Evaluation Part 8

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

Preliminary task

The strengths of my preliminary task are the use of various camera language such as match on action and shot-reverse shot. Another strength would be the effective use of iMovie. My editing is spot on and the video flows well error-free. The music suits the style of the video as the upbeat sound matches with the pace of the character walking. The transition effects were creative and linked well between some shots.

The weaknesses of my preliminary task are in terms of planning and research, it was somewhat rushed as i didn't have a lot of time to plan in order to start filming on time. The storyline could have been more creative and in depth with the plot to make it more interesting. I could have improved my sound editing as the background noise from 00:41 was too loud and this caused the audience to have difficulty in hearing the actor's voice.

There are many ways that I have developed my skills since making the preliminary task. I have become more knowledgeable with using editing softwares like iMovie. Before the preliminary task i had no experience with professional video editing and I was new to using iMovie. I know how to use features like precision editor and being able to blend in sound in different layers. I have gotten better at camerawork as some shots were not very still in the preliminary task, but are more clear now. The dialogue is easier to understand in the final production, because the voiceover was recorded in a quiet space, unlike the preliminary task where the wind was blowing loudly in the microphone which made it harder to hear the actor's dialogue.

Evaluation Part 7

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

Evaluation Part 6

How did you attract/address your audience?

Evaluation Part 5

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In my media product, the main character is represented as a pessimistic male teenage who has a bad life and faces loneliness. He wants to get revenge on everyone around him, because he cant stand people who do have a good life and wants to make them feel terrified and miserable.

In the start of the first scene, the audience are introduced to a male teenager and they have no idea who this person is or what he is doing.

The camera shot is a close-up and my partner and I have used many of these to connote the facial expressions and body language to the audience. We can see the character have an angry face through his furrowed eyebrows so the audience can already tell he is depicting his anger and is frustrated at something. This represents his social group as a disheartened teenager through the emotions he is showing in the close up.

By using this over the shoulder shot, we can see the character is typing a blog post on a laptop which connotes he is typing something privately but, since he is in a public place this could show its not very secretive. 

The lighting in this shot is slightly darker than other shots which could suggest the audience are not meant to see what the character is typing. This can also imply the character is plotting something dark and mysterious, because the lighting only gets dark when the camera shows him typing on the laptop. This representation portrays him as a mysterious character with a hidden vendetta.

There is a voiceover present over most of the shots in the library and the audience can tell through its tone of voice the character is serious and sounds menacing. The audience also figures out from the dialogue that the character has a bad, hateful life and sounds like he wants to get revenge on people that makes his life bad to gain self-satisfactory.                   

This scene here has a much different atmosphere than the library scene. The camera shots are more fast paced and has more movement whereas in the library, the camera language was more calm, slow and still. The sound bridge also dictates that as it transforms from a slow, powerful beat to a faster upbeat music which suggests the character may lead a double life; one being calm and a normal average boy and the other being a violent gang member.

We see through mise-en-scene that the character is now portrayed wearing a hoodie which represents typical teenagers in gangs. This connotes that the character has some association with gangs and violence, which is related to him having a bad life and he had to result to this.

My film will not apply Propp's character types as my film is about verisimilitude and doesn't follow the representations used in Propp's character theory. My film will subvert some of the typical representations seen in many British social realism films such as drugs, abuse, sex etc. This is because we want to show different aspects of our society that isn't commonly shown as every person is different.

Evaluation Part 4

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

Evaluation Part 3

What impact did the media institution Film4 have on each production stage and why?

Evaluation Part 2

Who would be the target audience for our product?

Evaluation Part 1

Brief

The brief is to create a new British Social Realist film that is aimed at British 16-24 year old's for Film4. I had to produce the first two minutes of the film to give a clear graphical, editing and musical style my film would use. In order to maintain Film4's reputation in British cinema, I must keep to the typical conventions used in their previous films in the Social Realist genre and meet all audience expectations. I must keep a low budget so all visual and audio material must be original. I believe i have met this brief, because I have targeted my film at teenagers and i have stuck to the usual themes and conventions that are normally present in Film4's productions. All camerawork I used are recorded myself and the music, which starts at 00:33, is originally created by a friend who allowed me to use it.

I chose this title "Hit List" because it connotes the themes and aspects I used in my film such as violence which represents the protagonists as his actions will lead to negative outcome. Another meaning of the title is that the protagonist has a list of people he wants to target for reasons like revenge.

In my opening sequence we denote a troubled teen is typing in a document inside a library, speaking his thoughts about life through a voice-over. In the next scene, we see the teenager rushing out of a house in anger and partly walking, partly running towards the park. He looks around frustrated as he strolls through before stopping by the lake and waits until the audience sees a mysterious hooded figure slowly approaching him. This creates an enigma as people are left wondering what happens between the two. This would have then led on to a fight between the pair and the protagonist takes out all his frustration. This opening foreshadows something bad is going to hit back on the character and this will lead to his eventual fate. My film establishes some of the themes used in BSR like loneliness which is exemplified during the first scene in the library, as the character is alone and talks very pessimist about his life. The theme of violence can be signified at the end of my opening sequence where a hooded figure walks up to another hooded figure, because teenagers in hoodies are stereotyped as part of gangs and bullying.

Production Log Week 9

This week is the final deadline to finish all our production and post-production work. me and my partner have done a lot of editing the clips like changing the lengths and choosing the best shots. We decided to change the voice actor for the voiceover in our library scenes, because the original actor's voice didn't sound serious enough and didn't express enough anger to match with the actor's facial expressions on screen. We also re-shot the whole library scene the same day and make a whole different range of shots. The original table we used was taken so we had to find a different seat. We found one by the window so the shots looked really bright on camera, so we adjusted the brightness to see the character better. We managed to get as many different shots possible from different angles.

Me and my partner have decided to change the order of the two scenes in the film by having the library scene before the park scene, based on my teacher's feedback. We did this so the story is denoted more easily to the audience. The audience can understand who the character is and what the film is about which gives a greater impact on the park scene. This still creates enigma as the audience doesn't know where the character is going and why, but they can understand the character a bit better from the previous scene. We also changed the protagonist's name from Ben to "Zakir" as we felt this represents the character more and is more realistic to his ethnicity.

Another slight thing we changed was the production logo. My teacher told me and my partner that "Concrete Corporations" shouldn't have an "s" at the end so we had to edit that letter out. However the problem was that at the time we done this using photoshop we forgot the save the PSD file so we had to create it again. We only saved it as a jpeg file but that cannot be edited. Unfortunately we were unable to find the same font we used at first which everyone have said they really liked, so we had to do with an alternative which looked similar but not quite the same and not as good as the original. Me and my partner know now that we should always save our work even after we finished it as it can still be useful in the future.

top picture (old)
bottom picture (new)

We were contemplating which software we should use to create credits for the opening sequence. We made titles on both iMovie and on Livetype but we were unsure which was more suitable so we decided to ask our peers and have a vote. The credits we made on Livetype had a typing effect so it looked like the credit was being typed as it comes on screen whereas the iMovie titles were more basic as it just pops up on screen with a fade effect and fades out when it goes. My peers all decided the style and effect of the credits on iMovie created a greater impact that suits with the style of the theme in the park scene so we chose this and disregarded the Livetype credits. 

Final opening sequence of "Hit List"

Call Sheet 4

Date and Time: Monday 15th April, 4:00pm

Location: Goodmayes Library + South Park
Script scene shot numbers: 22 + 26 - 35 
Cast: Muhamad Rahman
Props: Camera, Tripod, Monopod, Hoodie, Jeans, Trainers, Laptop
Reminders: Recording the entire scene again so the seat is not too important, just aim to have a table to yourself.

Production Log week 8

an example of Photoshop

The past week me and my partner have been doing a lot of editing as we have finished our production. We have created our film title logo using Adobe Photoshop which took a while to get used to as I am not familiar with this software. So we had a play around with the effects and features to see how this works which was helpful. We also decided to create our production logo using Macromedia Fireworks, because we wanted to add a layer of an image behind the text and we thought Fireworks is more suitable and easier to achieve this. Also we had to create other titles on iMovie as we were running out of time and didn't know how to add titles over the film using Livetype. Our film contains some titles running during the film and some of them are placed on a black screen cutting between the shots in a scene. We had to do this, to make a break between shots that are non-continuous so that it flows more better. We added the most important titles on the black screen and the less important ones are shown during the shots at the bottom of the screen.

Another issue was creating sound. As we cannot take other Artists' music due to copyright laws, the best option at hand was to create it ourselves. We attempted this using Garageband which is a new software we used in a Mac. We had played with many different types of sound using Garageband but we were unsatisfied with our work, because me and my partner are inexperienced with making sound. I resolved this issue by kindly asking a friend of mine who has the experience we seek and he accepted our request in creating a sound for us to use in our production. However we had an issue with time as we only had a matter of days before we had a draft deadline of our production and our friend didn't have much free time to compose the music to the best of his ability. Nonetheless he managed to produce a sufficient piece of sound using Logic Pro and I quickly incorporated that into my production. I also found out the music was not long enough to fully cover the scene we wanted, so I had to extend the scene by adding another layer and trimming the sound in the second layer to match with the first layer.

an example of Logic Pro

HIT LIST draft

Production Log week 7

This week me and my partner done a mix of production and post production. In one of our locations which is the library, we were unaware of the closing times and once we set everything up we found out we had only 15 minutes left before the library closes. So in that time we had to quickly rush through and do 8 shots of filming within that time. This proved to be a challenge, however we just managed to do what was needed although more time was needed to check everything is ok. We also had to do some re-shooting of the park scene as my teacher commented more facial expression is needed to create more impact on the lead and only character to fully show his anger.

Another issue with filming in the park scenes were the use of handheld, because it was difficult to keep it steady and maintain whilst following the character. To solve this issue my partner and i decided to use a monopod to create more static and less jumpy shots. This is very useful as it makes the camera easier to control and more static. This allowed the film to run more smoothly at the time of editing.

Also for the library scenes the character speaks through a voiceover and this was recorded through a voice memo on my iphone. There was a small issue with getting the character's voice right to match on screen. It was difficult to say the lines whilst retaining the emotions felt by the character. In the end we got there by practicing with my voice to suit the style of the film, which didnt take up too much time.

Call Sheet 3

Date and time:  Wed 20 March 5:00pm

Location: Morrab Gardens + South Park

Script scene shot number: 10, 12, 14, 16-22
Cast: Muhammad Rahman
Props: Camera, tripod, monopod, hoodie, jeans, trainers

Reminders: None

Production Log week 6

I have found a few issues with my production this week. The weather is constantly changing this week as there were cases of snow, rain and sun at different intervals. after we filmed one of our scenes, we had a look and realised one or two shots were not perfect and we will need to go re-shoot them which will be on a different day and it may be a problem if the weather looks different between the shots. Another issue was trying to film in Goodmayes library, as me and my partner went there one day, but there was no space for us to film, because there were too many people there. this is a problem, because it is a public place for everyone so we don't know when it will be free. We came to a decision if next time we film and there is no space in Goodmayes library again, then we will re-locate to a person's house and film the same scene in a bedroom/study room. I was also introduced to using a new program on the mac to create graphics called 'LiveType' for my film. This took a while getting used to as it was a bit challenging to use some of the special effects to make my titles look effective.

Call Sheet 2

Date and time:  Mon 18 March 4:00pm

Location: Goodmayes Library + South Park

Script scene shot number: 16-22, 25-28, 30-33, 35
Cast: Muhammad Rahman
Props: Camera, tripod, t-shirt, glasses, jeans, trainers, laptop

Reminders: Get the seat in the top right hand corner of library.

Production Log week 5

An issue I have faced this week is finding the right location for my opening sequence. Me and my partner have been through many different possible locations for where we can film that represents the nature of our film. There was an issue in finding a house to film in as neither mine or my partner's house was accessible for filming, because it doesn't represent a typical BSR location. We then resolved the problem by asking a friend to use their house as a set for our film. We also had difficulties in choosing the film title, because we need to pick the right words to fit in the context of our film. Eventually we came up with a title after looking for synonyms that represent some of the themes present in my film. Also the shooting script was done in microsoft office excel and we didnt know how to post this onto blogger, until I found a way to upload by saving it as a pdf.

Production Schedule

Call Sheet 1

Date and time:  Wed 13 March 4:30pm

Location: Street, Morrab Gardens and South Park

Script scene shot number: 8-22
Cast: Muhammad Rahman
Props: Camera, tripod, hoodie, jeans, trainers, bag

Reminders: none