media studies 2009-2011

Titanic

The opening credits to this film are very brief but introduce the film formally without giving away the actors and actresses. It begins with a dissolve in of the cruise ship followed by the production company’s name. The entire introduction is made into sepia to show the technological angle to make the audience realise that it was past present and also allows them to understand what era it would have been. More credits of the apposing production companies are shown by fading in. But then, unlike other opening sequences, the main title is shown straight away to initiate the powerful word, which means so much to the wide range audience spectrum.

Grease

The opening credits of Grease are animated to match the cartoon theme and used in a unique way to an ordinary film, the title ‘Grease’ is used by squeezing a tube of greasy hair gel to create the title ‘Grease’, which then turns into a car animation to represent the T Birds car. The sequence of the characters getting up from bed and ready for their college day, introduces each character by pausing the animation briefly and adding text to the right hand side for the boys and left for the girls. Also song lyrics are used to give the audience an understanding to what songs to expect during the movie.

The Notebook

The establishing shot of a beautiful sunset opens up the movie, and gradually the names of the actors fade in to introduce the characters. A different simular shot of a sunset is used to change the warmth of the film to make it appear to be romantic. A boat is then used to introduce the main character, the title is then shown and the film begins.

Make up-

Natural base make up with red blusher and red lipstick.

Location-

Romanby River/ beck,

A selection of random fields,

Dormant railway line,

Old-fashioned housing area.

Props-

Umbrella, basket, picnic blanket, hats.

Costumes

Our initial idea was to create a Victorian style theme by using costume along to set the era.

Elizabeth- Long skirt, petticoat, long dress, under-skirt, corset, bonnet etc.

George- army uniform, includes- beret, kaki jacket, camouflage trousers.

Storyline

Girl obliviously is having a picnic with her best friends; boy is watching her through the bushes whilst painting a portrait of her. He has a secret obsession. A series of minor events happen that leads up to the discovery of a blossoming love story. The boy’s obedient dog runs off to eat some food from the picnic allowing the boy to chance it which introduces the couple of young teens. As he goes to collect his dog he bends down and all of the paintings of the girl fall out of his satchel. She appears confused but flattered. They fall in love at first sight. From then on, the love progresses which is portrayed through a series of dates which will be showed using fast editing. The boy gets called to go to the war. Boy walks off into the distance reading a poem to her explaining his decision. As she reads this she cradles her stomach as she was about to tell him that she is pregnant.

Over the past few months of piecing our film together, we feel like we have achieved an awful lot in the time provided. Looking back at our Preliminary Exercise, we can see a big step in professionalism, simple aspects like; head-room and camera position make a massive difference to the outcome of the film. All our little mistakes from that exercise prepared us to want to achieve a more mature final piece for our coursework. And we think we have succeeded.

If we had the opportunity to redo ‘Disturbia’, there would be a number of things we would do differently. For example; we could have used a larger range of shots, for instance, we could have included a few more close-ups to build up suspense and make it more visually appealing. The lack of actors disabled us from delivering to the audience the desired atmosphere that a typical group of teenage girls would give. Also the fact that we couldn’t gather actors together made us have to compromise, which meant filming and acting (taking it in turns), we did manage this extremely well considering the difficulty when filming some of the scenes. We managed to distribute our roles equally, and we worked really well as a team.

Successes

We have created an enigma code, with the fact that the audience are unsure of what to expect. Also the way that we faded/blended the past to present in the opening credits worked well, and seemed to build up tension. The freaky laughing that the girls demonstrated gave off a eary feeling and made many of our viewers feel quite uncomfortable, which is what we wanted to achieve. Handheld camera was used at the beginning to make it seem like we were videoing it ourselves as part of our camping trip, which gives off a different feeling, this is also similar to such films as the ‘Blair Witch Project’ and ‘True Blood’ When the audience is expecting something bad to happen.

Failures

The main failure was to not get a close up of the knife during the tension scene. If we were to include this it would have created a lot more suspense.

We later changed our narrative due to inconvenience of setting and lack of actors. But in the end we thought our film was more successful than the anamatic that we previously created.

In conclusion we believe that our film has been a huge success.

Voice over commentry to explain the professionalism involved when making a film, we talk in the commenty how we would if we were the actual producers of a big time film.

Speech bubbles and notes were used to add in information linking to our film and what made it attractive to the audience and also what similarities it has to professional films with the same genre.

Since doing the preliminary task, we have improved on all aspects of filming and editing. On our film opening, we took into consideration the mistakes we made in the preliminary exercise such as head room and steadiness of the camera. We haven’t included all of the preliminary tasks in our film opening simply because some of them were not needed and wouldn’t of fit in with the filming and structure. We have mainly used mid and long shots throughout the film but have included an over the shoulder shot when one of the characters is speaking to the other. We didn’t manage to include shot reverse shot because there wasn’t an ideal place in our film to put it and there wasn’t a full conversation. We also didn’t include match on action because there wasn’t an object that needed to be passed over to someone else. Further on in the film, match on action may have been used if the knife needed to be passed to someone. When filming, we were very aware not to break the 180 degree rule, if we did, the shots would look strange and would lose a sense of continuity. If the film was to be continuted, all of the preliminary tasks would have been used.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?  Video camera, digital camera and microphone.

 Tri-pod to secure the camera onto.

  Computer to blog our work onto.

  Computer in the editing suite to edit our film.

 Programmes that we used to make our film:

1) Photoshop

This allowed us to create such media as our logo.

2) Abobe Premiere

This is the software we use to bring our film to life. The editing software was pretty straight forward to use and a lot of fun once our final piece was such a blessing to watch.

3) Google

To get photographs from, of typical teenagers for audience, and flower for logo.

4) Youtube.com

We used this to upload our preliminary exercise, to get critical feedback, and also we uploaded our final film so it would be easy to access reguardless of which computer we were using.

5) Audacity

This was used to make our sound track longer than antisipated. Also to make some of our sound effects more distinguished.

6) Media Blogs

Last but not least, our media blogs allowed us to update frequently, and write a sort of step by step guide to making a successful film.

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

The Title of the Film:

With our film we have tried as hard as possible to fit the forms and conventions of a real film for the opening off ours. Starting with the title of our film, we researched other opening sequences too see the style of the titles, the order they appeared and what names and jobs were most important to be in the sequence. After we had researched these, we fitted our chosen titles in to the 2 minute long film opening, so that the title ‘Disturbia’ would appear at the right time. We also made sure that we had the key titles in such as ‘directed by’ and ‘editor’. We decided the film title by the genre of the short sequence. As it was a horror film with a cliff hanger we wanted the title to have an effect on the audience, too give them a sense off terror, and uncertainty off the film. Real famous films, always makes the title unique and one to remember, this is so the audience wont forget it and will be attracted to watch the film. I think ‘Disturbia’ ticks all these boxes as it’s unique and explains the film in one short word which makes it effective.

Setting/Location:

We then decided on setting and location. For the title sequence we want somewhere spooky and extreme to then later contrast with the family home in the beginning of the film. Location is very important in the conventions of a real film. It explains most off the story line to the audience and adds a heavy genre onto the film. For the title sequence we chose Target Woods as it had trees and a river with a gloomy effect. It fit the film story line well, as it gave it a tense feeling and added to the uncertainty of the story. In contrast we then chose a warm feeling family home, on a hot sunny day too show a calm and safety feeling. Which at the beginning the audience is meant to feel this, but with the touch of worrying music you can soon make the audience hold on too their seats.

Costumes and Props:

We needed to then decide on costumes and props. This was essential tot the genre of the film. The opening credits we need bottle, covers, bags and other misused items to make the place look abandoned. These props would then worry the viewer wondering what had happened before hand. This was the reaction we needed for the next part of the sequence. In the second half, all we needed were a couple bags and the kitchen knife that the character ‘Lucy’ puts into her bag. This is again to represent the horror of which is about to happen, makes the audience have a need to carry on watching the film, almost gives the same feel as what a cliff hanger would.

Camerawork and Editing:

The camera work and editing was very important to hit the forms and conventions of a real film. We needed to make sure that the aspects of camera angles and the methods used were chosen carefully, as it needed an edgy effect, to give the film suspense and to make the audience almost feel nervous. The first technique we used was hand held camera. I think that this worked very well as it gave it a very abstract view on the dull scary woods and the happy exited teenage girls. The camera jumps constantly which makes you think what could happen next and it could make the audience jump in anticipation, but at the same time the hand held camera gives a different message when the girls are jumping round having fun and giggling. It shows excitement, happiness, hyper normal giggling girlie girls. This camera work is meant to show the past and the future. The past of happiness and loudness, then flick to the future, where it is deserted, scary, cold looking and dead.

Title, Font and Style:

We firstly designed the production label ‘Pink Rose Productions’. From this we wanted to make the rest of the titles to fit the same theme off pink so that they would match. We also needed the titles to have a certain style to fit the genre off the film. So to give it that edginess we chose a font that gave it the feel off threat and horror. After this we also added more effects to the the style of the titles such as shadowing them and spreading the letters further apart, which I personally thought gave it a uncertainty and contrast to the colour off the titles, which then related back to the theme we picked for the opening sequence (uncertainty of what was about to happen and cliff hangers). The actually title of the film ‘Disturbia’ fitted the same theme (style and font) as the rest of the titles apart from making it bolder and stand out more to the audience due to its importance in the film. The final aspect we needed to consider was the names off each title. As I have written about before, our group took out time to research into other opening sequences so see the style and layout of other titles. Which in the end really helped us decided on our sequence.

Story and how the opening sets it up:

The story line off our short sequence runs along the lines off a group off teenage girls all go on a camping trip, but it all goes wrong. We imagined the film to continue with one by one the girls going missing, leaving with a couple a girls too put the pieces together. Lucy the main character is the one who would have murdered them and would have been caught by those who were left. I believe the opening sequence does a very good job off setting the scene for this genre. It sets the scene and gives the audience a little too think about due to Lucy picking up the knife and acting very edgy to the other characters.

Genre and how the opening suggests it:

The chosen genre off our film is horror. I believe the opening sequence shows this of very well. The music plays a very good part to this as it has a horror theme and is very jumpy music. This type of music is used in many horrors which also makes the audience familiar to the theme of the film. We also used careful editing such as the slow motion to enhanced the look on Lucy’s face off worry and guilt, and the black and white, old movie effect on the title sequence. I think a couple of the references made by the actors make the audience wonder what is going to happen next.

How characters are introduced:

All characters are introduced by the title sequence from the mixture of past and present. When the film officially starts all characters are introduced by walking into the frame. The three girls at the beginning particularly. Lucy the main character opens the door to her friend but also it seems the way the camera is positioned, the audience is in the set and she is opening the door to them too.

Special Effects:

The only special effects we used, were the ones which are mentioned above. The old fashion film and black and white effects in the title sequence and the slow motion at the end to enhance the facial expression off the character. This is all to prove the genre and make it easier for the audience to understand the theme and what is about to happen.