Note To Examiners

Welcome to my AS Media blog. Over the last 6 months we have created an institution, called Moral Panic Productions, and have produced a 2 minute film opening for a Horror film, that we have named Necro5is. I have shown the research, planning and production phases of this through my 101 blog posts. I hope you enjoy.

Evaluation Question 7 : Progression from our Preliminary Task to our Final Product

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

Looking back at our preliminary task, I think I have progressed immensely in many different fields, especially camerawork and editing. For the preliminary task, we recorded a short scene that aimed to show different camera angles/movement, a short story and a usage of continuity editing (where the editing follows what is happening in order). For our final product, we had to produce a two-minute opening that conformed to all the stereotypes and conventions of our chosen genre (horror) and demonstrated a wide variety of camera and editing skills. Even from that, you can see where the improvements will lie.

For our preliminary task, we used a couple of shots (making sure that we met the brief for the task) but other than that did not really branch out with the shots that we use. We greatly improved on this in our final product. We researched a lot of movies, analysing the types of shots that they used and the effect that they have – then transferred this to our actual product. I produced a Test Footage post, that went over a variety of shots that we wanted to use and explained what they were and the effect that they have on the audience. In our final piece, I thought we used a good variety of shot, for example; we used a birds-eye-shot from the drone, close-ups of people’s faces during scenes where facial expressions needed to be shown, a low angle of the killer and an over the shoulder shot of Basket-Case taking the pills. I feel like our skills with the camera has also greatly improved, as we learned how to manipulate ISO to our own liking and also how to experiment with different focus points, for example shallow or deep focus. I think we have made a lot of progress in this area since our Prelim, and can hopefully continue to improve in the future.

Sound in our prelim was non-existent except from dialogue. This vastly changed in our final product, we went from using no non-diegetic sound at all to using it primarily. We added a backing track, sound effects, foley diegetic sound (like ambient woodland sounds) and we used high quality recordings of our dialogue and also our non-diegetic voiceover. The voiceover was used to explain the narrative more clearly and the backing track was used to show the genre and set the mood for the attached scenes. The comparison between our final product and the preliminary task is vast and shows an obvious growth of both skill and understanding, that was aided by research and target audience analysis (in the form of focus groups).

Another key thing that we needed to improve from our prelim was the usage of the different aspects of Mise-En-Scene. In our prelim we didn’t pay any attention to costume, lighting or facial expressions and body language. We did include a prop, the briefcase, and an example of positioning (as in our brief we were told we had to have two characters sitting across from one another). In comparison, for our final product we had to focus on mise-en-scene extensively, paying close attention to props, costume, make-up and hair, lighting and positioning and setting. We decided on an iconic setting for Horror movies, that being a forest, and as we decided on stereotypical representations for each of the characters they all had attached costume and make-up and hair pre-defined. Compared with the prelim’s single prop, our final product contained an abundance of different items, from a butterly knife to a pack of prescription pills to revision guides. Each one served a purpose in the story much alike the one prop used in our prelim but each had to be thought out. Positioning was also a key thing in our final product, and it was down to our own choice as opposed to being forced into it by some kind of brief. Some key examples were the worms eye view of Basket-Case’s foot that left space for a title to be inserted, or the final scene where the sixth character is placed in the right third of the frame, with the boggy swamp shown in the other two-thirds of the frame (which established a setting of his capture). The locations used in our final production also varied, despite being mostly set around the woodland. We had the more open areas and the thicket of the wood, each with a key reason why it had been used instead of anything else. This was another improvement compared to our prelim as there we only used one location that, whilst planned out, was not good as it was just in our school.

The final thing that was an extremely large improvement was the editing from our prelim to our final product. In between we developed a lot of key skills that allowed for the final product to look more professional and to be more effective. In our prelim we used continuous editing, which followed the current course of action, and just used cuts to transition between different shots. We didn’t do anything else to the prelim, it was all raw footage spliced and put together, mainly because we edited it on Windows Movie Maker which is a very simple and featureless application. In comparison, our final product was edited on Adobe Premiere Pro, which allowed a lot more customisation in our editing. For example, we colour corrected almost every clip in order to accentuate key shades, like deep greens, and also to lower the brightness in order for our final product to conform more with the chosen genre (Horror). Other editing techniques we used were strobing (flashing one image over another) and using a black and white filter. We were also able to tamper with the audio, changing different levels in order to produce a foley effect or able to sync the backing track with what is happening on screen by looking at the sound wave graphs. We taught ourselves a lot of the techniques used to edit in this way by watching Youtube videos, which gave a visual tutorial on how to do certain things. This allowed our library of techniques to be increased from our prelim as we were constantly learning and trying out new things. This allowed us to gain a furthered knowledge in the editing sector that can then be applied to any products that we create in the future, hopefully with further progress than this final product. 

Evaluation Question 6 : Media Technologies

In the production of our opening two minutes of Necro5is, we used 3 different computer systems, those being a Windows laptop, Desktop and a Mac. The majority of the editing was done on the laptop due to its fast specs and accessibility/portability. However, the desktop did provide a system on which we could render the finished product fast, so that is where we did that. The Mac was used to compare the different editing softwares (which will be detailed later), but we decided that a Windows computer was more familiar and as a result decided to primarily use that. Also, we found that using a mouse made editing the product far easier, as it provided a better degree of accuracy than a trackpad could.

When filming the opening, we had to decide on what camera hardware we wanted to use. Since I personally own a DSLR camera (the Canon 700D) we decided to use that. This would be better than using the schools available cameras due to its variety of features, the opportunity of an interchangeable lens and the manual feature on the camera itself, that allowed us to change the ISO or light intensity of our recording, more towards our tastes. The DSLR also produced a higher quality of final image, making our finished product look very sleek and professional. The camera was digital, meaning that we could convert the footage straight into a format that could be interpreted by the computer and edited in our chosen software. There weren't many downsides to using the DSLR, other than its size and the fact that at one point it did run out of battery during a shoot.

When filming we decided to use the Rode Videomic in order to record high quality audio for our film. This replaced the poor quality of the camera, which was quite echoed and buzzy. The mic allowed us to capture ambient sound or dialogue, both features we used in our final production. The downside of using the mic was that we had to purchase batteries as it burns through them quickly and it also provided some problems with not having turned it on and as a result having to reshoot some scenes, which in hindsight didn't matter as the majority of our opening has the dialogue muted anyway.

In order to set our product apart from other texts, we chose to include drone shots. These were filmed on the DJI Phantom 4 drone, which is one of the best drones on the market (for the average consumer at least). We borrowed this off of a family member of one of the group, who also flew it for us (to make sure we did not crash it!). Using the drone allowed us to get birds-eye-view shots of our setting, the forest, in extremely high quality (4K). These shots added a sense of prestige to our opening, as it is not something that is often seen. The disadvantages of using it were the time it consumed in order to prepare it and get it into flight, alongside the fact that it is very expensive and as a result required a great deal of care whilst in use. Despite this. I would definitely like to use it for future productions.

In regards to editing software, we sampled three different programs before concluding to use Adobe Premiere Pro CS6. We came to this choice because it was the most effective to use, containing lots of different features and a dedicated, detailed timeline and also because it could be used on Windows computers (unlike iMovie, which is only on apple products). Premiere Pro has the ability to change a clip's opacity, volume and motion (placement and zoom on the screen). Changing something like the opacity allowed us to create a strobing effect, used to tease the sixth character throughout the clip. Alongside this, it has over one hundred built in effect pre-sets, for example a warp effect or a black and white effect (both of which we used in our finished product). Also, Premiere Pro provides a lot of colour correction options, that of which we used extensively on almost every single clip in our work in order to colour grade it so that it fit our genre more clearly. It also allowed our 4K drone files to be handled, despite having a lot of frame-rate lag before we rendered the project (which is due to the computers specifications, not the software). The other programs we used were Movie Maker (for our prelim), iMovie (for our first draft) and Final Cut Pro just to test it out. The former two were just too simple to work for the final product and also did not contain enough options to change the clips how we wanted. The final program was good and had a abundance of features but is not available on Windows, so we didn't use it.

Finally, I wanted to cover all of the different web-pages I used in order to construct my blog and present my research, pre-production and post-production elements. The blogging site I used was blogger, mainly due to its ease of use and newbie accessibility. I used a wide-variety of web 2.0 tools to present my work, including; powtoon, prezi, emaze and coggle. Powtoon is a tool that allows you to create animated cartoons in order to present information. Prezi is a presentation tool that adds more movement to presentations, following a set path instead of a slide by slide layout. Emaze is your normal presentation software but is free and online. Coggle is a mind mapping site, an example of which is above. All of the web 2.0 tools aided my understanding of different topics because they put it into a more interactive and interesting format than just bland blog posts.

Evaluation Question 5 : Addressing and Attracting an Audience

Evaluation Question 4 : Defining Our Audience

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Evaluation Question 3 : Institutional Distribution

Evaluation Question 2 : Social Group Representation