CONCEALED

Sarah,Gabby,Georgie prelim

Question 7

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

Preliminary task

    

Opening sequence

Our preliminary task was an exercise we did before we started preparing for our opening sequence, it was the first time i had used a video camera and it helped to help us get used to the camera and the angle shots that we would have had to use. For the Prelim task we used shot reverse shot which was a conversation between two people. We did this by filming the conversation twice and then edited them together on Adobe Premier Pro by cutting different parts to make them fit. In order for this to make sense, we had to use the 180 degree rule, this meant that we could only film each person from the same side as we had filmed the other one, making sure that we do not cross the other side of the 180 line. 

From looking at the two screen shots from the preliminary task and the opening sequence, both images are from when they were about to walk through the door. As you can clearly see we have improved on our filming. The prelim is just a basic shot where as the opening sequence is edited in colour, shot from a better angle and shows more of the person walking through. There is clear evidence that my skills have improved throughout the learning from the prelim task, as the shots are better.

During the preliminary task we encountered a few problems such as speaking too quickly, this made the editing very tough as it sometimes felt as if it didnt fit properly. We also didnt have that many shots to chose from when choosing the correct ones to put in which fitted better. Another problem that we encountered was that the film seems to jump a little bit when the camera angle changes. However i did find the filming of the passing through the door very well done. 


We improved on this from our set goals after making the preliminary task by making sure we had plenty of shots to chose from. In the final product we had lots of choice, making sure we had shots from different  angles also. Another thing we worked on was leaving time at the beginning and ending of each shot so that it was easier to edit, because we could just crop the videos on the Adobe Premier Pro software anyway. 


I feel that the skills i have definitely improved on most is the editing and learning of the camera and editing software itself. I did most of the editing and i really improved on this. I learnt many different things such as changing color of clips, adding text; text color and text transition, cropping, adding music and sound effects. 


Overall during the progression of making my final product i learnt different uses of the camera, i found that larger wide angles didn't really work for our video and unless you use a tri-pod you get camera shake on the film! (I TRIED IT). My editing skills definitely improved a lot in the progression of making the final opening sequence as this is what i spent most of my time on. My organisation skills were lagging, making the opening sequence and having deadlines definitely pushed me to be a more organised person instead of leaving things until last minute. I find that with plenty of time it saves the stress and also gives a better quality final product. I learnt how to create effects (such as making it look like the moon light) during my learning of filming, however, my group and i used natural light as none of it was filmed at night time. There wasn't a lot of dialogue in 'concealed', however there was small dialogue during the phone call. I learnt how to record in the studio and record using the camera to have voice overs during the phone call. 

After making my preliminary task video, i set my self three targets which were:

• Talk slower during filming
• Think about potential problems and resolve them
• Ensure that the clips are filmed longer so that it is easier to edit

I think that during the dialogue with the spy, he spoke a little too fast, however this was okay as it fitted in because he had just had a nightmare. We definitely thought about potential problems - such as bad/good weather because there was a lot of filming outside, we solved this by making sure we didnt film on a bad day! Also, i feel that we achieved the last target as we made sure that all the clips had enough space at the beginning and end to crop and fit into the video. Overall i am overly pleased with the final outcome of my opening sequence, i didnt expect that i could pull this through as well as i did. 

Question 6

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

Camera on tripod

I learnt how to use a digital camera to film the movie. This is the camera we used to film all of our opening sequence video. We used the camera on the trip pod for 90% of the time. The only time we didn't film using the tripod was when we wanted to create an effect to make it feel like we were with the spy/murderer as he moved. We also used the camera to do voice overs; this is used when the wife rings up the spy and speaks down the phone. The camera has a slot in the side of it where we put our tape cassette, our footage then gets saved onto this tape ready to upload to the computer. The camera has a zoom in/out button, this was very useful when filming as we could just zoom instead of having to move the camera, for example we zoomed in on the spy's face while he was on the phone to the 'wife'. The camera also had a panel screen so that we could see what we were filming.

Adobe Premier Pro

The thing i learnt most throughout making the opening sequence was editing our video. To edit our opening sequence and transfer film footage we used Adobe Premier Pro, this is a software (one of the best and most popular) which we had access to in the college editing suite. We would put our video tape containing the film footage into a tape cassette reader, where it would be recorded and saved onto the computer and opened up onto this software ready for it to be put together into a film and edited. APP was the software we used to add effects to our video; colours, cropping, text, slide transitions and sound. APP also has a timeline, this is where we drop our clips into and combine together to make the film. If you look at the image above, our unedited clips are stored on the left screen in the top left corner, this is called the source panel. Lower down is a timeline, this is where we would drag our chosen clips and start editing them. When playing our film, it plays in the top right corner on the right screen, this is called the program sequence. 

Blogger

I also learnt more about blogging. Blogger is a free website for people to blog posts, images and writing. I used blogger to upload all my work, posts and a showing of everything that i have learnt during my experience of media and making my first opening sequence. I found blogger a simple way to stay on track with my work.









I also used YouTube as part of the technology in my work. I found that YouTube was the most easiest form of technology for me personally to find good video examples to compare and research into with my film. My pre-lim video and final opening sequence were also uploaded to YouTube, i find it a very simple way of sharing videos and work. I also used Google as a resource for my images when comparing my opening sequence to other movies and ideas on how to represent my characters from different characterization groups.

I also used paint during the making of my blog. I used this when i print screened images of the opening sequence to add to my blog. I would print screen and then paste it into paint and save it as a image ready to upload. I also used Microsoft power point during the time of the ideas for my video. I made a power point of the ideas my group and i had and then showed them to the class by showing my power point on a projector.

Question 5

How did you attract/address your audience?



We planned an interview with one of the audience to find out how they felt about our film.

interview

<- this is a shot from when the murderer/spy breaks into the office. I feel like this appeals to my target audience as this is where it gets exciting. My target audience need something to look forward to, something exciting. The music also adds great tension build up on this part. 

<- This is a screen shot from when the murderer/spy is about to hit the husband in the face. The camera here is placed where the husband would have been at work and so when he punches the screen/camera it makes you feel as if you are about to be the one hit. I feel this adds great tension and drama for the target audience and is in some way exciting.

<- Here is a screen shot from where the murderer/spy shuts the husband into the boot. I feel like this is a good part for my target audience as this is the part where we dont know wether he is dead, unconscious, where is he going? and it starts to make the audience ask questions to whats actually happening. I feel like this is good as it is a cliff hanger and the audience will want to carry on watching the film. 

Audience interview.wmv

Question 4

Who would be the audience for your media product? 

Lowri Williams
17 
Wrexham


Likes : Watching movies, spending time with friends and going to the cinema

Dislikes: Broccoli, too much work and being ill

Hobbies : Scouts, clay pigeon shooting and chess

Films : James Bond, Spy kids, The Godfather, 21 Jump street and anything which includes action and tension build up!

Tv Programmes: CSI Miami and Desperate Housewives

Music: Anything and everything!



I think that my film would appeal to Lowri as she seems to enjoy spy films. She is a typical teenager and fits in with the age group which i chose represents my film; young adults & teens, this is why i think she fits in well for the type of audience representing my film. Like most other teenagers, she likes watching movies and going to the cinema, she also likes spending time with friends and therefor could spend time with them by watching movies and/or going for trips to the cinema! Lowri likes action films, there is a lot of action within my opening sequence and also a lot of tension build up which i think Lowri would enjoy. I feel that if Lowri watched the opening sequence for my movie she would want to know what happens next. Lowri says she likes playing chess as a hobby which is a skill game and takes a lot of thinking, this suggests that Lowri wouldnt get lost in the opening sequence of 'Concealed' and she would enjoy it a lot more. She likes watching CSI Miami which is an all crime based Tv Programme, my film has crime and hints of murder so i think this would intrigue Lowri all the more. Desperate Housewives is actually a drama which includes murder and lots of secrets too... 'Concealed' is a secret based film which includes twists so i feel that Lowri would enjoy this a lot!

Question 3

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


A production company is generally involved in producing either recorded or live entertainment. They are in charge of the funding and spending of the entertainment and also have responsibility for ideas and organizations such as the cast, crew, script and location. We chose to call our production team SGG Productions, it means something to us as it initials all of our names. We are small budgeted production company and we have used the resources and facilities provided by our college. 


<- example of a title opening sequence from 'The girl with the dragon tattoo. 


A distribution company is a team of people who control the marketing of the film, for example publicity and promotion; trailers, posters, TV spots. Distribution companies are also in control of the actual transportation to cinemas (if it is) and the release of the film wether its going to be on DVD or in the cinema and where and when! There are two types of distribution companies which are independent companies and major studios such as 'Universal'. We have chosen an independent company called Ace Film Ltd. due the fact that our movie wont have star approval. We have also taken into account that we are low budget and therefor would need the funding from larger companies. 


I think that of most films our's would be more similar to 'Adulthood'. Adulthood is a crime genre, which DOESNT include spies of any sort, but i feel this is how we have challenged the crime genre with other movies as we are adding something different to ours. I feel as though the films are similar in ways of which it includes yob type youths, violence and also very sharp switch shots like my opening sequence does. In the clip on the right it shows various clips flashing to other clips, which is what we show in our opening sequence. 


If we were to carry on making our film so that it was a whole film, we would need funding, especially to distribute it etc. We would get our funding from larger companies, this is called equity investing; where they give money in return for profit in completion. 


Here is a list of the people we have included in our titles of the opening sequence:

• Production Company - SGG Productions
• Highest billing - main actor/actress - Jae Jones
• Title of film - Concealed 
• Supporting cast - spy/murderer - Sarah Higginbottom
• Supporting cast - husband - Daniel Fisher
• Supporting cast - wife - Gabrielle Davies
• Editor - Gabrielle Davies
• Sound Effects - Georgie Ilsley 
• Director of photography - Sarah Higginbottom 
• Screenplay - Georgie Ilsley 
• Producer - Sarah Higginbottom
• Director - Gabrielle Davies

question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?


Our film is most recommended for youth's (teenagers and young adults) of any gender, but is limited on nationality as our film is in English language. We have decided it is mostly for youths as the older audience would expect more explicit scenes which our movie clip does not offer. We gave our film a 15 rating after researching through the BBFC, this suggests that our film is for age 15 and over (applies for youths). Our film shows mild scenes of murder and violence, but as they are only a few second flashbacks then it is VERY little scenes of this sort.

This clip represents our social group as it shows why it isn't recommended for children any younger than the age 15.. as it could inflict on their behaviour. However, it also represents our age rating because it shows the tension that an older generation may want to see in their movies. I have compared my clip from my video to a video of the same age group in an existing film which is called 'kiss the girls'.

Kiss The Girls - The villain of the film in "Kiss the Girls" is a disturbing masked man who calls himself "Casanova". This is similar to our film as we also have a masked murder/kidnapper in our film which you can't see his face. In their trailer they also have flash backs of scenes of the woman from the proposed murdering scene. We found this very influential for our film as we could pick up ideas but not in the same scary sense so that our film is eligible for younger people. It includes alot of action which we wanted o=in our film to create tension. 

Knives and violence

Smoking

We represent our chosen social group as a negative representation of teenagers. Most people in areas consider adolescence as 'yobs' and associate them with 'vandalism' and 'crime' so it's kind of a typical representation in the same sense. Other films that associate with the typical 'yob teenager' is adulthood and kidulthood. 

We have created a meaning that suggests most adolescence are going commit a crime at some stage in their life, wether its under age smoking/drinking, taking drugs, murder, kidnap, theft and other things. It's a negative approach to how we think about teenagers but in most sense is true and our film represents this with the kidnap and the fighting when the murderer/kidnapper hits the husband whilst at work. The murderer/kidnapper convicts breaking an entry, violence and breaking the law in sense of kidnapping him, so this reflects how the majority of teenagers may break so many laws whilst thinking their only doing one.

Our film  clip isn't really something 'different' as it compares to existing films, as mentioned like 'kidulthood'. Another film i found was 21 jump street which is also a 15, like our film, and involves crimes within the younger generation. It isnt the same story line but reflects our film because of the 'youths making crimes' situation.

Question 1

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

Our film title - Concealed 

We decided to call our film 'Concealed, at first we wasn't certain on the title of our film, but once we had made the clip it was clear to us that this title was relevant and suited our movie. The term 'Concealed' means that something is kept a 'secret', this relates well to our movie as it is very secretive and can actually be quite confusing to the watcher as they are trying to work out what is behind the flash backs in his dream. We kept the title of our film bold and capitalized which makes a statement. I felt as if we have challenged other conventions of films with our headings as ours is more innovative, after research i didn't find many films that actually used their headings in 'bold, underlined AND all in capitals' so i definitely feel as if my team and i have brought something different to the spy film table.

Titles - font and style

We used 'birch' font in regular style. We wanted to keep the writing basic and sharp, however we chose to have white writing placed on the black background as this contrasted between each other. The text is white/grey, this is to create a muskier effect. Black and white is pretty basic, however sometimes less is more and i think that this has a great effect on the video as it stands out as well as creating effect. We didn't want fancy writing as it may have been too much and it also would have made the eyes of the watcher focus more on the text rather than concentrating on the film itself which is essential for our movie as it can easily become confusing.
We placed our titles within the clips themselves.. this saved time and we also felt that the texts were simple enough to place within each clips because they were only small an simple. Another film i found which has a similar opening sequence was the from the movie 'se7en' which is an american thriller. They also used small white text for their opening sequence which also combined with the film shots.

The house - dialing phone

                                                                                                                                                                             

The office - view from outside

When planning and filming 'Concealed' we had lots of different ideas for location and the settings of the  opening sequence, at first we planned to do all filming in college; but after filming we gradually changed our ideas due to realizing that some shots just simply didn't fit! Finally we chose to have the main setting in a bedroom in the college studio, this would be a dark room and the spy in bed tossing and turning whilst having flash backs of the dream, this is our main setting. However, during the flash backs of the dream the location changes, we finally planned to use a real architectural office (we were lucky to find one!) and the area outside of it. We did some filming outside of the office and some on the inside. Another location we used was my home, the 'wife' wandered up and down whilst calling the spy. We challenged films such as the 'Hangover' whilst creating out opening sequence. 'Hangover' uses flash backs for the men to remember what had happened the night before, which we took note of as this is what happens in the spy's dream in our opening sequence.

Costume - spy

The costumes used in our opening sequence were very basic. First of all because we are low budget, but the main reasons are because there wasn't a need for a lot of costume change! The opening sequence focus' on the spy who wears a vest in bed throughout the role of his character.

• Daniel Fisher (who plays the husband) wears a shirt and black trousers, this is because he is at work during the time and black trousers are the most common type of smart business uniform. 
• The wife dresses in a dressing gown as it will be early hours in the morning and also she is at home so comfortable bed/lounge wear is necessary. 
• The spy/murderer wears a balaclava with his hood up. He is also wearing dark clothing. We chose this style of clothing because we have an ideal picture in our head of what a 'thief, murderer and/or kidnapper' looks like. For example, if i were to say "imagine a thief" the majority would think of a male wearing black clothing and a hidden face, wether its on a game, cartoon or film! 

Another crime film that uses the typical 'crime genre' costume is kidulthood, Their characters are mob youths who wear similar to what the murder does in the spy image above which is: hoodie, baggy jackets, hood up, trainers, jeans/tracksuits. We challenged this by bringing in something similar to the movie Kidulthood. 

We didn't tend to use many props within our film as it focused more on the flash backs, however we did try different props. We came up with ideas to use weapons, briefcases, the husband carrying files and lamps for the bedside table. After filming different shots we actually only ended up using a phone, a bed and a car boot for our props! I feel that the props used during filming were the only necessary ones as we didn't want to over do it, 'Concealed' is a opening sequence which focus' more on the acting of the killing/kidnap rather than gadgets. One of the main props that we used in our opening sequence was the phone, this is because it is the phone that causes us to realize that it may be the spy that is the murderer/kidnapper as he has flashbacks when the wife is telling him details about the 'missing person'.

Lighting -blue  light reflects onto arm, which makes it look like there is a window on the right
with the moon shining through to create this effect.

The lighting used in our film was mainly natural lighting. When filming outside we didn't have to use any lighting equipment as we were lucky enough to have good weather on the day of filming before it got dark! We also used natural lighting from the window during the house filming of the wife. However, in the bedroom scene in the studio, we just used a basic bulb light which was blue colored. This is so that the lighting reflecting onto the spy actually looked like light coming in from the moon, this looks more realistic. I feel that my group and i have challenged the conventions of media products by doing this, as most movies shot are actually at night time, however we just used a dark room and a blue bulb!

evaluation

During the edit of my opening sequence, we didnt use any special slide transitions, after trying different ones we felt that they just simply didnt fit! However, we did use color correction during the edit. We made some of the shots black and white, these shots were of the flash backs. We then altered the color of the whole film and added a tint of blue to it, just so it all fits in better. We added music to our whole movie called 'bump in the night'. We went through quite a few songs before deciding but this one fit out opening sequence so well! We also added a sound effect which was like a splat when the murderer punched towards the screen, this makes you feel like you are in the witnesses position taking the punch and the sound effects added more impact. We also added text to our final product, these are called our opening credits. We edited the color of these so that they were a white/grey colour to make it more musky. 

Overall i think that the effects we used; even though we didnt use many, fitted the film perfectly and had a great effect and impact, remember less is sometimes more! 

diary

Week 1
First week of filming! First of all we planned when we all had time to go out and start filming our film, we decided to begin during the first week. At this point we weren't determined on how the opening sequence was going to go, so we stuck to our instincts and started filming in the corridors in college two days later. We did trials in different dark corridors of the spy/murderer sneaking up waiting for the husband to leave the office. Once the day of filming was over, we headed up to the editing suite where we had to plug our tape into the computer and wait for it to record and sync on to the computer. We saved our clips in a file until it was time to next film.

Week 2
During the second week we went to the studio to film Jae in the bed playing the spy, we did three different shots of the whole of his part; tossing and turning, at different angles and then got him to read out his script down the phone. Jae's part of the film was successfully done in one day and we were able to proceed with everything else.

Week 3
The third week already! we changed our minds by now and decided to film the murdering part of the husband from a real office to make it more realistic! we got together Daniel fisher and Sarah Higginbottom to play the spy/murder and set up ready to film. We filmed Sarah dressed as the murderer at different angles creeping up to the office. We also shot different angles of Daniel in the office from inside and outside so we had lots of clips to choose from. Just as well, we completed all the filming for this section within one day!

During the same week we went around to Sarahs house to film my part, i played the wife on the phone to the spy and pacing up and down the room. We did three shots of this and then packed up to head back to college.

Week 4 

This week we focused on editing our opening sequence. We uploaded all of the footage to the computers in the editing suite and dragged all of our clips into the Adobe Premier Pro editing software. It was this week that our film began to come together. We cut clips, chose different angles, changed the colours of the shots, added text and even added music and sound effects. We had a few problems where the shots were too wide and it didnt have the same effect, also we did have some camera shake. However, we were lucky enough to have a few more shots to resolve this! Our film came together and for the next couple of days we just went over out film and touched it up if we felt the need to.

Scheduling

Here is an image of my groups schedule!
We planned the dates that we could fit in for filming around college times and then went and booked the studio for voice over and filming use. We also then had to book the camera with our teacher along with a tri pod to help us film steadily.

We incountered that with us filming outside we may have weather issues.. such as rain or too much sun because we didnt want shaddows and reflections!

Extra Guidance schedual

The Pitch

Our group presentation ( PITCH ) 

We showed our presentation to the class with all our ideas, we had very positive feed back and no negative comments about our film. However, we were questioned on how confusing it was going to be and we promised to ensure that it makes sense.