Evaluation Question 7

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

• The main error we encountered in our preliminary task was the change in the direction of travel, the 180 degree rule. This created an unsteadiness in the task and ruined the flow. 
• I learnt to ensure continuity within the film, that a lot of things needed to remain consistent, such as the shot types and the environment. One of our difficulties was as a result of shooting outdoors, the weather and lighting became a changing factor whilst filming, so we had to make sure we filmed carefully, and that this wasn't noticeable during the final edit. 
• I feel I have also learnt a lot about editing. During our preliminary task, I encountered difficulties with Final Cut, which could be seen in the task, such as un-smooth transitions. Also, I learnt that filming was very important. For example, the use of a tri-pod in our final task ensured that shots were not shaky and the panning shots were of a consistent speed. Shot type was also very important when working within the thriller genre. For example, Alfred Hitchcock used particular shot types to create enigma and suspense. We made use of this, for example in our final task the character's face is not seen once, leaving the audience un-settled and asking questions.
• We analysed our preliminary task and pin-pointed the mistakes we made. When working our final project we made use of detailed story boarding and planning to ensure we didn't repeat these mistakes.

Evaluation Question 6

Evaluation Questions 4 and 5

Evaluation Question 3

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

A film needs to be distributed in order for it to reach the market and become available to watch by a large audience. Though distribution can take place through various different methods, and the right method can be decided through research.

Areas that they will need to research are:

• Target Audience - It is important to know the target audience of the film so that distribution strategies can be adjusted to suit the audience. For example, it would be ineffective to advertise a child's cartoon film, on a history channel advertisement break.

• Advertising - How will they gain awareness of their film. Where will the media product be shown, and where will be most effective.

• Budgeting - The production company will need to asses which method is the best value for money, and that the awareness gained will return revenue, to cover the cost of the original distribution.

• Screening - They will need to arrange for cinemas to show their film, trying to ensure the cinemas they by showing the film they will generate more profit.

For our product

As a result of financial constraints, we won't be able to distribute our product in the same way in which Universal, Twentieth Century Fox, Paramount and Warner Bro's do. Though, as a result of our target audience (18-30) and mixed gender, social networking sites are a cheap, and effective method of distribution.

Facebook, the world's biggest social networking site is great for sharing media content.

Here is sharing in it's simplest form, you can copy the URL of your media content, and post it as your Facebook status update, allowing friends and others to see it. This can then be liked and shared, and quickly gain awareness.

If budget is considering, we could use Facebook further, and pay to advertise our media content.

Youtube is also great for awareness, as popular and similar video's are often reccomended to other viewers.

Evaluation Question 2

Props

This is the initial shot, after the production logo. The opening shot has many props, such as the tractor to the right of the frame, and the farm machinery on the left.The second most noticeable prop is the weapon held in the characters hand. A weapon of some sort is not only common to the thriller genre, but links the opening scene to the farming and agricultural context in which it is set.

Costume

Items such as wellies and a long green coat further connote the agricultural theme.

Casting

As there is only one actual person in the film, that is all the casting there is. All that the audience can see is that it is a male, possibly anywhere from 17-24 years of age. The reason for such a wide range of possible age is that the face is not shown. This adds to the enigma. Being this age, it will attract the attention of viewers who are of the same age. To ensure that the video appears to as wide an audience as possible, extra characters have been added. On the newspaper clipping, women of varying ages are shown. Hopefully this will try to include a wider target audience.

Scenery 

The scenery is clearly in the countryside, and the barn, containing farm machinery and vehicles connotes the farming theme.

The weather also creates a theme, as it was raining during filming, there are many puddles on the ground, and the lighting is poor, this not only connotes the farming theme, but adds to the idea of preconceptions of England.

Evaluation Question 1

Final draft of thriller project

How we edited our thriller project

 We edited our project using Final Cut Pro. This is where we put together all the titles, logos, video clips and sounds together that we had created for our thriller intro. Firstly we imported all the files by clicking 'file' > 'import' > 'files'. By doing this all the files become available in Final Cut, and ready to drag onto the timeline.

 After roughly arranging all the clips in chronological order I began to edit all the clips. Most clips could easily be cut to the desired length by dragging one side of the clip in. For some clips we had to make them longer, by changing the speed.

To do this you right click on the selected clip then select 'change' speed. Settings then appear that canbe modified to change the clip to your desired speed.

The the titles used in our thriller opening had a 'shimmering' effect. This was also edited in final cut.

Firstly I created text and typed in the appropriate job titles. Then effects were added, we chose the 'bad film' effect to give the shimmering effect that fits in well within the thriller genre.

The template effect could also be edited, so each job title was varied.

After the titles were created these were also imported into our main project. 

After the editing was finished we exported the file by clicking 'file' > 'export' > 'Quicktime Movie' 

The making of our animated logo

At the start of our thriller project we made an animated sequence for our production company. This logo was made using Adobe photoshop.This picture is a square and to use it with our thriller we will just place it onto a white background to make it blend into the rectangular video shape.

We started off by drawing the outline of the 'bearded man', in a rough sketchy manner to give it a hand drawn appearance. We also chose a font for the text.

Fill was then applied to the image 

After the image was completed, we tried various fonts to see which would look the best with our logo.

Once the image was completed we moved on to using the photoshop animation to make the bearded man wink and then open his eye again, we also made the text fade in just as the wink goes down and it stays black and visible when the eye opens back up. The file was then saved as a .mov video file so it could be imported into our final cut project. 

First draft of our project

This is the first rough edit of our project, titled "Missing. Overall I was very pleased with the first draft, however there are many changes and improvements that need to be made, which I will cover in a seperate post.