Silhouette

To add to this a special thanks to Geoff Barnett for allowing us to use the track "Smile" by the crystal Method.

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

The main genre of the film itself is the superhero genre, which was chosen because it was an appealing concept which suited what all of us in our group would be intrested in and would want to make, as well as the recent boost of the genre with popular films such as The Dark Knight, Watchmen, The Incredibles and Kickass. The Dark Knight in particular has received universal acclaim, proving the genre is a successful one which would appeal to all age groups and almost all tastes. However, for our film opening we wanted to avoid what people would normally expect and instead opt for something new. We also started to veer off from the super hero genre towards the end of the production of this and changed it to a thriller but still used some of the conventions of a superhero genre such as a death at the start and narration.

These examples of films open with exciting scenes that cut straight into the action, although by contrast, The Incredibles creates a fairly calm setting before cutting into its opening chase a minute into the film, the idea being to establish its main characters. 
For our piece to set it off we had the ordinary routine of a man having his breakfast in the morning, so the audience would tend to think that this character will now become the main protagonist however we start to make the audience question this because throughout the morning sequence you don't actually see his face. Again this is quite the contrast to most other films however this was slightly influenced by the introduction from kick ass as they have the same thing but it is narrated by the main character however the man you looks at is not him and he dies so it is that sort of shock thing we were influenced by.

Evaluation 6

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Overall we were very lucky to have such a broad range of technologies available to us for starters we were aloud to use the one of the music track because i managed to email the manager as i found his address using the internet. The internet was a really big help as it meant that we could find lots of clips of films that had the similar idea that we wanted and we could use this to help others in the group understand how it could like, for example the quick editing we wanted to try and use in the breakfast scene is similar to the one in shaun of the dead's intro. So by being able share the information like this was very helpful towards creating our final product.

The whole idea of not showing the characters face was so that you couldn't really put him into a class or him to represent a certain social groupso then that character would have a mysterious enigma about himself therefore sort of alienating our audience by niot letting them relate to the characters.

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

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Another point with choosing Universal is that it has synergies that we could use to our benefit such as universal studios theme park which could really help with the distributing in the gift shops of the park and also helping with the exhibition by advertising the film round the park.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our main target audience would be 16-25 year old males with an interest in action and/or superhero style movies who are looking for a fresh and interesting take on the genre.

A range of young males who have been reading comic books since they were younger. More than 90% of the readers of mainstream superhero comics are male (1995) so this is why we've mainly targeted it at males. Also people who have seen movies in a similar vein to our production such as ‘The Watchmen’, ‘Kick Ass’, ‘Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World’ or ‘The Dark Knight’. Typically, 16-25 year old males would be interested in a fast paced action film.

We wanted the film to be darker and different from the now family orientated comicbook/super hero films. That part of the film isn't overpoweringly obvious.












The problem with the target audience for this style of film is that it's quite specific so we decided because to slightly change the storyline of the film to something more along the lines of an action thriller but at the same time have the protagonist possibly become a hero or villain so there is stilll that comic style element in it but this way we will be advertising to a larger audience. Also the good things about this genre of film is that most of the audience who like these types of films stereotypically use the internet alot of the time whether its games/Forums or buisness, it could still be advertised easily on the internet via certain websites, so by advertising to an audience like ours its worth knowing how to advertise the movie to them.

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

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How Did You Attract/Address Your Audience?

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Final Day Of Filming

To start off with we needed to get the shots of our character played by dan finn leaving his house and the accident scene as well so we started off with him leaving out of his front door. We used a high angle shot for this as we didn't want to see his face also we had the problem of trying to keep the film set in New York so we didn't want any of the grass on the lawn opposite of the drive in shot so this was quite an effective shot to use.

This problem of grass kept reoccuring in other shots outside Dan's house as we were trying to film the car drive round the corner so again we used a high angle shot to get rid of the grass line at the top of the shot.

We also decided to film most of the car shots on that street as well seeming as there was less traffic and therefore we could do the amount of takes we wanted. We played around with the idea of the car going past and the camera would have a view around head hight but then you could see the houses and lawns of the houses behind which could take away the sort of New York effect we wanted. So we ended up getting a really nice shot of the car going past by having the camera on the floor therfore it minimalized the rest of the street in view. Although this worked out well we had to do quite a few takes as we needed to get the speed of the car right because it actually went past the camera alot faster than it looked. After the car scene we then had to drive to Sophies Dad's apartment as it had the bathroom that we wanted in the opening sequence it may sound picky but it was perfect for the way we wanted to shoot our character getting ready in it. This shot was quite tricky as we of course had the mirror in front of him and we wanted to do an over the shoulder shot  however the characters face was showing up in the mirror and so to get rid of this we boiled a Kettle and steamed up the mirror so you couldnt see the face and that way we would not have to do some un necassary complex editing on adobe after effects. After this we went back into ringwood outside my house to do the last of the car shots this time of dan getting hit by the car, and the way we did this was that we had Dan jump onto the front of the car to lok as though i had hit him at high speeds, we first tried this outside my house but then realized we got the reflection of the house in the windscreen so we then did it in the middle of the road which again worked out better but we had to make sure we only got the bottom of the windscreen so as not to see the grass on people's lawn. By having just the bare minimum of the windscreen

shown we also managed not to show the characters face again which was really quite lucky. We ended the day by finishing of some of the shots of him eating for the breakfast seen which went without a hitch.

Editing attempt 1

After having our first shoot and getting most of the shots for the morning scene in the house we started to edit together our new york shots and the house shots to make our intro. Luckily we already had the music what we wanted as we had permission to use it from one of the bands. Anyway we started cut up the lengthy shots and fit them into eahc other and the rendering was what was taking the longest. During the editing we decided to have the new york shots start off the film intro to give it the sense of mystery which would then tie in with the title and theme the silhouette. To get the pace of the film started quite high we thought that by having sped up images basically very short time lapses at the start, then the audience would be captured straight away. Shortly after piceing the shots nof new york together we decided that to go in time with the music we would have the slow panning shots first and then the quick edits of the rest of new york to fit in time with the change of tempo and pace in the music.

First Day of Filming

On the first day of filming we planned to shoot at my house after school which we did. The equipment we used was the usual cameras but we also had a microphone with us as we needed to capture certain sounds whilst filming the shots such as this shot we were filming the egg being cooked and we wanted the sizzling sound quite clear incase we wanted to play around with words saying sizzle coming out of it when we got to the editing part also that the sound of an egg sizzling generally helps set the time of morning with the rest of the shots.

Whilst deciding which shots to do next we actually took the storyboards with us as it was quite good to work with the basic ideas of what we wanted shots wise, and then we could play around with different angles seeing if we could still get the same effects such as whether we should have a high angle shot on the alarm clock in the morning or a level shot to see the hand come in from the side of the shot. The storyboard was also quite a good way of keeping track of what shots we had done and the ones we needed to do.

Whilst filming we had a few problems for example you could only hear what was coming through the microphone after you had started to record so we overcame this by adding a sound check on some of the takes. Another problem we encountered was that the tripod we had wouldnt reach the certain hights we needed for some of the kitchen shots eg looking down on the eggs so instead we had to just hold the camera very still and to be sure to have a good shot we took the shot three times so we could have a choice of some of the good ones. Overall the day was a success and we now had some footage that we could start to edit with the New York footage i had previously gotten on our media Trip.

Main task Developement-Music Research

At the start of our title sequence we have a time lapse with a narrator speaking over the top of it. For th we have a montage of film shots of new york and we realized that having some underline music it would give the scene more tension and build up towards an event. The music we chose is a song calle Smile by crystal method, we chose this song as the electric sounds of it make the scene feel modern and New which is the time period we are going for. This band is actually under a record label so in order to use their music i had to email the manager of the band , he did infact get back to me and gave me permission to use the music.

For the second half of our animatic we want to use A-Punk by Vampire weekend so we are getting a band to do a cover version so we will still be able use the song in our title production.

Main task Developement

Obviosuly we need shots that look like a comic book in our opening title so i started to use photoshop to see how as a group we could use the tools and effects to create the right image for the film titles. On photoshop I used effects such as poster edges and accented edges i then played around with colour adjustments and finally made it look quite comical.

After creating this as a group we realized to make the comic shot graphic match onto the real shot all we would have to do is copy a still frame shot from the last frame of the recorded film sequence. We also decided as a group that a time lapse sunset would be hard to film in New York as we dont have much time to do it, so as an alternative we are going to record a sunet in the open with no trees or buildings and then layer that recording behind the comic stylized shot of the new york buildings therefore retaining the sunset effect on the city and making the filming much less difficult.

Main task Developement

In our second lesson we started to write up a actual plan of the shots we wanted and to fine tune our ideas into something that we could actually accomplish in the time we have been given. On our A3 sheet we wrote down the shot sequence we wanted and where we could find information on it aswell. For example for the latter half of our opening sequence we have alot of shots in quick succession of each other like In The movie Shaun of the Dead. These shots are exactly what we want as for the audience watching it keeps the fast pace from the time lapse at the start and gives a false sense of normality before the twist at the end of the sequence. We also decided that we would have four to five of the shots in our sequence changed into the comic type look as anymore would have been to much a task for our group to handle in the time given.

Film Brief and Main Task Idea's

For the main task we were given film brief's and we had to chose which one we would like to do, my group chose to do film brief one, which is to do an action film with a target audience of 15-25 year-olds, it also has to have the style of a hero comic as well. My group has Chris, Tom, Sophie and myself in it which should make getting the finished product done a lot easier as more people can take on more roles. Most of us chose this film brief because it lets you do a lot creativity wise such as creating a hero and bringing him to life, also the fact that throughout our film we want the use of live animation in some parts which is useful as chris is very good at animating and sophie is really good on Photoshop. For the live action shots tom will be good on the camera as i have no doubt he will have great input into what works best. Together i think our team has everything covered.

So once we had decided to do film brief one we instantly started coming up with lots of ideas.In our first lesson on this we came up with the idea that it should be a comic hero something along the lines of Batman: Dark Knight story line but with a possible twist at the start to make it a bit darker as for the older viewers. So talking over the whole comic book feel we thought it would be a good idea to have the start of the film looking at a comic book (which we wanted to make on the computer) and we wanted the camera to pan along the comic book reading it and then when necessary we would use the first shot of a piece of live action film we wanted to go in, and turn it into a comic looking picture, and then graphic match it onto the start of the real live footage. We would repeat this a few times before we got to the ending and throughout this we wanted a narrator to be talking the whole way through. The inspiration for this was from many movies but the one i thought of was the intro to kick ass as it had the narration and the first twist at the start with the person we thought was a hero dying. This intro is along the line that we want.