Friday 8 April 2011

Evaluation question 6

Audience Feedback

We recieved a mixture of comments about our movie mostly positive and a few negative below is a wordle of what some of the pupils in our class said abut Reap as you Sow.
Here are some links to our classmates feedback on our film
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=&feature=player_embedded
After we watched the movie at the cinema we got feedback  from the other students here is a wordle of their comments:
Many people felt we could have improved the lighting, although they also found the movie to be quite frightening and almost everyone said they would go to the cinema to watch the movie.

Evaluation question 8

We as a group have come a long way from when we made our prelim to thefinal cut of our thriller opening, I am going to go through the dramatic improvements we have made since the prelim.

In the prelim we had no credits or an ident all we had was Group 29 Prelim, this was due to us as a group not using our time more effectively and alsoour lack of experience and practise time using live type.

Our credits for our thriller were very much plain and this choice was influenced by Days of Heaven, we also had four differnent credits which is alot more than our prelim.



We also made some improvements to our establishing shot the prelim's establishing shot was poor and slanted whereas in the thriller the establishing shot is straight. This made the thriller alot more proffesional and gave the movie a more proffesional feel.

Also our thriller begins with an ident which also makes the movie more proffesional in contrst with our prelim which starts straight away.
All of these improvements show we have learned from our mistakes and made sure our thriller was to the highest standard possible.



Evaluation question 4&5


Our film was a low budget independent movie so could only be distributed in a few specific ways.
Firstly through Blogger.com

We used Blogger to distribute our film, we published it on the site and gave people the oppurtunity to comment on it.
Vimeo.com was another site we used to distribute our film, it was easy to upload the film to Vimeo and as it is a video sharing website many people like ourselves would be using it.
Finnaly the screen on the green
 
This was the cinema we used to display all our movies one at a time.

Other institutions that may distribute my film are
Dog Woof
This is an independent distributor which only releases 12 films a year specialising in independent films.
Youtube.com
We could upload our video to youtube and allow viewers to leave feedback
Facebook.com
We could upload the video to our facebook accounts which would allow friends to veiw it and leave feedback.

200 DVD copies of each movie will be made and I will be given a copy of Reap as you sow which will allow us to give copies to family and friends.

Thursday 7 April 2011

Evaluation question 8

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


Below are screen grabs of the differences that i have spotted between the prelim and the thriller opening;


Credits/Titles:


In the prelim film there was only one credit/title which was 'Group 29 Prelim', we as a group were really disappointed in not be able to deliver the desired credits, as we fell behind on time and weren't experienced enough in using Live Type.



Click on this link below to view the Prelim.

However in our Thriller opening 'Reap As You Sow' as we were more determined and knew for an fact that we would have to accompany our opening with credits we tried to make them as effective as possible. We included 5 individual credits that followed a conventional order, Our credits were simple and plain similar to the credits in Days Of  Heavens.






Click on this link below will allow you to view the thriller opening.
http://thriller11group29.blogspot.com/2011/03/final-edit-of-reap-as-you-sow_24.html
Looking back at the preliminary movie that i and my group made (group 29) and comparing it to our thriller opening (Reap As You Sow) I have noticed that there are a few major improvements that we have made, indicating that we have immensely progressed, such as;

Establishing shot:



The establishing shot in the prelim far left is an shot of an elevator, which is clearly shot from an appalling angle, which we at the time found alright. But as time went on and we became more experienced in camera skills, We were determined to get the establishing shot in the opening far right bang on straight, as we wanted to appear as professional as possible. 


Ident:


Our Prelim movie starts straight into the movie with the elevator doors opening, whereas the thriller opening starts off with 'Candi Studios' ident appearing, which makes the opening appear like a high quality  professional production.



Lighting:




The lighting in the prelim (far left) is fairly poor, at certain points its very bright and clear, and at certain points it has shown to be very dim, which shows a lack in planning and communication amongst the group, i personally believe that we should have chose a different setting inside the college familiar to us for having a constant ray of sun hitting it, providing light. In our thriller opening however (far right) over all the lighting works efficiently, showing no major differences.


All the above suggest that we as a group have shown progression by rectifying our mistake that had previously been made in the prelim, We've tried to produce a thriller opening that has no flaws, but as they say

(nothing is perfect there is always room for improvements).

Below is a self recording of me (sayf ahmed) talking about the progress that i think we as a group made.





Sorry that its not landscape.

EVALUATION - Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in theprogression from it to the full product?

The prelim
The full product

As you can see from our prelim and our full product, we have improved massively through, editing, camera, mise en scene and sound.

Mise en scene
The location we used in the full product was a more effective as we went out and used a church instead of staying inside college which looked dull in the prelim. 

<--- Church
College --->




The scenery in the church also added a more creative effect as the chandeliers was like a symbol for heaven as it was above him. The scenery in the college was just not as effective as it was just plain, there was not much we could do with the use of the college as there wasn't any good background to use.

Camera
In the full product we used a variety of shots
 
Whilst in the prelim there was only 2 different shots that was used. Over the shoulder and a medium shot.

Editing
There was more editing used in the final product, for example there were 
Transitions
Change of speed
Match cuts

Sound
There was only voices of me and Ryan speaking in the prelim, no other sounds was used and were all diegetic. In the final product there was no voices at all, instead all the sounds used was non-diegetic. It was a soundtrack which was produced by Ryan.

Team Work
When i first found out who was in my group, I wasn't satisfied as I didn't talk to anyone in the group before. During the first few weeks I didn't really get along with a member of the group but as weeks progressed and we started on our final product, everyone in the group seemed to get along with each-other and no one was complaining or having arguments. So i believed that as a group we made a team which could work well with each-other. Each person had their talent and knowledge about media, for instance
Sayf - Was good with coming up with ideas.
Ryan - Was good with music.
Zak - Was good with being creative to help Sayf.
Me - I was good with the editing.
So as a group we got along well once we started the final product.

EVALUATION - What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? How will you attract/address your audience?

Companies such as CANDIStudios may distribute my film as it is a low budget film and CANDIStudios supports low budget films made by students.

Ways in which I could adress the audience is by sharing the video on various social-networking websites such as



















So far, my film has only been shared on Blogger and temporarily on Facebook and has been watched by an audience of 200 people at a local cinema called 
The Screen On The Green

A student film which has had a big hits on the net is 

The Shortcut

Made by AS media students who also had the same task that I had, which was to make a two minute thriller opening. On Youtube they have 103,461 views so far, the link of the video is posted below.



Evaluation question 3

The audience for my thriller would most likely be 16 to 25 year olds this is a link to a short clip our group created on windows media player showing how we think our audience would look.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=

A few of my friends who i feel would be my desired target audience are below:

Ahmed Mohammed: 17 years of age is stdying at westminister college, he enjoys football, socialising, he regularly visits the cinema and likes the thriller genre.

Ahmed Mufasa: 16 years of age is studying at city of westminister college, he regularly goes to the cinema, he wants to become a doctor and is very much into psychological films

Evaluation question 2

I believe my group represented the young black male in a very typical sense with him the culprit, but the church scene shows him to be more than a regular young black male criminal and it is deeper than the typical view of a black male from our generation.

Ryan Cameron was an ideal suitor to play the main  protagonist in our film he ticked all the boxes of the kind of person we needed in our film. he looked a regular teenage black male which meant he could represent the social groups we were targeting. The picture below shows his appearance in the movie, it is very similar to the dress code of the characters in a movie such as 'adulthood'.


Ryan Cameron plays a very similar role as Nole Clarke in 'Adulthood' The traking shots of Noel Clarke and the religous references are all similar to what we contained in our film.


The similarities are there too see in the above images the dress code, walking style and the fact they are in a park are all important factors. The teenage group we are representing is very typical in many aspects but has a huge twist on the characters deeper feelings and mental state.

Evaluation question 1





Our movie was directed by Sayf Ahmed, was recorded by Zak Chennane, music was by Ryan Cameron, edited by Viet Pham and starred Ryan Cameron and Viet Pham.

In our group we tried to keep the simple plain white text that appears in Days of Heavens 
in our opening. Above is a shot showing one of the titles in our opening which is very similar to the titles of  Days of heaven.
Here are some of the shots we tried to mimic from other movies as intertextuality:
This shot of jesus' face is similar to the shot from romeo and juliet.
Our establishing shot is very similar to the shot from stepfather as can be seen above
Finnaly our fight shot is very similar to a shot from kidulthood.

Evaluation Question 8 - looking back at the preliminary task, what i feel i have progressed on.







Evaluation Question 7

Videos below show the main things that I have learnt throughout this media academic year...








Tuesday 5 April 2011

Evaluation Question 6 - Audience Feedback & Comment



OVERALL! VIEWERS THOUGHT THAT MY THRILLER OPENING WAS "VERY GOOD".
VIDEOS BELOW SHOWED WHAT THEY LIKED ABOUT MY THRILLER...



other feedback i had collected from other viewers shown in this wordle:

Evaluation Question 4 & 5 - What kind of media institution might distribute my media product and why? How will I attract/address my audience?

I have decided to use group 30's brilliant student media work as my example as they have had a successful amount of hits using the internet making their media thriller opening very popular locally.

the use of facebook - a very popular social network site that can help anyone to advertise products or new forms of media such as music, films, articles etc.





Also putting their video on other video sites such as Youtube & even Vimeo is very helpful to gain popularity and reputation.






Cinema we will view everyones thriller movies on the 5th of April, is below at 'the screen.' Other cinemas at which our thriller can be presented in:





I have envisioned a particular style of marketing for our thriller. As well as using social networking sites to promote it, campaigns, leaflets and magazines [Print Advertising] or using other websites as banners and tv adverts [Broadcast Advertising] would also help raise awarness of it. Premiere, film, empire [all magazines], similarly TV adverts, adverts before highly rated youtube videos and adverts on the side of facebook all can boost ratings.


One of the main film magazines is Total Film, which advertises new films and stars, also information and advertising for the film. Most of the front covers like the one shown above have a large image which shows the main characters in a certain film. They range from headshots to a longshot all of which make the film completly clear which is being advertised.They also like to cover some of the magazine title with the image this adds another dimesnsion to the page and it also look more professional, an example of this is this front page where he is looking directly into the camera as a figure of power, and on a shelf would gain eye contact and intrest the target audience. Also by the main characters being easily recognisable it will make people want to read a review and see what the film is like befire they watch it.

EVALUATION - Who would be the audience for your media product?

A typical teenage boy in London
He would carry:
His name is Nathan and he attends college, he lives in East London and works at a near by retail shop.