Brief: Music Video

Evaluation

After completing the mini movie, I have learnt that when making my real project whatever it may be that there is a deadline that must be met so I shouldn't be concentrating on one thing and not on the other, which means I should even out my time so that it is done on time and done to the best of my standards.

Overall the production part of the project was quite straightforward, it was easier because we had a storyboard so we knew what scenes to do next. The only thing that took long was trying to space out time to film, so if the actors had time to be in the film and also altering some of the shots from the storyboard as me and my partner had to decide on what looked right. Editing was made on movie maker and we didn't have too much difficulty with it, accept for cutting out scenes exactly to the right second and making it go with the music.

The feedback that we got from the audience were mostly positive, most people said that the movie has 'originality' and there was good 'direction'. All of the audience recognized that the genre was 'horror' and others commenting using gray scale and dressing the characters in dark colours gave that away. They also said that you could tell the genre because the movie was clearly story boarded.

Most of the audience said that camera angles and shots were clearly seen with a 'variety' of them. Others noted their favorite being the birds-eye-view shot and point of view shot making it 'different' and 'mysterious'.

Editing was 'well-flowing' and some of the effects such as the titles 'burning effect' was good in giving away the genre.

All of the audience guessed that the music was diegetic sound was used to create 'suspense' and non diegetic sound for dialogue

To improve, the audience said that we needed to be more clear on the 'flashbacks' and others said that it didn't look so 'scary'.

Mini film

Editing

The editing process of my mini movie was quite straight forward, the only difficult

Filming

It took me and my partners 3 days to finish filming, we used a variety of shots to make sure that footage looked more realistic, shots used include close-up shots to show characters emotions and so the audience can relate to how the characters are feeling at that time. Birds-eye-view to show distance and make a character look small and vulnerable, we also used point of view shots to show deterioration between characters and how things look from their point of view.

Changes made...

As looking at our storyboard, me and my partner have decided to change the location of were we are going to shoot our video in the classroom, as the bullies are doing after school 'coursework'. One of the bullies die in that room and then the other goes and hides under the table.

We decided to change the location from the toilet so it looks more realistic and creates more tension

Sound

For sound we used deep piano sounds and suspenseful music, not something common such as the theme song to the horror film Saw etc

Story Board

This is our storyboard we want to distinctivley add flash backs into the story board and have point of view camera shots to make the audience see through the characters view, I also wnated to include most close up shot to show the characters emotions. In the storyboard I wanted it to end quite dramatically with a 'black screen' at the end when she is hiding under the table and gets dragged this way it adds tension as we don't know what happens to one of the charaters. I realise that my storyboard is set out like a trailer but with writting and has fast scenes.
There is going to be diagetic sound to go with the theme of the movie, as well as non-diagetic sound when the charaters talk and here loud unknown 'stomping' sound which creates suspence.

Characters

The charaters I have included are all girls one of them is being bullied by the other two girls. The girl who is being bullied is quite different from the other girls and tells the teacher of the two girls who are bullying her which makes the bullies more angry.
The girl who gets bullied name is Nora Black, throughout the movie her initials N.B. is shown on objects, and is always dressed in black. The other two characters are going to wear normal formal clothes.

Location

After looking at some movie trailers, me and my partner have decided that we want the loction of the filming to take place in the school libray because it's well furnished and looks quite old and like a real interior of a house. The trailers that we watched tended to have typical dark and authentic looking settings linking to the paranormal. Other locatios we wanted to include is the narrow corridors were the charaters run down creating tension as if someone is chasing the charater. And finally we are going to use the toilet were one of the charaters are found and finally killed.

Research

For research we looked at different horror/thriller trailers on youtube.

The story line

The movie is set in the school. The scene opens with a hand held camera showing someone walking up the stairs with a package.  Two friend s hear a knock on a door and find someone standing with a package. They slam the door and slowly open the door again. However this time nobody is there. One of the friends goes and finds out someone is watching her. She then runs to the apartment and finds her friend dead and a threatening letter. She then runs to the toilets and finds a dark shadow behind her. She tries to call police but the phone is dead. She locks herself in the toilet and the toilet door opens and the dead girl appears.

Ideas...

We came up with the idea of making the movie based on a girl getting bullied and then commiting suicide, she comes back to haunt the girls who bullied her at school.

We are thinking of making the first bit located in the two girls apartment. The location that we picked would be the libery as it looks quite old with the book case and homish feel.

We would also include a point of view camera, also a bit shakey, while coming up the stairs to create more tension.

The rest of the shots will be flashbacks of the past with the girl getting bullied in school.

We are still yet to come up with the charater's names, who we are going to include in the film and are story board.

Starting the short film project

http://smaaaroufi16.blogspot.co.uk/

(The above link is to my work parners blog address, Sofia Tarik)

The genre that I and my partner have decided to do the short film on is horror. At first we were going to chose 'comedy' because it's is quite a versatile genre and you could use different outcomes as well as using as sub genre. But we then finally decided we would go for horror.
We chose this genre as we thought that the brief went well with this genre as it sounds suspenseful and we could imagine a lot more ideas to go with it.

Evaluation of AS media

Evaluation of AS Foundation Production module  

Consider the following and give honest and realistic answers.

·       How successful was my research of real media? How could my research skills be improved? I think my research of real media was quite successful as I did a lot of research of existing music magazines and websites as well as analysing. I would improve my research skills by looing more into how I wanted to make my actual music magazine look as in pictures of colour schmemes etc, to meke it look more real.

•       How successful was my audience research? How could I have made my results more meaningful in order to take them into account when producing my media product? For my audience research I used a questionnaire, and analysed the results and presented my findings in a bar graph. I would say that conducting my questionnaire was successful, although I had to take into account that I had to ask 2 specific question before giving out my questionnaire to my target audience (adults) ''if they listened to classical music?'' and ''what genre of music they listned to most?'' The outcome to this was that I got some of the qustionnaires back with adults saying that they didn't like classical music but gave me an idea of what would look good on a classical music magazine. The reason I decided to add these two questions is becasue it was quite hard to find a representative sample of adults who listned to classical music. To make my results more meaningful I could have sent my questionnaire to a sample who all like classical music such as and orchestara for example. That way results could have been  easily generalized.

•       How successfully did I keep my blog up to date? How could I have made better use of its multimedia capacity? I posted ever step of the construction of my music magazine, although I did post them bit late and not on the actual day because I thought that I needed to edit it more before posting it.

•       How successfully did I manage my time? How could I have organised my production more effectively? How could I have improved my planning and drafting process (and showing evidence of these stages for the examiner?  I don't think I managed my time efficiently as I could have because I think I took too long with the research process, and felt like I had to rush some of the other bits. I would have improved my planning and drafting by using more then one draft on my blog to show the improvements and probably hand drawn them.

•       How successfully did I follow the conventions of real media? Where could I have improved? I would say that I did follow conventions of real media as most of the feedback I got from my audience showed that my music magazine looked similar to classical music magazine. I would have improved by including more information of what is inside the magazine on the front cover.

•       Which technology skills did I learn and develop? Which skills do I need to improve/learn in the future? I learned how to use photoshop more successfully as I constructed my cover of my magazine, contents page and some of my double page spread on photoshop. Skills to learn in the future would be to make sure I check my work thoroughly, so that I can check my mistakes and won't always have to go back and edit.

•       How successful was my creation of my media text? Could I have improved or been more creative? I would say my media text was quite successful, I included a lot of information in my double page spread and contents page to make it as realistic as possible. Although for the subheading on the double page spread I would have made the colour different so it stod out more, as with the current colour it was hard to see on the dark background. I don't think that that I needed to improve anything in terms of creativity as I followed the general convention such as the colour scheme, pictures etc

•       Did my text fulfil the requirements of the brief in terms of Audience, Representation,Genre? I think that my text did fulfill the requirements of the brief as the I tried my best to include stories in the contents page to suit my target audience adults. Although some of the target audience said the fact that I have a 'young artist' on the front of the magazine and article is about this young artist it makes the magazine seem as if it is also targeted to teenagers too. The genre was clearly recognized  quite easily, as the target audience could link that the colour scheme, font and the fact that the prop used is a piano and violin that the magazine is to do with classical music.

•       How detailed was my evaluation? How could you have improved your discussion of the success of the finished product? I would say that my evaluation is quite detailed, as I covered all of the questions required in the evaluation. To improve my evaluation more I would have answered the question about the what company would buy my magazine and why in more detail, I would have done more research into it.

•       Anything else? In general, I would say that my classical music magazine was a success, and I wanted to challenge my self by doing it, although  I would improve the process of constructing my school magazine puting in more detail with more steps.