Evalutation For Movie Opening (Dear Diary) - Question 7

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

Throughout the entirety of this process, I feel my skills in abilities surrounding the subject have developed and enhanced massively. I came into the subject at the beginning of Year 12 not knowing anything about cameras, filming, editing or blog writing. I think now I can safely say I can do all of those things now with a partner sat next to me or even on my own.

Firstly, regarding filming, in our preliminary task I had very little knowledge of the functions of a DSLR camera. What we produced as a result of the preliminary task reflected a case of experimenting and trial and error. However, after watching videos, asking friends, being taught and experimenting I have learnt a lot. For example, I have discovered different shots and angles you can use while filming to achieve different affects such as; high angle shots, low angle shots, tracking shots, pan, point of view shot, establishing shot and many more. All these things I have tried and used and many we incorporated into our movie opening. Furthermore, I have learnt about the different settings available to use on the camera when filming certain shots in certain locations. You can adjust the settings so the exposure isn't to dim or bright, you can change the speed the shutter captures the shot the grasp detailed pictures and video clips. Again this is something I was unsure of when filming the preliminary task but now I have tried and applied to the movie opening project.

Secondly, the editing process, you can see from our preliminary task we just simply uploaded clips put them in order and submitted it to our teacher. However, after experimenting on Adobe Premiere and watching many videos on how to achieve different affects I feel this is one of the areas I have grown the most in my skills and abilities. I now can change the brightness and colour, add music, remove sounds, add different transitions, add text and tiles, overlap clips and sound and change the volume of sound on individual clips. All of these techniques we used whilst editing our main task and I believe it certainly showed our progress in our abilities.

Finally, writing blog posts, although it seems like an easy task I have actually learnt several new skills. I have learnt how to create and embed GIFs, how to embed YouTube videos, how to change the order of publication of each post and how to lay out posts so they look symmetrical and organised. Throughout the entire process of writing my blog posts, from the very first one I wrote until the one I am writing now I have learnt a few little tips and tricks that helped me achieve a better finish on my blog and allowed me to achieve as much detail as possible.

Evalutation For Movie Opening (Dear Diary) - Question 6

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

I chose to present this in a PowerPoint format:

Evaluation For Movie Opening (Dear Diary) - Question 5

How did you attract/address your audience?

Conventions:	Tally:
Low key lighting	II                                                                                 2
Faded cuts	0
Eerie music	III                                                                                4
Dark colour pallet	I                                                                                  1
Mysterious characters	IIIII                                                                              5
Relatable/realistic protagonists	IIII                                                                               4
Unexpected twists	0
Different locations	II                                                                                 2

Whilst asking people for there opinion on these conventions we noted some important quotes and phrases they said they look for in thriller movies also.

1. A sense of mystery from the beginning.
2. Lighting, sound and music that reflect the action and sinister nature of the film.
3. A film that both subverts and conforms to conventions of thrillers as it makes it interesting but traditional.

I used this table to see what conventions of thriller movies audiences felt were vital to include in a movie opening. It is clear that; realistic protagonists, mysterious characters and eerie music were 3 key things that audiences look for in thriller movies. Therefore we felt that those were the 3 most important things to include in our opening. We did end up including those 3 conventions along with different locations and low key lighting which some people also found important. By having a main protagonist in the age range of who the film is aimed at 15-21 it makes the movie more relatable and would most probably do better in box office sales as people can relate to that character more.

Overall, it is clear from our final product that many of the conventions listed in this table we included and focused heavily on the 3 most popular ones as we believed they were the most important and they were what people in our chosen audience would like.

Evaluation For Movie Opening (Dear Diary) - Question 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

We decided to give our movie opening a certification age rating of 15 as we wanted to be able to have more leeway with what topics and scenes we could include. This way it was possible for us to use common thriller attributes in our movie opening.

A 15 movie may include:

• Discrimination
• Drugs
• Strong language
• Nudity
• Sex
• Threat
• Violence

Prior to our decision of making our movie opening a 15 we carried out a basic questionnaire to see the age ranges and genders of people who would be more likely to watch a thriller. These were the results.

Yes	Sometimes	No
17 (M) 18 (M) 16 (F) 52 (M) 13 (M) 19 (M)	17 (F) 43 (F) 24 (M) 15 (M)	16 (F) 17 (M) 12 (F) 23 (F)

From these results I concluded mostly male audience would be interest in a movie that comes under the thriller genre. This could be due to the more violent scenes which are stereotypically more preferred by male audiences. Despite this there were a few women 
who would watch a thriller so by making the main protagonist a female adds a sense of relatability for them if they don't enjoy the more violent scenes.

We decided to make our age bracket 15-21 this isn't saying that people of an older age wouldn't watch our movie as from our result people in there 40's and 50's said they would enjoy watching it. But our age bracket is based on a majority number, we chose to have the minimum age of 15 due to the topics included but also the maturity of the audience, we wanted them to take matters seriously while watching the opening. By focusing on one specific age group it allowed us to tailor our movie and make it relatable and interesting for them.

Also, we felt that this age range would be more likely to go to the cinema and watch the movie therefore bosting box office ticket sales. This is proven in the BFI Statistical Yearbook, in 2015 nearly 30% of people attending the cinema were ages between 15-24.

Evaluation For Movie Opening (Dear Diary) - Question 3

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

Due to the small budget for the research, production and distribution of our movie opening we would need to potentially release our movie independently as appose with it being with a well known corporate brand. Websites such as Amazon Prime and Nextflix both facilitate this option, Netflix is popular among young people which is perfect due to our target audience being between the ages of 15 - 21. Both websites run on a monthly subscription basis and they promote both independent and well known movies and TV shows. Recently Amazon Prime distributed Manchester by the Sea which was nominated for 6 Academy Awards and won two for Best Original Screenplay and Best Actor, additionally it won a Golden Globe for Best Actor also. Due to their huge success with this movie we have decided to use Amazon Prime as our media institution to distribute our movie. Although it isn't as popular as Netflix, it still has a lot of success among our age bracket and has huge success in the film industry. Furthermore, we would hope that if successful our movie would be converted in to DVD format and sold so those who don't have access to Amazon Prime can still watch our movie therefore increasing sales and popularity.

Evaluation For Movie Opening (Dear Diary) - Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our movie opening represents things such as gender, age and class. I chose to present this in mind maps and I will summarize each one down to the key points. All the points I discuss are stereotypes and don't apply to all people in those groups they are just things that from our research and the construction of the movie opening we felt do apply to these topics.

In our movie opening younger people such as Lily are presented to be dependant on someone older than them. This is shown through the phone call Lily makes to her mum telling her way she is and checking in with her. It shows a sense of vulnerability which is why we wanted our female protagonist to be 17 years of age. Their childhood innocence is still prominent yet they can still act and be seen as mature which was the idea we wanted to portray with this character. However, the older man who is very briefly shown in the movie opening is a huge contradiction. He carries himself rather heavily almost insinuating a sense of power and dominance over Lily. This could be due to the stereotypes of the male gender however I believe that his age heavily influences the idea of control he has over people especially Lily.

Evaluation For Movie Opening (Dear Diary) - Question 1

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

• Similarities between our movie opening and the variety of other productions out there include (tense music, jumping straight to the action, flashbacks, sense of the unknown and suspense).
• These similarities allowed us to attract the vast and secure audience that we know already enjoy watching thriller movies that incorporate this themes. Yet it allowed us to branch out and use other ideas such as female protagonists that aren't so common among the thriller genre.
• Another similarity is having the kidnapper as a man, in keeping with the general stereotype that men are more strong, dominant and controlling. We did briefly talk about switching this roles however after doing thorough research we came to the conclusion that it could be to much of a risk. However, our main protagonist is still Lily therefore subverting the stereotype that men are usually the more prominent character. We wanted to show a female who subverted stereotypes in many ways and despite the or deal she goes through remains a strong willed character. Something many women in horror/thriller films lack.
• It develops conventions due to the switching of locations and time periods but also the introduction of a central character through the use of props and location is something that subverts traditional thriller movie plot lines. Additionally, secrecy was used to mask dangerous and sinister character such as the kidnapper which keeps the movie engaging and tense.
• However, it challenges conventional media by using dialogue in the opening sequence, many thriller movies including the one's I have analysed simply use a tense sound score along with creative and intricate camera angels and editing techniques to introduced their film. The limited dialogue we added felt introduced characters well and subverted conventions which made our opening stand out.

Conventions of Thriller -

• Dark colour pallet
• Low key lighting
• Sinister music
• Eerie location
• Mysterious characters
• Fonts that correspond with the genre
• Camera angles that reflect the desired mood

Our production addresses many of these conventions of thriller movies; lighting and sound are both things that we felt were fundamental to keep very similar to that of movies on the market due to there relevance to the genre we have chosen. These conventions allowed us to have a secure audience and also gave us some guidelines when planning and filming our movie opening to make it more realistic and relatable.

Feedback On Dear Diary Final Cut

Here is some feedback from family and friends and our overall opinion on the final outcome of Dear Diary.

• Understood clearly the different locations and liked the use of multiple locations as it made it more interesting to watch.
• Liked the fade to black transition thought it reflected the genre well.
• Didn't like the music too much although did have connotations of the thriller genre would have preferred something even more sinister.
• However, the music fitted the first location of the kidnappers lair.
• The story flowed and made sense.
• Would have preferred less or more quite ambient sounds from cars/birds etc.
• Could easily tell it was a movie opening.
• Wanted to know more and what happens next so would definitely watch it in the cinema.
• Overall, enjoyed it (good feedback).

This set of feedback is really positive and will be helpful when doing our evaluation. The comments were mainly positive with only a few sets of improvements which if we filmed it again we would definitely consider.

Dear Diary Final Edit

This is our final cut of Dear Diary that is now published on YouTube.

Overall, we are pleased with how our movie opening turned out, although there are some aspects we may of changed slightly or added. We believed we worked extremely well as a pair and got the work down to the best of our ability. I will discuss and evaluate the entirety of the process in more detail when answering the evaluation questions.

Editing Journal

The Editing Process -

• Post production was something we felt would we would need to spend a lot of time on due to the amount of footage we needed to edit. Overall it took us roughly 4 weeks of lesson time to finally export our final cut, we managed to meet the deadline which meant we submitted our work on time so now we have time to focus our time of evaluation.
• Throughout this period we worked well as a pair sharing the editing evenly and learning a variety of new skills by experimenting with Adobe Premier and watching videos on how to achieve certain affects and developing our technique. We took it in turns and we would rotate who had control of the computer each lesson, this meant we spent an equal amount of time editing and even when we weren't the person using the editing software we contributed ideas so it was constantly a pair exercise.
• During this process as a pair we learnt our strengths and mine was editing, I seemed to pick it up quickly so when Abbie didn't fully understand something I was able to help her and teach her something.

Lesson 1 -

• Before the first lesson I had already transferred the media files onto a memory stick so I had two copies of the original footage incase anything got lost I knew we had a back up. During the first lesson we uploaded all the media files from our day of filming onto the computer we were going to be editing on and added them all to a folder called 'Dear Diary Footage'. The computer we used was rather slow so this process took longer that anticipated so while we waited we planned out the order of clips so when we went to put it together it didn't take as long. Towards the end of the lesson we uploaded all the files from the folder onto Adobe Premier and saved it as 'Dear Diary'.

Lesson 2 -

• We arrived to our second editing session and opened the file we saved as Dear Diary the previous time around, we then began to name the clips i.e. 'clip 1, clip 2' and cut them down to the size we needed and placed them together in order. This took the whole lesson of us trimming down clips and rendering them to ensure the quality stayed as good as possible for when we watched it back.

Lesson 3 -

• During our third lesson when spent the entire hour looking for an appropriate piece of music to use as background sound for the movie opening. We used websites such as YouTube, Orange Sounds and MP3 Converters to find and download sounds we felt tied in with our chosen genre. We wanted something that had an eerie tone and made the audience feel on edge. Unfortunately, due to the temperamental internet speed at the time is why it took us longer than expected to find a piece of audio.

Lesson 4 - 

• In the fourth lesson we went through each individual clip which had previously been put into chronological order and removed sound which we didn't need. Also, we increased/decreased the sound on certain clips depending on the quality of sound and how clear it was. Furthermore, we added the music we chose and downloaded the recent lesson. As well as this we looked for a twig snapping sound affect because the one we recorded on the camera wasn't picked up clear enough. And once we got to the clip where that sound was needed due to there being no dialogue we eventually decided to remove the sound from that section anyway. We finished the lesson by re-saving the document which we had been working on.

Lesson 5 - 

• Throughout the fifth editing lesson we spent on our movie opening we tried out different intensities of colour, and tried different filters to decrease the light intensity to make it look more like a thriller movie. Despite this we felt that due to many of the shots being filmed outside on a really sunny day it didn't look right when we decreased the light. This then lead us to the conclusion that we should have filmed at a darker time of day to achieve a more sinister affect. This process took the whole lesson due to the MacBook we used was rather slow and froze at certain points during the process.

Lesson 6 -

• During this lesson my partner was absent so I decided I didn't want to make any drastic changes encase she didn't like them and we would have to alter them due to this being a group effort. Instead, I went through and made sure the original clips were names and then I checked the length of each one and some I extended or trimmed slightly to make sure the entire end product wasn't going to be too long or too short. Then as usual I saved the work I have done on the MacBook to continue next lesson with my partner back.

Lesson 7 -

• During this lesson we uploaded the final segments footage onto the MacBook that we filmed the day before. We then saved them into the same file as all our additional individual clips and then uploaded them to adobe premier pro where we had open the project we were working on. Then we numbered each one and began to trip them down and slot them into place. This took the whole lesson due to the MacBook taking a while to upload and save the footage, we saved what we had done and logged off. 

Lesson 8 -

• In this lesson, we opened from were we left off and continued trimming down and placing in order the remaining clips from what we had filmed and uploaded most recently. We then went back and had to re number the other clips otherwise we would have duplicates of certain numbers which would have been confusing. After, we made sure that all the clips were joined together and there weren't any major gaps between them. We finished the lesson by saving the project under our file name and logging off.

Lesson 9 -

• Due to the added length of the piece, we had to add the music again and then trim it down in order to fit the segment of the movie opening which we added so it had some sinister background music. We then altered the colour and lightness on the clips we added to see the affect it gave however due to the natural lighting (or lack of it) and the dark walls in the clip we decided after experimenting that this step wasn't necessary for the new sections of footage. Also, our teacher watched our movie opening so far and gave us feedback and constructive criticism for us to use to help the rest of our editing process. As usual we finished the lesson by saving the file and logging off.

Lesson 10 -

• Throughout this lesson, we added more transitions to each clip, this was a lengthy process due to us having to render the entire video every time in order to watch it back without it buffering. We managed to do about half of the transitions that we were completely happy with this lesson. So when the bell went we saved what work we had done that day and logged of.

Lesson 11 -

• In this lesson, we opened our project file and finished adding the rest of the transitions, such as straight cuts, fade and dip to black. We also faded out the music at the end so it didn't just cut when the action ended. Furthermore, we decided on names for production and distribution companies to add throughout the movie opening to make it look more realistic. Finally, we saved up and logged off.

Lesson 12 -

• During this lesson, we spent the majority of the time trying to find a font and text style we felt we suite and compliment the genre and style of our movie opening. This meant going through our research blog posts and looking at all the available fonts adobe premier had to offer. We came to a final, conclusive decision at the end of the lesson however we didn't have enough time to apply it, so we saved our work and logged off.

Lesson 13 -

• This lesson we added in all titles throughout the movie opening, we decided on a font size and colour that we stuck to throughout. Also, we decided were we placed each tile on the screen when we came up. This lesson our teacher for the second time watched our movie opening and gave up some more tips and suggestions. Due to this we made sure that all the text was off center but still looked purposeful simply because we didn't want it to block the action happening on the screen. We finished this lesson by saving and logging off.

Lesson 14 -

• During this lesson we finished adding all the titles and text throughout and added the tile screen at the end that would show the tile of our movie opening. We placed it central and it large writing. Also, we added transitions to it in order to make it look smooth and more professional. We the re-watched it back to make sure there wasn't anything we need to add or change. We altered some of the transitions slightly and the positioning of the text. We then saved and logged off.

Lesson 15 -

• In our final lesson we prepared our video for uploading and submitting. We saved it under 'Final Dear Diary Piece'. Then we rendered it one last time to ensure it wasn't buffering or anything like that. Next we followed the steps taught to us by our teachers and choose the quality we wanted to put it in. We choose 720 because it was still good and didn't take as long because the deadline for handing it in was at the end of the day. Once it finished and saved, we transferred it to a memory stick and saved it again on the computer. We gave the memory stick to our teacher and finished by closing all the tabs on the computer and logging off.
  

Filming Journal

22nd January 2017 -

• We decided to meet at Ockwells Park at midday where we would be filming our movie opening, we began filming the last few shots in which Andy was participating in as that was all he was needed for which meant he didn't have to wait around while we recorded the main section of the production. This was one of the sections that I filmed, it went well due to their not being many people around so we didn't get interrupted and on the rare occasion I did we knew we could edit the sound out if necessary. I tired several different angels and shots some that we didn't initially plan and others we did so we could chose the best from a variety of takes. Both actors participated well and followed instructions but also suggested insightful ideas which I incorporated in the filming process. The only negative aspect of this section of filming was the sunlight, due to the intensity and brightness when filming certain clips my shadow is noticeable in places however we feel due to the focus of the movie opening hopefully it wouldn't be to noticeable and we could always darken the color pallet and saturation to make up for this.
• Once the ending was finished and Andy who was playing the kidnapper was no longer needed in our filming process he went home and we focused on Charlotte's section, despite having a very detailed storyboard and shot list we still added and cut shots that we felt didn't work or didn't look the way we pictured. This does mean our final product may not look identical to the storyboard however we feel this reflects the pre production process of research and planning and the way in which plans and ideas change.

For example this was one of the shots we didn't originally plan however we felt that we wanted to incorporate dialogue to introduce the character more. We did include a few extra shots and skip some others that didn't work for us or we felt didn't look the way we imagined. However, this showed the way our ideas changed and developed not only throughout this day but the entirety of the process.

Obstacles We Overcame -

• Firstly, the park was a lot busier than expected which made the filming process last longer that anticipated due to us having to stop filming to allow for people to walk buy otherwise our shots would have included them in it.
• Additionally, despite being surrounding buy a quite, secluded location the motorway and air field were relatively close so when the character of Lily was talking (like in the gif above) it was sometimes hard to hear her clearly due to the intensity of the ambient sounds. However, we believe this is something we can alter during the process of editing.
• Finally, the weather, despite from sunshine it was extremely cold due to the time of year we filmed in (winter) so this affected our actors somewhat in their willingness to stay outside and get an array of different shots so we had more to work with when it came down to the editing process. However, we worked hard and the shots we did capture turned out well after briefly watching them back so we believe that although at the time in the future of this process it shouldn't be to much of a major issue.

Overall, the process of filming altered slightly from what we had planned originally from the adding and removal of certain shots. As well as the techniques and camera angels changing and improving. Despite this I believe filming was very successful due to the organization, team work and communication between Abbie and myself. Furthermore,we both felt we came a long way from our preliminary filming task in both our confidence and skills set we developed throughout this academic year.