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Evaluation: Question 7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?

The below four clips are clips of my own work. Two clips are from my match-cut preliminary exercise and two clips are from my thriller opening (I had to upload them onto four different posts because they did not all fit into one). The first clip of the four clips is one the clips from my preliminary exercise and as you can see, we have a very rough-looking, medium close-up. This has not been filmed very accurately and the lighting is very bad! At this point, we were still beginners in the filming world and we did not think much about the quality of the work that we were filming. When we completed filming the shot at that time, we were very proud of ourselves but now we realise that the quality of the shot should have been much higher. We have dramatically improved on the filming of our close-ups and managed to shoot a superb extreme close-up of a spinning fan (in the third clip of the four clips). This shot was commended by all that saw it. I am very confident that this shot displays how much we have improved since shooting the match-cut preliminary exercise: the lighting in the shot is perfect and we have edited to work in conjunction with the appearance of one of our titles. The shot looks very professional and the medium close-up shot from our match-cut preliminary exercise looks a tad tacky in comparison to it!

The second clip of our four clip is an example of how we broke the 180 degree rule during our match-cut preliminary exercise. I have to admit, when we were first taught it, I found it very hard to understand. Even during the match-cut preliminary exercise, I still didn't quite get it. When I watched the clips back, however, I could then see where we went wrong and I finally understood the 180 degree rule! Nonetheless, the mistake still appeared on film and made our preliminary exercise look very amateur. In the fourth clip of our four clips, a clip from my thriller opening, demonstrates how much we have improved on our since filming our match-cut preliminary exercise. In this clip, we are over-laying two clips very effectively to show what the character is going through whilst experiencing this dream. This clip is one that combines both effective camera shots and editing. The camera shot where there is a hand writing on a whiteboard is shot as a medium-shot and it is over-lapped with a hand-held shot of our character in fitful sleep. This took a while for us to learn but we got it down in the end. At the beginning f the course, I had no idea how to use the editing devices provided but now, I am very confident in doing so.

In general, our match-cut preliminary exercise is quite basic compared to our thriller opening as it does not incorporate the effects, higher skilled editing and higher quality camera shots that our thriller opening contains. These things, however, all had to be learnt through trial and error and we could not have reached the final level that we have reached in our thriller opening without having performed our match-cut preliminary exercise.

Evaluation: Question 7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?

FOURTH CLIP OF FOUR CLIPS: THRILLER OPENING 'GOODNIGHT, SLEEP TIGHT' THRILLER OPENING

Evaluation: Question 7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?

THIRD CLIP OF FOUR CLIPS: 'GOODNIGHT, SLEEP TIGHT' THRILLER OPENING

Evaluation: Question 7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?

SECOND CLIP OF FOUR CLIPS: PRELIMINARY MATCH CUT EXERCISE

Evaluation: Question 7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?

FIRST CLIP OF FOUR CLIPS: PRELIMINARY MATCH CUT EXERCISE

Evaluation: Question 1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

These are some screen grabs from my thriller opening and some screen grabs from the thriller opening of the thriller 'SE7EN'. I would say that we definitely used 'SE7EN' as an inspiration for my work as when I watched the opening of the film, I wondered what the rest of the film would be about and wanted to watch the rest of it - which is exactly the point of an opening. I also found some of the images quite disturbing, but very effective - the shaving of the fingerprints, the disfigured hands, the distorted inked writing. These things worked really well to denote a sense of psychological disturbance, in particular, that of an actual psychopath. We also wanted our work to denote a similar sense so we decided to film lots of strange, distorted images that wold showcase that our character is uncomfortable seeing them, which in turn would make the audience feel curious, as well as provoking tension in them. As you can see, we have some images of a book case and books and have edited them into quite grainy, negative images. Books, paper and photographs seem like a recurring motif in the opening of 'SE7EN' and we wanted to make this one of our motifs too, as it really creates a sense of history and makes the audience ponder about what the importance of the documents are - they usually end up being very important. We wanted to make our images look strange and seem as though they are not making sense, as in 'SE7EN'. Another motive behind choosing 'SE7EN' as our inspiration is that when the opening leads onto the beginning of the film, it seems as if all is back to normal. This is how we would have also wanted the next part of our film to be. We would have done this because the when there is normality, the audience would sense that something is going to go wrong or that the story plot is going to take a twist, which creates a sense of waiting and tension.It is also commonly known that when normality is disrupted, drama is created, which always grips those who are watching the film. The colour schemes are very different in the two openings. Where 'SE7EN' uses very sombre, cold colours, my film opening uses a range of different colours to show unsettlement, movement and slight chaos.

'SE7EN' title opening:

'Goodnight, Sleep Tight' titles:

Evaluation: Question 2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The character on the left, in the above image, is a a member of my group posed as George Matthews, the protagonist of my thriller. The image on the right is actor Daniel Radcliffe, posed as the fictional character of Harry Potter. Although the genres of my film and the Harry Potter films are completely different, the way in which the characters are shaped are very similar. Harry Potter is a average boy who lives in a house in England. There is not much drama in his life, it is rather boring and normal. In the same sense, George Matthews also lives a relatively normal, uneventful life. But both these characters are unaware of the drama that has been unfolding behind their backs their whole lives: in Harry's world, the whole of the wizarding world knew that he was a wizard, apart from himself; in George's world, he has been constantly watched by an old lady, but of course, unbeknown to him. Harry Potter's world is turned upside down when he find out that he is a wizard, and this information was conveyed to him by a particular person. George Matthew's life is also thrown into chaos when he realises that there is predator out to get him. I have chosen to compare the character of George Matthews to that of Harry Potter to covey the idea that when normality is disrupted, drama is created.

Evaluation Q.3&4

This short, 8 minute film is a low budget film, made by a student in university. He uploaded it on to YouTube and he got 42,001 views and a lot of positive comments. People are still watching this film, as its last comment was 5 days ago. He has used the internet to launch his movie to a wider audience. At first the movie was, probably within the university but then he might of decided to get a larger and wider audience. This movie might get spotted by a director and he might want to make a big film out of the basic outline. He could use the internet to distribute and market his movie and potentially reach a global audience. People can use the internet to advertise and sell their product for a reasonable price, sometimes for free on websites like Vimeo and YouTube.

EVALUATION- Q7- What do you feel you have learnt in the progression from your preliminary task to the full product?

Preliminary Match Cut Clips

A Clip from the final product- 'Goodnight Sleep Tight'

In our match cut we tried to capture a close-up of the characters' feet and hands to show suspense because the audience will not see the whole body, only parts of it, which will question them as to who it is? The close-up of the hand on the door handle was good I thought but compared to the close-up shot of the fan in our final product does not look too effective. In the match cut, the close-up of the hand in the centre of the shot shows a clearer picture, however it would have looked better if the camera was more close up or if it was shot from a different angle. With the shot of the fan, the camera angle captures the top part of the fan which shows some light coming through from the window as it spins around. This looks effective as the audience can see only a part of what is being shot making it look more spooky, thus creating suspense. I have learnt how to position the camera much better from the match cut to the final product and I have learnt what the 180 degrees rule is. When editing the match cut, I found it quite difficult editing and putting the shots together as I was new to using Final Cut Pro. However now, I am better aware of how to import and export clips and how to edit clips on Final Cut Pro. One of the shots in the match cut which I really liked was the close-up of the feet. I really found this shot effective as it was placed on a low angle which made the character's feet seem big, connoting power and dominance. Overall, I thought the match cut exercise gave me a little taster of what is expected of me to do in producing the final product. I learnt how to shoot a match cut and had experience filming with the camera as well as filming different shots such as medium close-ups and over-the-shoulder shots; this helped me to feel more confident using the cameras and more aware of what to do.

Task 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

When we were making the opening of Goodnight, Sleep Tight, we were heavily influenced by the opening of Se7en. When we first watched Se7en's opening, we found that it was rather good at creating a disturbed feeling in the audience, something we wanted to do with our opening. We managed to achieve this by having a montage of images and clips rather than a narrative opening.

Not only is it influenced visually, but the soundtrack used is quite similar as well. We liked the idea of having eerie, distant noises over actual music, and I believe we managed to create a good score thanks to various effects and samples from Soundtrack Pro.

Evaluation: 3&4) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? How will you attract/address your audience?

To release my film, I would use youtube.com. This is because youtube.com attracts a real, global audience. As my film is low budget and a student film, not many real institutions will buy it or distribute it. However, youtube.com enables students to upload their work for free and there are many student films that do in fact gain massive, global audiences. One example of this would be 'SMILE':

This is an extremely successful student film. It has over 443,000 views in youtube.com and numerous comments left by viewers, mostly positive ones. This film has reached a real audience, just as a formally released, professional film would have. Youtube.com would definitely be great way to distribute my film because it would enable me to showcase my work on a global scale - something that wasn't possible for a student before the online age! It would also be preferable financially as I would not have to pay for copyrighting, nor would I have to worry about the funds for up-keeping it. As a downside, I won't be getting any profit either!

I have many ideas about how I would market my film to my target audience. My target audience is mainly young people between the ages of 16 and 24 - this is because the protagonist of my film is a young male. As I attend college, I would begin to advertise there first. I wold create posters and print them in college and post them around various parts of the college, in particular the notice boards and in the media department. I would also upload a youtube.com link onto my facebook account, enabling my friends on facebook to have an easy access to my film. I have actual experience of some of my friends who have done this via facebook - they gained a large audience through this. As I have absolutely no funding to do any more advertising/promoting, I would also rely heavily on the word of mouth. Judging by the audience feedback, most of the audience enjoyed my film opening: this means that the people who enjoyed my work could talk about it and promote it to their friends and family. I would also advertise it to my own friends and family and assign them to help me promote it via the word of mouth and through their own social networking accounts.

EVALUATION- Q3/4 What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? How will you attract/address your audience?

This student film has had a massive 3,700 views on YouTube.

The video still has been having views recently as the latest comment on YouTube

about this video was posted 4 days ago:(it looks like lady gaga gone vampire :P lmao). As this short film is a low budget film, it starts of its promotion by embedding in onto local popular websites such as YouTube, so that it can be seen by as many people as possible. i think by putting it on YouTube raises awareness of the film because there are many links between these sorts of websites, which can help to inform others about the film. Also, by putting the opening as a little preview on chat rooms such as face book, this can help to benefit the makers of the film because young people are mainly the target audience for student films. So by sending out messages on face book to all friends would help to encourage people to visit YouTube or any other websites in which they must have put it up on to go view it. Also When a group of people or friends are all talking about a matter, for example the short film, this will persuade others to go and see it because it seem to be very popular with the people they know.. By targeting just a few viewers, encourages others to watch it thus becoming a wider audience all in time.

This short film is similar to our thriller opening as it is a low budget student film and it cannot afford to target a mainstream audience like 'Star Trek'. For 'Goodnight Sleep Tight' I would target the audience in several ways in which I know will not be too costly. Firstly, I would email or text my friends and family to inform them about our opening. I would tell them the possible websites that I put the video up on (YouTube, Face book, Vimeo) so that they could go and have a look.

I would give the viewers an option to give a small amount of money to us if they enjoyed the opening and want to see more because their funding can help us to make the rest of the film. I would also get most of my family together and have a little screening in my house or maybe hire a liitle cinema and invite most of the people I know including my friends and family. If I know I have less people expected to come than the full capacity in which the cinema can hold, I will spend some time making little leaflets and hand them out to people who I see walking along in the streets who are interested and i will inform them that it is a free event in which they do not have to pay for a ticket. However, I will encourage them to pay a little sum to make the rest of the film, only if they enjoy it at the end of opening and this will be harder to refuse after having a free screening and being asked face to face. However, before I do this, I would need to get as many viewers as possible to have a wider audience who are all interested and almost begging to see more! This will make them want to pay however much to ensure that they are promised to see the completed film very soon! Because it will be a free event, random people are more likely to attend and this can help me to promote the opening via word of mouth.

I will also try to get a local DVD shop to play our opening so that when customers come in, this can attract them thus helping to get a bigger funding for the making of the rest of the film. I will make posters and stick them up where i get permission to and make an arrangement with some local shopkeepers to hand out leaflets to customers. The aim to get 'Goodnight Sleep Tight' into cinemas will be to attract a local audience at first and hopefully make enough money from the funding as possible in order to make the rest of the film and potentially reach a global audience!

Evaluation: Question 8) PART 1 Audience feedback and comment

This is a 'word cloud' made of the feedback from our thriller opening. To create this, we collected the feedback of our opening and inserted them into a special website called www.wordle.net, which merged our reviews together to create the above image. The audience feedback was generally positive: as we can see, the words 'tension, 'diegetic', 'clear', 'psychological', 'shots', 'dreams' and 'enjoyed' are all particularly prominent in the word cloud. This is really positive as tension was something that we were definitely trying to denote, as well as the fact that our thriller is a psychological one. It is also very important that the word 'dreams' came up as this shows us that the audience understood what situation our opening was trying connote. I was particularly happy with the comments about the shots that we used: not only did our teachers commend the range of shots used, but our classmates also commended the quality of the shots that we filmed. Another very interesting thing that the audience picked up on and appreciated was our use of diegetic sound at the beginning of the opening; this really helped to denote a sense of normality, which was then disturbed by the dream, which thus created drama - we were very happy about the fact that this had an impact on the audience. In the above image, the word 'time' can be seen: some of the audience commented on the fact that the opening is a little short in length. This could be seen as negative feedback and at first, I thought that it was. However, I have now realised that the fact that it is not too long adds a sense of being a cliff-hanger, which creates tension and suspense, the two elements that spur a person on to watch a movie.

EVALUATION- Q2 How does your media product represent particular social groups?

'Goodnight Sleep Tight'/ 'The Fourth Kind'

Both of the stills from 'Goodnight Sleep Tight' and 'The Fourth Kind' are showing a white male sleeping, conveying that they are having difficulties trying to sleep. This immediately connotes that the sub-genres of this film must be a psychological thriller. However the mise en scene differentiates the two. The male character in our opening has a brighter coloured cushion with green and blue stripes printed on it. This connotes his age as being young as the colours indicate a childlike atmosphere. However, the much older male character in the movie 'The Fourth Kind' is resting his head on a plain dark brown pillow on a black settee. This indicaes a sense of maturity. Both of the characters' postures are similar as they are sleeping with their body straight.

The camera shots are also simialr as they are all medium close ups of the faces to portray the struggle that they are experiencing. In ' The Fourth Kind', one of the stills of the male character from the side has a different lighting and effect. This conveys that it may be a recording on a CCTV camera or that someone is watching him. Similarly, in 'Goodnight Sleep Tight' the shot of the female standing wearing black indicates a sense of surveillance as she too is watching the young male character in his sleep and the audience can see this because of the latching used between the two shots. However, the CCTV like footage in 'The fourth kind' suggests that soemone has been there phsyially recording him and the older male character is aware of their presence. In 'Goodnight Skeeptight' the young boy is seeing someone watching him in his dream so he is picturing the woman in black mentally, questioning the audience as to whether she is really a human being present in the world during the context of the opening or a spirit.

Evaluation Q.2

These two characters are similar because the are both ordinary people who experience something unpleasant.

Evaluation Q.7

Our Rough cut differs from our final one. This is because the first bit of our rough cut was a bit too long winded. However our final one has bit of the boring bit and then goes straight to the action. In the final one, the first bit was put in to help the audience understand what is happening.

Evaluation- Question 6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

EVALUATION- Q1 In what ways does my media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

As part of my evaluation, I have taken a 9 shot title sequence from the film 'Dean Spanley' and I have created a voice over, comparing this to our thriller title 'Goodnight Sleep Tight'.

Voiceover

'Goodnight Sleeptight' Titles

Evaluation Q.1

The opening sequence of seven is similar to ours because it has a lot of weird things happening in it, much like our one.
The last image is almost the same as when we cut the newspaper up in our opening.
The middle picture is the same as our opening when we was writing on the white board faded over the boy sleeping, the only difference is that we wrote on a white board and they wrote in a book.

EVALUATION- Q8 PART 1 Audience Feedback (Wordle)

We received mainly positive feedback from the audience about 'Goodnight Sleep Tight'. Many people thought the shots did not give away the whole story in the opening so this made them want to continue watching. They particular liked the shot of the fan spinning as they found it unique and different. The fact that there were latching shots and normal shots of the boy moving his head around the pillow frantically portrayed that he is having a bad dream and this helped the audience to notice the sub-genre of our opening, which was indeed a psychological thriller. However some also thought the opening should have been a bit longer and that it was a little confusing as there were many different, weird shots. On the other hand, this may also be a positive comment as one of our intentions was to make the audience confused to portray a spooky mood so that the audience would want to carry on watching. The weird shots, which we call the 'dream shots' are meant to show how the boy is having various, unusual thoughts to convey abnormality and portray a scary and mysterious feel.

Evaluation Q.8

This word cloud created on wordle shows different thoughts about our film. Words like 'enjoyed' and 'thriller' stands out. This shows that people have enjoyed our film and the film has reached its objective of being a thriller film.

Evaluation: Question 8) PART 2 Audience feedback on 'Goodnight Sleep Tight'

The feedback received from the audience after watching our title sequence was mainly positive. ( We do apologise that the videos could not be rotated)

Most of the reviews that we received from our classmates were quite positive, which made us feel very proud of our work! In some of the responses that we received, which we have not uploaded onto our blog, we were commended on the different camera shots used, as well as provoking thoughts about what the rest of our thriller film would be about. In response to this, Shopna said, "Our hard work has paid off!" and Sabrina said, "They were wondering what the rest of the film would be about - and that was something that we were aiming for!"

By Shopna Begum, Sabrina Chowdhury, Saadi Rashid and Nathan Toms.

Evaluation-Q8 PART 3 Audience feedback- 'Goodnight Sleep Tight' on the big screen!

This was filmed during the screening of 'Goodnight Sleep tight'.

EVALUATION - Q8 PART 4 Cinema Screening

Watching our thriller sequence on the big screen was a fantastic experience. I felt most proud to see our thriller title up on the screen in front of me. The audience cheered and applauded at the end which did show positive connotations and that they enjoyed watching it. The music and visual effects became much clearer in the cinema, which helped the shots to look more effective and the beats inside the soundtrack were much louder. This sounded almost like heartbeats, which helped to portray a suspicious, tense and mysterious mood.

Task 8 - Audience feedback

This word cloud I created on Wordle shows several points about our film. It is clear that people liked it, as there is a prominence of words such as "enjoyed" and "good". A specific shot that several people seemed to like was the shot of the fan spinning, as can be seen.

Some common criticisms seem to be that it should have been a bit longer, something that we as a group have decided would be an improvement if we got a chance to redo the film.

Evaluation: Question 5) Who would be the audience for your media product?

'Kyle, a nineteen year old gap year student who lives in his parents' apartment in London. He has an eighteen-year-old girlfriend named Samantha. After completing his A-levels in Chemistry, Biology, Physics and Psychology, and passing with straight A's in each subject, he decided to take a break from his intense academic life to enjoy being young. After his gap year, Kyle will recommence his studies and has accepted a direct offer from the University College of London to study Physics. Kyle can often be found in various, exclusive night-clubs, especially on Friday and Saturday nights. On these nights, Kyle can indulge in drinking alcohol but is not a regular alcohol consumer throughout the working week, nor does he smoke. He works in a high street store, H 'n' M, and due to his exceptional organisation and leadership skills, has already been promoted to assistant manager of the Oxford Street branch. His desire to experience life to the fullest pushes him to seek thrills, which has subsequently unsurfaced his love for thriller films, and in particular, psychological and crime thrillers. He enjoys these particular genres of thrillers because they often contain very interesting, complex story plots and require concentration to understand. His favourite films include: 'Psycho', 'The Matrix', 'The Silence of the Lambs', 'Touch of Evil', 'Unbreakable', 'Se7en' 'Memento' and 'Play Misty for Me'. Although Kyle loves life, partying and his friends, he is no less a family man: whenever he goes to the cinema, which he does every fortnight or so, he either takes his seventeen -year-old brother with him or his eleven-year-old sister, and sometimes both at the same time. On Sunday nights, he makes sure that he is at home to spend the day with his family and they he thoroughly enjoys the Sunday roast lunch and dinner that his mother prepares. Kyle's parents are high-flying, city workers and cannot spend as much time at home with Kyle and his siblings as Kyle would have liked.

On inspection of Kyle's over-the-shoulder sling bag, which he takes with him to work, the following was found:

A set of of BMW car keys; a wallet that contains three different debit cards from three different banks (Lloyd's TSB, HSBC and Nationwide), a Halifax savings account card, and about fifteen pounds of cash; we also find a copy of the Metro Newspaper, and a pencil, with the sudoku puzzle completed; there is a photo booth snap shot of Kyle and his girlfriend Samantha in his wallet; Kyle doesn't take a packed lunch to work because he purchases his lunch from surrounding cafes and restaurants; there is a pack of gum and a black Blackberry phone; there is also a can of red-bull, alongside a book entitled: 'Physics: The Laws of Motion'; an extra, silver tie was also found in the bag and a copy of the thriller film, 'Se7en'.'

Evaluation Q.5

Cedric, 17, a student from Hackney Community College. He studies Law, enjoys outdoor activities like sports and stuff, like's Lucozade and food. He likes films like Deja Vu, Die Hard, shops in JD and Foot Locker. He reads The Sun newspaper, carries his Debit Card, Oyster Card. Phone, iPod, College Id, Keys, Pen and Pencil. He goes on socialising sites like Facebook and Twitter, plays games on his phone and other portable devices like PSP, listens to a variety of music genres.