Question 6 - What have you learned about technology from the purpose of constructing this product?

Teamwork

Overall I feel that we worked well as a team although there were some misscomunnications along the way but we got there in the end. By working in a team I gained tolerance as at times things were frustrating butI learned to contain how I felt. I also learnt how to accept other peoples ideas even if I didn't fully agree with them. Overall I enjoyed the experience of working with my team members as I feel we strived and worked hard together as a team.

Evaluation Question 7

This is the preliminary match-up which i first done with minimum skills of final cut pro.

This is a match-cut which is part of my final thriller film, this is much more better quality as we have developed lots of new skills in using the program final cut pro.

Evaluation Question 8

After watching the short thriller films as a whole with all the media department I asked some friends for their opinion on our film.

Question 7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned from it to the full product

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This is an image of us working in progress, as you can see the shot shown isn't really of a high standard this is because we were unexperienced with using the programs on the apple mac. When we began editing it also wasn't of a high standard the shots fixed together weren't as smooth and the positions of the shots weren't as accurate as planned. However as we began to improve our skills and knowledge our filming and editing improved.

Our final edit- Over the process of making the 'Hollow pond' we gained a lot of skills with the help of using programs such as 'Live type', Final cut pro' the use of using different programs enabled us to progress. We've learnt how to use the cameras to a professional standard, set up and use the equipment effectively such as using the tripod, positioning the camera to our ideal shot. In addition to using the camera the skills we acquired are ejecting the memory card, inserting the memory card and putting the camera into focus using the zoom.

We also improved how to film the shots we wanted. One example of this is when we were editing. The skills learnt enabled us to use more than one effect in one shot. We learnt how to use timing effectively and the shots we produced showed our skills had improved.

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When comparing this final edit, we can see how much we have improved. Our edits and transitions are smoother.

Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

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This is a sequence of 9 shots from our thriller opening. I feel that our film uses conventions from media products as like 'zombie land' the titles are very bold and correspond accordingly with the film.

In zombie land the titles are red which is a colour of which is assoiciated with danger, anger and bloodshed. From the still images above the audience can instantly sense that these components are essential factors within the film.

Similarly the titles in Hollow pond are very bold and correspond accordingly with the genre of the film. The titles have a very child like effect and thus relate to the main feature of our film which is our child actress 'Kyla'. The titles are also blue which I feel creates quite a sinister, chilling and unerving effect.

Hollow Pond challenges forms and conventions of real media products as children are often portrayed as innocent characters in the media. Its is extremely rare to see children potrayed as sociopaths which is why we opted to go for the opposite of this embeded stereotype. However whilst it is rare to have children potrayed as sociopaths it is not unheard of an instance where this has occured would be the case of 'Joshua'. Which is a film where in which a young troubled boy performs grusome unjustified acts which are very unerving in many ways.

Our film also reflects other films that use desserted woods as a location as a means of establishing a chilling and suspenseful effect. Such films would include

'The blair witch project' which uses the woods as a means of trying to capture supernatural figures on camera, however an unexpected twist occured which took a sinster twist on their lives.

Question 5 - Who would be the audience for your media product?

Sandra, 19, an aspiring model who works in the retail industry enjoys shopping, going to the cinema and is passionate about travelling around the country and gaining new experiences.

Sandra's enthusiasm for modelling portrays her as a girlie girl, which she is, however, she also has a rough edge. She is very open minded. Her favourite genres of movies are thrillers, horrors and comedies. Her favourite band is Girls Aloud, but she also listens to Panic At The Disco, Green Day, Ndubz and Lil Wayne.

Evaluation: A level Media- Thriller Opening

This is a Thriller opening produced by As Level students. Although this is a low budget film it still managed to gain popularity over the internet using sites such as "You Tube" to gain hits up to 1,700. This supports the idea that a low budget film can be distributed succesfully on the internet. The internet is often used to further distribution, market the targeted audience specifically and to help potentially reach a global audience.

Social networking sites such as 'youtube' 'facebook' and 'Myspace' are perfect examples to use as they are all globally used. 'Youtube' allows their audience to specifically search for what they need. Some younger students may aspire to the videos shown on 'Youtube' such as 'AS Thriller films' groups can be created where they can all share work and comment. This allows them to all have something in common.

As for our own film 'Hollows pond" distributing our films on 'Youtube' would be the most common way of trying to gain popularity. This is due to the fact of our target audience would be a user of 'Youtube' so therefore would enjoy searching for movies that are specifically targeted for them. Networking sites such 'Myspace' and 'Facebook' means you can create groups where you comment specifically on certain institutions.

Question 3&4 - What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? How will you attract/address your audience?

I found this opening thriller on YouTube. Although it is a low budget film it managed to get 1538 views. This shows that low budget films can be successful. Our thriller would be distributed over the Internet via vimeo. It could also be embedded onto blogger, where we would be able to recieve feedback from our audience as they would be able to comment. Due to the growth in technology, ordinary people now have the opportunity to be heard. Thanks to YouTube, student film makers have been able to globally show there movies over the Internet. This means that they are able to get a global audience as YouTube is accessible all over the world. Aside from YouTube, networking sites like Facebook, Myspace and Twitter could also be used to market films by creating groups fan pages and in turn drawing in a wider audience.

Evaluation Question 6

Here i just made a short animatic about all the technologies i used to make my thriller and how my skills improved from first using them.

Evaluation Question 5

My audience for this media production would be a study, most likely to be a female aged around sixteen, seventeen, in the first years of college at the age of maturity as the film is a thriller, it needs a person whom controls their attention and is able to read into movies. Most likely a cinema love, a person that loves to attend all the new films. The person which is a female would be someone that is up to date with there fashion and this is what I believe they would carry on a day to day basis. We are not running a solely female film the male age group i believe would be similar sixteen, seventeen plus, the males would only be there because they are taking their girl friends to watch the movie.

Question 3&4: What Kind of media institution might distribute your media product?

This is a video I collected from youtube of which was posted by As media students. This video received 6,589 hits showing the film is appealing to quite a large audience. Although this film is of a low budget and so as a consequence has limited special effects and a limit in terms of the type of technology that could have been used to construct the film it has still attracted quite a large audience. This proves that low budget films can still be successful in their own right. In relation to our film it would be ideal to have working title 2 to distribute our film as they are a British organisation that specialises in distributing British films. Our film consists of an all British cast and in that nature depicts and reflects typical British culture. To gain a wider audience we will initially release our film on vimeo and embed it on to a blog where people can post comments and in this way we hope to gain positive feedback. In order to further market our film we will use additional popular social networking websites such Twitter, Facebook and myspace. In terms of developing a cult following by using Facebook I intend on uploading our film and sharing among my friends encouraging people to click the ' like' tool. This will promote the film as if it's liked by a number of people it will appear on a number of people's homepage when they log in which will mean more people will have access to view the film.

Hollow Pond will additionaly get a cinematic screening. We hold great aspirations and have high hopes for our film and we wish to share this journey amongst our peers family members as we are on a one way train to potential global success. Should Hollow pond become successful we hope that one it will venture in to a field of a bigger marketing stream on youtube in which we hope to achieve a fanbase and cult following of a wider audience then 16-21 which is what we originally opted for.

Evaluation Question 3 & 4

We would like that our short thriller clip would be promoted through sites such as YouTube. As this is a low budget film and the first of our media careers I believe that the Internet is the best possible way to promote. Sites such as Facebook are forms of blogging site, if I was to post the film on YouTube or Facebook I would be getting comments from the public but the most important thing is that my friends of similar age and that of the age we planed to promote the film to would see it and this would help us widen our views. As young people we like to talk, so word of month is a really good effective way to promote a film like ours.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gwcg18UduKg

I found a clip on YouTube of a American movie school a short thriller film, with 7,817 views, this was similar to my thriller as the producers were same age as me, and it was a low budget production.

Evaluation Question 2

A shot from our thriller film.

A shot from the 2004 hit 'mean girls' staring Lindsey Lohan.

As you can see there so many similarities between the two shots, all the girls seem to be involved in fashion the image which we tried to create was of the fact that this social group has all the new bags, clothes and always seem to be happy in their three's. Althrough this wasn't the actually inspiration of why we had the characters dressed as such, but it is easy to see the comparison of American teens and those of the U.K, we definitely see that they can relate.

Evaluation Question 1

Zombieland 9 shots
Our thriller 9 shots

The ways that our 9 shot tittle sequence needed to be to develop the skills that real productions use would be to have the tittles, we never had shots and tittles together rather our tittles came separately. One element that I can proudly say we used was the fact that i had minimum actions in the nine shots, this was to make it more harder for the audience to know whats going on but enough for them to want to watch the film.

Changes after feedback from rough cut.

We needed to really add some close-ups to our thriller as this was the comment of most of the people who gave us some feedback. Me being the camera man I need to find some places which we could add some close-ups. Another issue that we found when listening to feedback was the lighting and this meant that we need to go out filming again after our rough cut. We wanted to have a dark effect in the thriller back unless we use the natural light it wouldn't look dark rather the shots would be fuzzy and would make the film look bad quality.

Skills Audit Creation of Titles

Live Type pro the program which was used to make the tittles for our thriller film. There's a selection of fonts to choose from which come under livefont or normal. To make my title I simply typed the word such as Director, editor and so forth, into the text box and choose the font. I choose to create an effect to make the title appear suitable for a thriller title sequence. I also played with the textures, however, when going through the textures it wouldn't allow me to change the colour of the text which I later realised that I had to use a normal text rather than a 'live-font'. Like I already mentioned with the soundtrack the girls in my group helped me come up with a finally font and design for our thriller, basically working together as a team to came out with the best possible titles for our thriller.

StoryBoard

This is a small section of our storyboard, lots of our shots changed from what was initially decided to do.

Skills Audit Soundtrack

I first created a soundtrack using Soundtrack pro with the skills I learn previously when we first stated the induction to our media course. The program is pretty straight forwards after opening it, you use the different sounds these come up categoies which are easy to find. Sound included vocals, beats, percussion and lots of another instrumental. To make a sequence of the film with the sound as non-diegetic you dragged the sound clips onto the timeline, making it as long as you want you may have different sound clips at different parts of the film. After making a sound track the group believe it needed a little touching up, so the girls came together and developed what I had already created. With the sound and creating of text the girls in my group developed the ideas I first came up with.

Skills Audit: Filming

We came back together after filming to view our filming session, analyse our shots and make sure they would be of good quality to included in our thriller. Our shots were poor and so decided to approach our thriller in a different way, this was from the feedback of our teachers and some help from ends, the problem was lighting and we need some more close-ups, to show facial expressions.
We first wanted to use props such as beer/alcohol, but later decided that it was to much of inconvenience and the idea of people being drunk was a bit old as many other thrillers have used this idea. It took us three to four days to film our thriller, the child actor was only available for one day and so we made sure we made use of our time appropriately, this was what rather held us back because it was harder to picture the thriller without getting a test of the young girls acting skills.

We started filming around march 5th, we shot our first set of shots in Hollow Pond with out our child actor was she unavailable, we decided to shoot all of the shots that she wasn't in so that we didn't waste any time. We shot a variety of shots including our establishing shot which we had a couple takes to get the best possible shot, floor shots and close ups.Our Mise en scene included the forest itself and cans of beer to add to the fact that we were tipsy which we later decided to take out. We had a lot of forestation this was to add suspense and would make the audience want to carry on watching out film to see what happens next.Fortunately, the natural lighting in the forest was bright and so we didn't need to use artificial lighting.On the 12th March we decided not to film, but instead watch our footage so far so that we could analyse it and discuss what we could do to make it better. At this point we realised that we need lots of shots especially close-ups.

Question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

As it stands much of our film mirrors Orphan as it's where the route of our inspiration originated from. We took the idea of the young and troubled sociopathic girl and used this in our opening sequence as we thought it would create a chilling effect within the audience and as the film was so popular amongst the audience we aimed to target we felt that it would be a successful idea in that area alone.

Both characters are similar in that they both look quite innocent at first glance but if we delve in deeper we soon realise that their intentions are of a deep, dark and sinister nature.

In orphan the girl is always there no matter where you turn and this is similar to the effect we opted for which is reflected by our layering of shots. Where by two shots are faded into one to create the illusion of her appearing everywhere.

Both characters show anger which is reflected in not just their emotions but their actions as they both appear to be on a mission to seek revenge.

I feel that our film represents the social group of the girls from sorrority row. This was not the original interpretation we had opted for however after careful considertation it appears that our films have many similarities. The similarities are, the girls of Sorrority row depict the image of being a close nit unit of friends which is reflected in our film. They appear to enjoy partying, socialising and seeking new adventures. The aspect of seeking new adventures is shown in our hence ending up in the woods. An additional similarity is both groups are being haunted by something or someone which has an ominous effect on the outcome of the films.

Question 5: Who would be the audience for your media product?

Jenny 17, a former college student studying hair and beauty enjoys learning new hair and make-up tips and has a passion for fashion. She enjoys shopping in her favourite high street store Topshop. Jenny loves hanging out with friends in her favourite hot spot McDonalds. She has a love for all things pink but despite this has a tomboy nature which people often misread due to her love for pink. Her favourite film genre is pyschological thrillers as she enjoys watching things that keep her engaged and her mind stimulated. Her obsession with Robert Pattison often lands her in great trouble with her friends as she finds herself constantly talking about him obsessing over their future 'non existent relationship. Her favourite band is N-dubz and she thinks Gaga absolutely rocks!!

Evaluation: How does your media product represent social groups ?

The 'sorrority row' girl's representation is similar to the representation we wanted to achieve.

The 'Sorrority row' girls each have an individual personality just like our characters. This shows when they are challenged within the film. The similarities relies on the fact they are both a tight group of girls that are close friends, they all look out for each other and all share similar hobbies such as partying, an interest in boys and always up for a challenge. The similarities between both Pitches of 'Hollows Pond' and 'Sorrority row' is that both groups are being haunted by something an constantly on the look out.

The social group they both fall in to are the typical girly group that enjoy's partying and spending time together. They enjoy challenges and going to explore new places. They also enjoy getting ready and wearing new outfits thus the typical girly antics.

Another inspiration we gained from a particular social group was from the film 'The Orphan' we used this inspiration to create our own haunted character. The main character from 'Orphan' is a pyschotic girl we used this idea in our own film. As this type of 'Thriller' was popular amongst teenagers we thought it would help us gain popularity for 'Hollows Pond' .

Both characters have a similar appearance both are small and fragile but decieve us by being evil and haunted. We enjoyed the idea of always having the 'little girl' present wherever in the film, this inspired by 'The Orphan'.

Evaluation: Who would be the the audience for your media product

The lifestyle of "mandy, 15 enjoys gossiping with her friends, munching on pizza slices with her friends in town. Going to the cinema. Drooling over all the latest hot celebrities . Mandy aspires to be just like Pixie Lott. She buys all her clothes from 'Topshop' and 'H&M' and has an eye for the latest fashion. She enjoys snuggling up on the sofa with her mates watching thriller films and chick flicks She always loves getting dolled up with make up and painting her nails a different colour every week especially pink.

Question 2 -How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our child actress (Kyla) was inspired by the child played in Orphan.

Kyla's looks are very similar to the child in Orphan and therefore we were able to get the sinister but innocent look we were going for.
The motives of both of the children are the same as they are both seeking revenge for one reason or the other.

Children in the media are often portrayed as innocent people, however there has been a traditional trend where innocent children are playing the roles of sinister characters. For example, Damien in The Omen.

I think we achieved this very well. We did this by dressing Kyla in a white top to show the paleness of her skin. We also pulled back her hair to accentuate her features more so that she looked colder and creepier when she stared into the camera.

The image I am comparing our still shot from is Sorority Row. Although this was not our inspiration, I feel that it is very easy to relate to. In both pictures, the girls are seen as normal teenage girls. However, they have somehow get themeselves involved in a sinister twist that has a dramatic turn on their lives.

Question 8 -Audience feedback and comments

This is our Wordle. It shows all of the feedback given from other groups in our class. Our main feedback was that we needed a stronger close up of the cross. They liked our use of layering and said our shots were effective.

On the day of our screening, we asked a few people what they thought of the thriller. We recorded there reaction before and after on Alexandra's BlackBerry.

Video 1: Audience Comments before Screening.

Video 2: Audience Comments after screening.

Skills Audit:Editing

We all took on task to create the best possible thriller, as I was the camera man for all the filming we decided that other personnel's will deal with editing and other sections of the film. Francene used Final Cut Pro to edit the sequences, previously using the program I found it quite easy to use and had no major problems with it, I developed skills in using this program so if the other group members had problems I could help them out.The process of putting our sequence together spread out over quite a few days, we had to use the work shops at lunch times to effectively edit our film.Using FinalCut Pro, I have learnt many new skills such as using the tool to crop out any unwanted footage, changing the opacity of different shots and added effects to make the clip more effectively thriller like.

Creating Titles

We were responsable for creating the titles for our thriller sequence. We wanted to create something that matched our footage perfectly, and we found our outcome wos very succesfull.


using the equipment " Live Type" on MAC computers at college, we were able to explore many different

• fonts


• colours


• sizes


• effects


• live effects.

in our filming, our main character (Jessica) wears a blue gown, so our font innitially was ment to be red, but we wanted it to fit exactly. So we changed to a light sky blue, wich we feel matches very nicely.

To make sure they came in suitable orders, we watched the title opening of "panic room" to find wich title should come up when, for example we found it quite rare that the director was shown at the end, instead in alot of big block busters the director is usually shown in the first three titles.

each title lasts a couple of seconds on the screen, some appearing over the footidge at the bottom, or some in suitable places when the screen is blank.

we specifily liked the final title, wich is the title of the film (wich is the only pattern we didnt follow from panic room) it fits lovely with the soundtrack so we felt it would be at peak by showing it at the end on a black background.

Using the live effect called "frigid" this caused our text to move almost as it is vibrating and shaking. This panic, and frantic feel was perfect for our sequence.

After saving each title individually, our other group members (jessica and farhana) placed them carefully were they were suited best on our footidge.

Creating Titles

Initially The titles were made by Mohammed and touched up by Francene, However after a group discussion we decided the tittles weren't very thriller like as they ressembled grafiti writing so I was made to do them again. I created the titles using a programme called live type. I changed the text to 'Crazy killer' and added the 'frigid' effect. I thought crazy killer had a nice effect as it looked quite like handwritting and like it had been written by somebody unerving whom had pyschopathic tendencies. The frigid effect was chosen because it reminded me of one of our shots of our child actress 'kyla' where one moment you see her and the next moment you don't, that was the effect I was opting for with the text. When it came to incorporating the titles into the film we found this quite difficult as we was trying not to make our film go over the 2minute quota but by doing this it meant our titles were appearing and disapearing too quickly so we had to shave some shots down using the 'razor tool' in order to incorporate the titles so they could be shown for a decent length of time.

Pitch

Prior to creating our film we were made to pitch our ideas to our peers and our teachers. I was incharge of writing the title of our film and the explanation behind it, explaining what type of thriller we had opted for, chosing our target audience, planned location shots and drafting a rough production schedule. It was quite nerve racking to begin with but as our group got in to deleviring the pitch I became more relaxed.

Acting upon feedback we decided to change the title of our movie as initially it was entittled the children's playground. Conversely we changed this as their were very limited references to a playground in our movie and so therefore the title wouldn't make sense. Additional feedback from Mary and Dan was that our film appeared to be too 'ambitious' and that it would be too prolonged and delayed at getting directly to the source of action if we were to incorporate all the locations we intended to use. They also felt that shooting in the forest and only the forest would have a larger effect and that the other locations would stand as too much of a distraction.

Initially we intended on filming at nightime however we were informed that this may not be a good idea as the quality of our filming would be very poor. We later on learned that it's easier to make a light film dark then a dark film light.

As an element of mise en scene we planned on using a mobile phone, however our teacher's weren't keen on this idea as they noted that this is a typical commonly used prop and we wanted our film to be individual from others. Furthermore we planned on using alcohol to begin with but decided that this would have been an unnesscessary distraction.

Other feedback given was that our production schedule was to 'rough cut' and that it needed to be more detailed. Acting upon this we made a new production schedule of which was more satisfactory.

Pitching the Thriller

The Pitch was prepared before we went out and started to film, we had to pitch our ideas to our teachers and class mates after that we was able to go out into the filming process. After showing our pitch to the Teachers Dan and Mary we had some thing that they believed needed changing as they believed it would be to complicated to carry out in a small production film. At the beginning we planned to film at night, but using our teachers review, we decided to film during the day as we were told that it would be more effective, we wanted to have a dark effect which is better to edit in using the program final cut rather than filming in the dark and making the clarity of the shots poor. Looking to the to productive and critical feedback from our teachers and some of our class mates, we had some throughts on how to make our story better and had a few adjustments to our pitch. Due to technical difficulty we lost the pitch with was corrupted with my usb, fortunately, we located a copy of it today which just need to be changed up a little. Had lots of problems posting up our Pitch hopefully some time today the technicians will help our solve this problem.

Pitch

Pitching our thriller.

Before being able to go out and film, we had to pitch our ideas to our teachers and class mates. I was confident that we had thought of a good story plan, however, our teachers Dan and Mary believed it was too complex.
Originally, we planned to film at night, but using our teachers constructive criticism, we decided to film during the day as we were told that it would be more beneficial.
We were initially going to use a phone, however we were told that the exam board are too familiar with this prop and so we decided not to use it.
We also had to take out a large part of our sequence as our teachers agreed that it was too much to follow.
Working with both positive and negative feedback from our teachers, we were able to improve our story.

Due to technical difficulty, we misplaced our pitch. Fortunatley, we located a copy of it today.

Creating the soundtrack and titles.

To put the soundtrack together, I used the program Soundtrack pro I found this exceptionally easy to use and it didn't take me long before the soundtrack was composed.
Before putting the instrumental together, Tyra and I listened to a variety of sounds that varied from fast paced to slow and whiny sounds. I decided to incorporate sound effects in the sequence like screams, heavy breathing and heartbeats to help the audience understand that we are running in fear. This program is very simular to Acid Express, which I have used before and so I didn't really learn anything new from this program.

The title sequence was put together by Mohamed using LiveType. However, I had a play around with the program so that if anything went wrong, i'd be able to help. This program was also simple to use.
I enjoyed browsing through the different types of fonts and animations. I particulary liked 'Frigid' and 'Gating Gun'

Editing the sequence

To edit our film , I used FinalCut Pro. I found this program quite easy to use and had no major problems with it.The process of putting our sequence together spread out over quite a few days.
Using FinalCut Pro, I have learnt many new skills such as using different tools to crop out any unwanted footage, changing the opacity of different shots etc..
I enjoyed editing the sequence because it was satisfying to see the shots coming together bit by bit.
I think our editing could have been more productive if I wasn't the only person actually doing it. Although I had constant verbal contributions from Tyra and Alexander, I feel that we could have made use of the time more.