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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Below are screen grabs of the variety of technologies we used;
At first we were introduced to a variety of search engines. Such as google, we used google to research all kinds of different films regarding information on profits and target audiences. We learnt that by using google and other search engines such as yahoo we would always be able to find relevant information/research.
We used movie websites such as IMDB, which is the largest movie data base in the world, to help gain a better idea of what a good thriller movie includes.
We were later introduced to Blogger, which we used as an updating profile of research, such as what makes a good thriller, target audience of thrillers and what knowledge we have gained about all the different technologies we could use in our thriller movie.
Once entering on the blogger dashboard, we clicked on view blog and later clicked on our individual group page, (Group 29)
Clicking on new post we were able to update posts relating to research and planning.
Using the above tool bar on blogger we were able to change the font text size , upload images and videos and include links to external sites.
Above is an example of the posts that we have created after following the previous steps shown above.
With the use of blogger we learnt that it is always best to completely plan a task before getting started straight away, we also found that blogger is useful in updating/storing information & research by creating posts.
For filming our thriller opening we were required to use the college JVC camera, which we were given strict instructions on how to use appropriately. We were given two Sandisk memory cards to save our desired footage on, which was vital to the creation of our thriller opening, inserting the cards was a tricky process, they had to be opened and inserted the correct way round, carelessness could involve damaging the memory card or even the camera.
To create an overall final thriller opening film we were required to be able to use the college Apple Mac computers,on which where applications such as;
Final Cut Pro:
Above is a short clip from youtube on how to use Final Cut Pro.
Below are some still image editing the Bag swap on Final Cut Pro;
Final Cut was helpful in enabling us to trim, combine and add effects to footage.
By using Final Cut Pro frequently for Bag Swap, Prelim and Thriller opening. we learnt that to create a real life professional movie/clip it is necessary that you are able to use Final cut Pro fluently and effectively
SoundTrack Pro:
Above is a clip based around how to function Sound Track Pro.
Below are some still images of creating sound track for Bag swap;
Sound Track pro enabled us to combine a mixture instruments into one overall sound.
Although we found SoundTrack pro quite tricky to use we realised we will have to try and learn our way through to create an effective sound piece to accompany our Bag Swap and Thriller opening. By creating a sound track on Sound Track Pro we learnt that to create a professional sound track it is necessary that you are able to work your way around the application.
Live Type:
Above is a short clip on how to use Live Type.
Below are some still images of creating credits on Live Type.
Live type enabled us to create credits by altering fonts, effects and textures.
By using Live Type we learnt that you are able to create professional credits similar to big time movies such as Titanic, Terminator and many more. However to succeed in creating effective credits you are required to use live type fluently and all its components exposed. We however did not include credits made in Live Type in our thriller opening as we wanted plain simple text that was achievable on Final Cut Pro.
