Welcome to my blog

Hello I'm Megan, I'm 17 years old and currently attend Countesthorpe Community College (candidate number 7457). I started this blog at the end of August 2015 in order to complete my AS Media coursework. My group consists of three members in total, myself, Charlie Ball and Dan Neary and together we chose the brief to produce a film opening of around 2 minutes. We chose to produce an opening within the psychological horror genre and decided to follow many of the typical conventions within this chosen genre. I took on the role of main researcher, as I felt that this was my strongest point.

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

Social groups from Dan Neary

EVALUATION Question Six - Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in progression from it to the full product?

Among Her - Final Production

EVALUATION Question Five - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge conventions of real life media products?

EVALUATION Question Four - How did you attract the audience for your production?

EVALUATION Question Three - What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

EVALUATION Question Two - Who would be the audience for your media product?

EVALUATION Question One - What We've Learnt About Technologies From the Process of Constructing Our Production

Sound Manipulation

WORK BY DAN NEARY

Once we had collated all the footage and ordered the shots chronologically onto IMovie, I decided to do some independent research into typical, suspenseful sounds that would enhance the climax of our production. Using 'FreeSound.Org', I explored the various, existing sounds that had associations with the words, eerie, ambience, suspesne, climactic. This allowed a narrow search of specific sounds that would be of benefit to our production and therefore, was more efficient. For example: I found audio files that replicated a tense, climactic-build up, with 'clang'-like sounds embedded into the audio which gave the desired effect we were after. The fact that this audio was 'reversed' allowed the climax to be magnified further and this contributed to the tense atmosphere.

Afterwards, we decreased our search variation and focussed on the particular diegetic elements on freesound that were of better quality, rather than using original audio from our footage. Examples of sounds we collated included an old-record player (to synchronise with our own vinyl), an opening of a door & the washing of hands. Sounds such as these allowed the disruption of the narrative to become even clearer, as oppose to the quiet, confusing sounds generated from the audio footage. In particular, the use of an old-record player emphasised the eerie quality to our piece and therefore, created the impression of terror through the use of an out-dated feature. Our decision to use this record-player was influenced by our previous research of Sinister - where we established that the opening whirring sound of the video-recorder created a supernatural feel to the introductory shots. Therefore, by using a similar prop with an overlay of a static vinyl-recorder, the prop became more stereotypical of the genre & added to the peculiar aspect of the sound.


We also used 'Garageband' to manipulate existing soundtracks in order to add a more surrealistic pitch, tone & rhythm to the audio. We started by searching on Youtube for tracks that had influenced us from the Fallout movie sequences. An example of the soundtrack used in the opening title sequence was called: "Ink Spots-Maybe" & "Ink Spots - I don't want to set the world on fire". We believed that these tracks generated an eerie, slow paced atmosphere to the narrative, although, "InkSpots-Maybe" was decided upon as the music that is able to be most manipulated. This is an essential part of the editing  so that we are able to manipulate original sounds in order to eradicate the copyright restrictions.   

Final Title

Audience Feedback- Draft One

Company Logo - Adding the ident

With the logo design, I wanted to create an image that could be associated with typical horror conventions which helps to assist with the eerie opening that we desired. I experimented with alternative options that were available to me i.e. the different websites that would have enabled me to produce an animated logo/ident. My aim was to be more time-efficient when producing the design, as oppose to over-complicating the process and end with an ident & logo that did not meet our expectations. At first, I followed a variety of ident tutorials that showed me the process of manipulating existing images and text and make them an animated feature. The source 'Blender' was a website that I downloaded in the hope that it would enable me to create an ident that was aesthetic and less time-consuming. After numerous attempts, I decided to abandon this source due to the complexity of the controls, and focussed on being innovative with the given sources that were available - and thus, this saved-time.

I then sketched out different images that had an association with a dark, ambient atmosphere. These images included photos of a bright moon, silhouettes e.g. of a wolf, mountain range & bats. I collated all these images together & over layered them on Publisher - a simplistic, efficient source that I was very familiar with and thus, this met my aim. After around twenty-minutes, I decided that I needed a way in which to animate the image, which was somewhat impossible using  the Microsoft document on its own. I wanted the transition in colours of the moon to be consistent with key connotations of the horror genre. Therefore, by using a red saturation (on publisher), this allowed this desired effect to enhance the imagery, which we believed to be effective. Moreover, the use of the wolf & night sky used as the background connotes the idea of a sinister, immoral and foreboding nature and thus, this reflects our eerie intention. Furthermore, I used 'textfont' to generate a variety of fonts that gave the production name a professional look. We decided that the use of a white font would stand out with better quality as oppose colours such as reds and blues, and this is a typical ident convention in other professional titles within institutions. 

After the collation of images was finished, and I had created two identical logos (one with a red moon, the other, grey), I exported the design via a memory pen which enabled me to animate the logo on Final Cut Pro the following day. I used a minimum amount of editing to create the animation effect and therefore contributed to how efficient I was (taking approx. 5 minutes). I used additional fades and blackouts to combine the two images together. As a result, this created the effect that the moon had changed colour from grey to a saturated red, further denoted by the production name. To finish, I explored various opening sounds via freesound with the search tag 'cinematic'. This allowed me to find specific replications and typical sounds used by institutions to overlay the ident and thus, this created a climax to the moving image. Moreover, I wanted to synchronise a howl in order to denote from the wolf silhouette in the ident and therefore, this added to the realism of the image and further forebodes the mystery.

Work by Dan Neary

Re-filming our production

Today, we began the process of re-filming our production. Our main aims for this day were as follows:

1. Improve the lighting. Our main solution for this issue was to film the entirety of our production in daylight and use less of the outside locations, to still allow for a horror atmosphere.
2. Improve the consistency. The main solution to this is to show consistency with the lighting, but also to make the narrative flow by making it more straightforward.
3. Make the narrative more clear. Our main solution for this was to include more dialogue, as this allows the audience to gain more information as to what is going on and it allows the narrative to transition more smoothly as it will flow due to it being more consistent.

Below is a Flickr album of photos from today:

Film Title Research

Dan Neary

Shot List

This is our new shot list, which we created once we had secured a new plot for our production as of 9/02/16:

Major changes to our final production

After completing a rough cut of our production, we conducted some further audience research in order to receive some feedback on what we had produced so far. In light of the feedback we received, we decided that our best option would be to refilm our whole production due to elements such as lighting, time of day and lack of dialogue affecting the effectiveness of our production.

'The production did not have an impact on me as an audience member, as I did not find it engaging and felt that it lacked a clear storyline. There are also some issues with the lighting and the way that certain shots appear to be at completely different times of the day. I felt that because of things like this, it will not have the effect on the audience that you were aiming for.'
- Caitlin Wevill, audience member.

Problems with lighting
We encountered some issues with the lighting throughout our production, as we found that a lot of the shots either did not match the lighting of another in the same scene or that they did not reflect the time of day that our production was supposed to be set in. Also we found that in a lot of shots, it was just too dark for the audience to get a real sense of what was going on and we decided that this had a massive negative impact on our overall production and narrative.

For example, in the shot to the left it appears to be around midday, or a time of day when there is plenty of light. As this was our establishing shot for the production, this would give the audience the impression that the film would be set during the day, which made the rest of our shots inconsistent as a lot of them were shot in very dark lighting. This affected the overall consistency of our production, and was one of the main reasons that we made the choice to refilm.

This is an example of a shot that we felt was much too dark to fit in with our production. In comparison to the lighting of the shot above, it is a drastic change and having the inconsistency with the lighting will affect the audience's perception of the narrative. The difference in lighting may make the story line unclear for the audience and this will not allow it to have the full impact that we are aiming for.



Lack of dialogue
Another major factor that impacted our decision to re film was the overall lack of dialogue, which in addition made the narrative very unclear at points. We felt that if we had added some dialogue in at certain points, such as when she enters the caravan, the whole purpose of the scene would have made a lot more sense to the audience. Adding more dialogue will be something we will consider heavily when we are able to re film.

Unclear narrative

The shot to the left demonstrates one of our major issues with our production, In this scene, it was unclear that the caravan curtains were drawn suddenly as this was barely visible in the scene. If the audience did not notice this small but vital detail, the entire narrative would be unclear, making our production inconsistent and hard to understand. For this reason, our aim is to create a new narrative that will be more straightforward and clear to the audience, but still have a dramatic impact.




Over the upcoming half term, we have made plans to re film our entire production on the date of 16/02/16, with our new narrative and new actor. All members of our group have agreed that this is the best decision for our production, as we would not feel confident continuing with the footage that we have at the moment. To achieve the impact and the effect that we are aiming for, re filming our production is the best option.

Institutional Regulations

There are several institutional regulations when it comes to filming. We have to rate our film based on the BBFC categories. We decided to go with an age rating of 15, due to content that may be unsuitable for younger viewers. There is no explicit language or any sexual scenes/reference to drugs, however some scenes may be upsetting, and being a horror film, it will contain some scary scenes. There are some legal issues that could come to light too, such as product placement. We have no right to use certain brands of food/clothing in our production, therefore we must avoid them. We cannot harm anybody taking part in the production either due to the ethical issues that would be brought up.
- Charlie Ball

25/01/16 Update

This week, our main aim is to complete the editing of our final production, now that we have completely finished filming. We have already begun the editing process using Final Cut Pro, and so far there has not been any major problems.

Location Choice Analysis

Text written by me, presented by Dan Neary.

19/01/16 - Filming Day 2

Today we completed our second and final day of filming our production. We felt that overall today was a more successful day of filming, as Saturday was more focused on finalising our plot, whereas today we were able to work on filming a wide variety of shot types to vastly improve our production. We decided to re-film certain sections of our footage because we felt that it would be improved by having different lighting or being shot from a different angle. A scene that we completed re-filmed involved our actor being woken up by a phone call and we re-filmed this in order to give a wider variety of shot types and to work in some more match on action. We also filmed more shots inside the house to provide a variety, as on Saturday we focused more on the outside shots.

Pre Filming Plan

As we approach our second day of filming, it is important for us to make sure that the weather was similar to the first day of filming, in order for the lighting/atmosphere to be the same. The forecast for Tuesday 19th January was as follows:

Maximum Temperature	6 °C	14:50	Minimum Temperature	-2 °C	00:20
Maximum Humidity	100 %	00:20	Minimum Humidity	81 %	16:20
Maximum Rainfall	-- mm		Minimum Rainfall	-- mm
Maximum Pressure	1020 hPa	07:50	Minimum Pressure	1018 hPa	00:20
Maximum Radiation	-- W/m2		Minimum Radiation	-- W/m2
Wind Speed (Max)	5 mph	09:20

The overall temperature would not have had an affect on our filming, but we had to check whether there is any chance of rain, as this would alter our filming conditions. Luckily, there is no rainfall forecasted for this day.

Filming Space

This is a floor plan of our filming space, which will obviously be subject to the shot that we are filming at the time and the location that we are using.

Filming Day 1 - 16/01/16

Today we completed our first day of filming for our final production. Whilst we were actually at the location, we decided to make some changes with our plot and are very pleased about the progress we have made so far. We aim to continue filming on Tuesday afternoon (19/01/16), with the hope that we can complete our filming and move on to the editing stages.

Shooting Schedule

Plot Blocking/Flowchart

Preliminary Task

Today, we filmed our preliminary task, which we will soon edit and I will upload it to this post. 

12/01/16- In today's double lesson, we completed our editing of the preliminary task which we then uploaded to YouTube.

Final Pitch

Storyboard - Preliminary Task

In today's lesson, I completed a storyboard for our preliminary task to complete our planning for this task.

Shot list - Preliminary Task

Tomorrow, I will complete a storyboard to visually demonstrate these shots.

Cast

We had to change our original actor for our production, due to some unforeseen circumstances that meant that she could not attend our planned days for filming. However, we were able to quickly find a replacement, someone who me and Dan had previously worked with in GCSE Media Studies - Caitlin Wevill. We picked her because she has previous experience with the subject, and understands what it requires. As a group, we will have to adapt our plot and filming schedule to suit the change of actor, but we should have no problem with this and it should not slow our progress with the production.

Online Tutorials- Filming

Today, I found this tutorial called '10 Tips for Beginner Film makers' and there were some key elements of this video that I thought would be useful to apply to our own mindsets when we approach the filming process. The first tip was to have some practice, as we would learn a lot more by doing practical work. This is useful for our group to consider, especially in the way that we approach the preliminary task as this is vital practice which will help to improve our own production in the long term. Another tip was to utilise the amount of resources that are available to us online ,such as YouTube channels and blogs, which are free to use and provide valuable information. One of the most important tips was to spend a lot more time on the planning and preparation of the film, as this will allow our group to be more confident with what we are producing. In addition, one of the last few tips was to not focus on the quality of the camera or the equipment, as the quality of the story is much more important.

I found this video to also be useful, as it goes over lots of different camera shots. This really demonstrates the variety of shots that we could use for our production, and displays the effects that each type of shot can have for the audience. This video would be good to act as something that our group can keep referring back to to improve our production, especially when we are working on our shot list soon.