Coursework feedback

Research and Planning - 15

Excellent organisation of actors, locations etc with a detailed schedule, risk assessment etc. All recce’s complete and detailed as well. I would have liked to see a more detailed script. The script is simple but effective, but lacks the sound detail. Research into similar products is extensive and proficient, but sometimes lacks detail in analysis. The work on target audience is also lacking in depth, but does cover some interesting areas of demographics, even if it isn’t applied in any detail to her own work. There is a good level of care in presentation and time management was excellent.

Main Task – 53

This is a challenging film that tackles delicate issues and questions of representation. They have chosen to go along conventional stereotypical male aggressor/female victim lines. There is good continuity throughout, and the cross cutting is interesting and effective. Close attention has been paid to the location, make-up etc and the casting is impressive. The sound has been built up into an interesting sound scape through the use of found and created sound. There is no dialogue, however the voice over guides us and this follows conventions of many film openings of this genre. There is a good variety of shots and the titles follow conventions closely.  

February feedback

Your web-log looks good and has potential to be excellent if you can be more thorough with evaluation.  Ensure that creative technologies have been used to present your evaluation.

Complete the evaluation.

Put the preliminary task and your production as last posts then the questions

Add any extra elements to the research and planning.

Set targets for what you need to do over half-term to fully complete the coursework

Q7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you've learnt in the progression of it to the full product?

Q6: What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Software

We used Premier Pro to fit our footage for our preliminary task as well as for our main task opening scene. From first using it in September i found it hard to use but after practising using the software it became more familiar and therefore more easy to use. At first i didn't know anything about how to use it but here are some of the things i learnt;

Rendering: This helps smooth out your final cut of the video and make it better quality. To do this you would see a red bar above your edit, this shows that your footage needs to be rendered. Once it has been rendered to bar will turn green and when you play it back it will be of a better quality than before. 

I also learnt how to use the effects for transitions, colouring, audio ect. We showed this in our video by using different lighting effects to show a darker contrast between the two characters. 

For the antagonist we used a dark outer edge to create depth and darkness to represent the character with a light spotlight effect in the middle where he's walking to focus the audience on him.





For the protagonist we edited the clips so the shots would be brighter to reflect her innocence throughout the film. We used light effects to show this as if we was to use a dark effect it might look like she is a antagonist as those are the connotations of a villain e.g: dark colours.

To create our logo for the beginning of our opening scene we used After Effects, which i also found extremely difficult to use. However I used Youtube tutorials to help create our final product. Originally our title was very slow and time consuming as we anticipated that it would be 3-4 seconds long although it ended up being around 10 seconds long. We couldn't figure our how to speed it up therefore we rendered it into our film and sped it up on Premier Pro as this was a lot simpler and still looked as good as if we was going to do it on After Effects.

Audio
Throughout our filming we couldn't hear any of the audio as the equipment we used drowned out the audio. Therefore after we edited the footage together we used free sound.org and a voice recorder to record some audio to put over the top as sound effects and voice overs.

Q5: How would you attract your audiences?

How would you attract your audiences?

  

Q4: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms of conventions of real media products?

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

Q3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

The Call is a similar film to ours as they both have a teenage protagonist and middle aged antagonist. They both have similar features like being taken into a room/house in the woods. 

The Call:

• It was directed by Brad Anderson who is a film director, writer and producer. He is most known for horror and thriller films like The Machinist and Session 9. 
• It achieved one award as well as being nominated for 10 others.
• According to Box Office the film was supposed to earn around $11-$12 million, on its opening weekend within three days it had earned $17 million. The film cost around $13 million to produce. Box Office takings exceeded $64 million.
• It is WWE Studios most commercially successful film to date even though the R rating narrowed down the audience.

As our film is UK made is would probably make a lot more than The Call made in the UK as it would be more known and better advertised as The Call is an American film, which is filmed in America with American actors and actresses like Halle Berry.