Closing Down for Moderation

Thats all folks!! Goodbye for now ..

G321 - Evaluation

Here is our evaluation created by Stella and myself..

Media Studies Evaluation on Prezi

So Long, Farewell AS Media Studies from Mac 2

Here is our last vlog we decided to do one all together Mac 2 the bestest group in Enfield County School Media Studies 2011-12 I'm going to miss AS

G321 Evaluation Questions

1. In what ways does your film opening use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

2. How does your film opening represent particular social groups?

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your film opening and why?

4. Who would be the audience for your film opening?

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this film opening?

7. Looking back at your prelim task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the final film opening?

Great! we have to answer these in depth and in a creative style reflective of an A level Media Studies student.. this should be fun. 

Let's review..

Lets take a look at some definitions:

Suspense:
Suspense = interactive elements. The reader may choose to challenge the tale by attempting to outwit the author and solve a crime before detectives do, figure out how best to defeat a foe before the hero does, or unravel the elements of a conspiracy before the writer reveals the whole story.

Thriller:
Thrillers = suspense + a growing sense of threat (IE, in The Ring people only had 7 days to live, a ticking time bomb, etc.)

Horror:
My favorite definition of horror is something that will explicate the darkness at the heart of the reader's soul. Horror is more than any of the above, because the reader will sympathize or see something of himself in the antagonist. Even if it is just the flaw of humanity, or the fact that a human like him is capable of an act such as murder, for example (psychological horror).

I believe we have conformed to this equation even though we only have the first 2 minutes of the film opening including the title sequence that also had the interactive elements Thrillers need and what audiences associate with them.

Mac 2 AS - 2012 - "Fragile"

Tomorrow's Deadline

Tomorrow is the deadline for our AS Media Construction task. I may have been upset about reaching the end of our filming but I certainly will not be saying the same for the editing and finalising of our film opening. tough is an understatement when describing the massive challenge we had on our hands. ...

OK maybe that is a bit of an exaggeration, as Mac 2 were able to get through it (just about) and it looks decent if I say so myself. I have learnt many new skills and how to deal with the frustrations of not getting perfection with our editing software as its not professional like the big studio film companies, I have had to to humbly accept the reality that some of my ideas and creative footage I wanted to include were a bit too advanced and extravagant for a two minute film opening.  
I'm quite pleased with what we have accomplished and I think a break from the computer screen is truly deserved, it will have to be a very mini one though, as we need to start our Evaluations. Well there's no rest for the wicked bring on the next task!

Production Company (2)

Here is a video showing the making of our second production company, (well it's really the first as we have placed it as the first one the audience see) it was an eventful day another triumph, great success for Mac 2 were on a roll ... heeehee 'Film' roll

 

FRAGILE

I am so pleased to announce that Mac 2 have finally come up with a name for our film!!!!

Bookmark this as a significant day in history, we may have been the last group but we got there in the end after searching for existing films which have already have infringement rights on titles like 'Paranoia'

Fragile - We chose this title as it reflects the idiolect of the protagonist. We wanted it to be one word as one word film titles are often effective and powerful like Se7en and Orphan.

and here it is our sixth draft - with the title of the film included!

Problems - Leave it!

The one problem we're still finding hard to overcome is the frustrations of using the sometime-ish software. On a good day it will give you its full co operation and even work fast, however recently as we draw closer and closer to the deadline of our G321 construction task  imovie has really been acting up and behaving slothful and anti! to cut my rant short we've planned on fine tuning our opening with the use of synchronous foley sound when the protagonist is in the tunnel and drops to the floor. it should look and sound very professional so when imovie decides to work we will get straight to it - so far not coming along as easily as anticipated, but hey that's "advancing technology" for you.. it better fix up otherwise we are in for some hard stressful life in this fluid digital techno era.

Look What I Found!

Here is a list of the order of film opening credits, of course this is just an outline and its not written in stone where all films have to follow the convention religiously and we won't be either, however this is a great guideline and it will make it a lot easier for us to strategically place the credits and to justify their order of appearance.

The order in which credits are billed generally follows their importance to the film, just not linearly. First is usually the motion picture company, followed by the producer, then the 'a film by' credit. Then we see the Title followed by the cast. from there we reverse gears on the whole "order of importance" guideline and work backwards to the director...

PRODUCTION COMPANY presents
a NAME LASTNAME production
a NAME LASTNAME film
"TITLE"
Lead Cast
Supporting Cast
Casting Director
Music Composer
Costume Designer
Associate Producers
Editor(s)
Production Designer
Director of Photography
Executive Producer
Producer
Writer(s)
Director

From http://www.indietalk.com/showthread.php?t=14862

FAILED cliff hanger!!

Here is footage of what we attempted but it didn't turn out quite right - draft 5 the hospital beep is right at the end at...

Credits!

Judging by our fourth draft for our film it may seem that Mac2 haven't got a clue about appropriate fonts, sizes and placing when it comes to film credits as ours are all over the place; too small, inconsistent and in some places non-existent. It looks as if the film has only six people involved excluding a director or we couldn't be bothered to name them all because the credits stop rolling half way through the opening...

Yes indeed it definitely seems as though we have lost the plot and our group are unable to follow the conventions of a film opening however, what we wanted to find was a suitable font and colour that would contrast with the film name and compliment the filming on screen. In draft 4 we have used 'Gaz' size 32 for the credits which is the same as the 'name of film' but before that we used a different font for the main actors.

To cut a long story short we have finally found a suitable font we can all agree on the right size and colour.We chose the faded yellowish white as it contrasts the name of the film colour which is dark and it goes with the soft music and crazy state of mind the character is in, making the audience sympathise her as we researched that the font colours have an essential effect on the dominant reading the audience will take from a film.

TV Drama Study Day

Today we went on a day trip to Richmix to learn more about tackling Section A of the exam. We watched Sherlock and had a question and answer session with the editor. Overall I enjoyed the day I learnt a lot of new techniques which i will need to revise on especially key terminology.

More info about what Pete Fraser chief examiner said on my TV Drama page

Tv drama

View more presentations from petefrasers

SLC Productions

This is our production company made by simply using paint and a power point presentaion document but saving it as a JPEG file and uploading it to iphoto then imovie.

SLC Productions is the initials of the names of the people in our group. Stella, Letisha, Cherice its a combination of our names as the construction of our media product was a combination of our ideas and editing skills.

We are currently thinking of another company, however this one is not going to be created digitally, producing a variation shows higher skills and even the large British film companies need cross media synergy in the distribution and exposure of the film, for example Working Title UK and Universal US. 

Draft No.4

Its getting there but still a long way from where we want it to be, we have almost finished just need the production company and to fix the credits.
We have finally changed that  boring unwanted canvas background, and we have recently had a rethink about our decision to rebel and break the 180 degree rule (at 0.55) It is a bit of an ambitious move to make it could actually work with our psychological confused genre, however our task only covers the first two minutes, we could argue that this is a little too early on in the film to be adding abstract elements that would potentially baffle the audience and we couldn't quite come up with as many reasons it needed to justify our technique so its CUT.
We have used Foley sound of fireworks and loud explosions to replace the fireworks sound from our original footage.
Finally we have used a zoom out an fade to white to add 'closure' to the opening.

Group thinking

Certificate 15

Name of Film - rated 15 in cinemas June 24th.....

Mac 2 have been thinking very carefully about the certificate rating of our film, this was challenging as it meant we had to think of where the storyline could possibly go from our 2 minute film opening, we decided that it should have a certificate 15 as it is not suitable for young viewers as it would contain, some violence and strong language, and scenes that even some adults would find disturbing.

The genre is psychological thriller so some footage featured would be very scary and confusing with most scenes playing back on the audience mind. We wanted our target audience which are 15 - 35 year olds to have the 'jumping-out-of-your-seat, skin-crawling'  experience when enjoying the film without it actually being labelled a horror movie.

This information is from, http://www.bbfc.co.uk/

15 – Suitable only for 15 years and over no one younger than 15 may see a ‘15’ film in a cinema.
No one younger than 15 may rent or buy a ‘15’ rated video work.

Discrimination
The work as a whole must not endorse discriminatory
language or behaviour.

Drugs
Drug taking may be shown but the film as a whole must not
promote or encourage drug misuse. The misuse of easily
accessible and highly dangerous substances (for example,
aerosols or solvents) is unlikely to be acceptable.

Horror
Strong threat and menace are permitted unless sadistic or sexualised.
Imitable behaviour

Dangerous behaviour (for example, hanging, suicide and 

self-harming) should not dwell on detail which could be copied. 

Easily accessible weapons should not be glamorised.

Language
There may be frequent use of strong language (for example,
‘fuck’). The strongest terms (for example, ‘cunt’) may be
acceptable if justified by the context. Aggressive or repeated 

use of the strongest language is unlikely to be acceptable.

Nudity
Nudity may be allowed in a sexual context but without 

strong detail. There are no constraints on nudity in a
non-sexual or educational context.

Sex
Sexual activity may be portrayed without strong detail.
There may be strong verbal references to sexual behaviour,
but the strongest references are unlikely to be acceptable
unless justified by context. Works whose primary purpose is
sexual arousal or stimulation are unlikely to be acceptable.

Theme
No theme is prohibited, provided the treatment is
appropriate for 15 year olds.

Violence
Violence may be strong but should not dwell on the infliction 

of pain or injury. The strongest gory images are unlikely to
be acceptable. Strong sadistic or sexualised violence is also 

unlikely to be acceptable.
There may be detailed verbal references to sexual violence
but any portrayal of sexual violence must be discreet and
have a strong contextual justification.

Films we researched that had the same certificate and the same sort of certificate were:
The Orphanage, Gothika and Se7en

Seven Deadly questions simplifying number 4

Technology and proliferation

View more PowerPoint from reigatemedia

Film Production companies

Today in class we started to seriously think about putting our film production company names down on paper, we came up with many, many possibilities - non plausible though, as we couldn't come up with reasons for choosing them, and how to produce them into an effective logo. I created this montage of existing film production company logos to help us get more ideas and see what has already been taken.