Welcome to my Blog!

Dear examiner, welcome to my blog! I hope you enjoy my Blogs which will explain the journey I have gone through in my learning of Media.
Below is my main task, which is an opening sequence called 'Somnium'.

Evaluation

The following post will be the evaluation of the creation and making of our opening sequence 'Somnium'. This is evaluated from seven different questions.

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

Below I have posted a video of a news interview which asked me about question 1.

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

Below I have added a video blog of my self answering this question.

question 3: • What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Some of the media institutions which could have been a possibility would have been ether YouTube or mainstream film in Cinemas. Below I have created a radio interview involving my self and a interviewer. It is there to help answer this question.

The reason why we chose to put the film for a more mainstream film audience was because its genre and style is well suited for mainstream cinema as our target audience is couples aged 18 to 35 which enjoy horror films. As our film is a psychological horror it would be fare better suited being shown in a cinema, like Odeon, than being shown to viewers on YouTube.

question 4: Who would be the audience of your media project?

Our prime research was done through a small questionnaire which I carried out individually with random people in Bicester town Center. I asked the different people two questions: ''their age range, 18-28, 39-48, 49+'' and ''if they liked horror films''. after carrying out the survey I analysed the results. It showed that 70% of people aged between 18-28 enjoyed to watch horror films. the other 30% said they didn't. I also did an observation, by noticing that it was primarily couples going to the cinema. Therefore as our film is a horror film I believe my Target audience to be couples aged between 18 and 28.

Age ranges:            (Number of people which where asked was 50)

• 18-28         14 people liked horror films out of 20 people.
• 39-48         5 people liked horror films out of 20 people.
• 49+            2 people liked horror films out of 10 people.

Question 5: How did you attract/address your audience?

The main forms of marketing for our film 'Somnium' was the use of posters. The posters would be displayed around the mainstream Cinema's as it is the most effective place to advertise to their audience. As our target audience are couples aged between 18 to 35, they are most likely to see the film poster when around the cinema, which would attract them into watching the film.  Below I have designed a poster which would be displayed in mainstream Cinemas.

I researched what would need to be included in a movie poster. The main things which I ensured that I included was the following:

• The film title
• A relevant picture to the film
• production name
• The size of the poster should be 1920 by 1080

Below is the poster in picture form. 

I chose to use a simple picture of a pillow as it is extremely suggestive, but at the same time doesn't give very much away. This would method of advertising links closely with the use of film tailors, which brings the audience in even further. 

Question 6: what have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Below I have added a video explaining and answering this question.

question 7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Below I have added the link to a website which I have created answering this question. ('click' on the 'ABOUT' button).Also below there is a panal talk which helps to explain this question further. http://question7joel.weebly.com 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvNpFaDeDuw&feature=youtu.be 

Pre-production (scripting)

We have now started working on our pre-production for our opening sequence. We have begun by having  an  idea of what our opening sequence is going to include, by primarily looking at the genre and the story line. We chose the genre to be a horror film as we all had similar tastes in film.We started to base our scripting ideas from a psychological horror called insidious. Below was our starting idea for the opening sequence.This was adapted to fit the idea which we had.

Back stage filming

Today we did some filming for our opening sequence 'Somnium'. to ensure that our continuity was kept the same, we left the set essentially how it was for filmed previously. Therefore there was allot of equipment on set and ready to be used; for example, lighting. Below is a picture of the set, when filming today. We ensured that the bed, the cuddly toys, the shelf with doles and the clock didn't move at all between days when not filming. We did this to ensure that our continuity stayed the same throughout the filming process.

min of the meeting

Today we discussed in the meeting if we should keep our Holiday dream scene. After looking at the footage which we had, we decided to shorten the entire project by not having two different dreams. The main reason of this was because we believed that it didn't make very much sense with the rest of the opening sequence. Below was a reference we used when creating the story board.
http://www.wikihow.com/Draw-Storyboards

learning how to make a movie poster

I decided to create a movie poster for my film 'Somnium' Because posters tend to be one of the most effective pieces of advertisement in the film industry. Below Is one of the websites which I looked at to help me create the movie poster.

http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2011/02/7-elements-of-a-great-movie-poster-design/

Age certificate

I did some research Into age restrictions for films. As our film is a horror film we already knew it would be in ether the 15 or 18 age certificate, due to it being a horror film. I researched into what the difference between two certificates. The  British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) is a non-governmental organisation which gives recommendations for age restrictions, which the different county's reinforce through the law. I have come to the conclusion that our film is aged 18 appropriate as it has supernatural horror.

Where researching into the 18 certificate it stated that any of the following would result in the film receiving an aged 18 certificate: hard drug use, supernatural horror, explicit sex, sadistic violence and sexual violence. Thereforeas our film contains supernatural horror, our film would be an 18 certificate. 

film techniques

I researched into different film techniques using Google. I found the '30-degree rule' which is essentially a editing guideline that states that the camera should move at least 30 degrees between shots of the same subject occurring in succession. This is to avoid the risk of the audience focusing on the filming technique instead of the story that is being narrated. For example, if this rule was to not be followed and it was to be followed by a jump cut it could result in lose in concentration of the audience. Below is the Wikipedia link which was my prime source of research. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/30-degree_rule
From this research I believe that this rule is not as straightforward and can be manipulated in certain instances.

Transitions

After learning about transitions, I needed to learn how to use it within my adobe after affects software. Blow was a YouTube video, which I primarily used to learn the basic transitions. Essentially what I learnt, that one needs to layer the different video clips together to create a transition.

Should we use stop motion?

When creating the story board we debated as a group weather or not to use stop motion film in parts of our opening sequence. We decided to find some examples of stop motion first to see what kind of affect it would create. Below was one of the examples which we looked at.

We decided as it was a horror that it wouldn't be very conventional and work very well with our idea.

Final Story board

Below I have posted our final version of the story board. We changed it several times as some of the shots where too complicated for our filming ability's. For example, we changed shot 7 to being more still as our original idea was to complex.

Production pitch:

We were set, today in class, the task to start having an idea of what our opening sequence is going to involve. The things we needed to include were:

• synopsis
• mood board
• location
• cast/characters
• treatment
• sound track

We created a power-point, which is below, explaining what our opening sequence is going to be about.

Production Pitch Media

Scripting

I wrote out a rough script of what would happen in the opening sequence. Then me and my group had a meeting going through the script to add and take away things. Below is the script and the minuets notes:

Script of the Opening Sequence

Part 2:

Shot of the door. Door opens by itself- looking into the room. Closed curtains, there is a girl sleeping in the bed darkness apart from the night light. There is a focus shots looking at the jewelry box and the sound box. Music Box pops up. Close up shots of the girl sleeping.

Part 3:

There’s a happy dream of very bright home videos from when the girl is younger- happier music used from the sound box.

Part 4:

There’s a shot of the girls sleeping with happy facial expressions and then a dark Smokey hand coming up and getting closer to the girls neck changing her facial expressions to more scared and upset. The sound of the music box becomes more scary and distorted - before the hand appears. Just before the hand touches the girl, it changes to black and the title of the film appears in blood red smoke. It then suddenly jumps back to the girl, where she wakes up and gasps in fright (there isn't a scream). The hand has disappeared… (Was it a dream? Was it real?)

Minutes-

Talked about the script J

Took out first scene – decided opening shot of door

New Idea – China Dolls

Filming

Today we filmed the music box opening. This was one of our more complicated shots. We had planed too different methods before filming on how to achieve the shot (of the music box opening it self). Our two different plans where:

• To flick the music box down by hand and then edit it in reverse.
• to use some wire and some how lift the lid open. 

We had planned on trying both methods of opening the box, however when actually filming we found that the wire was far too difficult to achieve. Therefore we carried on with the reverse method.  Below is a picture of the final colour corrected music box. 

P.S.

Notice in this shot that at the start the lid pushes into the box (as if a person has properly lifted the box). This was a bounce of the lid which we manipulated in the editing stage.

horror film research (Insidious)

Below, there is a video of some research and clear identifications of what the opening sequence of insidious includes. Primarily it shows that their is a protagonist and their is also a non-conventional antagonist. This helped to create our opening sequence, as we also introduced our protagonist and a antagonist.  

Minutes of the meeting

In the meeting today we discussed if I should steady the opening shot. After some debate between the group members, we decided that it would be necessary as it could make the difference of the entire project maintaining the professional quality. Therefore I tracked the footage and then added a steady filter to the footage. This was all done using Adobe After Effects. The reason why the footage wasn't steady to start with was because I didn't balance the Steadicam well enough, which resulted in emphasizing the faults.

Below is a YouTube tutorial, explaining how to steady footage.

Minutes of the meeting

In today's meeting, we discussed the plan on what we wanted to do with our after effects editing. We all agreed for a dark hint of blue color correction, as we thought that the darkness would help to show that the film is in the night time and the blue would also help to give it a cold horror feeling to the entire production.

Minutes of the meeting

Today when filming we started by having a meeting. The meeting was about one of the shots we where unsure about. In our story board we had wanted to film a birds eye view shot of the bed and then have the camera float down to a close up shot of the protagonist. The reason why we where discussing the shot was because we had found that the shot was not stable, even when using the Steadicam and very difficult to film. Therefore we made the decision to change the shot to just a birds eye view. From this we made some minor adjustments to the story board. Also this meant that we didn't need to use the step ladder for the filming of shot, instead we used the tripod.

An introduction to Semiotics

In the lesson today, I learnt about semiotics. We were told that semiotics are the following things:

• Colour 
• Camera shots and angles
• Clothing
• editing
• Mise-en-scene

I was explained that visual semiotics was the study of signs and codes. The definition we were given on how they were used was as followed: ''producing, conveying and interpreting messages and codes that govern their use. We where then explained, through the use of different examples, a range of colour corrections; camera shots and angles.

After the lesson I spent some time research into semiotics theory. Below was one of the videos posted by another teacher giving a more in depth explanation.