the final soundtrack

i think its really obvious that our soundtrack was rushed. i made in about the last 30 minutes of one of the lessons so although it sounded ok with our piece it still had alot of issues with it that needed sorting. like we needed to make it quieter so that you could hear the heartbeat and the subtle little effects like footsteps. without them it didnt sound as natural and just sounded to fake. i really hated having the soundtrack and loved our piece when it was really simple. i enjoy having simple projects for our media studies because you can still show your abilities by making a simple piece and evaluating, planning it and drafting it well.

Evaluation Questions

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge conventions of real media products?
What conventions of professional products have you used in your own film? (narrative conventions, character conventions, genre, camerawork, sound, editing, special effects, mise-en-scene?) Use screen grabs of your own sequence to illustrate each example where you have followed conventions or gone against (challenged) conventions. Also use images from the films that have influenced you where relevant.
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups? (Gender, age, ethnicity etc.
Compare a character in your sequence to a character in a professional film (use images). If you have included a villain/victim character, does your character follow the conventions of characters in professional films. For example, is your villain male? Is your victim female? Therefore how are you representing gender?
3. What kind of media institution would distribute your media product?
Discuss similar professional films and their production companies (use images of the films and logos). Which production company do you think would distribute your film? (If it was professional and you had made the full film).
4. Who would be the audience for your media product? (BBFC and target audience)
Use images from a similar product with a similar target audience. Remember that target audience is not the same as classification.
5. How did you attract/address your audience?
Refer to significant moments in your sequence where you have tried to generate a response from the spectator (a close up to encourage identification with a character, music that encourages the spectator to feel suspense, tense, visceral reaction etc.) Use screen grabs of your own sequence.
6. What have you learnt about the technologies from the process of constructing your product?
(Blog, camera equipment, editing software- Final Cut Express, istopmotion, Garageband etc.)
Use screen grabs/photos of all these things. Be very specific about tools/effects/techniques learnt, not just "I have learnt a lot about the software"
7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to your final product?
Discuss your second preliminary task that you did in the week before starting Thriller. Discuss what you have learnt since then about construction or micro elements in order to create meaning, how to use different techniques, practical skills etc. How have you built on your knowledge that you learnt from the preliminary task? Use screen grabs of your preliminary task and your sequence where relevant.

Final Version

This is our final and finished version.

Title

We have now decided on our film title to be "Sender Unknown" I think this works well and is a well thought out title for our piece.
I thought it would be a good idea to use a font which looked like cut up newspaper letters put together as words. It would fit well with the letter idea of our piece however, i thought that this is a very typical kind of font and is very overused so i decided against it. The font i went with in the end was a distorted typewriter font. It goes well with the piece and emphasises the theme of the letter in the film.


This is a screen shot of the title. The font is called "Uncle Typewriter" from the website www.dafont.com

Film Title

We have almost finished our clip now, the only thing left to do it to think of a title for our film and add it in to the credits. We decided it should contain the word "letter" as our film focused on the letter quite a lot. I think it should be quite a simple title. Some suggestions i was thinking of were "Letter Man" or " Dead Letter". I prefer the second one out of these two titles as i think it sounds more myterious and more like a thriller than the first.

last lesson

on the last lesson i added in the final soundtrack to our piece but because it was rushed i still need to work out the kinks with the sound and make parts of it quiter and parts of it louder.

rough cut video

last minute things to fix

the only thing left to do was to add the end credits in because im not to sure what were supposed to put them right now. i dont know wether they would work better in the start of the clip or the end of the clip. today ive finished clearing up the mistakes with the sound effects and added a few more in, ive also added music to the introduction and changed the music in the ident. i also moved around some bits of the video clips because they had changed order.

typical conventions of a thriller our piece includes.

our piece has a few typical conventions of a thriller.
1)the first is our piece doesnt give to much away you only see close ups of our killer's body parts. it keeps you guessing and intices you to watch on to find out whats just happened.
2) our piece is set in an area that is relevant to everyone and that is what helps to make it a psychological thriller because its someone invading your home while your there which even if we dont voice is playing on a fear everyone tends to have.

todays lesson

we completed most of the tasks in the last lesson. i added some credits to the begging and helped beki finish the ident by adding the words and shortening it down because it was really long and dragging. we really just do need to add the credits in because i think our piece works really well with just the common sound effects. in scream you dont get music running in it. its silent and thats what helps build the tension in that film. it has you on the edge of your seat because your not expecting much to happen. thats what i want i think music will really distract the audience but i hope group feedback will really help us work it out. we seemed to be on target really in todays lesson because we only had to add the title to our film which were still struggling to decide upon.

plan for the next two lessons

the rough cut deadline for us is tomorrow and ive decided to plan the next two lessons so that our piece is pratically finished.

todays lesson:
1) add the ident into our piece adding the writing into it and timing
2) add the title of the film into it
3) add some more sound effects to the beggining

tomorrows lesson:
1) add some credits into the end
2)add a music soundtrack to the end shots
3)speed up some of the editing to create tension (right now the editing at the end is to slow and nothing like what i had imagined.)

knife effect edited

ive decided the best way to show what i wanted for our knife effect was to find some images that showed it. i really wanted the blade to glisten and to look menicing and dangerous and i dont think we got that effect using a hand held view. i really wanted it to be a still shot and maybe use an arial shot but my partner beki thought hand held worked best. i still think it looks sort of lame and immature a still shot would of really created the menicing image and would of just been much more effective. the fact we couldnt use a really sharp knife due to safety issues also didnt help to make the point look sharper.

this is my favourite image and is really the sort of image i wanted in our piece. its got some form of elegance to it but is still dangerous. i also think it would of helped to build tension.

Technical Equipment

The first and most important piece of equipment we used was the video camera. We used this to film all of the shots we needed and some sound.

The second piece of equipment we used was a tripod. This enabled us to keep steady shots and we were able to pan around smoothly. However a few of the shots may have been a bit jolty where we did not loosen the grip on the tripod enough.

The rest of the equipment we used were all computer software on the Apple Mac. We used Final Cut Express as the basic program to capture and edit our footage. We cut scenes, outtakes, re-arranged the order, changed the speed of certain clips, inserted video filters and text, insert sound effects, adjust sound levels and insert transitions between shots. I also used final cut to create our ident. I animated the logo and added the sound and text.

The next piece of software we used was GarageBand. Using this program we created a soundtrack to fit our film using the many different sounds that GarageBand has to offer. We then exported it out of GarageBand and into Final Cut to combine with our video. I also created the short sound effect for our ident using GarageBand.

Photoshop was also used to create our ident. After we found a good picture to use as our logo I then opened it with Photoshop and created different layers of the different sections that needed to be animated. Each layer was then imported into Final Cut seperately and I animated it from there.

Sound Effects

As something went wrong with the sound from our original footage, i deleted it all and i have re created the atmospheric sound by layering different sound effects on top of each other and cropping them to make them sound different and suitable for our video.

Analysis Of Shutter Island Film Poster

The film poster for Shutter Island shows it is directed by Martin Scorsese who also directed other hit films such as The Departed, drawing interest to the film. The poster is also promoting Leonardo DiCaprio by displaying his name in a large, bright white font that stands out against the dark background. The first thing that the viewer’s eye is drawn to on the poster is the island with the mysterious white glow around it highlighting it. It is also in sharper focus which makes it stand out stronger. The tower on the island then quickly brings your eye up to the match which, being one of the only sources of colour immediately catches your attention.
The island is made up of a montage of different photos patched together. This is why the sky behind has sharp edges where two different shades make contact, and the broken waves around the island base are not in a continual outline. This gives us a small insight into the synopsis of the film suggesting that it involves an investigation trying to piece things together much like a puzzle.

The smoke from the match outlines the right side of his face saving it from having to take up too much of the poster with his cheek and ear which would distract focus from his facial expression where the left of his face is left to blend into the darkness. His facial expression builds a lot of tension in this poster. He appears to be confused yet frightened and concerned at the same time. The diegetic lighting from the match makes him look more mysterious with half of his face shadowed. It suggests that he may have something to hide or something that has not yet be uncovered.

The title font is quite sketchy and written in a bright red colour. It stands out against the monotone background. It could also symbolise blood emphasising the thriller genre of the film.

Analysis of The Dark Night Movie Poster

This poster shows the film is a thriller with many different components. The colour scheme of the poster mainly consists of different shades of dark blue, because it is a dull and dark colour it shows that it is not a happy film and will have a dark storyline. We are shown a low angle shot of Batman which makes him look important and powerful and because he is the only figure in the poster it is clear straight away that he is the main character in the movie. The suit he is wearing seems to be carved out of metal or some other hard armoured material which suggests indestructability.

The first thing that you notice in this poster is the orange Batman embelum. As it is highly recognisable and well known, the viewer straight away can recognise where it is from and what the film is about. The fire also suggests destruction, fury and revenge.

The poster also contains the names of the actors/actresses in the film. This will boost the film's appeal as it contains some quite big names like Morgan Freeman and Christian Bale. They have also included Heath Ledger's name on the poster which will also create a lot of appeal as it is one of the last movies that he made before is death, thus creating more attention to people who were fans of him and his work. The font of the writing is plain white lettering but this stands out against the dark background so it draws more attention to the names.

The poster also has the phrase "Welcome To A World Without Rules" written at the top. This suggests that the film will be quite dark, involve a lot of terror and a lot of action. The phrase is quite mysterious and appeals to people's curious sides, "...a world without rules" gives the imagination a whole new topic to explore.

The blue and white around the embulum in the title is white hot like an intense explosion, a great impact of some sort which be physically or emotionally/mentally. The debris and ashes falling from the building creates a realistic atmosphere of danger and destruction.

The Warner Bros. logo is also included on the poster in the bottom right corner showing that a big film company has distributed it which could also bring more people in to see it.

the knife effect

i didnt really like the knife effect in our piece when its being dragged up the stairs because it looks really fake and like an obvious student film. i dont think that hand held worked for that shot. we should of probably done a tracking shot to a close up.

sound track

were still having alot of problems with our soundtrack. we dont really have a set idea for what kind of soundtrack we want so its been hard to try and create one that fits with our piece because of the limited sounds avaliable on garage band. i think i want a piano soundtrack that is subtle and grows as the tension builds in our piece. i think it would be easier to make on an actual piano soundtrack with a real keyboard not the computer keyboard.