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

Question 6 - what have you learnt from technologies from the development of your product?

Survey Monkey – Survey Monkey has helped my group and me to enhance our questioning, this is because we have been able to ask specific questions so that we get specific answers. I think this helped because we got detailed audience research about what we actually wanted to know and by having it online we could get a more wide range of people to answer to get a more varied views. This helped us to achieve our final product.

Blogger – Blogger has helped to store all our information in one place, before this none of could use it or even think of using it. It has helped us to organise where all our primary research, secondary research and general updates of our opening was. They have also given us the skill of being able to embed YouTube videos and other methods of sharing onto our blogs using the HTML.

Prezi – We used Prezi to create our treatment video, I think this was very helpful because it was another way we could share all our information and learn how to use new software in the process. I think this was better than using power point as well because it is far more interactive. We not only did this, but some our group used it for evaluation.

Youtube – YouTube helped us to load all of our audience research and our different cuts of our media opening. This was very helpful because we were able to get embedding codes from here to put them on our blogs(using HTML), Also we could use the HTTP link to share they on social media websites like Facebook at we have our own page now.

Scrib – Scrib was used to upload different tasks we were set, I think this was very helpful because once again we were able to embed stuff into our blogs instead of having to click on a link. It was unlimited how many times we could do it so become a very helpful tool when doing tasks on power point, word document etc.

Secondary research – secondary research was very helpful because we used many different websites to get different information on generic horror movies. We also found out how to use these websites very effectively to get precise research and they also had a wide range of music. These websites included Rotten Tomato, and IMDB. I found these very easy to use like the rest of my group and believed that the information we found greatly helped us to achieve our final product.

Box Office Mojo – This could fall into both secondary and primary data but I think helped because it gave statistics, it gave quantitative data instead of detailed information. We also could pick up on what kind of person we were aiming for as a target audience due to the figures of what gender it was more popular with, class and age.

Photoshop – To create the title of the Mark and the Fish Tank logo, I used Photoshop CC. The reason why I used this is because Photoshop gives you a plethora of advanced designing tools which helped me create a professional/detailed title for our film opening and also for the logo of our company Fish Tank Inc.

Final Cut – To edit our film opening I used Final Cut pro, reason being is because Final Cut pro is an extremely advanced video editing software which when used correctly gives you the best possible outcome for your video and you have a hundreds of different effects which you can apply; I took advantage of these effects that Final Cut Pro offered to me and I tried to make our film opening look as horror related as possible.  

Question 5 - How did you attract/address your target audience?

Question 3 -
What kind of media institutions would distribute your product and why?
What kind of media institutions would distribute your product and why?
 

Question 4 Evaluation - who would be the audience for your media?

- Question 2 - how does your Media represent particular social groups?

Question 1 for our Evaluation -

Evaluation

Mise en scene - 

• The imagery pictures evil 
• Iconography associate with the cross and the Anti-Christ
• Basement dingy feel, used in other films: Devil inside and conjuring
• Dark sense of unease, unusual lighting, dark colour scheme: Like The Rite and The Possession, REC 2   

Editing -
The main editing technique we used was cuts, cuts is a very simple technique as it keeps the audience interested as the film is changing from one clip to the other. We used various types of cuts such as jump cuts which is when the camera jumps to a dramatic point in the film opening; and cutting rhythm which determines the speed in which things are cut to emphasise specific points in the opening. The main reason why we used cutting rhythm was to induce an element of surprise, suspense and shock into the audience; so clips that had a longer duration were to emphasise suspense or to focus on a particular point and then the shorter duration shots had the element of surprise and shock. Another editing technique we used in the film opening was the Ken Burns effect which was used to make the audience focus on an important aspect of the scene.

Camera Angles - 
For our film opening we used a variety of camera angles to create the most thrilling atmosphere for our target audience. We used multiple, effective camera angles such as close ups, tracking/panning shots, mid range shots and long shots. One of the main camera angles we used is the tracking/panning shot, we used this because this shot can be used very effectively in horror/thriller movies as it can indicate a moment of suspense and gets the audience wondering what's going to happen next. The other primary shots we used are close ups and long/mid shots, we used close up shots in our opening to see characters reactions and to capture detail in important scenes; mid/long shots were used to establish the setting in which the film was placed.

Evaluation 

Sound -

• 1 sound track throughout the whole opening, it was the sound of quite static. We used it to work around scene changes and transitions. 
• Creepy background music - I think this music was very appropriate for our genre.
• Non diegetic - this has no speech in it and is just purely sounds of instruments. 

• Slow pace
• Insidious films uses similar music 

Evaluation 

Character –

• All of our characters are quite anonymous; I believe this was a good technique because it is very typical of a normal horror movie, as like in Se7en. There is 4 characters in the whole opening, 3 possessed children in the basement and one man. The man has a hidden identity to the end and we don’t see his face due to the way it is edited, we have used this to create unease within the audience. 
• Due to the scenes that he is we can gain some knowledge of what he is like due to him researching possession, and then this man taking us on a journey – the audience can then visualise him as the main character.
• We have also got the three ‘possessed children’, we have made it clear to the audience that these actors are possessed by the colour scheme that looks like a sort of bloody colour. We have put them in all black clothing and due to the shots, like the male actor shaking aggressively.  Also we have put them in a dingy basement; you would not see anyone normal in there. This is very similar conjuring, and the devil inside. 

Evaluation

Font and title –

·        The font and title in these piece are used very well I believe because they stand out a lot, and also work around the colour scheme of most of the piece which contrasted very well (black and white).

      This is very similar to ‘Dawn  of the Dead’

·        We used the font ‘Kati SE’, both of my screenshots below have used the same font and colour.

·        There is a black background which makes the white text stand out more. We considered having red text but we believe this would be too dark to see for the audience.

·        There are transitions with this which help integrate the text into the opening. I believe it we have chosen to do this because it fades into the piece in a slower pace and does not take away attention from the actual footage.

·         The other title we used to say ‘The Mark’ which was the end title had the opposite colour scheme, the text was black and the background was white. The font we used for this was ‘true lies’, this is because it look like someone has inscribed the text into something, and looks quite roughly done, which links back to ‘possession’ etc. and from research a lot of horror titles used this sort of font.

·         We have also used the anti-Christ sign to stand for the T in ‘The’; we have done this so it relates back to our opening or general story line. We had this sign placed on the actor’s foreheads. The relevance of the anti-Christ is that possession and anti-religion. This is iconography of the anti-Christ.

Our final AS Media opening 

Progress Report 

THIS IS BEHIND THE SCENES OF OUR PROGRESS REPORT AND AUDIENCE RESEARCH VIDEOS.

Progress Report 

Here is a progress report at the moment for where my group is, all of group have finished there minimum requirements for there blog, we have finished all of the video editing for our video and at the moment are choosing what font and colour to make our text for the titles. I believe that by the end of this lesson that we will have finished all of the credits/titles and we can get onto our evaluation. 

3 way montage

We have used our 3 way montage for our opening scene, which is basically a selection of three situations placed into one video by cutting in and out of each other within two minutes. We have used this to get a lot of information to the audience within a small amount of time. 

Our first scenario is a mysterious character searching up on his computer about demonic possession and general possession. In this it includes symbols of Anti-Christ, religious tapestries and general knowledge and definitions about possession. Throughout this the character doing it it anonymous and we believe it is effective due to this. 

Our second scenario, is the same mysterious character walking through different situations. The range of scenes goes from a graveyard, bridges, misty fields and pathways. It it him making his way to an unknown location to meet his son which turns out to be in the basement of a church. By keeping this character anonymous it makes the audience want to see where he is going and also finding out who he is. 

The final scenario is a video of children being possessed in the basement or dingy room somewhere. This whole scene is very simply and we just have different images of people being possessed in different camera angles and camera shots. I think this is very effective because it makes the genre of horror very distinctive to the audience. 

In conclusion, I believe this was a good idea because we got across 3 different scenes because we have controlled what genre that we present to the audience whilst making a clear journey with a character. 

Our Title scene. 

This will be the logo for our film, it works around the whole idea of religion with the Anti-Christ, which stands for the 'T' within the title. We have used a white background and black text to make it stand out to the audience. Also we have used 'Part 1' because we believe that most movies work there consumption around sequels. The font was selected because it looks like its been inscribed onto something, like the actual mark would be on one of the actors forehead. But also it was very effective for this type of movie as a font. 

Title Scenes 

I have used 'you've got mail' as a contrast from ours being all photography to animations and a transition to photography. 

This is 'Se7en' a classic horror movie. 

This is one of the oldest movies I have used and there is a massive contrast between the titles then and now.

Media

Cabin in the Woods - 

I have chosen to use this title sequence because it is not the original and was made by a student for a project. I have chosen this because I believe that I can gather tips and pointers from a very effective student opening scene which will have similar briefing to me. 

	This looks like a very old drawing, the contract of colours being black and dirty white give the impression of nighttime or darkness. Also as the cabin is central it makes sure that they know what it is also about, as most of the film revolves around this.The outline of there trees portray to the audience the location being very concealed between all the trees.
	From this image we can interpret that most of the film is set in a forest or wood, also the hands show quite a distressed person struggling. This can illustrate to people that they might be a lot of death scenes in the film. There is a lot of mono colours, there is not red included.
	Once again, the same colour scheme being brown and black. The forest is then included in this opening scene, also we can interpret there could be some animals in this, In this shot or outline, the animals looks more violent and scary, and ends with looking at the camera.
	You see the outline of a bright room and a dark forward shot. It looks like s drawing of some of laboratory or coffin. This has a slightly different colour scheme which is black, white and grey. This intrigues the audience because it doesn't give much away about the audience.
	In this scene there is two girls talking, one in her underwear, they come across as quite vulnerable characters. Also in the sketch pad there is a drawing of an older man, which has a back story behind it. You can gather a lot about there personality's from the dialogue. The red heads seems more shy. Also the font for the titles is red with blood dripping which immediately gives the a gory and horror impression to the opening. But however although this is quite a bright scene, so you wouldn't think initially it would relate back to horror.

Media Coursework

Our FishTank production progress for our AS Media coursework 

In this video we discuss our steps of what we have so far down in our coursework video, relating back to editing and our blogs. 

AS Rough cut audience research (Part 2)

This is our second video of our audience research, this is were all our questions got answered - 

From this we can hopefully make changes to our opening which will make it better.

There was a trend in our results that said it looked mostly like an opening but however a lot of people said that they think the music should have worked up to a climax. 

Our audience research of our rough cut opening.
All of our participants were very helpful, and we realised the strengths and weaknesses of our opening, we have been working on solutions for it.