Q3 Evaluation Matty Beet

evaluation Q3

Evaluation Question 4 - Tom Swift

Question 4

Throughout our film, we used the iMac computers to do produce our film. The biggest amount of time for our research was used on the internet, where we used sites such as the IMDB website (www.imdb.com) to research initially into what genres are currently doing well and then later on, to do reviews on other films in the same genre that we picked.

Another piece of very useful technology that we took advantage of  is Blogger (www.blogger.com/home) This allowed us to keep up to date with all the information we have on our film, from character profiles to the evaluations, they are all in one place and easily accessible and easy to navigate around. Also during the evaluation stage of our production, blogger allows us to imbed videos, photos and sounds to enhance the quality of our work and make our work look more original.

When we had our initial idea for our film, we designed a questionnaire, so that we could get constructive feedback for it. This was made simpler for us as we made the questionnaire on Google docs, (seen in image A) this helped us send it out to people we know on social networking sites, like Facebook (www.facebook.com) and Twitter (www.twitter.com).

Our film poster was created using  Adobe Photoshop and it was a very useful piece of technology to use as allows the user to do anything with a photo, this allowed for us to go creatively mad and change the poster a lot, however one downfall to this, was that our poster took quite a while to edit and change, there were a few problems that we had during this period as Photoshop can sometimes be difficult to use, but once you get the hang of it, it is an amazing piece of software.

 I think that this equipment that we were provided with, throughout our film production, was vital to the quality of our final production, which was published in the HD format and the cameras, computers and other sound recording equipment are all top of the range, with any lower quality equipment, the film wouldn't look nearly as good as it does. 

Evaluation Question 3 - Tom Swift

Evaluation Question 2 - Tom Swift

Evaluation Question 1 - Tom Swift

Question 1

I know how important it is to keep an audience immersed in a film, breaking continuity in a film can take a viewer out of the film and make it a bad experience for them.  For example if there was a person wearing a pair of sunglasses and in the next shot, they aren't wearing any, it can confuse a viewer.

When we were filming, all our scenes were shot together, this helped us a lot as there were no problems with people wearing different clothes during a scene, which would break continuity, also we were aware of it all the time and made sure that there were no errors in the background of each shot.

We also had to take into account things such as the 180% rule, which is a vital importance within a film, this is where the camera must always stay on one side of an invisible line.

Our film is a Psychological Horror with mystery mixed in as well, we tried to make sure that we kept to the genre as close as possible and to ensure we did this, we researched heavily the different films with similar types of genre, i looked at films such as Shutter Island and Jacob's ladder, which are both good films to look at as they are in the same type of genre and are fairly similar. We did this to see what different tricks they used. 

I feel that our film does meet the criteria of the genre and that we successfully projected this genre well to our audience, we used things such as music, lighting, costumes and editing all to link with the genre of our film.

We did try to use the effects and different tricks in our film which other films use, however we did not use them very often. There are 2 points in our film which we use the same editing trick as another film in its genre, the first, which is the shaking head effect from the film "Jacobs Ladder" and the second which is the eerie music we used in the majority of our film, which is used in a lot of different films of this genre.

In our film we have tried to make the audience to have to try and predict what is going to happen and to allow them to try and figure out the plot, this keeps the immersed in the film and makes them enjoy it more than them understanding exactly what is about to happen next. I feel that in our film we may have made it too confusing for this to be accomplished and for a first time viewer, it is a little confusing and difficult understand.

There are some different films where we used different ideas so that our film would be in that genre, for example from the film "The green mile" a man a guard is possessed by John Cofee and then murders another inmate, in our film, a man picks up the die and is possessed and then kills someone because of it. Another other film which we relate to in our film, is "The Ring" where an object with power takes control of a person, in this case, one of the hobbits. 

Media evaluation question 4

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

In every media lesson we have had we used Mac computers. These computers were used to carry out most of the activities for our project.

We used Google Blogger to post information about our film and research we had conducted.

http://bigsweb.net/know-about-what-is-google-blogger/google-blogger/
We used YouTube for research. We watched trailers of movies similar to ours and also watched videos that gave tutorials on various different camera techniques and shots. The ultimate purpose of using YouTube in our project was to upload our completed film on to the Internet.

http://9to5google.com/category/youtube/

For researching our film we used Internet Movie Database to look at films that were the same genre as ours (psychological horror).

http://www.filmofilia.com/imdb-announces-the-top-stars-of-2012-2011s-emerging-stars-became-2012s-chart-toppers-129542/

In conclusion these websites came in great handy for the planning and researching of our film. I will definitely use these websites and others like them in future.

When it came to making our film we used other pieces of software and technology. We used Adobe Photoshop to create individual film posters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Adobe_Photoshop_CS2_retail_box.jpg

This is the poster that I created using Adobe Photoshop.

We HD digital cameras to record our film. We also used them record video logs that we

made for the blog.

http://www.made-in-china.com/showroom/protax/product-detailNeOEtgqvfPhW/China-Protax-OEM-HD-Digital-Camera-HD1-.html

After we had finished our filming we then used Final Cut Express to edit our film together.

http://appleinsider.com/articles/07/11/15/apple_announces_final_cut_express_4_slashes_pricing　

Finally, for our film’s radio trailer we used zoom recorders to record Tom Swift’s voice.

http://techinmusiced.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/zoom-recorders/
In conclusion, the technology and software used in our project served us perfectly. I believe we had no problems with the equipment and they didn’t interfere with the making our film.

Media evaluation question 1

1. In what ways does the media product use develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

1a. At a technical level, how well does your film reflect or challenge the conventions of continuity, and the language of film and editing?

As a media student, I am fully aware of the importance of continuity in film. Continuity involves keeping things in a scene the same throughout the shooting. For example, if a door in the background is closed, it must remain closed unless it is opened as part of the script. If in one shot the door is closed and in the next shot it is open then that is what’s called a “continuity error” as it confuses the audience and makes no sense at all.

As director of the film, it was my responsibility to make sure that continuity is properly used in our film. I would often observe our settings to see how things were laid out in case we ever had to film on the same setting again. I would also take notes on costumes and props. I also starred in the movie, for my role I wore a black coat, blue jeans and black boots. For continuity, I had to make sure that I wore these all the way though the film.

1b. The genre of our film is a psychological horror with some mystery added in to it. I believe that the content of our film meets the conventions of a psychological horror. We have suspenseful music, emotional instability, murder, mystery and a cliff-hanger ending. I think that these help to meet the nature of our film.

1c. Having viewed our film, I don’t think that there are any moments were we played with the genre’s codes or history. And we didn’t make a lot of references to other films. One of the only references to another film that I can think of is the head shaking effect from the horror film Jacob’s Ladder.

1e. As our film is psychological horror, we decided to study other psychological horror films in order to get an idea of what we needed to make a film of that genre. Our film has some comparisons with films such as The Shining (a man loses his mind and commits murder), the Silence of the Lambs (a cliff-hanger ending), and The Ring (a supernatural object that triggers the events of the film).