Completed film intro

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

The main genre of the film itself is the superhero genre, which was chosen because it was an appealing concept which suited what all of us in our group would be interested in and would want to make, as well as the recent boost of the genre with popular films such as The Dark Knight, Watchmen, The Incredibles and Kick ass. The Dark Knight in particular has received universal acclaim, proving the genre is a successful one which would appeal to all age groups and almost all tastes. However, for our film opening we wanted to avoid what people would normally expect and instead opt for something new.

These examples of films open with exciting scenes that cut straight into the action, although by contrast, The Incredibles creates a fairly calm setting before cutting into its opening chase a minute into the film, the idea being to establish its main characters. We wanted to take a fairly similar approach by establishing our main character in a friendly environment at home going through a daily morning routine, although this is carried out across the two minutes of our film opening as we wanted to show our main character could be anyone. This creates interest instantly and entices the audience differently to what had been done before.

With our film we challenge forms of media by not showing our main characters face. Normally in any film the main character is always seen as he is the hub of the film and it evolves around him. With our film not showing his face it challenges normal films and therefore makes it unique and individual. We develop on normal conventions in media with the character that is killed being innocent, this is usual in films as it creates emotion in the audience.

Q.2 How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Q.3 What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

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

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Q.4 Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our main target audience would be 16-25 year old males with an interest in action and/or superhero style movies who are looking for a fresh and interesting take on the genre.

A range of young males who have been reading comic books since they were younger. More than 90% of the readers of mainstream superhero comics are male (1995) so this is why we've mainly targeted it at males. Also people who have seen movies in a similar vein to our production such as ‘The Watchmen’, ‘Kick Ass’, ‘Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World’ or ‘The Dark Knight’. Typically, 16-25 year old males would be interested in a fast paced action film.

We wanted the film to be darker and different from the now family orientated comic book/super hero films. That part of the film isn't overpoweringly obvious.



As our film changed to a thriller the audience would still attract a young generation but also it would start to attract the older generations. This is because the people in their 40's-50's grew up during the cold war when spies and sabotage was real life. Therefore they will be interested in thrillers because they can directly link to what was happening in the cold war, stuff they witnessed and can relate to.

Q.5 How Did You Attract/Address your Audience

GoAnimate.com: How Did You Attract/Address your Audience by whiteisaac15

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We tried to attract the younger audience by using cool, exciting music. if we have cool exciting music the younger generation will relate the film with the music they are listening to. Hopefully if they like the music they will download it onto there ipod or mp3, therefore when they listen to it they will relate it to the film and hopefully see it again or tell there friends about it. If the music is catching attention with the younger audiences it will bring a lot more of them to see the film.

Q.6 What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Evaluation 6

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One problem we found with technology was with the editing. We used adobe premier for the editing and straight away the problem we encountered was with the rendering. It took along time to render anything we did and so added to the already long time of editing itself. We also found problems with importing sound into our film, especially with our recordings with our narration. Even though there were problems with the sound levels, there was the technology to fix it. So we found out that for most of the time there was technology to solve problems we encountered.

Q.7 Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

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

One problem we found with our preliminary task was with the script. We had no script for our preliminary task so when it came to acting and saying lines it was made up on the spot and not well thought through. This resulted in the lines maybe not working well with the film and not at the right times. Therefore for our film intro we wrote out a script before hand so we could see if it would work or not and if so we could change it without it being rushed. Because of this the lines in the film worked and did not sound out of place.

Production company name

We decided to call our production company crescent moon. We decided to call it this because using the word crescent suggests something curved, something unusual, not boring and straight like everything else is, this is what we want are films to be like, a bit different. We also used the word moon because it suggests of coolness, with its grey, sophisticated colour. It's also out there, far away from anything normal, so like the word crescent it is suggesting something a bit different.

Changes to our film intro

It became apparent during our final stages of editing and putting the film intro together that the intro did not make complete sense and the new york filming went on for way too long. so we decided to change the intro completely around to make the storyline work and keep the audience intrigued. We decided to put the alarm clock going off at the start of our film intro so it grabs the audiences attention, with the animations. And after this we would have the scenes of the character waking up and the quick shots of him getting his breakfast. This therefore sets up the rest of the intro as we get to know and relate to the character straight away. We then have the scenes of the character going out of the house into the street. After this we put the filming of the car hitting the character and killing him. This now breaks the equilibrium of the both the character getting hit and the main character that hit him, and sets up the rest of the intro. Isaac filmed scenes of the main character packing his bags as he try's to escape from what he had done. This is now therefore changing the equilibrium, as the character is wanting to change his life. Then we used shots of a plane taking off and landing to a give a clear indication that the character is moving abroad. After this we put in the new york shots, were the character has fled, and hopefully a new equilibrium for the character. This whole storyline makes it a lot more clearer and easier to understand what the rest of the film would be about, the character trying to get his life back on track. This though is a very basic and rather predictable storyline so we decided to shake it up a bit with a twist at the end. Since the character hit the man with his car we have had him narrating over the film talking about he has to get away. This give the film a very personal feel and also tells the audience of the characters worries and feelings so they feel like they know the character and feel what he is going through. But to finish the film we decided for the character to give a enigma for the rest of the film and so keep the audience watching. We decided the character would, in the narration, say how they would find him or know about him. This therefore creates the enigma of is there someone chasing him? or does someone know what he did? and also if so why is he so scared of them? This then therefore keeps the audience intrigued and wanting to watch the rest of the film to find out what happens.

Final day of filming

For our final day of filming we started off filming the character leaving his house and walking onto the street. We got Dan Finn to act as the character and used the outside of his house for the filming .

The first shot was a high angle shot of the door being opened and slammed shut. We used the high angle shot so we did not see the characters face and only his legs so his identity is still kept hidden. We then had to film the character walk onto the street so we had to use the 180 degree rule to keep the continuity of the piece. All this time we are filming only the lower half of the character so we do not see his face. Next we had to take a shot of the car going around the corner. We had a problem with this as there was a lot of grass at the corner and as it was meant to be in new york we had to angle the shot so we did not see as much. We had to take a few takes of this because the car that Isaac was driving had to be in the right position to get the shot. We then had to get a shot of the inside of Isaac's car to show the audience what it looked like, we took the shot from the back seat so it looked like it was from a passengers point of view. Then we had to show a shot of the car driving along to give the idea of the speed it is travelling, to do this we took a high angled shot of just the wheels of the car then in editing we will speed it up to give the idea of it going much faster.

After this we travelled to Sophie's dads house to film the character in the bathroom washing his face. We soon encountered a problem as there was a mirror in front of the sink and when filming the character you were able to see his face in the mirror. We overcame this problem by steaming up the mirror by using a kettle. This worked really well as the character looked like a blured figure in the mirror, giving it a really cool effect. The filming went well with shots of the character turning on the tap and splashing water in his face, these shots were filmed for a short amount of time to give the idea of the rush to get ready in the morning. We then travelled to Isaac's house to film the last parts. For the character walking down the stairs we used a low angle shot but not low enough to see the characters face. We used this type of shot to give a view of a person looking up the stairs. We then were able to do the shot of the character eating the bagel as we brought some before hand. We are going to use stock animation of the bagel being eating so we took a shot of the bagel on the plate every time a bite was taken. We decided to do this as it gives are film a different edge to it. When taking the shots of the bagel being cut we realised that it took to long to show the whole bagel being cut in half, so we decided to speed it up when it comes to editing it. After that we went outside to film the final shots of the character being hit by the car. For this we decided to take a high angle shot of the character falling over on the bonnet of the car so you don't see the background and therefore still believe it is new york. The final shot we did was an inside the car shot of the character rolling on the bonnet. We decided to use this shot because it is a point of view shot of the accident, and gives a personal feel to the film.

First day of filming

For our first day of filming we went to Isaac's house to film the shots of the character waking up and getting ready to go to work. Our first shot was of the character hitting the alarm clock as he woke up. For this we had to give the bedside table the alarm clock was on a messy look, so we put some money and bits and pieces to give it an authentic look.

 We decided to take two shots of each shot so we can chose between the two and pick the best one. The next shot we did was of the character cracking an egg and putting it in the frying pan. We were going to take separate shots of the character cracking the egg then of it being put into the frying pan. The cracking of the egg went well but when we were putting it into the frying pan it didn't look very realistic so we decided we would cut some of it out so it only showed it hitting the pan.

 We then had to shoot the shots of the character turning on the kettle which went well, and of the kettle reaching the boiling point. With this shot we decided to have a close up of the switch switching of to show it has reached the boiling point.

Then we did the shot of the mug being put down on the table. We decided to use a low angled shot of the cup being put down and then a high angled shot of the water being poured into the kettle. We realised that when we had the water being put into the mug we didn't show the tea bag being put in, so we decided to do a shot of the tea bag being put into the mug. We then had to shoot the egg being cooked in the frying pan, we used a high angled shot to show the egg being cooked. We wanted the sound of the egg hissing as it was cooked so we held the mic close to the frying pan.

Our last shot was of the character taking his car keys, which like all the other shots we took two shots.

Editing

We started editing the shots that Isaac and Chris took on the new york trip. We soon found out that the clips we were using were far too long, and made the intro seem boring. The music we have is the crystal method, which Issac personally wrote to to get permission to use the music as it was copyrighted, this was very good as the music was perfect for the intro. The music has a very good beat to it and so to stop the long boring shots we decided to change from shot to shot in beat with the music to give it the fast, exciting feel. We also speeded up the shots to also add to the fast feel and show the pace at which new york city moved. A problem we encountered with the editing is that it takes along time as you have to render every clip used.

Narrator

For the start of our intro we have the character, the silhouette, talking over different landmarks of new york city. For this we had to get the right voice to add to the effect of the superhero. We were lucky enough for Sophie to have a friend with the right, cool sounding voice for the intro. By using a cool voice for the intro it enhances the superhero, comic book feel, with the superhero always being a cool, strong character, like christian bale in batman, the dark knight.

Animatic

This is our completed animatic

developing film intro ideas

After coming up with the initial ideas we had to develop them and start to storyboard. We made a few changes to the time lapse idea, we realised it would be hard for Chris and Isaac to film one area for a long time and have shots for night and day. So we decided to take the shots of the night sky at ringwood and edit in the background of new york. We also decided to take single shots of new york landmarks to set the scene, and make a montage. This will really emphasise the location of our film. while these images are coming up we came up with the idea that the narrator will be telling facts about new york city like the population and crime rate. The crime rate fact directly relate to our hero who is trying to cut down the crime rate. The images of the landmarks will last for around 10 seconds, and good amount of time to tell the facts and set the scene.

Film intro ideas

As a group we started to brainstorm ideas for our action comic book film introduction. We were lucky that Issac and Chris were going to new york, so we started to think about the idea that are film could be based in new york. From this we came up with the idea of a time lapse of new york to set the setting for the intro. We also thought of the idea of the titles appearing on the buildings of new york. We then started concentrating on the main character. We thought of the idea that the characters face would not be seen, so the name silhouette seemed appropriate. We had to show the character in his normal life so we came up with the idea of him waking up, and his normal morning routine. We took reference from the film hot fuzz on the idea of doing very quick, short shots to show the rush of him waking up. At the start of this clip you can see the quick shots we are thinking of.

Since this was a comic book film intro, we came up with the idea of mixing comic book animation with real life shots. This would give the film the comic book style, with real life and animation together. It would also look very good and give the film a very unique style. We also wanted a narrator to set the scene and tell the story so far. This came from the film kick-ass which uses narration.

Film brief

For our opening of a film we have chosen brief 1, the action film based on a comic book.

My group consists of Isaac, Chris and Sophie. As a group i believe that we all bring different aspects to the project which will result in a well balanced finished product.