Media Evaluation

FATAL INFATUATION

Untitled from Kieron Marchese on Vimeo.

THE FINAL PRODUCT!

The titles

Today me and Kieron had some spare time on our hands to do a little more on the title. It isn't the easiest thing to complete and we still need to get Jessica and Melissa's views on it. We used Photoshop to cut out the text and insert it on a blank frame (we may take a still frame from the movie). There will be some screen shots to come.

Evaluation Questions

There are many questions that I need to cover in order to complete my evaluation. These are:


1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
4. Who would be the audience of your media product?
5. How did you attract/address your audience?
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Jack Cardiff (1914-2009)

This man was called Jack Cardiff. He was and still is deemed to be Britain's greatest camera man and cinematographer. Born on the boards – his music hall parents put him in the silent film ‘My Son, My Son’ in 1918, aged four – he progressed through runner, clapper boy and camera operator, often under Alexander Korda, until two big breaks: being taken on as the first British trainee for Technicolor and embarking on a globetrotting colour-documentary career culminating in the Oscar-winning ‘Western Approaches’ in 1944. Then, magic happened. Second unit on one masterpiece, ‘The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp’, he was invited by its director, Michael Powell, to film the whole of a second. His work on ‘A Matter of Life and Death’ (1946) – incredibly, his first complete credit – ‘Black Narcissus’ (also 1946) and ‘The Red Shoes' (1948), with Cardiff’s versatility and pioneering experimentalism dancing perfectly in tune with the Archers’ own, produced a trio of achievements of beauty, impact and emotional meaning that are unsurpassed in British film.

Through six decades it was concluded that Jack Cardiff's energy never dimmed. He worked up until he was ninety.

UPDATE

At the moment we are almost finished with our editing, we are in the final stage (woooo!) and soon our results from our questionnaire we did a while back will be posted on each of our blogs.
Kieron: Update on sounds
Jessica: Detail on styling
Melissa: Finalising editing.

Final Filming

Before half term, the girls all got together to film the beginning of our O.T.S. Unfortunately Kieron could not join us as he was on an educational trip but however, we have made sure that he was updated with every detail that we did. We filmed some establishing shots of Jessie's house and a friends house: followed by some varied shots and angles of our femme fatale. Overall, a good day of filming I reckon!

Cropping Shots

Due to one of my camera operating mistakes, there was one shot in which Jessica was sitting in the corner. At the time we were so fixed on getting the lighter drop right that we didn't notice. However, by looking at Final Cut Express HD I managed to crop the shot.

 Here I used 'Motion' above the preview of the video and I simply clicked 'Crop' and I kept moving the picture left and right and then using 'Scale' to make the picture fit. 

This is the result of cropping the shot.

After scaling it, it looks perfect as Jessica is no longer in the picture.

However, the main problem that we faced was that by cropping and scaling the shot, the lighter does not fall centrally so as a result, this method cannot be used. Also, due to scaling, most of the quality is lost. We have decided as a group that we will re-record the lighter dropping as we want the 0.T.S to be perfect.

At least the cropping was better than the original...

Camera Operator

Since I was the camera operator I decided to do some more detailed research on what a camera operator should do and whether I succeeded in that task.

"The operator is responsible for physically operating the camera and maintaining composition throughout a given scene or shot." 
I personally think that I did this well and maintained a careful shot balance. I didn't think I shook the camera too much but this wouldn't have been an issue if we didn't forget the tripod (oh dear!). 




"Important camera operator skills include choreographing and framing shots, knowledge of and the ability to select appropriate photographic lenses, and other equipment (dollies, camera cranes, etc.) to portray dramatic scenes. The principles of dramatic story telling and film editing fundamentals are important skills as well. The camera operator is required to communicate clearly and concisely on film sets where time and budget constraints are ever present."
Looking at this description makes me realise how under-equipped we were - we had no camera cranes, dollies etc. but for what we were doing I think that it came out perfect. Well, nothing is perfect but it was to the best of our abilities. Looking at the last part of the quote, I personally think I communicated very well with my group and the actors (as you can tell on some of the out-takes I like to make myself heard..)   and this did prove successful as we managed to get everything done in good time. 




Source: http://en.wikipedia.org

Copyrighting Music

It is coming up to the time where we really have to concentrate on our music. Since we cannot copy any recent music due to copyright laws I decided to do a little research for myself to understand it.


What copyright exists in music?

There are usually 2 types of copyright to consider when we talk about music copyright.

• The traditional ©, ‘C in a circle’ copyright, applies to the composition, musical score, lyrics, as well as any artwork or cover designs, as all of these are individually subject to copyright in their own rights, (though when you register, you can include them all in a single registration provided they have the same copyright owner(s)).
• The second type of copyright applies to the sound recording itself, and is signified by the ‘P in a circle’ .

I print screened some information about copyrighting from wikipedia to show in good detail what copyrighting surrounds.

Sounds

This link will take you onto Kieron's experiment of sound effects. CLICK HERE

De-constructing of 'The Killers' O.T.S

To really get a feel of what me and my group want to create ourselves, we have to see how other people do it.
I have de-constructed the O.T.S from The Killers. I have listed what is conventional and what is unconventional about this opening title sequence.

Conventional:
- Fades in at the start to show 2 people in a car driving a long.
- There is an establishing shot which shows exactly where they are 'Brentwood'.
- There is non-diegetic music to create an alarming theme. Brass instruments were used to create that power.
- Titles and credits come in within 30 seconds.

Unconventional:
- Enigma has not been established.
- No speech up until 1.33. Most likely to create an 'eerie' feel as there is some non-diegetic music played quietly throughout the O.T.S
- Hook; Who are those men and why are they there?

Sound Foley Experiment

Today, Kieron set himself the task of finding the right sound effect for a gunshot. He conducted a test of 3 different items:
A - A dictionary
B - A ruler
C - A shoe

Go to Kieron's blog to see how he conducted this test or [click here]

Logo

As a group we have decided that this will be our logo as it is not a traditional film noir specifier. This shows that we are trying to put in a modern (neo-noir) side. However, a fingerprint is associated with forensics and crime - which film noir is loosely based around. Having the fingerprint this bright green shows that we are not going for the contemporary film. This gives our film an edge and an individuality for our wider audience to experience. This impression shows what our group is going for perfectly.

Group Progress and Final Cut.

Kieron: Assessment Criteria
              Inputting Sound

Jessica: Storyboards
              Styling

Melissa: Final Cut Express screen shots

 This is an example of what Melissa is doing. We have been trying to get used to using Final Cut Express, but so far, it's not really going well. Final Cut is very hard to use. Melissa has posted more information so to see that post click here.
I think that the main reason why we are having so much trouble with Final Cut is because we are so used to using iMovie from GCSE. I do personally think that by our group using Final Cut, we will gain a lot more experience.

Assessment Criteria

This assessment criteria is to assess what each of us have done so far. Individually and as a group we need to look at what needs to be done aswell. This helps us be a lot more organised and up to date with posts. Each of us need to make sure no one out of the group is falling behind so we need to link to eachothers posts and blogs.

Orange is what we have done.
Blue is in the progress of.
Red is what needs to be done.

VIDEO This is the specification for -
Level 4 48–60 marks A*/A High B
I am aiming high as I want to achieve and do well, so I will try and meet all the criteria.
There is evidence of excellence in the creative use of most of the following technical skills:

-holding a shot steady, where appropriate;


-framing a shot, including and excluding elements as appropriate;


-using a variety of shot distances as appropriate;


-shooting material appropriate to the task set;


-selecting mise-en-scène including colour, figure, lighting, objects and setting;


-editing so that meaning is apparent to the viewer;


-using varied shot transitions and other effects selectively and appropriately for the task set;


-using sound with images and editing appropriately for the task set;


-using titles appropriately.



Marking Criteria for the presentation of the RESEARCH AND PLANNING, specification for - Level 4 16–20 marks A*/A High B

There is excellent research into similar products and a potential target audience.


There is excellent organisation of actors, locations, costumes or props.


There is excellent work on shotlists, layouts, drafting, scripting or storyboarding.


There is an excellent level of care in the presentation of the research and planning


Time management is excellent.

Our editing

PROBLEM. According to the macs we are using, there is not enough disk space resulting in some of our clips disappearing. Melissa has been trying to find ways of sorting this out and hopefully by next lesson it will be successful. We have just about finished our dummy run but NEED to sort our real o.t.s soon as the deadline is coming up. EEK.

Linking to previous questions - Task 5 and 6

As a small theory task as a group we had to answer some questions separately and all together. On my own I answered 2 questions about how society affects our views on the media. This relates to our work because we need to know what the audience want to see. As I answered in the question, some people prefer to go to a cinema to see a film because it has a bigger dynamic. However, we need to make sure we can capture the audiences eyes just with our O.T.S. Basically what we need to do is make sure that society doesn't influence our film in a bad way. They need to see it for themselves and decide whether to like it or not themselves. We won't be able to influence their views on it but we could help change that by drawing them in to watch our film. (I feel like I'm writing a campaign!)

FILMING

Today we finally got sorted and filmed for our O.T.S. I emphasise on the finally. So overall I think it was a very productive day. We re-recorded shots if we had doubts and all worked together to make sure it was great. Being camera operator I felt very pressured to make sure I held the camera straight (as we forgot the tripod ERGH), also I wanted to make sure that I recorded each shot for long enough. Personally, I think I did alright. We wouldn't have been able to do it without Lauren Newby and Thomas Wilson, they're acting was spot on. I am proud of what we achieved but now it's up to Melissa to be in charge of editing. We're on a roll if I'm honest!

Dummy Run

Untitled from Ellen Lowe on Vimeo.

This is the dummy run that we completed to get an idea of what we needed to do on the actual day of filming. This helped us get an idea of shots, angles, the lengths of shots and basically the overall mise-en-scene. There were plenty of mistakes in this and we are fully aware of it. However, this is the point of a dummy run and we are very ready to film the real thing.