post 12.7-Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

One of the main things I have learnt through doing both the preliminary task and the main task was how to keep up with the blog. This was a difficult task and although I do not feel that my preliminary task was up to my highest standard, I don’t feel the same with the main one. I feel that my group worked a whole lot better this time round, and the communication and division of work was more equally distributed between all our members.

The second element I feel we improved on was looking out for mistakes in our footage during and after shooting. For example, in our first piece, while filming I caught myself and the camera on footage in a reflection, but this time round we took more time not to get reflections in car windows or shadows of ourselves in the footage.

Lastly, I feel that we were a lot more adventures with what we did with the camera. In our first short film we had most of our shots from on a tripod, where as we tried to vary most of our shots in our main task. This helped to give the film a more interesting look to it and helped audience to keep interested, as at the end of the day our main task was two minutes of people running. I feel that the one time we did try something ne with the camera in the preliminary task it worked out well, with the high angle CCTV shots, and this, as well as watching other films, gave us more conference to do more interesting things with the camera such as a tracking shot.

post 12.6-What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

post 12.5-How did you attract/address your audience?

A unique selling point of our film is the dynamic setting and action on screen. Most british films would not feature a level of violence that our film contains, this is much more conventional in American films, rather than british films. Our idea to use the ending of the film at the begginging is also a unique selling point, creating a sense of mystery around the actions that occured before.

Our audience feedback came back mostly positive. The key element the audience liked and responded well to, was the various camera angles used to present the running sequence. When viewing our rough cut, our audience did not respond well to the silence of the opening and the name of the film. Therefore we have rectified these issues.

post12.4-Who would be the audience for your media product?

A brief description of our target audience.
Our prime audience will be mostly males age 18 to 35. This will be due to a use of strong language and hard violence throughout the film. This is typical of the crime genre and has attracted the same target audience in the past. We want to attract people who are familial to the crime genre already and are mostly aware of the conventions already set in place.

A description of one member of our target audience.

One of the members of our target audience is Cameron Smith. Mr Smith has just turned 20 and lives with two of his mates in an apartment, 10 minutes walk away from his university. Mr Smith is studying art and photography, and is on track with his grades. To celebrate his birthday, Cameron Smith wants to go and see a film with his mates. He is not looking for anything life changing, but a fun solid film that he can have a good time with his mates watching and go and talk about it with them at the local pub after. When Mr Smith see’s that our film has violence and action as well as an ok storyline, which he is not to bothered about, he will hopefully pay his money and enjoy his birthday with his mates.

post 12.3- What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

The role of the production company is to make and produce thif film. This includes everything from the start up untill the film is made and ready to sell to the distrubution companys. The money genurally would come from diffrent sources and not all of it from british companys. Alot of money for morden british films comes from France. The film makers could also go to the UK film council untill very recently, due to it being closed because of spending cuts. The main reason for acumilating money from multibal sources is that if all the money comes from one source the person or company who paid will have too many rights to the film and will own the rights to your film and there for they can legaly come on set and make changes the film, no matter what the contract says.

After you have located the money and made your film you need to get it out there, in order to make a prophit. This is where the distribution company comes in. It is there job to advertise and sell your film to cinemas and in turn the audience. This includes adverting in Newspapers, Billbords, buses, virals and websites, posters and more recently Facebook groups. It is important to get not only the right distribution company but one you are cofetable with and can cumiunicate with, because at the end of the day, you may have the next big thing but if no one knows about it then you cant sell it to them. The only thing that a distribution company cant do is one of a films greatest selling points, word of mouth, although now days some films are paying people to give their films good reviews in newspapers, magazies and websites.

Main post 12.2

post 12.1

Genre
The genre of the film is crime and we used all of the micro elements and the convetions set up by previous films to create this.

Style of presentation
Within the operning sequence we used alot of close ups on faces and legs. this was to give a clostrophobic feel to our peace and hopfully to get an audience ingaged. The film is in 4:3 where as it should conventionaly be in 16:9. this is an error that we made during shooting, that if we had more time or made a new film we would learn from.

Style/colour of font
The style of the titles sticks to the crime gnere convention and uses simple white typography on a black backgroung. This slick way of presenting the titles mirrors the suites and lifes of the crimminals.

Narrative enigma
The main enigma of our operning scene that will get people intrested is the reason why there running. During the whole operning we never find out the names 0of the people or why they are running. This unsureity of name and character motive is very common not only in the crime genre but in most genres of film today.

Introduction of characters
In our opperning we only had two characters. We started by only showing one of them ruuning (Nick) away from somthing befor showing the other character. This will hopfully set up an air of mystery to what the film is about, a common element used in the crime genre.

Camera
As the majority of the film was shots of a chase seen, we used alot of diffret camera angles. One of the most difficalt shots we wanted was a tracking shot, which we managed to get by sitting on a skate board. this shot can be seen in many privious films such as the running in the opering of Trainspotting and the circerling arond the table in Resivior dogs.

Editing & Sound
The film uses fast pace editing with an equally fast sound track to create an tense atmosphere. This sets the mood for the opering and lets the audience feel the fear of the main character from the get go. this sticks to the conventions of a crime film as opens with a fast pace action scene, as seen in such films as Trainspotting.

Special Effects
We didnt use and sepecial effects in the conventunial sence of the word, other than the editing, sticking to the realsitic look of privious crime films from around the world.

Mise-en-scene
We had our chararctes wear suites sticking to the conventions of old and new films with the same genre. We also had our actors use prop guns, anouther well astablished and recconised genre convention.

post 12a

Audience feedback on rough cut.

After looking at the Rough cut, the audience said they liked the suspense at the end of the title sequence, and finding out "who killed who" and the fact that the end of the film was the title sequence, the audience didn't like the shaky camera angles of the tracking shot and felt
the opening sequence could have given off a much clear effect if the camera was
smooth. Overall the audience felt that the idea was very inventive and would
defianetly capture the audience however if we had better resources the idea
could have been more of a success

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RTHZdV49pw&feature=channel_video_title

post 11

Our Final Opening Sequence

Due to some compression problems on you tube the audio was out of sync with the video for our final film. Once this problem has been rectified our media teacher will send the examiner a copy. Thank you for your understanding.

post 10

Post-production

To start off the editing we had to set up a new Adobe Premiere Pro Project and log all of our raw footage, then as a group we set up a word document to log our rushes, we presented this piece of work as a table which consisted of the INT and OUT code, the scene and shot numbers and how many takes this took us with a last column showing which scenes would be used. Underneath is our groups logging rushes table:

Next we had to batch capture, only the footage that we wanted, and create a rough cut of our film before we showed it to the focus group, this meant that the group had to cut the shots so they would fit together and run smothely, this included the continuity issues of the feet because in our project it consists of a lot of running and we needed to make sure the continuity ran smoothly. After a rough cut had been put together and played back to make sure it flowed correctly, we then had to find a soundtrack to play above the music, as a group it took us a reasonably long time to do, because as a group we all had different ideas as to what sort of music we wanted, after spending a lot more time than we originally wanted to picking music, we found a track called Ghostocolypse from an uncopywrite internet site called incomputech.com, which fitted our piece really well. Initially we were going to cut out all the background noise and just have the music and sound affects, but after watching the piece through we felt that we needed to keep some non digetic, because otherwise the piece sounded in some ways 'artificial' and looked more like a music video.



post 9

Production Report

The filming process took a total of nearly 2 hours, and consisted of the group collecting the equipment, walking down to the location, filming all the scenes and then returning the equipment back to the teacher with the tape we recorded on.

The filming process was reasonably easy and quick due to the fact that we practiced how to do the tracking shot and bought all pre production work to the location with us including the shot list to help us remember all the shots we had to shoot and in which order so we didn't miss anything out, however as a group we didn't stick to the shot list because we found perfect opportunities to add in our own shots that we felt reflected our genre better. We also felt the more shots we had in our project, the easier it would be when coming to edit, because this way we wouldn't need to re-shoot.

However as a group we did also have minor problems as there was a lot of traffic near the end of the school day from parents picking up their children from the primary and secondary school and children walking home, walking into our set and making noise, which did mean it was hard to shoot some scenes as we had to let the cars and peolpe pass. Also we did start shooting quite late due to the fact that we found it difficult to schedule the shooting when both teachers and all of our group were free and when working this out before shooting we didn't take into consideration that one of the teachers was on duty at lunch and couldn't come down to the location on time.


The group, throughout the task have worked well effectively and worked together as a team, during the post production we handled the tasks by splitting the tasks neading to be done and then coming together as a group and improving them to make them better, we started off aiming to do this routine in the production stage and originally set tasks for each other to complete but when coming to the production stage we felt that these tasks weren't suited for that person and we ended up switching roles so our strengths would be shown in the production.


Once we had looked at the raw unedited footage we had filmed we were pleased with what we had done, however some of the tracking shots started off well but near the end turned to an angle, this was due to the lack of and money equipment the school could provide, so as a group we decided that as an alternative the best option was for one of the crew to sit on a skateboard with the camera and two of the other crew members to push and pull him with a piece of rope, before actually filming the piece we practiced this and at the time seemed the best option, but as a group the outcome of the shot wasn't great but was the best option, without the right equipment.


Overall i think the production was a success due to careful planning and learning from our previous mistakes in the preliminary task, this also helped because we had changed groups from the preliminary task we all had different mistakes from the last time, giving us more to be aware of for this product. If we could change anything i feel we would have better equepment to gain some shots but as this was down to money problems i feel we did alright.

post 8

Synopsis of the Whole Film
The film follows Nick, starring James Lyons, through an emotional journey in which he attempts to save the life of his dying daughter, starring Kelly Brown, by funding a lifesaving operation. He is a successful businessman and this financial goal is easily achievable for him, until he allows the stress of his daughter’s illness to interfere with the quality of his work and he is fired from his role in the company.
From this, his life begins to spiral out of control as he uses the controversial drug trade and other illegal methods to fund his daughters operation but after becoming addicted to the substances he formerly sold, he was incapable of prioritizing his savings. His daughter ultimately passes away which results in a prolonged battle with schizophrenia and eventually the dramatic ending.

Synopsis of the Title Sequence
The main character, Nick, starring James Lyons, will be shown running in various locations. He will also be shown panicking over the voices that he can hear whilst he’s running. As Nick is running, there will be scenes which reveal the titles and will be superimposed in the editing process. At the end of the title sequence, Nick is shown contemplating shooting himself as Raoul enters the shot, and the audience feel obliged to watch the whole film to discover which character dies. At this moment, the screen will black out and the title of the film will appear on a black screen.

Time line

















Shot List























Storyboard & technical detail







Risk Assessment
It’s important to perform a risk assessment so that we are prepared for the filming stage and making sure everyone is safe. Listing all potential hazards also ensures that everyone is aware of the dangers and also what can be done to prevent these.


Crew List
We also decided to create a crew list describing the roles of each member of the project for each scene, and any additional props or equipment that is needed.




Locational and Technical Reece
In order to prepare for the filming process we photographed the locations which we were going to use as our set and later analyzed various aspects of that location and the effects that it could have on the film. This is the conclusions that we made:


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post 7

We asked diffrent ages and genders about our idear for our opening and this is what we got.
Working off of this we changed the end to our opening, to encorpurate there feedback.

post 6

Most popular genres have a history. The crime film so many that it is near impossible to give a straightforward account of the genre's evolution without getting lost in innumerable byways as different crime formulas arise, evolve, compete, mutate, and cross-pollinate. Crime films arise from a radical ambivalence toward the romance of crime. That romance gave heroic detectives like Sherlock Holmes—burlesqued onscreen as early as 1900 or 1903 (the exact date is uncertain), in the thirty-second Sherlock Holmes Baffled —a matchless opportunity to make the life of the mind melodramatic and glamorous, and it made silent criminals like Fantômas and Bull Weed ( Underworld , 1927) both villain and hero. The arrival of sound in 1927 and the Great Depression in 1929 created an enormous appetite for escapist entertainment and a form of mass entertainment, the talkies, capable of reaching even the most unsophisticated audiences, including the millions of lower-class immigrants who had flocked to America. The great gangster films of the 1930s and the long series of detective films that flourished alongside them, their detectives now increasingly ethnic ( Charlie Chan Carries On , 1931, and forty-one sequels; Think Fast, Mr. Moto , 1937, and seven sequels; Mr. Wong, Detective , 1938, and four sequels), were nominally based on novels. But crime films did not seek anything like the literary cachet of establishment culture until the rise of film noir—atmospheric tales of heroes most often doomed by passion—named and analyzed by French journalists but produced in America throughout the decade beginning in 1944.

Postwar crime films, whatever formula they adopted, were shaped in America by cultural anxiety about the nuclear bomb ( Kiss Me Deadly , 1955) and the nuclear family ( The Desperate Hours , 1955). The decline of film noir after Touch of Evil (1958) was offset by a notable series of crime comedies at England's Ealing Studios (such as The Lavender Hill Mob , 1951) and a masterly series of psychological thrillers directed by Alfred Hitchcock ( Strangers on a Train , 1951; Rear Window , 1954; Vertigo [left] , 1958; North by Northwest , 1959; Psycho , 1960). The 1960s was the decade of the international spy hero James Bond, who headlined history's most lucrative movie franchise in a long series beginning with Dr. No (1962). But it was left to a quartet of ironic valentines to retro genres, Bonnie and Clyde (1967), The Godfather (1972), The Godfather: Part II (1974), and Chinatown (1974), to reinvent the crime film for a hip young audience. The replacement of the 1930 Production Code by the 1969 ratings system allowed niche films to be successfully marketed even if they were as graphically violent as Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1990) or as bleak in their view of American politics as The Parallax View (1974) or JFK (1991). The closing years of the century, marked by a heightened public fear of crime, a fascination with the public-justice system, and a deep ambivalence toward lawyers, allowed a thousand poisoned flowers to bloom around the globe, from the sociological sweep of the British television miniseries Traffik (1989), remade and softened for American audiences as Traffic (2000), to the ritualistic Hong Kong crime films of John Woo ( Hard boiled [ poster on the left]) and Johnny To ( Dung fong saam hap [The Heroic Trio], 1993) and their American progeny ( Pulp Fiction , 1994), to the steamy eroticism of the all-American Basic Instinct (1992) and its direct-to-video cousins. Perhaps the most distinctive new strain in the genre has been the deadpan crime comedy of Joel (b. 1954) and Ethan (b. 1957) Coen, whose films, from Blood Simple (1985) to The Ladykillers (2004), left some viewers laughing and others bewildered or disgusted.





Themes
· Rivalry- usually with other criminals. Often regarding money, pride or loyalty or gang hate.

· Morality- as religion is used as a key aspect, usually used as dramatic irony or to highlight their lack of morals. This can be seen in films such as Goodfelles.

· Betrayal- huge theme of giving up information to crime families or police. Can be to do with frustration or most commonly, will go to prison otherwise

· Fierce ambition- protagonist is usually full of desire, sometimes resulting in his death or attaining ultimate power

· Materialism- most focus on material aspects, for example cars represent ultimate fantasyof rags to riches

· Self destruction- obtain everything they desire but they become complacent and bored, leading to a big downfall

· Evil- the protagonist can appear evil, clinical and sinister as death is portrayed as a business with no care or doubt

· Loyalty- undying loyalty between the mob, shown with how they consider them to be ‘family’, such as The godfather.


Symbols are used throught the crime genre. Here are the key ones :
· Money, epitomizes materialism and a crime films ultimate desire.
· Guns and ammo, represents violence and most prevalent weapon used in a crime film
· Police, represent the law which is everything the mob hates and fights against, epitomize the ultimate enemy
· Locations, the two main styleof location are poler extreams. Most crime films are ether set in hot, sunny America ( such as the film True Romance) or dirty back allys and streets (such as trainspotting).

post 5a

post 5

As a group, we decided to create a detailed timeline of the visual parts of the title sequence for the film Goodfellas, Se7en, The Dark Knight and Pulp Fiction as well as a description of the audio which matched up with the visuals