Prelim Task Opening Sequence

Opening Sequence Photo Storyboard

Before planning and starting off our shooting schedule we have to plan throughly but taking pictures of the actions that will take place for our opening scene so therefore i have used my phone to take pictures of our location reece which basically was needed for us to do after we setted up our location reece because of the time limit and the changes we had to do from other location reece,so here is the slideshare.

Photo story board

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Analysing Opening Sequences

This film is called Love Sick, and it starts off with a woman shouting at man in slow motion, and there is a voice over of him wondering if there is ever a thing called love. And there is a playful, cheerful tune throughout this film. This makes the audience wonder what has happened between both of these people. When the woman walks off the man goes to a bustop in which he sees another woman and calls her 'the girl of his dreams.' But whilst he is imagining them both together she gets on a bus and it drives off, leaving him there. He then sets out on a journey to get to the next stop to see this woman, making the audience wonder if he will get there on time or not. However, when he eventually gets to the bus top he misses the bus, and is left heartbroken, but is happy again when he sees the woman sitting at a bar, so he walks over to her and presents her with a wedding ring. This does not go according to plan as her boyfriend comes over and punches him in the face. The voice over then asks again if there is a thing called love again, making the audience wonder if that was what happened with him and the last woman. The man then goes to the park and is sitting on a bench when another woman goes past and she is now the 'woman of his dreams' which is funny for the audience. The opening sequence of this film is good as the audience start off asking what had happened between the man and the woman, but then find out that he may just see other women as the 'woman of his dreams,' as he loved three women in the same day.

Analysing Opening Sequences

This film is called Strangers, and it is about a man who gets on a train and ends up saving another man. In this short film, the man gets on a train and sits down, and keeps glancing over to another man who is reading a newspaper. And they keep looking at each other and looking away for some time. The man who got on the train then holds his Jewish necklace so the man reading can see it. A dramatic drumming then starts, and some tough looking bald men get on the train and sit near the two men. One of the bald men draw a swastika on the newspaper the man is reading, giving us the impression that him and  his other companions are Nazi's and want to cause trouble. All of the bald men then stare at this one man giving him intimidating glances. This makes the audience left wondering what are the Nazi's going to do to him, and is the other man going to help. The man with the necklace's phone then starts ringing, and the attention is now on him as he tries to find it, making the music of the film his ring tone and not the dramatic drums. When he finds the phone and switches it off the men smile and look away back to the man with the newspaper and the drumming starts again. The man with the necklace then looks at the man with the newspaper and nods and they quickly run to the doors as the train had stopped, and a fast paced music begins as the Nazi's chase the two men. However, when they get to the doors, they get off separate doors and the Nazi's are left on the train as the doors shut in their faces. The two men then wave at each other and walk off. The opening sequence of this film is good, as it does not give much away, and it makes the audience wonder what the relationship between these two men is going to be, keeping the audience watching.

Evaluation Question 6

Question 6 – What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

The technologies I used in the editing process were a Canon XHAI camera, battery, tripod, video tape, a lens cap, and a LaCie for storage. I learnt from the camera which was used, that you have to be very careful when carrying it around, and you always have to put down the LED screen before moving it anywhere as it can easily break if you happen to bang into something. So with this I had to be very careful when moving it anywhere. The camera is needed whilst filming as it helps you to see what you are actually filming, rather than relying on the actions of you actor/actress, as not watching them through the LED screen, would mean you would not be sure about what is actually going to show up on camera, so for this a camera is very important. Also there are zooming tools on the camera which is useful as well as the autofocus or manual focus. We used autofocus as it saved us time, as the amount of time we had was limited. What I learnt about the battery is that when taking it out of the camera you have to be very careful when doing it, as if you do not, it can just pop out and fall on the floor, which could damage it, and this would not be useful for your filming. The battery is needed when coming to filming, as it is what powers your camera and if you are not using a battery whilst actually moving around your camera your camera will not work as it will not turn on. What I learnt about a tripod is that it is useful for keeping your camera steady, it also helps you get low angle shots, high angle shots, and panning shots when filming. The spirit level on the tripod helps to focus the camera, keeping it steady, and if this is not fixed, when coming to watching back your film, you will see that the image that is there is not straight and out of place, so a tripod is helpful and needed for all of these reasons when filming. A video tape saves your work that you do when filming, and it can also be used when digitising your film onto the computer for editing, which is why it is needed. However, when putting in the tape you have to be careful not to damage it and same when taking it out as well. A lens cap is needed because it can help you not to get the actual lens of the camera dirty or broken, so it is useful in these areas, but when filming you have to take it off as if you do not all you will end up seeing is a black screen. And last of all the LaCie is the place where you save your video, and this is there so you can watch your film, because if it is not there you will not be able to see your film to edit it, which is a reason why it is needed.

The filming techniques I learnt and used whilst filming was the rule of thirds, which is when the screen is divided into nine parts and the four golden points is where you put the most important parts of the image, it is also the natural way to view an image. This was used in our production in the shot with the teddy in the foreground and the girl in the background blurred, making a more interesting shot. The 180 degree rule, which is where two people are having a conversation opposite each other, and when it comes to filming you have to make sure these people do not switch sides, and also that the camera stays on the same side of the line. This rule was used in our shot for when the girl was “reading a magazine” and the sister was checking on her. Continuity is used with match on action. Match on action is when something is happening in a shot, and a cut happens and the same thing has to be going on in another shot. This was used in our film when the girl was going to get her shoes from underneath her bed. We had to get the girl to walk away from the mirror, and then do it again for the next shot where she is nearer to the bed, this helps the continuity in a film, and continuity is where a film flows well despite the cuts. Action/reaction shots is when something happens and a reaction is given. So for example in our film the girl heard her sister coming so she had to jump into bed and her sister peeped through the door, for an action/reaction shot to happen we had to film the sister coming in and the girls reaction for the shot of the sister walking in and we had to repeat those same actions for the girls reaction to her sister coming in. Total shots is where the whole of a person is shown on camera. In our film we did this for the girl exercising. This was to show her ballet moves in detail. Different angles is when you film something in different angles, so for example in the film we did, we filmed her getting out the shoes from one angle, and then we did it from another angle. The second angle looked good and so did the first one, so we put them together and it gave a better effect, making it useful for us and good viewing for the audience. The weather can be a problem when filming no matter if sunny or rainy. The sun can ruin the lighting and the rain can spoil the camera and the tripod. Luckily for our film, on the outside shot it was good weather for filming, as it was not too sunny and it was not raining either. When it comes to changing in location, you have to be careful with the equipment, in our case we had to close the legs of the tripod, and close the LED screen on the camera to avoid them breaking if we banged into something, so doing that provided us from making any accidents, when changing location from the set to outside.

When actually constructing the media product we needed some editing software for the film to be complete and so used Adobe Premiere to help us. This is useful as I learnt that it has loads of tools to help you edit and make your film look great once completed. Some of the tools that we used were the razor tool for cutting up our film into pieces to be ready to edit. But before all this we had to digitize our film onto the computer, which was done by putting a usb into the computer connected to the camera, once this had been done, we had to then capture our film onto Adobe, and save it onto a LaCie drive. Once this had been done we were ready to edit our film. We did this by cutting our film into different sections with a razor tool, after this we found out best rushes and used the selection tool to drag and drop them to one side of the time line with the ones we did not need to the other side of the timeline, in case we decided to use them later. We then organised which order would look best to have our rushes in and the hand tool helped with this by letting us drag left and right. When finally in order, we then started cutting the film again with the razor tool to fix continuity etc. and the zooming tool helped with this, as it helped us cut at just the right moment to make the film look good. When all this was done and we decided that the best shots we had were used we deleted the ones that we did not need. After this we put in some transition effects, like dissolves to make the film have a better effect. When we completed this a soundtrack was put in, but before this was done free copyright free music had to be found. We found this on a website and we downloaded a couple from there trying the best ones. Eventually two were found, and we used them by fitting them into our timeline at the correct moments.

Problems that occurred whilst doing our filming were location problems, as we had to switch our location from a house, to a leisure room to a media studio. This was as the house could not be used due to work being done, so we re drafted the story to make it fit what we had available, which we thought was a leisure room, however, we had received incorrect information about this and it was not free when we needed it, so we ended up going back to our original story and we used the media studio and set it up like a bedroom instead, resolving our problem. Another problem we faced was when the sister was coming up the stairs, this was as the stairs that we had available looked like school stairs from a high shot, so instead, we used a lower shot but still from the top of the stairs, which helped. Trying not to see certain things in the mirror was another issue, because we had to close the curtains so we could not see the school chairs in the background, and also we had to make sure that the camera did not show up in the mirror. This problem was resolved by us standing to the corner of the mirror where it could not be seen, and doing a panning shot of the girls make up from there.

Overall, I have learnt a lot about technologies from the process of constructing this product, as I have found out valuable things when coming to film making. Also, I have faced problems which were resolved and this will help me to learn from them when coming to filming again.

How to make a blog interesting

What I have learnt from this video is that you have to consider your audience when writing a blog and you also have to be very specific and unique to attract them. This is as if your blog is complicated the audience will not understand it and if it is the same as everyone else's, they may find your blog boring and may not want to read it as they may not find it attractive and appealing compared to other blogs and they may not find it very original either.

Evaluation Question 3

Question 3 – What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Film distribution is when a distribution market gets a film, and has to find people to “make it big.”  The whole media distribution etc. as a whole starts off with a person who has an idea for a film that they wish to make.  The pre production (planning), production (actually making the film) and post production (the editing process) come together as a whole, meaning the film is ready.  However, this film being ready without any way of it getting out to the audience would mean it has no purpose.  So to make it have a purpose, the distribution market has to find a company that will rent a number of copies for a limited amount of time to exhibit the film in various places like the cinema, on television, online, at film festivals, and on DVD, so it can get out to the audience for them to watch, and it being marketed in this way makes it more successful.  Film companies that consider exhibiting films in the big showcase cinemas like Vue and Cineworld etc. are places like, 20^th Century Fox, Lionsgate, and Paramount.  But the only problem with these companies is that they may only showcase the big production films, rather than the independent ones, as the big productions make more profit because of a higher budget.  But even with independent films, although you may be able to put it on places like Youtube for free, this is also a well known production full of other films, and your one may not be able to stand out from the others, meaning your film may not attract as much of an audience as you had planned to.  In this type of situation, it could be best to put it on other websites that are not well known, but are willing to market low budget/no budget films for you, by showing it on their website to stand out, for example.

For our film “Lets Dance,” we would have to find a distribution market that would be willing to rent our low budget/no budget film and exhibit it for us.  A company that may be willing to do this could include http://www.independentfilmcompany.com/  they may do this as our genre of film is a “Teenage High School Drama,” and on their website, they market films, that include drama.  They also specialise in the distribution of films across various media marketing techniques, making it a great website for our film to be shown on, as it could attract a wide audience.

Another website that may consider distributing our film could be http://www.bigbuddhafilms.com/ this is as they screen films that are to do with human dilemmas, and as our film is to do with a girl that is hiding her secret of ballet dancing from her parents, this is something to do with human dilemmas in her teenage life, so therefore this company may consider distributing our film for us.

The website http://www.screenonline.org.uk/index.html may also consider distributing “Lets Dance” as according to their website they have a variety of genre of film, and our film could fit into one of these categories.

Websites like http://www.youtube.com/ would definitely consider distributing our film for us as they have a variety of all types of genre of film, and they also have a number of short films on there site too.  However, even though this is a good thing, our film could get “drowned out” and not attract a wide audience as planned due to the amount of films on there, so this site may not be a good idea.

Film festivals are another way of distributing a film and this is a good idea as people sometimes tend to go to film festivals, and a number of short films are played here.  This is a great way to get our film distributed as this will attract a wide audience who love short films already and they may like to watch our film.

Overall, the kind of media institution that may distribute our film is that of an independent film distributing company, and this is as our film is a low/no budget, and these types of companies usually produce films like this, rather than companies that produce big blockbuster films, as those films have a high budget.