Looking back at your preliminary task,what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

After finishing our preliminary task I through that I was fairly confident on what skills we would need to use when it came to our final task. From our preliminary task I wanted to improve upon three areas, which were shot sizes, media terminology and knowledge of editing. I believe that from this task I have developed a more of an understand of how important it is to use a variety of different shot sizes in any scene you see in a film, after not having enough shot sizes and having to go back and improve on this area, it made a massive improvement to our overall opening sequence. With the help of other media lesson I believe that I have made a big improvement on my knowledge of media terminologies, for example I was able to understand the process of how a film is made and how its moves though the different stages and companies. This was most important in our pre-production tasks when thinking about, how well our film would do if it was to be released and what kind of audience would our film best most suited to and would bring in the most profit from looking at box office records.

Finally I feel that my knowledge in editing has made the biggest improvement overall, I think this is down to the fact that I was more involved with the editing of our opening sequence whereas before I took a step back as I had never experienced using the equipment before. When putting together our shots from filming I think I had a better understanding what shots when together and how others just didn’t fit, which meant we could create an opening sequence to a high quality.

Even through from this screen shot of the production company doesn’t show my knowledge of media institutions, I now have a much better knowledge on what role the company would have in the making of the film.

In addition to the above, i think that i have learnt one very important skill which is being able to create an initial idea of what you would like to produce and being able to carry out the project and keeping the idea consistent. As a group we all shared the same ideas which meant it was easier to keep to the project. This can be seen from looking at our pre-production documents and then our final project. Even though we had to re film some of our shots we kept the script and storyboard Constant throughout our project.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constricting this product

1. Editing suit- I have used the editing suit before and i felt i had some knowledge in how to start editing out opening sequence however i felt i need to relearn a lot of what i had learnt previously.

2. Tripod- we used this piece of equipment through out all of our filming to make sure the camera was stead and didn’t end up with wobbly shots.

3. Blogger.com- we used this website to publish all of our work, here we could add pictures and create folders of different sections of work. I had never used this website before starting this project, this meant that it took a lot of getting used to however, I feel that I can use it well and understand the layouts.

4. Word- we used this programme to produce a look of our work for both pre-production and post production. This programme was very useful when making tables.

5. Scanner- The work we had done on word and inserted a table or drawn pictures, this could not be added to our blogs which meant we had to scan in all this word and turn it in a PDF folder.
6. Internet- I used the internet for all of my research into recent films for our chosen genre as well as looking at box office profits and much money had its takes to make a film from start to finish. It was very helpful as it allowed me to took at many different resource sites.

7. Sony Handy cam- we filmed all of our opening sequence using a Handy Cam which we attached to the tripod, this camera is very good as we was able to see what we was filming as well as look back at previous shots.

8. DivX- We used this programme to import and convert all of our filming on the computer edit suits. By using this programme it meant it could be kept in a small folder rather than taking up loads of room.

9. Digital camera- we used a digital camera to take pictures for out location recce as well as during filming which we added to documents.

10. PowerPoint- As adding pictures to our blogs had to be created into a PDF file this meant that a lot of work I did was produced on PowerPoint than that word, this was a much easier way to upload word rather than printing it all off and scanning.

11. Adobe Premier- we used this programme to edit all of our opening sequence. Even through I had used this programme before for our preliminary task I still found it confusing and hard to use however after some time of working on our opening sequence I felt more confident using the programme and was able to edited a change parts of our opening sequence with ease.

After looking at all the technology i have used it is hard to image that 50 years ago making a film or opening sequence was a job for only the professional with large money funds and had expert skills knowledge on creating films . Today with the the use of Handy Cams and editing software it can take only a few weeks to put together a home made film and try to get interest from production companies to try and sell your film. In the 1950 this was quite the opposite , from these pictures it shows us how technology has improved over the years and how today we can carry around cameras, and within minuets we can upload images to the computer whereas before pictures where taken on a film roll and had to be developed, anywhere in the world today in it is most unlikely that you would find any technologies that isn't now digital. As this is the way forward in the technology industry always improving and always doing one better than before. During the 1950's people of very high power with large amount of money would be responsible for creating a new blockbuster and to be part of the filming institution was a big deal. Today i think we are very lucky to have the equipment and technologies at our fingertips that that allows us be able to create, capture and edited filming within days.

How a media institution might distribute our media product and why?

What is a production company?
The job of a production company is to be a responsible source to develop new ideas for new media, films, radio and television programmes. They could also have the responsibility for finding funding for the production to start taking place, this could be a small company that would like to sell its products to a film studio or could be a well-established studio itself.
The sole job of the production company is to create money for the directors so they can start filming and production their films, a good production company should be reliable and stick with the until its distributed. For our film we have associations with Kings Langley productions, this means that they have given a proportion of money to help use create our film.

Where does a production company get its money?
With the average Hollywood film costing around $300 million to produce (this information came from my pre-production documents) how do companies such as Paramount and Pixar afford such large sums of money without going bankrupt?

The first place the look for money is from past films, a company such as Paramount will only produce a film if they think it will sell and bring in a large profit for them. An advantage of having a large distruption company distribut your film means that they have a large amount of experience within the market and would have great suggestion on how to improve your film. However if this was their first film or have not enough money left over they look into distribution and production deals, or they will find investors which will come together and give a large amount of money for a define purpose. However for production companies that are trying to produce a small British film it’s much harder to find a company willing to find funding, this is you can received money that comes from the national lottery and goes towards the UK Film Council. From the Council directors can apply for money, any films that are chosen will receive money for all their costs such as, script development, film production, film distribution and export and skills. Some examples of films that have used this award is How to Lose Friends, Alienate People and St Trinian’s. For our film we would look into applying for such a contract where we could be given money to help produce and improve scripts, story lines and skills. Another example of this is the BBC Film Network that production company that showcases British film Making, directors for new and upcoming films apply for grants. If your film is chosen for the grant then you will receive help with all aspects of your film for example, script writing, directing and how to make your film as successful as possible.

What is a distribution company?
A distribution company can be a individually company or be part of a massive organisation such a Sony who have many subsidiary arm to their business. The distribution is the last stage between the films production company and a films exhibition, for film making the distribution referees to marketing of the film and it being shown in cinemas and later DVD releases. Its main focus when a film is to be distributed it to convince business such as Vue, Oden to rent of book each film, which is normally done through and exhibition where the film is watched and then contracts to be drawn up.

For our film we would like to take it to a film festival such as Portobello Film Festival held in London each year. We would take it to a festival that was focusing on the genre of our film and hope that a director would notice our film. If this happened and we got chosen then we would like our film to be released in the United Kingdom in as many cinemas as possible. In addition to this we would also try to get a company such as Film 4 to try and showcase our film on television.

How we attract/ address your audience

Screen grabs from opening sequence

We decided to add in a camera flash in between the past and the present day, we decided to this so that the audience will get an idea of what went on during the murder and how the young women ending up in the situation. We also changed the past to black and white to create a different effect and would be more interesting to the audience.

Our title screen has the running trait that follows all of our murders that take place during the film, by using a visual code to attract the audience and so that is known to the murderer it can be traced back to him every time, this will make the audience become drawn in and want to know who is behind all the murders and why he chosen to leave behind a hand print after every murder. This is known as the Narrative Enigma as we want to know who is behind the murderers.

We decided that in our opening sequence we would always have the murderers face hidden from the camera, this would attract our audience in to watch the rest of the film and to find out who was behind all the murders.

By using violence from the murderer towards the victim, makes the audience want to understand why he would want to be so aggressive towards a young women, and is there any hidden reasons to why he would be acting in this way.

When we thought about creating our film and how we would try to attract out audience, we through that it would be best that our film was made by an independent film producer or a brand new production company. We decided to produce our film this way as is means that we could make our story lines more creative and have new exciting actors to star in the film which would attract a younger audience. By choosing to have an independent film maker it meant that it could attract an audience that has interest in new British films.

Receiving audience feedback

To receive audiences feedback we decided to create a questionnaire of our target audience to complete, within the questionnaire we asked question on the overall opening sequence as well as individual comments such as editing and light. We decided that this would be the best way of asking for their opinions with it still being confidentially. In addition to this we did a rough-cut copy for an audience to comment upon, we chose to video their responses and place them on our blogs. From looking at the feedback we had been given we then had to decide on what the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) should be. When thinking about this we had to make sure that what would be seen throughout the film would be appropriate to the rating, and also thinking about our target audience. As our target audience started from 16 rather than 18, this meant that most suitable rating would be 15. By choosing this rating it meant we could use violence, strong language and drug use, which could all fit into our story line at some point. In addition by making the rating a 15 it meant that the audience would know what to expect when they went to watch the film, we decided that there was no other suitable rating as you would never expect to see a crime film with a lower rating as you instantly think it would be unconvincing.

Who would be the audience for your media product

Target Audience
As a group we decided to chose our target audience to be between the ages of 16-25, we have chosen this age group, as from looking at results from our questionnaire it was clear that older teenagers and young adults attend the cinema most regularly. In addition from looking at recent box office statistics its shows use that most media products are produced for the age group of 16-21 and are made for both male and female audiences. This is further shown when looking at my pre-production document of recent crime films for example box office profits from The Dark Knight show use that it was a very successful and made profits of $215 million. Furthermore we can see that crime films have always done well as in 1998 the crime action film Lock Stock and 2 smoking Barrels made a box office profits of £22 million in the United Kingdom.

By looking at recent films of all genres it shows us that most film story lines are being based around the life styles and hobbies of the main characters. From looking at results to the questionnaire it also showed use that most people attend the cinema on regular occasions and often go with groups of friends or with a girlfriend of boyfriend. We also found that many recent films produced have the genre of crime related to the film at some point during the film. In addition to this many people said during their questionnaire that the most recent film they had been to see was linked to crime. Finally we came to the conclusion that we would aim our film at the ages of 16-25 as we felt the film would get higher box office rating and produce larger box office profits if the genre was crime and action.

In addition after looking at the media in the United Kingdom it was clear that TV dramas about crime are very popular and are very successful, however the United Kingdom never goes any further than producing TV dramas and leaves film making about crime to the America. The success of how well crime dramas do in the UK is shown by the production of Law and Order UK which was first aired in 2009, even though the idea came from the American series the UK version is doing exceptional well. In addition the new series of Foils War is another example of how well crime dramas are doing in the UK, this can be shown by the 7.40 million viewers turning in to watch the new series. This information is from the website http://www.barb.co.uk/, from this website we can see weekly viewings of popular programme and how well they are doing compared to others. My final example is the police drama Ashes to Ashes which got 5.58 million viewings. From looking at the weekly viewings on how well crime dramas are doing we then had to think about what audience our turning in it watch such programmes, this lead us having a new idea on another additional target audience. We believe that our second audience would be people aged 40 and over, these people are clearly very interested into crime dramas that our being shown weekly which means they could possible be interested in going to see our crime film.

From looking at this information on how well crime dramas do in the United kingdom it seems clear that there is an open market for a crime film just like we have created to be produced in to the film market.

First audience 16-21

This is Katie Walsh. She is 17 years old, and lives in a small village called Kings Langley. From the picture we can see that she is straight forward dresser with a plain white vest top and colourful shorts. She a typical teenage girl who loves to be around her friends, and spends most of her weekends going on trips out shopping, going to the movies, staying over friend’s houses and partying. However ever since she was a child she has always attended drama lessons, this is one of her favourite hobbies along with art and swimming. She has many ambitions for later life and would like to become a psychologist. Katie is still in full time education and really enjoys the subjects in while she has chosen to study in 6th form.

During any free time that she has, she spends watching TV programs such as CSI, The peep show, The OC and 90210. She is also a big fan of horror, action and crime movies with fast moving story lines and cant stand any romantic girl films. She likes to go to the movies with friends and would buy the DVD as soon as possible if it were to her taste. She listens to a wide variety of music and finds it very relaxing to just sit and listen. Her favourite style of music would be Indie and some pop music however would never listen to r ‘n’ b of hiphop.

Second audience 40+

This is Till she is 52 years old and lives in a small town on the ourskirets of Leeds. From this pictures we can see that she has short hair, creamy cut of trouser a plain white t-shirt and cardigan and is wearing walking trainers. She has worked all her life and comes from a long line of teachers and at the age of 25 she became and English teacher herself. She lives a very normal life she is happily married and has been for 27 years, she has no children but has a very large family. She has many hobbies which include sewing, gardening and walking. She has a great love for animals and currently has 2 kittens living at home. During her free time she loves to cook and relaxes on the sofa and watches her favourite program es such as NCIS, Law and order, CSI and The Bill. She is a great fan of books and loves nothing more than spend all day Sunday sitting down a having a good read.

How does our media product represent particular social group.

Within our opening sequence we have use three characters Detective Brown, the Victim and the Murderer. All three of these characters have completely different representation of social groups. For example the victim of the murderer would represent a stereotypical social group of an older teenage girl student attending university, has a small group of good friends and is friendly, lively and always there to help a friend out. This is her first time living on her own and experienced what its like to live away for parents. However while she is studying she becomes good friend with a boy of the same age, appears to share the same interest and confineneds in him as a close friend. After being close friends with him for a few months she starts to find herself

wanting to be more than friends even though she is aware that he has anger problems. For the first time one evening at her flat she finds out first hand whats its like to be on the other end of one of his angry outrages. We know that our victim knows the murderer as she sit backs and takes the fighting which is very unexpected as if it was a stranger you would instantly run away. Her character is easy to relate to and for other girls to understand how she would be feeling. We can liken her character to Little Mo from the BBC programme EastEnders. She was a friendly, loving and funny however found herself in a horrible situation when her husband started to become violent towards her. She felt that she couldn't leave him as it was her job to stick by him and try to find the problems that were causing the anger. http://estb.msn.com/i/4C/E244EB6D1F41CDA34B146BDB5D591D.jpg

(http://studentservices.dal.ca/Images/home4.jpg)

However on the other hand the murder in our opening sequence represents the same social group being of the same age as the victim but rather than being a student and attending university he comes from a criminal background. A criminal background is very easy to relate to as an audience as its shown on films on a regular basis.

The Detective in our opening sequence comes from a completely different social group of more of an older background. He represents a stereotypical man in high power and has collected detailed work experience and as worked his way up in his career. This could be related to a younger social group as something they could aspire to be like and to have the drive to work hard and move up within a business or company. We tried to create a detective of the same stereotype as detective Tom Barnaby from Midsommer Murders. If we where to recreate our opening sequence we would try to find and slightly older actor and place him in a jacket.

This is John Nettles he is a actor and plays the role of a detective in an ongoing show called Midsummer Murders. He would present the same social groups as our detective as he is of a high power within his job and has a large amount of experience. We can see from the picture that they are both similar as they are wearing the same clothes and look professional.

Audience Feedback

Audience Feedback
From exporting the rough cut of our opening sequence to the class. Even though it wasn’t finished yet and didn’t have any music, i found it really helpful to see what everyone else through of what we had created so far. To record the results from the audience feed back we chose to record what their idea and suggestions where on ways in which we could improve.
Insert recording here From looking and listening to what our class mates had to say it was clear that we had many improves that we should make to our opening sequence For example some suggestion where to add music, we were planning to add music however hadn’t yet got around to doing so as we had great trouble in finding a piece that we through would fitted appropriately. Some other suggestion where to add in more shot sizes, we had again planned to do this as we re-filmed some extra shots to add in such a close ups. Another negative that they found was the light, we was aware of this problem as the natural light wasn’t very good when filming, we did try to correct this problem by adding in lighting while editing but still wasn’t as good as it could have been. However on the other had there was some good results such as they thought it had a good story line and found it easy to follow, we believe this was done by the use of making the present day in colour and the past day in black and white. The feedback also showed us that they liked the actors in our opening sequence and thought they where easy to relate to.

insert recording of audience feedback here

After finishing editing our opening sequence we showed it to our targeted audience which was the ages of 16-25. We decided to do this through the use of a questionnaire which is shown below.



From looking at the result of the questionnaire we found that overall our audience really enjoyed our opening sequence. The plot was again mention and how much they liked it and they really enjoyed the flashbacks that we put in black and white. However on the other hand they found that the pace of the sequence was a bit slow and could have lasted a few more seconds. On average we found that they scored our opening sequence of 7 out of 10. I was very pleased with this feedback from our target audience and hoped they would go and watch the film it was to be produced.

In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products

After looking at many different opening sequences I have decided to stick to norms for an opening sequence, this included the use of titles to show production companies and distribution companies as well as adding in titles of what actors will be staring in the movie and finally the name of the film and who was the director. Even though in some of the sequences the name of the film was the last title to appear I decided to go against this structure as I believe this would make it look like a trailer rather than an opening sequence.

The title of our film is called The Hand Print, we decided on this name as it was linked with our plot for the whole film, which was the common link between all the murders. The title of our film appears quite early on of the opening sequence. We have chose to use the same style of font though out the opening sequence so it was fluent. We chose this font as it was clear, sharp and make an impact to the audience. For all our titles beside the name of the film, we chose to leave the font white against the black background as it made it prominent. However we changed the colour for the name of the film to red as we felt it reflected the blood from the handprint. In films that are associated with crime and violence it is common to see the use of fonts that are bold and hard rather than the use of italics or large colours. I believe this is reflecting the hard times a criminal life and the large impact it has upon people lives. The use of fonts with hard edges was common in all the crime films I looked at of example in the opening sequence of The Italian Job.

We decided to create a film with the genre of crime. We came to this conclusion as we found from our research that it was a very popular genre at this moment in time. I feel that what is seen in our opening sequence breaks away from most conventions for example, our film starts with how the film will be ending. This is very unusual and is normally seen in television programmes rather than films. The main genre of our opening sequences is Crime however we do see some violence and can start to see drama building. From the opening sequence I think that it’s clear that the film will be about crime due to the Detective and the forensic scientist. The use of many genres within on film is very common and can be seen in films such as batman Begins, which is an Action, Crime Drama.

Characters are introduced into the opening sequence very quickly from the start. The first person we see in the opening sequence is the Detective and soon after the murderer, this is common in most opening sequences so we can start to identify with them and start to understand their story. I think that the first words we here from the detective shows to the audience that we will be following him and trying to find the person responsible for the murders and to get justice.

Within the opening sequence we have used short shots, and tried to make the cuts between then quick and sharp. This creates the image that the film is fast moving and is full of exciting drama, we was able to create this image when editing but putting a cross dissolve before each shot however not at the end which goes against the norms of an opening sequence. Through out we used a range of shot sizes to make it interesting for the audience and the cuts for the different shot sizes made it fast passed, the use of different shot sizes can be used in the film Hot Fuzz. This opening sequence is very fast passed and is creating by the editing.

We decided to add lively fast music to our opening sequence rather than a slow; by doing this we found that it made all the difference to the overall effect of the sequence. With slow music we found that it become boring and uninteresting to watch however, with energetic, vigorous music is made our opening sequence more exhilarating and created a speedy and rapid story line. We chose to have the music playing all the way through our opening sequence as we found this was the case in all genres of films and gets the story going.

For the opening sequence we only used a few special effect, which was, changing, our flashbacks form a different time period into black and white. This was easily done during editing and helped show the audience the difference in time period. The second special effect we used was adding in a light source during editing which again was easily done and made all the difference. The special effects I have talked about aren’t very common within films are more likely to be seen in films such as Star Wars which is a sci-fi / action genres.

The location in which our opening sequence is set is a flat. This is a location that can be easily identified with, as it’s a common living accommodation, and most people of our target audience will know what a typical flat looks like. The use of housing in an opening sequence to films is very common and helps by setting the scene for the rest of the film. Within our opening sequence we used many props to help see the scene and to make it look believable to the audience that the location was a real flat. We see a desk, sofa, table and magazines, which is all furniture and recourses in which you would expect to see. The characters costumes we decided to use was a smart suit and tie for the Detective to give the impression that he is of a high power and standard, we had the forensic scientist in lab coats which is commonly seen in other films. Finally we had the murderer wearing dark clothes that covered his face making sure his face was never seen to the audience so that it keeps suspense.

Production report

This is Bianca how was asked to be an extra a played a forenstic scientist.

Here is a picture of us setting up our props and creating the loaction to look like a flat.

This is Joanna filming during production.

Post preduction documents

While editting as we went along we made screen shots of what we did while we went along so that we could show how we changed and improved our opening sequence.

Log Sheet

After we had finished filming we then captured our recording and then looked through it and found the best shots and logged them, this was a really long process as we had to stop the shots at the correct frames. Unfortunatry we had a few break in time codes which meant we had to start counting again and make importing the shots harder as the camera couldnt cope with it. Even though this look a long time it was defintly worth doing as when we imported it ready to be used for editing, it was a much shorter process and worked really well.