Final film

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

I feel that I have learnt how different lighting can create different effects and that you have to plan out all your shots and make them consistent.

Consistency in our shots became more important as time went on as in our movie we couldn’t have one shot with one person sat in one place and then in another the next, as it would confuse the viewer. We also had to make sure that we had consistent lighting and that if we made sure that everyone remembered their lines and said it exactly the same if we had to re-take a shot, especially when we tried a shot reverse shot. At the beginning, we didn’t think about this as in the preliminary film we just made sure the story and objective of the main character was clear

Looking back at having a rough storyboard, I have learnt that it is more important to have a detailed storyboard or having a few different storyboards is better. This is because if we got to filming with everyone and we had a minimalist storyboard and script we would have struggled as to where to start. Also, we wouldn’t have had a chance to film the shot and realise that it wasn’t quite what we wanted and chance it and it would have taken us a lot longer. Part of what we learnt was that time management, organisation, persistence and cooperation really help in producing an effective final film/ opening scene.

Teamwork was a very important thing that we learnt as we had to adapt to fit the idea that we both had in our heads. If we completed the work separately I think our work wouldn’t have been as accomplished as it ended up. This is as we have learnt that having two opinions and perspectives is a lot better than one and that it is way better for coming up with ideas. In my very first preliminary task with Rossi and Lewis, our ideas were more one sided and the co-operation was less as it was a much smaller task and I feel like I have learnt how to co-operate better.

I have also learnt the use of colours and what effect they can have on a clip. For example, we edited a shot of a wine class and the red wine was left red while the background was black and white. This foreshadowed the later blood on the table from one of our shots of a dead character. It also connoted blood and danger. In our preliminary video we never really thought about using colours or foreshadowing and I’ve learnt that really fining down all the little details really can make a difference and make the viewer pay much more attention to the video. It’s got me to think a lot more.

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Eval Question 6 by Lily on Scribd

5.How did you attract/address your audience?

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

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

Our movie would most likely be independent as it doesn’t really fit into the tropes of what you would see from a movie released through Disney or time warner. It doesn’t really fit in with the perfect glamorous Hollywood actors and movies you would see released by those companies. Our product would most likely be funded by Kickstarter or the BBC as those tie in with independent films. Our movie would most likely be featured on the BBC if we were lucky, this is as our target audience would stereotypically watch the BBC. Also, our movie is similar to ‘And then there were none’ which is a series that was featured on BBC one and gained some popularity. Our movie also follows a style similar to that seen in ‘Inspector Calls’ which was also featured on the BBC which also happened to be independent.

Depending on if we could get a company to sign a contract with our movie to help fund it, it would most likely be funded by something similar to Kickstarter or Kickstarter itself. If so it would be released and shown in a select few cinemas near the local area it was made. If it was released under a company name we would more likely get cinemas all over the country as cinemas would recognise the company and could see it as something that would draw audiences in.

A company might choose to distribute our movie because they most likely would think it would draw audiences in so that they could gain money. They may also choose our movie as they like how unique it is and how it illustrates how a certain class may act in society. They could have not had anything in our genre for a while viewed in their cinema and may have come across our movie and distributed it to get a wider audience to come to their cinema, and/or for the cinema to expand, promote and distribute something that’s new and different for them. 

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Evaluation Question 2 by Lily on Scribd

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

1st Final edit of our film

We have made some new improvements since we made this as we have had some further feedback from the teachers. We have changed the lighting for the smile to make it more neutral and to get rid of the green tones. this makes it fit better in with the richer lighting and tones seen in the previous shots. We have added distorted sound after the voice over for it to fit in better with the genre of our movie. we have also added the sounds of birds to show the person from the voice offer is somewhere else in the further in a different environment. We also made the titles smaller so it looked more professional and so it didn't take up too much of the screen.

Audience feedback

In this, we again got reviewed by an audience on a film only this time we did this with non-media students, as well as, students that featured in our film. The overall opinion was positive and we were happy that the opening film gave off the right atmosphere. I don't think we are going to make any improvements to the movie as the impressions from people who have seen it are good and we are very pleased with it.

Sound

We have recently changed the music to a ticking soundtrack that we found on Youtube, it was copyright and loyalty free from the Youtube site original music store, it's called the haunting clock. We used this as it fits with our original theme of time running out, and a ticking clock is in most of our shots, you can still see it if you look closely but it's not as overwhelmingly present as it would have been. In our opening scene, we also have other uses of sound like diegetic (like what was in the shots) and Non-diegetic which includes voice over, music (which I've talked about) and a low pitched boom sound played behind the four shots of the dead character, and played when the title comes up.  The boom is to catch the viewers attention to important parts of the opening scene, this links to later events in the movie like the death of a character. The voice-over sets the scene for the protagonist and it is there to get the viewer thinking about who they could be and what they have to do with all of this. We have also got the diegetic sound of people at the party talking and giving hints as to what class they belong to (the upper class) and puns to the later death of a character they have ties with.

Written feedback by a media student

Claudia Wingrove
Feedback:

Pros:

• The background music running on in the background was really affective, it created the right atmosphere and drew me into the film.
• the opening shots were very steady and ran off one another, which made everything to make sense.
• There was a clear semantic field of death 
• The cutting between each of the scenes was clear and ran smoothly.
• the voice over was full of emotion and help portray the appropriate feelings
• you made it hard to know which one of the guys would die because they both spoke about death, got me trying to guess!

Pos Criticism:

• Make sure that the flash of the hand especially is made a second longer this will help the audience to hold the image longer in their mind as it was quite quick
• The beginning did look a little bit like a trailer, so maybe make it shorter... but keep some of it in.
• Wasn't quite clear who the person who spoke over the shots was... a clairvoyant? a friend? the killer? although this may be showed later on then.

My Response To The Positive Criticism:

• It wasn't supposed to be clear who was in the voice over was, its supposed to make the audience think and make them confused, so i'm happy that it worked. 
• The beginning is there just to set the seen and crate and atmosphere.
• We looked into changing the flashed of the still images however when we looked at it being longer it gave too much away and we felt like it didn't fit into the opening right.   

Ident

I designed this ident as Morgan chose the font and I wanted to go with a pixel theme like what is displayed in the letters. I wanted to give an effect where it looked like the pixels where fading away to give an iconic modern feel to it. I also kept it black and white to keep it simple and memorable. The name Loragan pictures came from a mixture of a Morgan's and my name; we added 'pictures' to pair with the name as the R's matched and made the title look symmetrical.

Rough Cuts

Rough Cut 2

The challenges we faced here was trying to get the stabiliser to stabilise some of the shot as some of them where recorded by hand. In this we added in some more shots to make the video longer, we would often make cuts between to similar shots and put another in the middle to add diversity and link two shots together. For instance the shot of the fire that then cuts to the cards and then back to the fire implies that they either link or that the two processes, like the fire being burnt and the cards being laid, are going on at the same time. The card shots implies that something bad is going to happen and the fire represents part of the destruction or how a situation may have burst into flames. 

First showing of rough cut and feedback

Morgan did some editing at home and she showed her mum and we made some changes from this. For instance we changed the original shot of Corey dying as it was weak and as we didn't have any fake blood at the time and it didn't look very effective, or even look like he'd died. We made sure to make changes of this so we re-filmed it. Also her mum talked about the music and how it would be better if we added ticking clock noises in the background so that it looked like his time was running out. She also recommended that we add more/ better shots of the fortune telling cards so we re-filmed it and added it in.

Rough Cuts

Rough Cut 1

This is our first rough cut, in this we realised that we realised that we did not have enough shots for the film so we went out to shoot some more atmospheric shots. In this edit we decided to fiddle around with the leave colour tool for the wine glass to give a more spooky feel to the opening. Also we wanted to link the red colour in the wine class to the later shots of the dead body with the blood as part of a foreshadowing of the death effect. The shot of the wine glass is also there to give a hint of what way the character may have died. In this we were also choosing on what sound we wanted, at fist we decided on a murder mystery typed theme song, however we finally went to a spooky clock ticking theme song as to link to our original idea of having a ticking clock prominent in our opening scene. the idea of the clock it to link to the idea of time running out and death. Later on in the movie time is going to become more of an big part as all the characters cant leave the room until they have worked out who the murderer is.

The final title

We changed our title to prediction as we thought that our audience may get confused by Seite as its a Spanish word and our movie does not have anything to do with Spain. We chose this font as its sharp, crisp edges made it very prominent and memorable, When I look at the edges the sharpness makes me think of a knife, and this could connote danger to the viewer if they see that as well. The font looks like it's almost been painted on with blood this links to our murder mystery thriller genre. The contrast between the relatively smooth flow of the editing and ticking of the clock, with the previous soft curvy font compared to the jagged title font, makes it even more prominent and impressionable. The title also gives off a horror feel making the opening scene even more spooky.

Main Titles?

A

B

C

D

These are the current fonts we are using for our opening scene, although I prefer font D me any Morgan have decided to use font B as our current font for our opening scenes main title. The fonts we have found are from dafont.com as they are free to use and the programme you use to create fonts we don't have access to at the moment.

Titles from genre specific films

These are titles of films with similar genres to our movie, we have used this as inspiration for our movie title when trying to make or use a free one. All of these are quite bold and sharp and we are considering using a similar kind of font for our own movie.

The Editing So Far...

The editing so far is going well, however we have faced some challenges especially with zooming in in. In our opening scene we have a shot of a dead murder victim, in the filming process the only clear shot of this we managed to get of him in it he blinked. To deal with this we made a picture from some of the footage by capturing a screen shot and tried to zoom in on that but failed in the process of cross cut zooming.

Otherwise the filming is going well so far, we still have yet to record the voice over and edit it in.

Bloppers and footage from filming

The Filming

I had a few issues with the people in the filming as 2 didn't turn up, one as he was ill and the other for unknown reasons. This caused a problem as the movie was called eight and there were only six; to address this problem we have decided to call the movie prediction. We have called it this to link to the fortune cards and also as it memorable and it looks good with multiple fonts.

Fortunately we had a breakthrough as the sound on my camera from home worked, as last time it didn't, so we did not need to use the massive amount of sound recorded on the boom microphone. I think it would have been nice if we could have been more organise with the actors, as we needed a lot of people to get involved we didn't have to cast as only six people agreed to do it (this doesn't include me and Morgan). This was a problem as some were not familiar with acting and so the quality of footage in terms of acting wasn't as good as we initially hoped. In an effort to fix this we are adding a voice over like initially planned and we are having music in the background which we are hoping will distract the viewer from some of the acting. However we are truly grateful that the people who did come, came. 

Although we didn't follow the planned story board we got a lot of the types of shots from it that we wanted, like dutch tilts and high angle shots. One of the most effective I think may have been the over the shoulder shot as it makes one of the characters look suspicious. 

Risk assessment

Location
- One main risk about the location is weather people will be able to make it there, we will have to advise them to drive safely as our location is on a country road and you can't always see the cars coming round the corner.
- Another risk is that there is hardly any parking so we will have to make sure we get everyone is to be dropped off.
People
- We will have to make sure that anyone with a condition like asthma, epilepsy or anything that requires them to take medication, to bring what they need is necessary to cope with it and for anyone with something like epilepsy we would have to take into account not to use any flashing lights.
- The same goes for anyone with allergies as I have a dog, also we will have food at the table so we must make sure that any of our cast tells us about anything like that before we start filming, and if its something we can't help for them to bring an Epipen.
-We must make sure that no one trips up any wires as there will be a lot of people in the room and if we need to plug any lights in or the camera we must make sure that no one trips over the wires.
Costume
- We must make sure that if anyone in the cast reacts badly to certain material and we ask them to wear a specific item of clothing, for them to tell us that they cant wear it and then we can find a replacement. 
- If we are going to light any candles to make are video more atmospheric we must make sure that we take extra caution that none of us are close enough to the flame to catch any of the clothing on fire, or anything like that for that matter.

Props and makeup

Make up
The make up will be plain on most of the characters but for those who have more secrets they will wear more make-up (mainly the women). This will represent that they have a lot of secrets and hidden truths that they are covering up.
Props
For props we will have food around the table and general things you would typically find in a dinning room. Where the chairs are placed and how high or grand they are will show superiority, class and importance.
The clock will be of the most importance as the whole movie is based around time, how it's running out and that someone dies at 8 o'clock (the are also 8 people at the dinner party). The clock will be zoomed in on and shot in time lapse to give the idea of time going forwards and the idea of flashbacks and things as such.

Genre

The genre of the movie will be a psychological thriller/ murder mystery. We will show this in our opening scene by putting the camera in high places or in awkward positions so that the audience will think something is odd. This will also be shown by the quick jump cuts and how a lot of the shots, from shot to shot, will go from close up to long shot for dramatic effect. The difference in lighting in the shots will further add to the off-putting atmosphere the opening scene should give off.
The murder and the confusion around it should further prove the genre.

Audition video

In this we auditions a select few people for the relatively important roles and audition them for our movies opening scene we chose some more people after this and didn't include some. We decided to include myself as the protagonist as I knew the script and how we wanted to have the voice over sound. We were grateful for the people who did decide to help that they did.