AS Media Studies : 2015

Monday, 11 May 2015

Music and Permission letter/rights

To be able to use the song we chose, we first had to e-mail the production company in charge of managing and distributing the song.

The e-mail sent had to ask for permission to use the song but also included a sentence that allowed us to use the track if they didn't reply:

"If we do not receive a reply, this will tell us that we can use the song".

Although a very quick endeavour, it was vital to our project. If this wasn't done then we might not of been able to use the song at all.

Friday, 8 May 2015

This is a MoodBoard we designed as inspiration to help us create the idea of using the genre of a crime,thriller. Making the product appeal to our audience by using multiple of the images as influence to keep them watching.

Film Logo/ Our Production company

The following is my ideas for logos for a production company. My idea was to correlate the genres of both the opening and the production company.

This image was created on Microsoft power point. What I have done to make this is the following:

I searched crusade Templar cross into Google search and found the following image. What i then did was edited the image to push the cross down to provide room for the writing.

To conclude I used font 'Script' to do the crusade lettering and added the productions in font 'arial'. I then added spaces to spread the lettering evenly below the crusade lettering.

Crusade productions correlate to our opening through genre. Our genre is crime due to the fact that in our opening, a crime is committed to have the criminal incarcerated. The way in which it correlates is due to the fact that crime has been around for centuries and the crusades were believed to be about purity against sin. From this we used the link to make a logo which includes the Knights Templar cross. This cross was a symbol of purity which is how we contrast and correlate it to the crime genre.

To create this I used adobe fireworks, this is due to the fact that it has the feature to group words and images together to make it useful for merging the two (swords and lettering) together. Where the swords are concerned, the swords were taken from the internet by searching 'crossed swords' and from there I had to edit out the black background that it came in to successfully merge it into the lettering. For the lettering, I used the font 'Algerian regular' to give the effect of an historical feel to the logo.

Here is another example of Crusade productions that we came invented. We have decided that this is a good logo to relate to the crime genre due to the fact that the crossed swords are commonly associated to pirates. Pirates lived a life of crime during the 1500's and were rather ruthless. We decided to use this layout due to the fact that it related into our genre a lot more. In addition I have integrated the actual cross swords to be the A in crusade which shows that they are connected through the genre of crime, as I've just explained.

Preliminary Exrecise

This is the finished version of my groups preliminary exercise. Overall, this was a successful end product. In the beginning, there were quite a few hiccups in the filming and a few more in the actions. We had some bloopers like failing to open a door or falling off a chair but after they were cut out it looked fine. As well as that, we also took many shots of each of the scenes to make sure we had a good one or two. A bunch of the shots also needed cutting/cropping because the speech had a pause before it or the filming started after the first few words. After it was cut out and put together it looked smooth and quite...semi-professional. Another thing we need to take into account is the screen, we have to extend the size of the actual picture to cover the black border around the side.

Finished Product

Monday, 27 April 2015

Evaluation Task 7

Q: What are the main components that have improved from your prelim?

RA: I think one of them has to be general understanding of concepts, conventions, audience and editing. I think we all understood the angles and shots quite early on (near the prelim) but near the beginning of the school year, if you asked us to make and edit a film, aimed at a specific target audience; we would have no idea how.

Q: Taking into account both your prelim and final opening, what do you think you have improved the most?

OD: Its gotta be the original shots used in our first attempt. The 180 degree rule, match on action and the shot/reverse shot are a few things we kept looking at and trying to include throughout even though we didn't include all of them as much as we wanted to.

Q: Throughout this process, how do you think the camera work has improved?

AG: When I done the filming for the prelim, I didn't have much understanding of camera angles and shots but as the year moved on my understanding grew and I could help my group not only film but direct. Although that is the case, I know my understanding could be better.

Q: Thinking back across the year, what would you say you've learnt and can take away from this?

CC: As Reuben said, I think the general understanding of shots, concepts, conventions, movement, editing and the like have been massively increased. Not only this but smaller things that we've learnt which are just as helpful such as understanding target audiences and doing research on other films of the same genre has given us a better understanding of media in general.

Evaluation Task 1

The Title Of The Film

Our chosen title is called Pursuit because it

references to the main sequences of our product which is the chase scenes. It is also fitted into our character options and gives our audience a taste of why this short stylish title.

Story + How the opening is set up

The story is broken down into 3 sections. First
being The Break In, a jump right in fast past
scenes to capture the
audiences attention, Then the main chase
a section of scenes to build up to a climax
and show twists of tension,Then the Hook
a ending based on leaving the audiences wanting
to know more.
Setting and Location
We chose to use 2 main mise en scene setting's as to set our product first being all mid-shots of the scenes through out the

house to show illegal activity and then out to
its back garden as a lead into the forest, then
a open tree space through POV and long to
mid-shots to show a kind of hiding spot of
sort to keep our audience on edge to see what
happens next then to a long shot of chase scene
to show a build up to the climax and then onto
a close up of match on action arrest on out skirts
of forest then a cut to the small interrogation
ending through an over the shoulder shot.

Creating The Enigma?

At the end we leave the audiences questioning
what has happened? why did the chase scene
take place? who is the stranger in black?
and leaving them wanting to find out more
about this franchise we did this by using more
of the music and at the end have the first bit
of speech used to draw them in wanting a
depth of characterisation.

Costume and Props
Through out the product we have chosen

to use a full on black jump suit with balaclava
for the criminal to make him appear anonymous
to our audience which is a use of mystery to the
story and character development. And we used
more of a formal slightly dark dress code
through the detective's cloths form he wears
a shirt and tie along with black trousers and
smart but runnable foot ware we did this to
show he is able to work in the field and comes
across as dark in look but busts of bright
character through facial expressions.
And the interrogator the same.
plus the only prop used was a folder to
represent order when slammed down.

Genre and How the opening show it
The Genre is Crime/Action/Thriller.

Crime due to the breaking into the house and
running from something giving
the idea of cops and robbers, and Action
because of the dramatics used within the first
three frames in the way the criminal is trying
to move as fast as possible, and Thriller due
to the mystery appearance of the criminal
in all black and you cannot see his face leaving
audiences wanting to know more.
How character are introduced
The masked man is shown instantly as
a criminal as he has just kicked in someone's

door and is clearly not seen as the good guy
other wise why hide his face. The Detective
is shown hot on his tracks through coping his
hop the fence scene and shows he is hot on his
trail. And at the end the interrogator is shown
as the only character to use speech and
is the one who directs the Hook to our
audience.

Camera work and Editing
Through out the scenes in our product we used
a variety of shots (mise en scene- close up-
over the shoulder- mid shot- two shot- long

shot) and some camera angles such as low
angle when climbing the tree representing the
criminal rising above the law and high angle
looking down showing the criminal has more
power/advantage over the detective. also the
edits are as smooth and Sharpe (as possible)
to show the tension in the chase scenes and
ends with a fade and brings up the title from
far away to fill up the screen. And the begging
production name starts with a flash as drawing
viewers in then a rotating edit of our production
name appears then fades along with bubble
sparks. Another edit used was the music
coming in at right points such as the the
falling out the trees leading onto the climax
and an fade out of music to be a calm
ending at the end not an instant stop.

Title Font and Style
The style is Bold and Gapped this shows
a short of prison and crime based theme this
allows our audience to picture what the film
is about, and we chose black and white as
a symbol of stereotypes plus it also includes
the idea of what is Society? to our Audience.

Evaluation Task 5

Evaluation Task 6

We used word as a place to save our images and store work this program came in constant use when doing our research and planning.

Of coarse we used blogger as it had appropriate tools and options to fit our progression into media and the designing and phases we took to make our product

We used YouTube as a file holder by uploading our product to a youtube channel (reubenallard) in order to get the embeded HTML code to put on our blogger

This Is an image of Movie maker we used it to make final edits to the film in order to put the finishing touches on our product.

This is an image of use using Adobe Premier Pro editing our film together with appropriate cuts and matching the clips narrative

Evaluation Task 4

Our target audience is of 15 to 25 year olds for our product shows a lot of resemblant to the young trends, there street smarts, and lot of the time links to consequences of anti social behaviour. Therefore on the positive side our audience and characters age in our product share a modern interest such as the shop would be, Top man, River Island, Superdry, primark, TKMax etc. And music would be pop songs and bands such as Maroon 5, Katey perry, Izzgy, Snow patrol, Ed sheeran etc.

We believed that this kind of taste would have a major impact on what kind of viewing these audiences would like. The fast paced and snappy structure of our opening seemed to tick all the boxes for this specific audience.

We went through the brainstorming process of thinking what audience it would appeal to the most and decided on teens to young adults. This was mainly due to the music and speedy snapping on shots. We didn't think that this would appeal to older viewers and younger viewers wouldn't be allowed to or want to watch a crime thriller.

To understand this better we had to gather contextual information by viewing other cop shows and thrillers. This allowed us to see how their shows were structured and if it was in any way similar to ours.

Then we had to do some research to see if we could find out what age group watched these shows the most. After a while through our research we found a recorded sheet on-line that had the figures of who watched some different genres of shows. This record wasn't fully professional but it was the one we used. This document stated that younger adults were the ones who watched thrillers and cop shows most.