Ciara Egan: September 2017

Wednesday, 27 September 2017

reflecting on AS production work: the reasearch and planning processes

Research:

The 9 frame analysis research really helped; especially when it came to us adding in our credits to our final product. It enabled us to find out the effects used, the positioning and the timing that they entered the screen which we then incorporated into our own thriller opening.

The production logo research gave us an insight into what professional production logos looked like; this helped when it came to making our own production logo (shadow productions) in terms of the colourings as we found that blue and gold were used a lot.

Our interviews and audience research really helped as it gave us an insight into what out audience liked and disliked in relation to thrillers. When it came to us thinking of our thriller plots and the conventions we intended on using this piece of reaserch enabled us to reflect back on what our target audience expected.

Marauders (Miller, 2016)

Synopsis: When a bank is hit by a brutal heist, all evidence points to the owner and his high-powered clients. But as a group of FBI agents dig deeper into the case - and the deadly heists continue - it becomes clear that a larger conspiracy is at play.

PLIT (Night Shyamalan, 2017)

Synopsis :Three girls are kidnapped by a man with a diagnosed 23 distinct personalities, and must try and escape before the apparent emergence of a frightful new 24th.

Shutter Island (Martin Scorsese, 2010)

Synopsis: Shutter Island" is the story of two U.S. marshals, Teddy Daniels and Chuck Aule, who are summoned to a remote and barren island off the coast of Massachusetts to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a murderess from the island's fortress-like hospital for the criminally insane.

This Research allowed me to identify typical plots for various different types of thriller films and I can take this research into consideration when planning my thriller opening with my group.

Planning:

This piece of planning allowed us to finalise our ideas as to our class and answer any queries that our class had on plot. This was useful as out target audience age range was the age of our class mates so we were able to get their opinion on the plot.

Both our storyboard and our animatic enabled us to put our ideas down on paper and visualise what our thriller would look like. The audience feedback also allowed us to work on and improve it before the production and filming stage started.

Reflecting on AS production work: Conventions from real media texts

Below is our picture in picture video of us talking through our conventions in terms of continuity editing for our preliminary and final product.

Tuesday, 26 September 2017

Reflecting on AS production work: Post Production

The post production process is where our filming was put together and our thriller opening started to take shape through editing; using programs like Final Cut Pro.

Visuals:
Throughout the post production stage we were putting all of our camera footage together.
We used stabilising affects on certain pieces of footage to make it seem smoother and more professional.
We also blurred certain parts of footage to make them appear out of focus and adjusted the lighting from bright naturalistic day light to a darker fore sinister affect.

Here is a video showing our post production editing stage

Titles and Credits:
Throughout the editing stage on final cut pro we also added in titles and credits as shown below. We decided to make our titles and credits in the bottom right hand corner and through our research in our pre production stage we found that alot of professional films like Gone Girl tend to have there placed here. We also decides to have them fading in slowly so they were not the focus of the viewers attention and it also added a sinister affect. As a group we also decide on a typewrite font to link it to an ongoing investigation.

We added the title of the thriller 'Unmasked' in the centre of the screen to differentiate from the ordinary credits.

Audio:
In terms of Sound we created the main soundtrack for the opening on software called garageband; this was because we couldn't find anything that we wanted online so decided to create it ourselves.
However towards the end of the opening there is more of an upbeat sound that we were advised to use during out audience feedback so we sourced it an un-copyright sound track from soundcloud.

In terms of dialogue there wasn't much in the opening and the few lines that were didn't need to be edited and the microphone picked it up clearly.

Preliminary Vs Final Product:

In out preliminary task we were were pushed for time on editing meaning we were restricted to what we could do with our footage.
Whereas for our thriller opening we were given a lot more time and were a lot more used to using Final Cut Pro meaning we could edit continuity aspects such as match on action much smoother allowing real events to appear as if they were happening in real time; creating a sense of verisimilitude. Below i have inserted clips to show this.

Preliminary:

Final Product:

Due to there only being one protagonist at a time on screen in our thriller opening we did not demonstrate the '360 degree rule' or 'shot reverse shot'.

In terms of editing there is also a clear difference in our credits. Our preliminary tasks credits are against a black background and appear in an armature font and transition. However from research we found that a black background was not typically used in thriller openings and more simplistic fonts and transitions are usually used so we incorporated this into our thriller opening which is demonstrated below.

Preliminary:

Final Product:

Reflecting on AS production work: Use Of Digital Technology

Pre-Production:
During the pre-production process there were many stages that we went through as a group to plan our media product before we could start the production process.

One pre-production process that stood out to be a great use was developing out story board into an animatic. This enabled us to decide the structure of our thriller opening and helped us a huge amount when it came to the production process of filming our thriller; it also allowed us to peactice our editing skills on final cut pro.
In terms of digital technology; our animatic was filmed, edited on final fut pro and and was then uploaded onto you tube which is a social media platform allowing it to be open to the public, that way we could refer to it whenever necessary and also add it into our blogs.

Our Storyboard Animatic

Production:

The production process mainly consisted of filming our thriller opening.

In terms of digital technologies the equipment we used consisted of:

Cannon DSLR 650 EOS
Camera lenses
large tripod
small tripod
microphone
lighting

Below we analysed the strengths and weaknesses of using the Cannon DSLR 650 EOS.

Post-Production:

The post production process was mainly the editing stage.

In terms of digital technology we used programs like final cut pro to edit our footage as well as logo maker to make our production logo and and distribution logo. We also added sound which we made ourselves and also sourced from sound cloud; we added titles and credits as well as uploading it onto youtube, a social media platform.

Our Final Thriller opening:

Reflecting on AS production work: Creativity

Below is a podcast of me reflecting on our our AS production work; in particular the creative aspects.

Wednesday, 20 September 2017

Technical Post: Green Screen

A chroma key (known more commonly as green screen) is a technique used in film, video and still photography to replace a portion of an image with a new image. This is most commonly used to replaced a coloured background with a different setting.
The example on the below shows footage shot against a green-screen background, to which we edited in two different backdrops; one moving and one still image.

Tuesday, 12 September 2017

collective identity: representation of youth

Zoella

Information on the blogger:

Zoe Sugg is a 27 year old English YouTuber known as Zoella.

She has an estimated net worth of £2.5 million

She has a huge following on all social media platforms and over 11 million subscribers on youtube alone.

As well as her videos and blog, she has released self-titled UK beauty products and a series of young-adult novels.

Website:
https://www.zoella.co.uk

The design of the homepage is modern, girly and has a slight 80's feel to it with the colours used in some of the photos. Zoella is know for her love of rose gold, copper and pastel colours which are evident throughout her homepage.

Her logo is featured at the top in its wall known hand written font. beside it are links to her official social media platforms as well as her blog.