1) In what ways does your media product use, develope or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our product uses most thriller conventions and also attempts to take them to another level. It consists of a protagonist and a psycological antaginist (this is where we tried to develope our idea) which can be very confusing at first but as it goes on we begin to see that the girl is having her mind messed around with. We used voyerism towards the end of our piece along with a high angle shot to show the girl is being over-powered and can not keep on top of her feelings. We challenged the conventions by using a young ordinary girl who is having psycological problems. We done this because we didn't want it to be too typical. In most psycological thrillers, it is a man with problem and he ends up killing people. Our piece has no dead bodies or any sign of death because we thought it would be too typical.
2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our media product doesn't focus on alot of people, just a young girl. As the actress, I am in my mid teens. However, I look young so it made things alot easier. To base our story on a girl in her early teens, means she could be experianceing hormonal problems that could effect her mind alot and make her mentally unwell. We focused it on the young girl because we was targeting out piece at teenagers and maybe they have experianced some psycological problems (maybe not like our piece) but they could relate and if not they could see how hard it is for those who do.
3) What kind of media institutions might distribute your media product and why?
Film4 distributes films on all scales. They have been known to pick up some films that havn't done very well but also some of the best films known such as "Slumdog Millionaire". Although our film is sort of Americanised, Film4 do seem to pick up on many of these types of films such as "Love Actually".
4) Who would be the audience for your media project?
Looking at our results from our questionaire and our research into thrillers, our target audience would be between 15-25 for both genders. This is due to our content being a little disturbing and younger people may be effected by it. I think people between this age could maybe relate a little bit more to the girls problem because maybe they have been depressed and suffered skitzaphrenia in their teen years. However, older people could also relate to this but maybe would'nt be as interested in this particular genre anymore.
5) How did you attract/address your audience?
We began researching thrillers and seeing what conventions attracked us the most. We addressed our audience but createing a questionaire and used the results to match them with the conventions we most enjoyed to. We used these conventions in our piece to attract our audience. We used visual effects to set the scene and style of out piece but also to seperate the present time from the girls dream.
6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
From our preliminary exercise, I learnt how to arrange good shots and get them to be very effective. This became a big part in our final piece as we needed the best angles we could and make them mean something everytime. Using the tri-pod sometimes became difficults as it would only go so high and only go so low, and became a problem but we worked around it and it became easy to work with after a while of thinking. The iMac computers were all new to me. I had no idea how to use the computer itself let alone the software! After a few lessons of just experimenting I became very adapted to it and could do things alot more easier, even if we did encounter a few more problems. The iMovie programme did let us down quite regulally. I don't know why but it made out preliminary task go really bad and it kept jumping and speeding up. We still do not know why that happened. Our final piece also took a while to edit as the programme often didn't let us crop our piece properly or add effects. However, we did overcome these problems and produce a good piece.
7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the product?
Looking back to my preliminary task, I have learnt that you should always leave enough time to edit because something could always go wrong. We even encounted this with our final product but still managed to sort it out in time because we knew something could easily go wrong. In our preliminary task we experimented with many angles but found that when it came to editing they did not link together very well. I now know how to link them together at the time of filming rather than later on when editing. I learnt about the 180 degree rule and how to keep continuity, even if it is stilll a hard factor! I need to express my ideas alot more because once I finally did everything came together. Next time I should pick my group carefully as one member did not turn up very much and it made everything alot harder.
Saturday, 2 May 2009
Friday, 1 May 2009
1st May - Editing - Final Touch - Alice
Neelam was not in media today. However me and Shelley view our piece again and decided to change the voice over. We made a new one and edited the pitch of it to make it more higher to sound like a young girl. It is SOOOOO much better now.
Thursday, 30 April 2009
Names For Our Piece
We came up with several names for our piece. Here is a list...
- Alice
- Emily
- Daisy
- Candy
- Polly
- Sarah
We chose Alice because for the voice over the "A" in Alice sounds like someone is screaming at first.
29th April - Editing
Yesterday Shelley, Neelam and myself completed our final piece. Ernest had made us 5 pieces of music and we chose the best one. It really goes with our piece well.
For our effects we added "black and white" and "aged film" onto the shots where the girl (I) am dreaming to make a clear distinction between the two times. We also changed the contrast of the clip where the girl is fidgeting in her bed. It made it go completely black when the lights goes off, and go a redish colour when it turned on. This represents the pain she is feeling within her dream. We also soften some of the shots because they were very dark and it lightened them up abit more. The last shot was also edited by changeing the contrast and we chose to make it light so give it a ghostly effect.
The first shot was a long shot. This was kind of our establishing shot to show the audience where the girl is. We could of used the front of the house but it wouldnt of looked very good. We then have a exteame close up of the eye moving around. It shows she is disturbed in her sleep as her own eyes are moving as she dreams. We then go to a midshot and see that she is holding her doll close to her. This shows she needs comforting and that she has a tight bond with the doll.
The shot of the dolls show her obsession for them. We later see they are on her bed so they are acutally her own dolls affecting her mind in her dreams. Maybe the dolls affect her mind in real life??
We used another long shot of the girl turning to show the whole of her body going crazy. This is where we see the are dolls on her bed. It shows her frustration and discomfort the dream is giving her.
A shot of the girls reflection in a mirror with smeared makeup is very disturbing. It shows she sees herself differently when she looks at herself. The makeup is really bad showing there is something wrong with her. Her head is tilted to give more of a disturbed look also.
We used the clip of the eye again but this time we put a closeup of my face after it to create kind of a grpahic match. The eye is moving and the close up my eye also moves giving. I like this part because we have just seen an eye, the audience is automaticly draw to the eyes on the closeup.
I jump up just on the beat of the music. We have a credit to seperate it with the clip where I get out of bed. The music goes well with this because as I jump up on the beat, its just the end of that sequence and then the music gets faster as i get up.
We used a disolve to link the shot of the girl getting out of the bed and then sitting on the floor. It was just to show there was a little bit of time where she did sit down and she didnt just magicly appear there. For this we used a high angle shot to give the represent that she isn't incontrol of herself and her mind. It then has a straight cut to her reflection. She is holding the doll. This is where we begin to see the dolls are affecting her mind; she dreams about them and even when awake, she sees herself holding her favourite doll in her reflection.
We cut down the music a little because at this point it then got alot faster and we needed it do die down a little. It goes back to the beat it started off with and there is another graphic match. This time it is more distinct. We have the natural face and then the made-up face. We have a voice over saying Alice that sounds really good!!!
[However, when doing the voice over and playing it, we did not hear the background noise. I uploaded it to youtube and relised that there is alot of background noise :( ]
For our effects we added "black and white" and "aged film" onto the shots where the girl (I) am dreaming to make a clear distinction between the two times. We also changed the contrast of the clip where the girl is fidgeting in her bed. It made it go completely black when the lights goes off, and go a redish colour when it turned on. This represents the pain she is feeling within her dream. We also soften some of the shots because they were very dark and it lightened them up abit more. The last shot was also edited by changeing the contrast and we chose to make it light so give it a ghostly effect.
The first shot was a long shot. This was kind of our establishing shot to show the audience where the girl is. We could of used the front of the house but it wouldnt of looked very good. We then have a exteame close up of the eye moving around. It shows she is disturbed in her sleep as her own eyes are moving as she dreams. We then go to a midshot and see that she is holding her doll close to her. This shows she needs comforting and that she has a tight bond with the doll.
The shot of the dolls show her obsession for them. We later see they are on her bed so they are acutally her own dolls affecting her mind in her dreams. Maybe the dolls affect her mind in real life??
We used another long shot of the girl turning to show the whole of her body going crazy. This is where we see the are dolls on her bed. It shows her frustration and discomfort the dream is giving her.
A shot of the girls reflection in a mirror with smeared makeup is very disturbing. It shows she sees herself differently when she looks at herself. The makeup is really bad showing there is something wrong with her. Her head is tilted to give more of a disturbed look also.
We used the clip of the eye again but this time we put a closeup of my face after it to create kind of a grpahic match. The eye is moving and the close up my eye also moves giving. I like this part because we have just seen an eye, the audience is automaticly draw to the eyes on the closeup.
I jump up just on the beat of the music. We have a credit to seperate it with the clip where I get out of bed. The music goes well with this because as I jump up on the beat, its just the end of that sequence and then the music gets faster as i get up.
We used a disolve to link the shot of the girl getting out of the bed and then sitting on the floor. It was just to show there was a little bit of time where she did sit down and she didnt just magicly appear there. For this we used a high angle shot to give the represent that she isn't incontrol of herself and her mind. It then has a straight cut to her reflection. She is holding the doll. This is where we begin to see the dolls are affecting her mind; she dreams about them and even when awake, she sees herself holding her favourite doll in her reflection.
We cut down the music a little because at this point it then got alot faster and we needed it do die down a little. It goes back to the beat it started off with and there is another graphic match. This time it is more distinct. We have the natural face and then the made-up face. We have a voice over saying Alice that sounds really good!!!
[However, when doing the voice over and playing it, we did not hear the background noise. I uploaded it to youtube and relised that there is alot of background noise :( ]
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