1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
3. What kind of media institutions might distribute your media product and why?
4. Who would be the audience of your media product?
5. How did you attract/ address your audience?
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
I felt that there's a massive difference between our Preliminary task and our thriller. This is largely due to the huge learning curve we've experienced the last few months since beginning the thriller task. Overall I believe our thriller looks a lot more professional which is due to the fact that we knew how to use all the equipment and software.
To begin with when filming the preliminary task I used my camera (The same one I used for the thriller) however I'd only ever used it for photography before and so I didn't know how to adjust the settings to suit the affect we wanted or, a bigger issue, how to focus the camera which caused a lot of time wasting, However since then with some practice and a few youtube videos I learnt how to create a variety of different effects just through the camera use alone.
The main software that my skills have improved on is Premiere pro. For editing of the preliminary task quite a bit of the editing was left to Ben with me sat next to him watching as I didn't particularly know what to do. I did learn the basics of how to cut and form a clip but when it came to continuity, filters, titles etc. I was completely useless. During the thriller task on the other hand I improved my skills massively, my joined together clips no longer jump and instead run smooth, I can add basic filters (nothing to fancy but it's enough) I can add titles and adjust how they enter, exit how long they stay AND I can even cut up music and rearrange it so it suits the scene better. I feel a lot more confident with Premiere pro than I did a few months ago and a lot of it is down to either Ben showing me or ditching me until I worked it out. Most of the time I could work it out. Although we did have one editing hiccup in which I accidentally somehow managed to lose the entire project on Premiere pro and because of this we had to call in our year 14 friend Sam who saved the day. I'm still not sure how but I'm very thankful to him.
One of the unsuccessful software we attempted to use was After Effects in order to add a glitch effect to the beginning ERROR message. This part was down to Ben as I was completely out of my depth. It went well as Ben managed to add the effect however we had no idea how to put it back into Premiere pro which we needed to do in order to make other adjustments. We couldn't find any youtube videos to help us or any friends that knew what they were doing and so we had to abandon the idea. Although we failed with after effects this time (Mainly our fault though, I won't blame the software) I would very much like to learn how to use it properly for next year at A2.7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the main task?
This is the standard of our thriller once handed in to sir. From this he gave us feedbacks of areas to improve for our copy.
The improvements are below.
We struggled to make all the improvements in the time given but we did as mush as we could.
To see our final creation head to the following blog post!
After uploading the rough copy of our Thriller 'Runner' yesterday we asked our friend Sam in the year above (who did his thriller last year) to watch what we've done so far to see his reaction and listen to any tips/improvements he has for us.
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| (Left to Right) Ben, Ben (On Ashley), Ashley, Callum, Ben (Front Row) Seb, Me (Josie)
our thriller as we did have to change the story to accommodate the disappearance of a character but we've adjusted it as best as we can. We also experienced a major problem of the camera dying. I'd fully charged the battery but only had one so after approximately 3 hours of filming we were in a desperate rush while the camera was flashing red. It was a great relief at 4:30 after 3 bus rides, one lunch break, several strange looks from the public, a few scrapes and grazes and waking up at 8 am when we finally declared the filming complete.
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We've used two songs as the soundtrack to our thriller to narrate different scenes.
First Track
The first track is used to narrate the runner heading up the street on his own toward the two government teenagers. we got it for this website. It's called 'Like swimming' from the Leaf album.Second track
The second track is used to narrate the chase scene of the three characters.
Me and Ben did some background research as to how to give an atmosphere of a professional film using a DSLR, the style of camera we're going to predominantly use. Here's the rather helpful video we found and plan to use as a guide line.
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| (Left to Right) Dalton, Ben, Ben, Ashley |
Sunday we officially started filming our thriller with the help of some friends.
Everyone was assigned their rolls Ben (at the front) being the runner, Dalton and Ashley being the two government teenagers and Ben (at the back) helping with sound while I was on camera. Although the weather was against us we shot from 11 till 3 and got quite a lot done. However we did receive quite a lot of strange looks from passers by.
To tie in with our Pitch video here's a copy of our written pitch with all our plans and details. However this is not our first pitch. We did our pitch twice as our original plans needed adapting. Hopefully the video of it will be uploaded soon once we've edited it a bit.
Here is Mine and Ben's Pitch video for our thriller, well actually its our two pitch videos. The first pitch was our first ideas and plans for our story however once we had spoken to Sir we found a couple or problems. At the end of the pitch we then decided to have a few days to alter and improve our plans hence the second pitch video. We've now got our ideas down and are getting deep into the pre-production process.
For our Thriller we're wanting to shoot around Chesterfield Town. Above is our video looking around the streets we intend to shoot on and looking at the two possible car parks we could use. We have decided to use the second car park as we felt it suited the style we'd like. It didn't have barriers and the top had lower walls adding a city effect. Its also older and a bit more run down creating the dystopian theme we desire. The second car park is also less used than the first so it's more likely to be empty at the top floor when we need to film. We gained permission from the car park security to film in it as long as we told them every time we we're filming so that they could ensure we were safe.
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| Levi Strauss |
For example:
- Good vs Evil
- Hero vs Villian
- Man vs Woman
- Sociecty vs The individual
- Harry Potter vs Voldemort
- Deadpool vs Francis
- House vs Illness
Our Thriller
Our thriller will use a variety of binary oppositions. Our story will follow a basic binary opposition of government vs Rebellion however this will become blurry as members of the government join the rebellion, but this will cause the line of good and bad to be unclear. We'll also have in our clip, the binary opposition of security vs insecurity as a chase scene takes place through the centre of town which most people would consider a safe place. |
| Roland Barthes |
Narrative Codes
Roland Barthes was a media theorist who came up with the concept of Narrative Codes. This consisted of five different forms of code that could be used in a media product to send the audience different messages. The codes consisted of:- Action code
- Hermeneutic/Enigma Code
- Semic Code
- Cultural Code
- Binary Oppositions
Action Code
An action code are often used to insinuate the next step taken in a sequence of events for example if a person is running down a street it makes you question why. Is the person running to something? From someone? and many other questions. It is often used to help create suspense.Hermeneutic/Enigma code
This code is used to create a sense of mystery in a narrative which is done by controlling exactly how much information is passed on to an audience. Its designed to draw the audience in by creating a problem to be solved throughout the course of the production. For example at the beginning of each episode of House M.D a person becomes seriously ill, this illness is then diagnosed and cured (hopefully) by the end of each episode.Semic Code
The Semic Code is used to add an extra layer of meaning to inform the viewer about different characters in a film or the narrative. Se7en for example showed a figure of a black cat in its opening scene which could represent Morgan Freemans character, detective William Somerset, to be superstitions.Referential/Cultural Code
The cultural code refers to a form of knowledge such as cultural, scientific or historical. it relies on your knowledge outside of the film in order to gain a further understanding. A war film could be an example of this as it links to your historical knowledge.
