AS Prelim task

AS Main Task " ADDICTED" Opening Sequence

Wednesday, 17 March 2010

Friday, 15 January 2010

Q2
How does your opening sequence represent particular social groups?



The main characters in our film are George and Michelle. George is a lonely geek and obsessed with Michelle. Michelle is a popular girl who is pretty and has the good looking boyfriend. This shows the main codes and conventions of thriller movies following the characteristics of the usual characters in thriller movies about stalker.


George:
We represent George as lonely and obsessive by using dark colours for his costume. characteristics well by only using point of view and not revealing his face which shows his loneliness and his paranoid behaviour. For example has the same characteristic as Miles in perfect stranger which is obsessed with Rowena. Wearing dark colours and having paranoid behaviour.

Michelle:
We represent Michelle as the pretty and popular girl that George is obsessed with. This is represented well as we do not show Michelle in the whole of our opening sequence. Which challenges and manipulates the audiences thoughts of what she looks like and why we have not her in the opening sequence. Michelle also has the same characteristics as Rowena in perfect stranger being the popular pretty girl that miles wants to be with.


In our opening sequence we had no cast because we decided to only use point of view shots; however drawing up our opening sequence we realized we needed cast and decided to use our sound manager to be our only cast. We decided to have no cast in order to make our shooting day easier and less stressful. Which did in fact help as our shooting day ran smoothly. It also made directing how I wanted the movement of our main character to be.




Q4
Who would be the audience for your media product?

The age group of the target audience is around 16-25 years as our main characters are young adults, which relates to our audience as young adults would usually watch thriller movies.

There isn’t a specific gender for our film as age ranges or demographic classification, but is important nonetheless. For our film, the gender of the target audience would mainly be males, though females could be attracted to the film also. The reason for this is that males like the idea of watching pretty girl being followed and are more attracted to thriller movies because of their mysteries. For example the thriller movie perfect stranger had mostly males as viewers and they were mostly aged between 18-29 being., as 75% of the thriller-viewers sample were students. For our film, this can be related to by the audience.

The majority of our target audience will be made up of students due to the age range. Also because of how around 75% of my thriller consumption research proved to be thriller fans.
The interests of our target audience are demonstrated mostly by other thriller films they like, so film reviews of films that we have associated with our film (such as Perfect Stranger and The Sixth Sense)are important, as shown above with the gender and age results I obtained from http://www.imdb.com/ and their user ratings.


We chose to target young adults who are students because it’s the kind of people that would watch our movie based on my target audience research. Also the films that they would have recently watched is: Pulp fiction, Physco, Fight club and the usual suspects.



Q5
How did you attract/address your audience?




Our opening sequence starts with off - screen diegetic and non diegetic sound combined together using adobe premium pro. By editing the non-diegetic background music (In Memoriam and Heart of hell) and combining it to the diegetic sound of our main character breathing heavily. This worked well because the heart beat from “Heart of hell” matched the heavy breathing and the soundtracks to make a dark, mysterious and scary sound in order to grab our audience’s attention. This was used as a sound bridge then showing the first shot of our main character sitting down with a mobile phone in his hand with the parallel sound continuing throughout the shot. Then a credit comes up (directed by) showing white writing on a black background a usual code and convention of thriller movies. Using the rule of thirds a shot where our character is dropping the mobile phone on the floor and the camera is showing he’s legs and the mobile phone near to his right leg, he’s left leg on the left side of the frame, a space in the middle showing the carpet and his right leg on the right side of the frame. The fact that the phone is left with the diegetic sound of it ringing and showing the name Michelle already introduces a new character without seeing her giving a clue to our audience about the narrative. All the titles come in-between a series of shots as they usually would in most thriller movies. Also the shot of him running with an edited dizziness effect which adds to our cinematography making the audience believe that he is actually beginning to feel dizzy. At the end of our opening sequence we edited all our shots in order to make it look like he passed out and is having a flashback including all the shots used in our sequence with a dip to white effect. Then fading into our bold white and intentionally blurred title “Addicted” the reason our opening sequence would attract to our target audience is because we have used the knowledge they know of thriller movies in order to attract them to our film using the codes and conventions and interpreting them into our film making our genre clear to our audience yet making our opening sequence original.


Q6
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

CAMREA

• Canon XH-A1
• Tripod
• External microphone
• Windshield
• XLR cable
• Tape
• Boomstick

EDITING

• Lacie drive
• Canon XH-A1
• Tape
• Fire wire
• Adobe Premium Pro







Filming techniques

• Rule of thirds
• 180 Degree rule
• Variety of shots- LS,CU,MS,MCU,OTS,ECU,MLS,ELS,POV



EDITING TECHNIQUES

• Adding Effects
• Digitizing
• Editing shots
• Cutting
• Assembling
• Adding Titles/Credits
• Editing Sound

Monday, 14 December 2009

Evaluation


Question 1


In what ways does your media product USE, DEVELOP or CHALLENGE forms and conventions of real media products?

The opening sequence for our film “addicted” follows the form of most opening sequences for our genre (Thriller) by incorporating the types of background music, credits and titles that would usually be used in thrillers, to add a sense of slow dark and mysterious theme to our opening. However we challenged the conventions of thrillers by creating our own style and interpretation using point of view shots in our opening sequence which entices and puts the audience in our characters shoes. We used this as an advantage to apply the codes and conventions of thrillers. Adding mystery to our opening sequence by not showing our characters face to the audience which keeps the audience watching. Also our beginning shots adhere to what most thrillers use to grab the attention of its audience. By using off screen sound and non diegetic sound to the beginning of our opening sequence.


Also we add clues as to what our narrative is about to keep the audience guessing the storyline and showing our genre by the mystery of the narrative and main character. For example this same method is used in James Foley’s “perfect stranger” starting by giving clues about the narrative in their first shot by using the big eye and fading it to their main character halle berry’s eye to suggest the fact that the eye and their main character are linked to their narrative. Also their beginning credits are slow paced with a mysterious and dark background music which also portrays their genre clearly to their audience. In this same way we have clearly shown our genre with the use and development of its codes and conventions and have incorporated it into our opening sequence.