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

THE ROBBERY VS FIRST GLANCE.

Making the preliminary film contributed a lot to how the final film turned out. As a group we learnt many different ways to improve our film, and how to plan perfectly how we wanted everything to turn out, and make sure that we had the ideas clear in our mind so it was easier to do, and we understood how to do it ourselves without having to ask for much help. If it wasn't for the preliminary, i think a lot of things would've gone wrong with our main film, so i'm glad we got to do both, because it was really helpful to have an idea of the things that could've happened while making our main film.

PRELIM

In the preliminary film, we didn't do much planning. We didn't pay much attention to Mise En Scene, or Camera Angles. We just tried to get it all done and make sure the story was there, but we didn't pay any attention to the little details that can help make a good film, great. Also during this film, we didn't pay attention to the rule the subject must always be in the middle of the frame, and there shouldn't be much space between the top of the frame, and the subject's head. Also, during the preliminary when we was putting it together and adding sound, we didn't think of putting natural sounds together. We just used long scientific sounds, which made the whole thing seem a bit fake.

FINAL CUT

The improvement of our preliminary compared to our final film is extremely obvious. In the final film, we took weeks planning out exactly what we wanted to do and how we wanted everything to look, compared to the preliminary where we only planned for about an hour at most. One of the things we spent the most time planning was Mise En Scene. We had to make sure that everything was perfect before we started filming. We chose the outfits of each character especially. We wanted it to be obvious what each character was about, and we portrayed them pretty stereotypically. The main factor in whether or not this film would have had the desired effect was the location. We knew that we had to find the perfect alleyway, or the main part of our thriller opening wouldn't look right, and the whole thing would fall apart. With some careful planning, i think that we produced a great, and effective thriller.

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

In the process of putting this film together, i think that i have learnt how to use many different editing programmes, and i've become more able to research specific things, and come up with exactly the right results i wanted.

Google was one of the key websites that was used to help make our thriller. We had to research all the different type of things we wanted to incorporate into our film, and find out whether or not it would work as a thriller. We looked up different camera angles used in a thriller, what type of roles each person can play, the different genre's of thrillers, and how we could put a few together, to make our own genre which was suited to our taste.

Google gave us a lot of links to Youtube videos. Some of these videos were actual thrillers which we used to get inspiration for our film. We used Youtube to look at the lightning, location, shots, and other common features which are used in thrillers. Other videos that we looked out were just about sound. We wanted to get the most realistic sounds that actually sounded like they belonged in our thriller, so that we could make it more effective.

Final Cut Pro was the main programme that put together our thriller. Before these lessons, i had no idea how to use this programme, as i'd never used it before. In using this programme to make the film, i had learnt how to cut two different clips down the middle, and put them together so that it was like one clip had been placed in the middle of another. This allowed for the range in shot movement to be shown off to it's full potential and so that we could get the best out of our film.

Another technology i'd discovered through making this film was the programme Live Type. This programme could have been used to make all the titles for our film, but instead we used Final Cut Pro because we only used simple fonts. In Live Type, you can choose from a range of fonts and backgrounds to create the perfect titles for your movie. There are a lot of different colours and effects that you can add to your text, so that it can be suitable for whatever genre your film is.

By combining all these different technologies, i have found it really easy perfecting my film. Even when i didn't know how to do something in one of the programmes such as Live Type or Final Cut, if i wrote down my problem into the Google search bar, i was given a solution almost immediately.

6) Audience feedback and comment

This picture is full of the words that came up when students were asked what they thought about our film. The bigger words are the words which appeared the most. I am quite proud of the feedback that has come from our film. There were a few negative comments which i completely agree with, such as the lighting being a bit too dark, and the scream at the end sounding a little too fake. I was really nervous at first to know what other people would think of our film, but in the end i was surprised at the results. I'm glad that our thriller opening left people wanting to know more, and that it built up tension and even made somebody jump, which was our aim.

4&5) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? How will you attract/address your audience?

I have decided to distribute this film online using social networking websites. I think that because this is a low budget student film, this would produce a more successful result that if we had a cinematic release. Using these websites, it'd be quick easy to spread the word about of film, therefore hopefully gaining more attention, and hopefully a lot of views and downloads of it. I personally think that this is a good idea because there are millions of people around the world with access to the internet, and social networks. This way we can get a range of people around the world, with different interests, all together to view our film.

To start the process of distributing our video, we'd have to first upload it to YouTube.

YouTube is a website which is made just for videos. You can find almost any type of video here, and this makes it the perfect place to upload our thriller. You can rate, like, dislike, and comment on videos, as well as share the links to other websites such as Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter. This can help spread our video around the world, and the use of ratings and comments is a helpful feature which we can use to help us improve on our future films.

Once on YouTube, the video looks like this:

The next step in distributing this video would be to upload it to Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr.

When i upload the video to Facebook, it will be available for all the people on my friends list to see. I can upload the video to just my profile, or i can post the link onto all of my friend's profiles. If i do this, i'd be able to share the video with at least 300 people at one time and if i asked my friends to share the video with their friends, then it can be shown to more than 500 people in one day.

When posted on Facebook, the video would look like this :

Twitter is a really good place to share the video also. Here we can connect with celebrities and many other people from around the world. If we can find a celebrity who is interested in our film, it would be a good opportunity to use them to get their fans to watch the video also, which gives us more promotion and hopefully more people who would enjoy our film, and then spread it around to their friends.

Our film would look like this on Twitter :

Tumblr is a blogging site which is full of 'Indie' and 'Hipster' teenagers. On this site, you'd be bound to find many people who like this film. If i uploaded the film to my blog, all the people who follow me, would be able to see it. It's not that easy to share the video over Tumblr,  so i'd have to ask people to share it around for me, and pass it on to their followers. This website doesn't have much diversity in it's users, but as long as it shares the video, it doesn't matter.

If posted on Tumblr, the video would look like this : 

3) Who would be the audience for your media product.

I think that the type of person who would be interested in our media film is somebody who likes to watch unconventional films. This person wouldn't normal fit into any sort of crowd. They are really individual, and they don't make decisions based on other people. This is because our film is about a female who becomes obsessed with, and stalks other girls. In any other normal film, you'd expect the stalker to be male, if they were stalking female. Below are two character profiles of people who i think would stereotypically enjoy this film.

Male, 19, aspiring journalist. Loves online blogging, heavy metal music, and shopping in vintage markets. In his spare time, he writes short stories.

Female 23, student at a fashion college. Loves having nights in with a bowl of popcorn, snuggled up on the sofa watching horror movies, likes online blogging, and having girly nights out with her friends.

Now that we've watched our film back, i think that our target audience has stayed the same. We aimed for this film to reach out to people in their late teens, to early thirties, and i think that this still fits the same niche. I also don't really think there is a type of person who'd specifically go out and watch this film. I think this film is really open to a range of different people of all types of age, gender, and interest. There would be different aspects of this film to suit each persons' taste.

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

When we were brainstorming and coming up with ideas about how we want our film to look, and the way we wanted our people to come across, we looked to other films for inspiration. We researched how the 'typical' victims and attackers look like in thrillers. One of the films that we found inspiring for certain characters was 'The Stepfather'. I'm going to compare the murderer character from this film, to the stalker character in our film 'First Glance'.

 
Although in 'The Stepfather', you can see the man's face straight away, we used him as inspiration because he changes his appearance in the opening and is therefore in disguise.
 

He ends up making his hair all tidy, shaving his beard, taking off his glasses, and taking out his contact lenses which changed his eyes from brown to blue.
 
The fact that he is in disguise was inspiring for our group because we didn't want to hide the stalker person's face in our film, by having her wear a mask, so we used this idea of disguise as how we'd show her. Our disguise was to have her hooded, and in a dark light so that you could still see her face, but not completely.
 

 
This is a bit of juxtaposition because we left some light so that people could find comfort in the fact that you can still see some of her face, but also we wanted it a little bit dark so that she'd be mysterious, and also a little bit creepy. This person doesn't fit the stereotype of a stalker/murderer in a thriller movie, so it is a bit of an anti-stereotype, which makes quite a bit of an impact in this film, as stereotypes affect the way an audience member feels towards a character in a film.

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

SE7EN VS FIRST GLANCE

I am going to compare my film 'First Glance' with David Fincher's film 'Se7en'. I'm going to take 9 shots from each film, and compare them on the basis of similarities, and differences.

These are the opening shots from each film. On the top is 'Se7en', and on the bottom is 'First Glance'. The shots are completely different. 'Se7en' opens with a close up of a book. The lighting is dark, and adds mystery to the atmosphere, as we don't know what is going on. 'First Glance' opens up and we are brought straight into the action. We can see a girl walking towards us. There is a lot going on in this scene which is contrasting with the first film as it is very basic. One similarity in this shot, is the use of dark lighting, despite there being a lot of shops which add some light to the second picture.

These next shots are the title sequences for each film. These are the clips where the characters names come on screen. 'Se7en' was one of the clips we used for inspiration for our film. As you can see, these are extremely similar. We wanted to keep the titles extremely similar, so that most of the attention was kept on the action of the film. Both of these clips show black backgrounds, with white simple fonts. A difference between these two shots, is that the font in 'Se7en' is written in small font, and the font also flickers, where as the font in 'First Glance' is very simple, written in slightly bigger font and more basic font which doesn't move.

These shots are of the name of the directors. In 'Se7en' there is a shot of a drawing of hands. These hands are distorted, and there is a shadow passing over this to add more tension. Yet again, the creepy, flicking font is used. In contrast to this, 'First Glance' has stuck with the white simple font on the black background.

The next couple of shots in 'Se7en' are dark, flickering shots of close ups of various items. There are dirty fingertips clutching a razor, dropping a piece of paper, and soaking it in water, where as in 'First Glance' the storyline develops as we see over somebody's shoulder as they look at a picture of somebody, and stroke it. 

The 4 shots above are of how the title is shown in each film. The 3 small pictures are of how the title appears in 'Se7en'. I've shown this in 3 different pictures because it comes up really fast and flickering all over the screen, in several different font sizes. It also goes from a black background, to a background which sounds a close up of some grated edged cardboard. This is directly opposite to the way 'First Glance's' title appears. It appears on the screen in capitals, in a really big font. Also in the background is a 'boom' sound. This adds impact onto what would be a fairly plain shot.

Yet again, the next shots in 'Se7en' come flickered and fast so it's hard to keep up with what is going on. There are shots of a man cutting up pictures, and sticking them down, as more title come on screen. Meanwhile, in 'First Glance', we see the same girl walking toward us in the first shot, walk past the camera, and see a dark figure start to follow her.

More flickering shots from 'Se7en' lead to a shot of somebody blacking out words in a book. The lighting is still dark, and there isn't much sound. In 'First Glance' we are given the point of view of the person following the girl from the beginning. The music starts to build up here, so we suspect that something is going to happen.

The shots where the composer are a bit more similar. The one from 'Se7en' has changed from it's usual theme. Half the screen is turnt red, while there is a piece of paper with writing on it, in the background with the text flickering away in the corner. In 'First Glance', the screen has bit split into little boxes, and the title are coming on, around the boxes.

The ending of these films are also very different. 'Se7en' ends completely different to what was happening throughout the opening. There is no more flickering, and no more close ups. It ends on a wide shot of a city full of buildings, with some text saying Monday. 'First Glance' ends on a close up of the stalkers face, then a completely blank screen which contrasts to the fact that there was always something going on during the full opening.

Compared to Se7en, our thriller completely contrasts the conventions of a thriller opening, but compared to a stereotypical thriller opening, i think that ours is basically the same, despite having a female stalker.

'FIRST GLANCE' FINAL EDIT

WOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! WE'VE FINISHED OUR FINAL EDIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Making the titles and credits

After struggling for a long time, we decided on the film name First Glance. We feel that it fit in with what the film was about, and also it didn't give away too much about what was happening. Also, we tried to find a name for our 'production company', but there was nothing that we could agree on, so we decided to just use our initials, and come up with the name 'GTMR'.

Also we tried to find a font that wasn't too complicated, and that wasn't too plain. We also wanted it to fit in well with the type of film that ours is. We decided on MS Gothic.

Things that went wrong during filming

There were many things that went wrong during our filming that we hadn't notice while we were actually shooting. The main problem was light. There were many shots that we couldn't use because they were way too dark.

Another problem was the blurry camera. Some of the scenes don't flow properly because some scenes had smooth camera work, and others had a blurry camera.

The worst, and most occuring problem, was people walking into our shots. There were some people who found it funny to purposely stand in the way of our filming, and wave into the camera.

Things like this made it extremely hard to get the filming done, and concentrate on making sure it was done well.

'First Glance': Adding Sound

Here is our process of 'adding sound' to our final cut of 'First Glance':

Adjusting the volume of different sounds

Cutting down sound

Checking to see that the music flows with the film

Testing sounds and picking the most appropriate

Mixing sounds

Talking about the film

This is me talking about the film whilst still in character, with a special guest appearance haha.

Soundtrack Inspiration

For our soundtrack we wanted to find a beat that was dark and mysterious, and in a way reflected upon the concept we had for the thriller, making the audience aware of the danger in the film. As a group we decided that our soundtrack should begin quick and then get louder as the opening continues building up suspense and tension, making the audience aware of something bad that is to take an turn for the worst. We looked at many different artists and instrumentals when trying to get some ideas of what beats we liked, here are some examples that were crucial to our soundtrack experimenting:

We found all of the examples above good and fitting for our thriller opening, which meant we had many great ideas for how our soundtrack should sound and what the pace of the music should be making sure it fits with our thriller. 

However, due to copywrite we were unable to use these and so we just used them as inspiration instead for the instrumental we were to create.

Roughcut: BLOOPERS

Roughcut

Here is our roughcut:

Things that i learnt during the filming process

When i first started thinking about our filming, i thought that it would be easy in some aspects. As the process began, i started to realise that i was wrong, and there were many things i had yet to learn. Some of these things began to appear obvious from the moment things started to mess up, but some things took a while to notice, and sink in.

• The first thing i learnt was that we had to plan out each shot carefully before we did it. There were many times where we would just stand around, and think of what to do, and there were also times where we'd just have an idea pop into our head, and then try film it, even though we probably didn't need it, which led to alot of time being wasted.

• The second and most important thing i learnt, was that lighting is the key thing to consider when filming. There were many times where we'd film a scene which would go extremely well, but we wouldn't be able to use it because the lighting was too dark for us to see anything. Below is an example of the lighting problems.