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

Since we started making "The Watched" we have learnt how to operate lots of media equipment. The first thing we learnt was how to operate the video camera.  The photo below shows the camera we used. All of us had a small amount of experience with this technology.

We then learnt how too attach the Video camera to a tripod.                  

The tripod allowed to keep the camera steady and to get smoother shots. 

We also learnt how to use Final Cut to edit our film. We first learnt how to capture footage off the camera and then to select clips and build up a sequence on the time line. We learnt how to fine tune edits on the timeline. We also had to insert credits into our videos.

We used Garage Band for the sound in our film, but I had some experience on this program.

 

Who would be the audience for your media product? How did you attract/ address your audience?

Presentation

How does our media product represent particular social groups?

Our thriller opening represents the life of 16-24 year old men. The film consists of 2 boys walking on their own in a wood, splitting up and one of them being taken. With the title 'Watched' and the story line quite violent and thriller based the film would be rated as a 15. So the target audience would represent both men and women of all ages above 15. It would represent and be a typical stereotype of boys with a country lifestyle with very naive attitudes towards violence and kidnapping. This is what creates suspense and the unknown in our thriller as it is not expected to happen in such a small rural area.
The connotations of how the boys are dressed in simple country clothes, wellies and trainers and fleece's. Typical rural clothing.
The basic story line of the boys walking along the countryside keeps it simple and therefore even more thrilling and exciting when the action scene kicks in.
The soundtrack: The soundtrack makes a huge difference to the film. The genre of music can represent various social groups, as well as the age of people it appeals to.
Camerawork: The type of shot used in the film resented different social groups as the different angle resembled different peoples way of looking at things from their perspective. For example the point of view shot of the watcher in our film.

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

Here we are comparing our film to a proffesional film. We decided to compare it to Se7en as we can compare credits, shots and how the enigma is created. We used Final cut to edit pieces from our film, pieces from Se7en and voice overs from us so the viewer knows what we're comparing.

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

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

I would expect to see our thriller opening mostly on the internet. Youtube is the largest video sharing site with many other thriller openings that people have made. As our thriller opening is made on a very low budget with basic equipment, I wouldn't expect to see it competing for a place on cinema screens.

AS Media is new to us therefore we haven't experienced creating shots or editing before. This makes our film very unprofessional, we also are using our production team as our actors.

A production company such as '20th Century Fox' has an extremely large budget which they can afford to pay professional actors, producers and directors. They can also afford to use far superior equipment to film, edit and create scenes. This is why our film wouldn't be shown in cinemas or put on DVD.


You could also expect students to publish work on their social networking group as they want to share it with their friends on sites such as Facebook or Myspace. 

Feedback 1

Final Movie

Feedback 2

Production logo

Our Production Logo is very bright and very recognisable. We edited this on photoshop to make it so bright. It has our production company name clearly stated in the middle that is easy to read and very in your face.

Rough Cut 1

This is our first rough cut, we decided to get feedback after our rough cut so we knew the things we had to change.

Positives/ Negatives

What we did well
I feel as a group we worked very well together. We each did a bit of acting and we all contributed with ideas on our filming. Our editing went well including adding the soundtrack, although we could have got better sound effects if we used a different program that was available to us.


What we would change if we did it again
As we now have experience of making a film I think we would get a clear idea when we are storyboarding and try sticking to it as much as we can including all the camera angles and dialect as when we went filming our idea on our storyboard we changed it many times and when we went out filming we didn't have a clear idea what we had to do until we were actually there so this slowed our filming down. We would also probably use a better camera with more mega pixels are our film looks very unprofessional because of this.

Camera work

We varied our camera angles throughout our thriller sequence, specific ones we used were; extreme close up/close up/medium shot/long shot. The close up shots complimented certain parts as it was crucial for the audience to know what needed to be emphasized. The med/long shots were used when we needed to show more happening in one shot. More examples of camera work we used were establishing shots, point of view shots and an enigma shot with the close up of the kidnappers eye.The majority of our thriller was filmed using a tripod. However, we filmed hand held on the parts where the kidnapper was watching the two boys as this made it more clear to the audience that they were being watched. We also used night shot mode on the camera to make it more obvious to the viewer its a point of view shot.

Lighting

We didn't use specific lights to change our lighting as all of our film is outside. We aimed to do our filming in low key lighting but this was difficult as our filming is done outside so we had to choose quite a dark gloomy but clear day so the lighting would already be situated for us. On our camera we used to night mode to do our point of view shots as this changed the colours slightly so it's obvious they're point of view shots. We were rushing to meet filming deadlines so one of our shots there is frost on the ground as we had to film over the 'big freeze'. We did the majority of our filming at this time but we decided it wasn't working at all well with our film ideas so we went back out a few weeks later when the lighting and conditions were better. This slowed us down by a few weeks but fortunatly we hadn't got too deeply into the editing.

Sound

We did all of our sound on Garageband that was already installed software on the apple macs. We found it very easy to use as Fraser already had knowledge of how to use it. We used little diegetic sound for our film which consisted of speaking and the rustling of the leaves both by the mysterious man and the crunching leaves on the floor. We mostly used non-diegetic sound. We felt that this is best suited to our film. The non-diegetic sound we used were camera shot noises so it was obvious to our audience what the polaroid images were. We also used a background track of a piano which made it very tense. When the extreme close ups of the mysterious man came on we used a very dark and jittery sound effect, we also used this sound effect when our credits were shown.

Here is us adding music and sound effects:

We could also use Garageband to fade out our sound track and sound effects at the end so it doesn't end all of a sudden. As there was a lot of background noise such as birds and cars driving past on roads we edited this all out on Garageband. 

Editing

We all contributed with editing as we all had ideas. I was head of editing the movie and Fraser was head of choosing the music and sound affects, although it was all a team decision on what we changed. In our film we use various point of view shots, and so the viewer knows it's a point of view shot we used the night mode technology on the video camera. The editing program we used was Final Cut Pro, this was although it was quite difficult to get the hang of and we had to be helped a few times by our teacher when we got stuck.

So we could get perfect shots we repeated our shooting around 3 or 4 times per shot so when we uploaded it to the computer we could choose which was the best shot and edit the bits we didn't want out, this worked very well as it meant we didn't have to go outside filming time and time again until we get the right shot.

Here is us editing:

On our credits we used the technology Final cut pro offered as there are tools where you can disorientate and flicker the text, we feel this goes well with our film. We also faded out credits in and out on our film. We also put our polaroid shots in on the editing stage and we feel they go well with our film title 'Watched' as its as though these boys are being stalked.

Audience Research

Name: Adam
Gender: Male
Age: 28
Describe a thriller in one word: Enigmatic
What is your favorite thriller: Moon
What was the last thriller you watched: Se7en

Name: Sophie

Gender: Female

Age: 17

Describe a thriller in one word: Tense

What is your favorite thriller: The Knowing

What was the last thriller you watched: The Knowing

Name: Tom

Gender: Male

Age: 14

Describe a thriller in one word: Exciting

What is your favorite thriller: Fight Club

What was the last thriller you watched: Inception

Name: Laura

Gender: Female

Age: 16

Describe a thriller in one word: Breathtaking  

What is your favorite thriller: Die Hard

What was the last thriller you watched: Inception

Name: Spencer

Gender: Male

Age: 33

Describe a thriller in one word: Puzzle

What is your favorite thriller: The Shining

What was the last thriller you watched: Inception 

Animatic

When we started filming our ideas from the animatic we saw our idea would be too difficult to create, so we decided to change it as we went along making it a more exciting thriller and opening to a film.