Q5 - How did you attract/address your audience?

These were audience members feedback on our opening:

Evaluation Q7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Looking back at my preliminary task, i see that the progress to my full product is really good and it is clear to see that i have learnt a lot between the creation of my two openings.

When producing my prelim, i hadn't yet done much practical work therefore it was all trial and error and creating shots in the styles that i knew off the top of my head (what i learnt in media, tv drama, earlier in the year). The main thing that helped my group with the production of our prelim was the brief; it set instructions that were easy to follow and still left lee-way for each group to make it their own. Another thing that helped my group was the storyboard, it was a good starting point as it layed out clearly each step that we had to shoot and we later came to see it was a good starting point for all the camera work that we did.

We looked at foley sound before creating our prelim as we later had to incorporate it into our own work.

Whilst sticking to the brief, we decided to a college corridoor and a small interview room as our settings. In the beginning of our prelim it shows how we experimented with various camera shots/angles of the main character walking (using a wheely chair so the camera moved in time with the person walking). We shot the feet/legs from left, right, the back and the front which we later agreed looked really effective and made it more interesting to look at than if it was just one long shot. Another successful part of our prelim was the match cut of the hand touching the door handle before the door is opened, the timing of the shot and the shot itself turned out to be really good. We also stuck to the "character sitting down opposite the other character", this point was where we decided to keep the main characters face out of the shots, this was intentional and was intended to create more mystery. At the same time, we kept in mind the "180 degree rule" which we had just learnt about.

Post production, we added sound and titles using Soundtrack Pro and Final Cut Pro. Our aim was to have a slow background tune aswell as using foley sound to emphasise footsteps and the door closing. The inclusion of this in our prelim made it even more successful and inspired us to use the foley sound in our final product. We added the title in Final Cut Pro, this was also useful for us as it showed us further how to use the program but this time on our own work.

Much of the work on our final product was inspired by our prelim and existing films. We used the same interview room as our main setting, where the killer played her game of chess. Again, we similarly created storyboards to use as a starting point. One of the improvements was the fact that when filming our final product it was less trial and error as we were now used to the software and the hardware that we had to use and had already thought up the shot types, camera angles, lighting, mise en scene and sounds before prior to production.

In our full product, we also focused on the 180 degree rule, which led to a few issues rising with certain shots that didn't fit once we put our work together. It was more challenging to stick to the rule when producing our final cut because we had a lot more atmosphere to create than when making our prelim but the room is very small, especially when filled with 4 people plus equipment,

The lighting in our final product was thought up by the members of my group however it is more than likely that minimal, focused light is already present in some film openings. We kept the mise en scene simple, the chessboard was obviously the main focus and we added a few more shots such as the book and the second character walking, to add some variation.

The main thing we focused on when creating our final cut was having a variety of different shots. As our main prop/focus was the chessboard, it was essential to have different shot types/angles in order to keep the audience as engaged as possible. One shot that we tried really hard to create was a 360 shot of the chessboard. My group and i tried various different ways of making this possible in the hope that if we nailed it, it would look really good. However, with the room being so small, and not the right sort of tripod to create such a shot, it was not possible and we had to replace it with something much simpler.

The last things we focused on again, much like with our prelim, were titles and sound. We put in the titles first, ensuring to hold them for 3 seconds each (which was also a challenge as the software didn't cooperate many times). The main theme to our titles was the type writer effect, we thought it would stand out and look good at the same time as it is simple yet interesting. We also made sure to use white coloured font on darker blackgrounds and vice versa to ensure the titles were as eye catching as possible.

Using Soundtrack Pro, we inputted a background noise of a quiet room with a sort of air conditioning to keep it simple and added foley sound to emphasise movement e.g. tapping nails on the table and slamming down the chess piece on the board, again, similar to our prelim.

Over the course of this project i have picked up many valuable skills. I learnt to use both hardware and software that i wasn't familiar with and had not come across before which i am now confident in using. I also learnt alot about the other side of production such as the widely used 180 degree rule, not to zoom in by hand and other tips on how to make your filming look its best aswell as mastering camera angles, shot types, sound, lighting and mise en scene.

Evaluation Q6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

This is an iShowU that i made showing what tools i used on Soundtrack Pro. There is no sound as all the explanation is in the powerpoint slide above.

Evaluation Q4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

This voicenote is the response to question four created by myself and two others in my group: Nevin and Denise in which we speak about genre's and target audience.

Evaluation Q3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

For some reason, everytime i upload my beeclip.com answer to question three some of my text gets cut off therefore i've written it below.


Page 1: what kind of media institution might distribute your media product?

Page 2: in my film opening titles the production company i used is candi productions candi studios which aren't a big major company but a small college based independant company.

Page 3: why do you think they would distribute your media product?

Page 4: because it supports british, low budget, student-made films therefore it was the most suitable.

Evaluation Q2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Representation of Social Groups on Prezi

Evaluation Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

OUR FINAL CUT - CHECKMATE

Final editing Process

Creating Sound

Process of Editing Checkmate

Editing final cut

These pictures are of when we were editing out final cut during lunchtime workshop. At this point we were  putting in our titles and our sound. 

Evaluation of Rough Cut

The rough cut was the clips that we had complied so far (we are yet to fully edit it, add sound or credits).  The main issue with our rough cut is that it is much too short. The brief was for an opening to a thriller (at least 2 minutes long) and our's is currently only 1:09. This is because we are yet to add all of the footage we recorded and also the transitions between each shot should lengthen it slightly.

At the moment, our opening looks very unfinished but I think we have a good basis to work up from. The strongest part of it so far is the shot of the extreme close up of Billie's hand tapping against the desk. With the effects that we added on Final Cut Pro, it looks eery and creates the scary atmosphere that we wanted to create. The weakest point of our opening is the sound as, because we have been working on just the visual side, we are yet to remove the sound that was recorded on each clip. This meant that the clips we slowed down or stretched to look visually better, also did the same with audio. However, this did give us an idea for the sound effects we can use in the future; the tapping of Billie's nails against the table could be used effectively as Foley sound.

Another thing we are yet to work on is the titles. After looking at different fonts and learning whilst we created the prelim, we decided that using a typewriter font could look effective. We also like the idea of incorporating typewriter sounds also. We started experimenting with possible positioning's of the text, however we couldn't complete it as we were yet to add all the footage. This, I feel, we could improve on. However, I did like the contrast of the white against the dark imagery that we'd filmed.

We wanted to draw the audience in to our thriller, and so we tried to make it intriguing and suspenseful without jumping into the whole plot. We did this through the use of extreme close ups instead of revealing the whole character, as I think it leaves the audience asking questions. However, I think what we need to improve in order for this to become more interesting is that we need to have an opening shot that will make more of an impact because, although the shot we have at the moment is an introduction to the chessboard, it doesn't do much to draw in the audience.

Overall, despite there being lots for us to work on, we have a good basis of what we want to do next.

Difficulties in filming

All of the shots that we filmed of the chessboard were filmed in a small interview room in our college. This had some advantages and disadvantages.

ADVANTAGES:

- Easily accessible, which was convenient for when we needed to re-shoot certain shots and also carrying the equipment.

- It was quiet which meant that we didn't have to worry about background noise when filming.

- There were no windows so, we were able to have almost a complete black out aside from the lighting that we wanted.

DISADVANTAGES:

- The room that we used was extremely small which limited our creative freedom. Also, four of us in a room with equipment and lights often made things difficult, space wise.

- Because the room was painted plain white, in order to create effective mis en scene, we had to create an eery setting more ourselves.

Rough Cut of Opening

This is the rough cut of our final opening. We still need to fix up our titles and sound. 

FILMING.

PROPS

This is the real book we are going to use in our final opening.

Filming Pictures!

Checkmate Filming

We took some pictures during our first filming session to show some effects we hoped to achieve:

The chess pieces on our board.

We wanted to create a shadow of the pieces for good Mise-En-Scene.

This picture shows us creating the shadow with an artificial light

The end result.

As we wanted to create more mystery, we decided to use an artificial light in the dark to create shadows. We found this worked well and we will be using these shots in our final cut.

We took this picture to show the difference between using the artificial light and having the normal room light. As you can see, our end result was much more effective for the audience.

Props

The chess board that we plan on using:

Similar to the chess board used in X-Men, one of the films in which we drew inspiration from, we thought that choosing a glass chess board rather than a plastic one would add more to the creepy atmosphere that we wish to create.

Filming Location - Interview room

This is the room where most of our filming will take place. All the chess shots will be taken in here as well as the close ups of the killers eyes, mouth, hand and feet and the book.