Media Presentation

Media Presentation on Prezi

The Unbeknown

Ketchup all the way. Preliminary.

Video answering parts of question 1 and 4

 2nd and 3rd time of seeing chloe's character, adding tension



This is the point of view shot used for main character's eye shots

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 How we used cross disolve to make chloe appear.

Question 6.

Here is a picture of my sister, who is the my target audience for my film. She is 22 years old, currently studying optometry at university. She enjoys watching films with her house mates, both of which are girls. She therefore likes a occasional ROM-com to watch with her friends but prefers the horror films.

The kind of things she likes are horror/thriller films that have a concluding ending, indie/rock music (things that build up towards the end) The places that she shops are topshop, new look and river island, She shops there because they have a huge range of clothes for different occasions. Her favourite t.v programme is prison break and vampire diaries. This because she likes the dark, strange side of these programmes and also likes intense action. 

Question 5, With Video

Question 1

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

(I was going to make a video of me saying this, but unfortunantly i have got a old and a sore throat at the minute, so you wouldnt be able to understand what i'm saying."

Naming our film

If i had one regret about my whole media project it would be not allocationg enough time to name our film with a clever title. However, i do like the title of our film, as it does what we wanted it to do, which is not to give too much away to the audience about our plot. When Becky and I came up with "The Unbeknown" we thought it fitted in well to our media product. I think this because to the audience what's happening is unknown, as all the action that is taking place is happening in our main character's head, therefore its unknown. And the other being that we see is also unknown as the audeince are unaware of that the chracter is to the main character.

This is like many horror films, as they focus on one thing from the entire film, for example "The Shining" thats aimed at the powers that the boys has with the other man and "The Ring" is aimed at both the telephone ringing and the ring from the top of the whell where Samara lives. This therefore isnt giving too much away about what the film includes. 

Title of my film. Using text.

The way that we added the title "The Unbeknown" onto our film was by using the 'Titles' tool on Imovie selection. The font we used was a basic times new roman, we used this font as we wanted our title to look simple and effective, as in our preliminary we thought it looked tacky. The way our title comes onto the screen over a plain black back ground and with white font i think resembles "The Shining" titles and credits, this is because they're both simple yet affective. This is mainly due to the fact that they have a "donging" sound going on once the title appears. If i was able to apply this sound effect on to the film without it looking too over done, i would of, but i think keeping the title the way it is with the non-diagetic sounds underneath. 

     

The colours we chose for the title were a plain black background and white font is because we wanted to grab the audience's attention - making it clear that "The Unbeknown" is the title of our film opening. As there is nothing else happening in the back ground of our film it makes sure that the audience aren't going to get distracted by anything else shown on the screen.

Originally we wanted to put the title at the end of our film opening, but because our opening could have been seen as a short film we decided against it. Also we noticed that a lot of people were putting their titles at the end of their film openings, so we liked the idea of doing our differently. 

Setting and location

The location we did all the filming was at my house, there are many reasons for picking my house; it's close to school, meaning that there would be no trouble for getting to my house after school when we were doing our filming, the actors we used lived close, so their would be no problem for them getting to and from my house and finally as my house is tucked away behind towering trees, from a distance and in the dark my house does look a bit scary, even though we didn't want my house to be scary as we wanted the story and action to be the scary part. This is because we didn't want the location to be the "normal" scary house setting, because we wanted to show that schizophrenia, which our main character was suffering with can affect anyone.

Most of the action look place in the house, mainly the hall way and kitchen. However, when filming i discovered that the rooms i was filming in were far too dark for the camera to pick up anything. The way that i worked around this was by making sure that as many lights were on as possible, without loosing the night time effect. 

The inspiration we got for our location was from the film "The Ring" this is because the location in which "The Ring" takes place in is an every day home, this links to what we wanted the audience to link to about schizophrenia but also that they could relate it to their own homes.    

     

Props and Costumes

As i have already mentioned, "The Ring" was a huge inspiration to how we wanted our imaginary friend to look and resemble their character of Samara, as Samara looks really scary in the costume she's in. Her costume and make up consists of; a worn and torn white knighty, bruised skin with a pale dead completion and hair covering her face. The reason we wanted our imaginary friend to look like this is because the tension that the audience get from not being able to see her face and also because of the fact that her characteristics are like a little girl. 

The way we achieved this look on Chloe Smith, who played the role of the imaginary friend is by dressing her in a blood, mud stained top with rips all over it, including ripped tights, covering her legs in mud and her hands, putting pale face paint over her face and body with some bruises on her arms and face and dead looking eyes. With her hair we put Olive oil and flour in, this is because we wanted her hair to look greasy and dirty. We then pulled her hair across her face. The end result was very rewarding as many people have commented on the make up and costume we used on both of our characters.

The main prop I'm going to focus on is the pill box that our main character uses when she needs to take her pills but discovers that she has ran out. The label on the pill box says "Resperidone. Antipsychotic medication." Which i researched for schizophrenia medication. This prop was very useful in indicating to the audience what the character's illness is. This is very different to any other film opening, as usually they reveal the main character's illness at the end of the film to build up a climax. An example of a film that does this is "Mad House" when the main character who the audience thinks works in the mental hospital at the end turns out to be mentally ill and thought all of it up.

Story line and how it opens up the film

The way that we started the film opening is the same way as most films start, with the main character walking/ running towards the camera, this instantly makes the audience think about where that character is going and what they're doing. It also allows the audience to take in the character's surroundings and build an instant relationship with that character. A horror film i cant link this to is "The Fourth Kind" opening as it allows the audience to take in everything within the shot, including the mise en scene of that shot. 

     

Genre

The genre of our film opening is a horror/thriller. I think the opening makes the audience instantly aware of this due to the slow pace and music used through out the opening. The slow pace and music adds tension into the opening but also the surroundings add to the thriller side of the film, although we didn't want and intend them to a lot of the feed back i got was "Wow your location looks really scary, especially the house!" so in a way it was good as it added even more tension to the opening. Another way the audience would know that the genre is horror/thriller is by the lighting used as its dark and ery, mainly due to me doing that on purpose during the editing stage by lowering the contrast. 

The action taking place within the first few seconds also has the audience will make a connotation with the main character holding her head that something isn't right with her and then the figure of another girl slowly appearing behind her indicates that its all in her head adding tension as there is no indication of what is going to happen next because its all in her mind and her own thoughts. 

Question 6. Equipment Used

This my digital camera i used during the film making process. I used this camera to refer back to certain angles i used in the actual film. This was helpful as i could reflect back to why i used that particular angle and say why is was effective.

From this i have learnt that keeping a record of both normal and unusual angles is very useful because you could think about what would and wouldn't work well with the action that's happening in that shot.

Question 6. Equipment Used

 I know doesn't really count as media technology, but i used my phone a lot during the film making process. This is because i need to make sure that all members of my group and both actors were able to make it to my house to film. It was also very useful to keep everyone informed about ideas and changes i had made to the film.

From this i learnt that communication between group members and other people involved in the media is very important, because if one person said they couldn't make it and gave enough notice, other members of the group could think of things to do without them.

This happened once, both Becky and Rob were unable to make an arranged date to re-film important shots, so i had to do them on my own, i did everything i could on my own. And the end result was very pleasing. 

Question 6. Equipment Used

These are the computers i used to update and upload picture for my blog from home. Both very easy to use, however i did realise that updating my blog was very important as if i feel behind i would not be able to recall what i had in previous media lessons or free media time. Therefore i learnt from processing my media product that to stay on top of all the key areas which should be blogged about is key to not getting behind or stressed about previous work.

Question 6. Equipment Used

This is the computer Becky and I used to make our ident for our film. The programme we used on this computer was photoshop, which was very useful and added a great effect to our ident. 

The only problem i came across with these computers was that during any class time they were always taken up, so there would be some lessons when i was unable to do any photoshopping or blogging during lesson time, this wasted a lot of time as i hadn't thought of other things i could of been doing.

Question 6. Equipment Used

The tripod, which i learnt to be the most important part of the camera use, this is because a lot of the shots in the preliminary were hand held, which made the shot shaky and unprofessional. Therefore i made it clear that all shots other than point of view shots are to be done on the tripod.

However, one shot that i did use on the tripod was still shaky, this was due to the strong wind and the camera not fitting properly onto the tripod. Luckily it isn't that noticeable, but if i was to do it again, I was use the tripod, as i did but also hold the camera to make sure that its defiantly not going to shake. 

Question 6. Equipment Used

This is the camera we used while filming our film opening. I found this camera really easy to use, as there aren't many controls which need much instruction on how to use. 

However, i have learnt while making my film that its best to film in lighter ares, even if you want a dark scene as the camera will naturally make everything looks darker. I learnt this when i did the first set of filming and all of the shots were far too dark to be able to see any of the action taking place. I also learnt this when some of the shots i did the third time, it was a brighter day than the other days i had film, i worked round this by editing the contrast in the editing process.

Another thing i learnt from the camera is that its better to have more shots than you need rather than having only the shots you "think" you want, as these might not work out due to lighting or weather. 

Question 7.

Question 7.

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Question 6. Equipment Used

This is the mac computer i used to make my film, using Imovie to edit all my shots together. 

As i have a mac at home I found it all very easy to use. 

However, there were a few problems i came across with the computer. For example, it froze a lot when Imovie and took a long time to start up again, this was mainly due to the fact that a lot of its memory had been taken up and maybe my group and I were asking too much from it at once. 

Another problem i also faced was that the Macs are in such high demand, this is because there is only 4 macs for everyone, so i got taken off the Mac a few times when i was trying to edit the film in my free time. 

Question 3

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

I think the type of institution that would distribute my media product is of an Internet release, as the plot is hard to follow and I think the audience would be a niche audience compared to the original idea about our target audience. Therefore if a large company were to release our film, i think they would loose money over releasing it as the audience wouldn't be big enough to make them any profit. 

I think if our film was to be released over the Internet, it would do better than it would if it was made into a Hollywood block buster. I think this because i think this idea of a young girl having psychological issues has been over done, so they would be bored of that kind of film. Also they would have to re-do all of the shots as they equipment we used wasn't at a high technical standard, and it would look better on a smaller computer screen rather than a huge cinema screen. 

However, i do think the idea and context of the film is a good idea, although i have said it's like other psychological films, it addresses a certain issue, which is schizophrenia. This is unlike other films as they just show their characters as being "naturally crazy".

Questions 2, 4 and 5.

Emmas media, evaluation

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Ident

Here is the original picture and a picture of the ident Becky and I made. We all came up with the idea of having an eye, as we wanted something to link in with our film and we used point of view shots a lot, which obviously links to eyes as its what you see. 

So we took a picture of an eye, then changed the contrast, temperature and tone of the overall picture using photoshop. I think the colours we used are really effective as they're bold and stand out. 

Originally we were going to call it "I-View" but Becky and I thought it was tacky and seemed like we were trying to be part of the apple company, so we changed to to "eye view", which i think links well with the picture and makes more sense. 

To make our company seem more professional i gave the idea of adding "pictures" on the end, to make it clear that our company is a film company. 

Overall i think that our ident looks really professional and adding the stardust sound over the top, makes it look and sound even more professional. 

Filming

When filming we came across some problems, such as the lighting was a huge problem for us as most of our shots were far too dark to be able to see. This meant that i had to re-film the outside and bathroom scenes and try to add more light into the shot without the light being over powering, because i still wanted to keep the dark scary atmosphere. I did this by turning on surrounding lights in the hall when Abbi would be on the floor crawling out of the toliet, and the way i got round the problem of the outdoor shots being either too dark or too light was while editing changing the contrast and brightness within the shot. This worked very well as we were able to make all of the shots look the same.
When we edited all of our film together, we discovered that some of the shots didnt move smoothly onto the next, therefore I had to re-do numerous shots to make sure that the action within the final film opening 1. made sense and 2. the film was smooth with its editing.
The shots i had to re-do were when Abbi was walking towards the house, as I was told that i needed to make the audience feel more involved with Abbi's character and have more emotions to her about the way she was feeling within the scenes. Another shot i needed to re-do was when Abbi and Chloe turn towards the knives, here i used match on action with Chloe's head turning from Abbi's point of veiw then to the knives point of view. This looked professional as i have edited them to move smoothly and make sense of the action within the shot.

Editing Of The Film

Once I had filmed all of our shots for our film opening, I uploaded all of the shots used onto one of the Macs. Here i was able to see what shots were effected and which ones weren't, while also enhancing the effective ones.
The problem I came across when editing the shots, was that the outside shots, some were darker than others, this couldn't be helped durring the filming process as it was getting darker as the night went on. I worked around this by editing the contrast and brightness of the shot. This then got rid of the mismatch between each outside shot.
The things i found easy on the editing of our film was how i could make each shot flow easily, while also breaking up one long shot and putting a shorter shot inbetween to break the action up. This was effective i felt as it would make the audeince feel more involved with the action within the scene while also making the overall shots look more professional.
Putting the credits and title onto the film was also easy, but i had to consider which font and placement of the credits looked more effective. I did this by researching different film openings with the same genre and target audeince. However, this was hard to find as most of the thiller/horror film openings dont include credits or a title, but the title does appear at the end of the opening. I didnt want to put the title at the end of the opening as i thought it was over done and it would be more effective for a audeince member to get a sence of what the film includes from the title, "The Unbeknown" before it even started.
Adding in music on the film opening was also something i found very difficult to get around because, i wanted to enhighten certain parts of the film opening to add more tension, however, this would of been far too time consuming so i looked on some legal music download sites, to find a piece of music that fitted really well with the action and context of the film.
I edited the music into the film and made the parts of the film where i wanted the action to be enhightned by music louder, these parts of the film were when we first see Chloe, who's playing the iminary friend, this is because i wanted the tension to build and make a bigger impact on the audeince as it would hopefully scare them.