Preliminary Task

Final opening sequence

4) Who would be the audience for your media product?

Audience on Prezi

2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Teacher Assessment

Here is my teacher assessment from the second draft of my opening sequence. I have read the feedback and made the appropriate adjustments so that my media product will hopefully improve up to my target grade.

Planning Teacher Assessment-

Research Teacher Assessment-

Assessment on technologies blog post.

WWW: You outline three technologies fairly well, if somewhat briefly.

EBI: You spell it “Celtix”, you could include a link to the programme’s website. Could you include screengrabs or photographs of the product being used? You should also include the technologies you used during research and planning. What about the use of the camera? This is also a digital technology. This post does need to be longer.

3) What kind of media institution may distribute your product and why?

Here is an example of a film distributed by Vertigo Films, 'The Firm'.

The production company for my media product is Palisades Tartan. The role of the production company is being responsible for supervising the filming from concept to completion, holding the legal and financial responsibility of the movie as a whole. Our film would be screened in a small indie cinema in England, which would perhaps go on to screen on a TV channel. For my media product, I would give a BBFC rating of 15.

Peer Assessment.

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

Preliminary task to now on Prezi

5) How did you attract/address your audience?

To cater to our audience, I took a research questionnaire which can be seen here and made sure that I followed the preferred choices, such as adding the titles over moving image. Other ways that I adapted my media product to the audience research are making the sequence only last 1-2 minutes and combining the sub-genres of action and thriller.

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

6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this project?

Through constructing this project, I learnt how to use many new technologies, each aiding towards the development of my final product. 


During the research and planning section of making my opening sequence, I used the site 'Blogger' to present my information and research that I did into the genre of my choice, which was  action thriller. This proved to be a useful blogging site throughout planning and research, as the site is easy to use and presents the posts in a readable and neat way. The posts are available to edit any time, allowing me to keep complete control over my work and make changes at any time when they are needed. Through this site, I can now insert videos, photos, gifs and much more into my posts, working to make them super visual. Here is me currently making a new post on blogger to demonstrate how it works:

Another technology that I used throughout my planning process was a program called Celtx, used to create my script for the opening sequence. Although my script only consisted of two lines of speech, it was still essential for me to create this as the planning process could clearly be shown. This program was relatively easy to use, offering tips and an easy to use process. It was more effective to create my script on Celtx than another unprofessional program such as word, as this way the script is easily highlighted for the different types of text such as the setting and character speaking, as well as it being correctly laid out.

In the process of actually filming my opening sequence, I used technologies such as a digital video camera and a tripod. The advantages of using these technologies included allowing me to preview the footage that I have just shot on the cameras display, easily letting me know whether the shot was correctly framed or if it needs to be re-shot straight away. The viewfinder screen can also be moved freely up and down, allowing the correct angle to be used when shooting for me to see how the shot looks, such as holding the camera on the ground and yet still being able to see what the camera is going to record. Advantages of using a tripod include being able to hold a shot steady, giving a pristine and professional overall look to my opening sequence. A tripod also allows for easy pan and tilt shots, among others, which may over wise be difficult to film whilst holding the camera steady.

Here is me operating the camera and tripod whilst shooting.

Again, here is me recording a shot for our opening sequence.

Production Roles.

Production Roles on Prezi

Script

Test shots.

Our group decided to do some test shots before we started filming on location to make sure that we got a chance to experiment with the equipment and knew how we would frame some shots. In order to progress this footage further, we will shoot the shots with extreme close ups to make them more interestingly framed and making them fill the whole frame in order to get the intimidating effect that we wanted on the opening sequence.

Animatic Storyboard

Shooting Schedule.

Here is my group's shooting schedule, which will help us to organise and set up the filming process. This will let us know which cast are meant to be there in which scene, and with what settings or equipment.

Peer Assessment 2

This is the peer assessment for the planning part of our opening sequence on my blog. This will help me to identify and make the necessary changes to improve the grade of my blog.

Titles.

Due to the genre and concept of our film/opening sequence, me and my group have decided to use titles relevant to this. We agreed that 'graffiti' font will work effectively, moving over picture screen, as this was the most preferred in our questionnaire. The order of the casting crew jobs, names and actors will go in this order, using Sixth Sense as an example:

- Distribution company

- Names of the distributors 'present'

- Main actor

- Movie title

- 2nd most important actor

- List of the rest of the actors; from most important to the least

- Casting by..

- Costume designer..

- Music by..

- Edited by..

- Production designer..

- Director of photography..

- Executive producer..

- Producer..

- Written & Directed by..

An example of the font that we may use:

Peer Assessment

This is the sheet that I received as my peer assessment of my research blog posts. This included our presentational skills, the opening sequences analysis and titles analysis e.g. the conventions for a successful opening sequence. For each section, we were assessed on what we've achieved so far and given a level. Our overall grades were then worked out, giving a final grade of what they believe our blog is at the time.

Location Permissions.

Permission

Character Descriptions.

Character Descriptions on Prezi

Actor Choices.

Characters

Props, Costumes and Locations.

Stoners outfit:


Crop image

Toni Morrellis outfit:


Crop image


Maria Morrellis outfit:


Crop image

Other man outfit:


Crop image

Audience Research Results

These pages show the results from my audience research. This questionnaire helped my group as now we have an idea of how long people would prefer the sequences to be, and whether we should have the titles over moving image or a black screen.

The first question we asked was 'What gender are you?' The majority of the people asked were male, which could perhaps put a biased view on the survey as the films that males watch tend to typically differ to female audiences.

By asking how long the research group would prefer to have an opening sequence, we have a rough knowing of the length of time people prefer to be watching the opening, in this case either 1-2 minutes or 3+ minutes.

We asked our audience research group how many films they watch per month on average, in order to get a variety of views depending on how many films, and therefore opening sequences, that they had viewed. Half of the people asked only watch 0-5 films per month, suggesting that we could have found people who are more interested or educated in this subject matter, however this also allows for a wide range of opinions on opening sequences.

This question is concerning the titles that will be placed in our opening sequence. The majority of people asked said they would prefer the titles to be over a moving image, as this perhaps keeps the audience more interested and involved in the film. Therefore, our group will aim to add the titles over moving images.

Finally, we asked our audience which of these genres were their two favourites. We found a positive result of 5 people  preferring action, and 8 preferring comedy. Therefore, our group decided to create a combined genre film of 'action comedy'.

Sound

We have not yet decided on our final sounds, although have made note on some that we would like to include. These consist of:

• Heartbeat pounding
• Footsteps
• Background noise of an urban area containing sirens, traffic noises etc.
• Hyperbolic fighting sounds

Storyboards.

These are the initial storyboards my group has created to guide us with filming and editing. Storyboarding is essential so that when we come to filming the opening sequence, we know exactly what to do and how much to shoot.