Sunday 10 April 2016

Evaluation part 6

Question 7:

" Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? "

Throughout this project to create our title sequence, I feel that I have acquired a new set of skills and more knowledge on the subject and how films are funded, put together, created and even altered throughout the process of being made. I feel that I've learnt the skills needed to edit footage and assemble it in such an order to covey a particular genre, for example, my genre was a sub genre of sci-fi - dystopian so i had to research into similar films and see how they were done. As we worked in groups, we assigned ourselves certain roles to fill in the group, so when it came to editing my group member Tyrell was lead editor and as I was lead cinematographer, I had to make sure my camera shots were up to a good enough standard for him to edit to make it conventional to our genre. Furthermore, Tyrell and I worked closely on editing together as well as cinematography. This gave us both a second opinion on what each of us was doing and we constantly gave one another constant feedback. Another member of our group Jacob was in charge of sound, so he researched into soundtracks for dystopian films and as a group we found a soundtrack that fitted well into our title sequence. Thus making me feel that I've learnt how to manage my time and efforts efficiently and I've also learnt that constant constructive criticism from myself and m group members and even teachers as well as classmates is essential in making the final product perfect.

Furthermore, I've learnt that research and planning is key in progression when making a film plot and title sequence. This is because as we chose a challenging genre, we had to know what exactly made a dystopian film dystopian. So via research we had to take notes on what was conventional and we then applied these key features, ambiguous plots and micro-features into our own title sequence to make sure we do it right. Planning was a major issue at the start of this project, there was lack of communication within the group which ultimately lead to differences and made it harder to work on the project as a group as none of us had any idea what the other member was doing or when. So, in order to fix this issue we set up a group chat and would inform one another what we were doing, arrangements could get planned days in advance and then things became much more organised and made our lives easier. This helped us much more so we even had time schedules for when to meet in the half terms, what equipment we'd need and what time etc, which ultimately lead to a more organised team and made us work better. 


Personally,I had issues with attendance and I realised that this was making it much harder to get work planned and made it harder for the group. This was right at the start but i then improved my attendance and even came into school in my half terms and stayed behind to get work done as i knew it wasn't fair on m group members, so i learnt that punctuality is needed as it's fairer and more efficient to have all three group members working at the same time. This also improved and made communication easier as we could all talk face to face, this was a huge improvement to our groups productivity as well as our final outcome. So i have learnt that it is essential to make as much effort as possible and pushing yourself as far as you can go to get the best results you can possibly produce, but i digress. 

Looking back at our task I'd say that as a group we have learnt a lot on how to communicate and plan things as well as research appropriately for our needs. Personally i feel that I've come a long way as I'm much more equipped in the sense I'm more informed and experienced in editing,cinematography and the media industry in general.There was  task to look into possible studios that would distribute our films, so using previous media knowledge I took the initiative to apply my current knowledge and research into "The Big Six" studios as i knew that these were vital media institutions that are very successful and also have history in distributing blockbuster films, so inevitably my knowledge about these conglomerate studios increased and i learnt a lot more about the industry.

In conclusion, I can confidently say that I've learnt a lot. Whether that'd be with personal issues, group issues or problems or even technical difficulties and errors, I now know how to improve this and fix these. I still criticise myself for lack of effort at the beginning of the project and i also criticise my group for early communication problems and minor issues that could've been resolved sooner. However, i believe that once we over came our difficulties and we all put in a lot of effort in resolving things, planning events and scheduling things better we improved and made our title sequence the best we could possibly do.







Saturday 9 April 2016

Evaluation part 5


Question 6

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

Evaluation part 4

Q:4 - who would be your audience for your media product?

Q:5 - How did you address/attract your audience?
For questions 4 + 5, we as a group decided to answer them together due to them being very similar.Our group  response via video
Question 4+5

I thought by presenting our work this way it would attract/address our audience, we listened and read through multiple amounts of feedback from our classmates and teachers. We ensured that we took their feedback, listened to their wants and needs and made sure we made the improvements in order to please and appeal to our audience.This is also a good way to show what we've learnt throughout our coursework. 

Evaluation part 3

Question 3

Evaluation part 2


Question 2

Evaluation part 1

Question 1

Evaluation for our title sequence

For our title sequence, we made sure that we all worked and followed closely to our given brief and specification for our title sequence for our movie of 'Genesis: The Uprising'. My group, included Jacob, Tyrell and I, and we assigned ourselves specific roles to have in our group project. Tyrell was lead editor, jacob was in charge of sound and i was in charge of cinematography... anything else we done and decided as a group. At first, for our title sequence and movie, we decided as a group that we wanted to essentially make a movie that would hold as a Dystopian/Sci-Fi movie - which is essentially a sub-genre. We wanted to challenge ourselves as our teacher said about how easy and conventional typical genres were, e.g horror and thriller. The reason this was a challenge was to create this genre, there usually needs to be a budget of some sort and as we are all students, our budget wasn't high at all. The narrative of our movie consists of a dystopian future with different cults and groups forming who aspire to take down the government of this society, however, the government is in fact one step ahead and are planning to overthrow and eliminate these groups and, they are tracking their every move via CCTV and found footage being sent to them. Our title sequence sets up for the rest of our movie as the plot/narrative is briefly introduced through the beginning of the movie via our title sequence.

Our title sequence sets up enigmas as the title sequence is quite vague, although our plot and genre are clearly conveyed throughout the sequence, there's still bits that leave the audience unsure of what's happening. This is through the government having complete CCTV coverage of the cults within our fictional world and the audience is left to wonder why, what their purpose is and so on. So without complete context it's difficult to understand what's going on, but it' still intriguing as the audience wants to find out.

In conclusion, I feel as though the title of our movie 'Genesis: The Uprising' fits well with the narrative of our movie as genesis means the beginning or creation of a something. This "dystopian future society forming and creating cults in order to overthrow the government and, how this society simply has to find a new way of living due to the new world order set by the higher classed government." - This is what our group decided our narrative was and uprising meaning that their will be a social uprising which is fitting for the narrative of our movie as this links well with the cults rising up together in order to take down the government. The genre of our movie is a sub-genre of Sci-Fi, which is Dystopian.

Half term editing

Tyrell and I met up during the half term and went into school to edit our video that we created for our evaluation. We both worked on editing but I mainly focused on editing the evaluation questions and Tyrell went over our title sequence to make sure everything was perfect.We actually managed to get all three of our video evaluation questions edited and uploaded.
In order to edit our 3 answers (via video) for our evaluation on our title sequence, we have decided that we will come into school within our own time during the half term in order to edit the answers using Final Cut Pro.
As the Deadline approaches, Tyrell, Jacob and I have decided to begin recording and planning ideas for our evaluation for our title sequence. Today, we used a tri-pod, a camera, high-key lighting and, a greenscreen behind us. We decided to use a greenscreen for the recording process of our evaluation as we thought it would be best to screen our title sequence behind us whilst we provide our answers to the camera. We brainstormed all of our answers for our evaluation the day before and have now gotten around to recording 3 answers to 3 of the evaluation questions. This leaves us now to edit the recorded parts of our evaluation and, for the other remaining answers, we will be answering them in another digital and interactive format 

Further improvements

Today, Tyrell and I decided to improve our title sequence by incorporating all of the feedback we had previously received and, improving our title sequence. We have changed the font to a more simple yet sci-fi visual representation , but we kept the Dark Underground font for the end titles of the sequence. Furthermore, we decided to space out where the names would pop up throughout the sequence. Finally, we decided to incorporate the found footage, cam-corder feel to our updated Rebels scene is this was what was mentioned during our feedback. 

Title Sequence second draft

For our screening of the second draft, improved version of our title sequence, we received again another set of feedback from our class mates and our teacher in terms of what has been improved since the previous screening. We received praise on things such as: the lead government man (kaseem) pointing angrily at the CCTV board and, the re-shoot of our Rebels scene. Upon editing, Tyrell actually found that our original Illuminati sequence that featured a focus pull with Jacob was still on my Apple Mac. So, we all decided to add this version into our improved title sequence. Classmates felt as though the narrative was conveyed much clearer than previously and, that the re-shot version of our Rebels scene looked much more fitting compared to the original Rebel scene. However, some feedback that we had received was that people weren't too fond of our font choices and, felt as though the appearances of the text on screen was out of place. Also, some classmates felt as though our Rebels scene should be similar to The Scavengers scene in terms of also including a found footage, handheld camera filter. All feedback on this day has been taken into account and will be added and improved to our official final version of our title sequence. 

Preparation for our evaluation

For our evaluation,Tyrell,Jacob and I have sat down within our own spare time in order to start preparing answers for the 7 evaluation questions. We made a variety of mind maps for 4 of the questions that we decided to answer. We brain stormed ideas for each of the questions that we chose. The 4 questions we chose was:
  • " What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product ? "
  • " Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product ? "
  • " What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why ? "
  •  " How did you attract/address your audience ? "
After brainstorming our ideas for these 4 questions, we decided to present the answers for these 4 questions in particular through a fun interactive media technique which was to film it in front of a green screen. We decided to play our title sequence continuously on repeat through the duration of our answers. For the remaining 3 other questions, we decided we were going to experiment with other fun interactive techniques by using things such as: PowerPoint, Prezi and actually posting blogs on to Blogger. 

Mistakes while filming

Whilst filming for our title sequence, there was a variety of things that could be deemed as a mistake that occurred at different times. When going to film at The Shard building, we decided not to use the tripod in order to get the panning shot, tilting from the top of the building to the bottom. As a result, when it came to uploading the clips onto 'Final Cut Pro', we found that the shots we took came out as shaky as we used a handheld camera. This was a learning curve for me as lead cinematographer and when editing, Tyrell then had to find a different shot that we took and reverse it on Final Cut and, we used the 'Stabilisation' effect to ensure it wasn't shaky. 

How we got the CCTV Government scene

Jacob, Tyrell and I managed to go to our schools library (the 'iBrary') and shoot an extra scene with the Government Leader (actor Kazeem). As Tyrell had previously created the 4 different pieces of CCTV for each cult and group and put them all together, he put a big red cross over each one to insinuate to the audience that Kazeem isn't of favour or the cults and simply wants to take them down. Tyrell created this using Photoshop. The scene we shot today shows Kazeem pointing furiously at the different groups, with over the shoulder shots and close-up shots of him done by me. Once the shooting for today was finished, Tyrell proceeded to go and edit the footage using 'Final Cut Pro'. He incorporated the recently shot scenes into the beginning of each cult members being shown within the title sequence in order to make it clearer for the audience to understand that what is being shown links together with the government scene from the beginning of the sequence. 

CCTV Footage on governments screen

In order to make the Government scene stand out more and be more noticeable in terms of following the plot, I have decided to create a poster including all 4 CCTV footages from all 4 of the cults/groups. This part of the scene will be used when the leader of the government is delivering his speech for his hatred towards these groups and that he wishes to execute them all and take them all down. The poster includes all 4 of the cults through CCTV and will have big red crosses over them to show that the government will take them all down.

Our Title Sequences Title

We created the title for our movie, by using an effect on 'Final Cut Pro' called 'Tumble 3D'. This made the titles pop up on screen and then slowly but then rotate/flip away backwards into the background. We used the font of the 'Dark Underground' in order to get the dark, bold and gritty font, which fits the theme/genre of our title sequence as it's a visual representation of what we're trying to achieve via visual aesthetics. Our lead editor Tyrell also decided to use the 'flashing' effect over the text so that it stands out and is eye-catching while also keeping it effective in the aspect of keeping the chaos.  

Order of credits

This is the order in which our title sequence credits go:
1. " 20th Century Fox Presents "
2. " A Film Directed by Ridley Scott "
3. " Tom Hardy "
4. " Gemma Arterton "
5. " Idris Elba "
6. " Matt Bomer "
7. " Produced by Sam Raimi "
8. " Edited by Tyrell Bibbiani "
9. " Cinematography by Danny Wright "
10. " Executive Producer Elina Roditou "
11. " Soundtrack by Danny Elfman "

12. " Genesis: The Uprising "