EVALUATION1 - Ways In Which Our Media Product Uses, Develops And Challenges Form & Conventions Of Real Media Products You

'The Shinging' -->

'SOLO'
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Starting with the initial still of both 9 shots, 'The Shining' begins with an establishing shot so the audience know the scene of where the clip ill take place. It is therefore, clear for the audience to know where the following clips will take place unlike, with out shot which begins with a close-up shot of Christel, the audience are left in awe. In real media products, a situation is already displayed for the audience; in our still, the audience have to figure out for themselves what is going on.
Comparing the second stills, it is obvious that in the real media they have better access to better filming equipment, in this case, a helicopter to capture a 'birds-eye-view' shot of the scene. This allows the audience to feel superior as they are 'above' and privileged, whereas, with our still, as it is a mid close-up shot on Alima, the audience feel sly; almost as if they are spying on her. The extreme close-up used helps to create tension as it reveals the emotion of the character and indicates how the audience should feel.

Also, with the use of dar lighting and high in contrast, it helps to create a convention of a thriller film.

Looking at the font used in our third still and the font used in the 9 shots of 'The Shining', similarities are that we have both used a type of sans serif font indicating a serious atmosphere that engages a mature audience; both title sequences create tension for the audience. However, unlike with 'The Shining', we have challenged the idea of placing our title at the beginning of our title sequence by placing it at the very end in order to create more suspension.

Unlike in the real media, where the writing tends to stay in the center third of the screen, we have chose to place our titles in different positions.

In the real media, they tend to keep the shots of the 9 shots similar or almost the same whilst we chose to pick the most appealing for an audience. This may suggest that in the real media, they choose to withdraw the real idea of their film from the obvious and when it comes to the audience watching it, they are in shock as what they did not expect is presented to them. With our 9 shots, the audience are aware that something mysterious is taking place as stills include, a shot of Alima getting followed, a leg getting tied up and a timer.

Other similarities between the media products used in our title sequence and in the real media include the use of a car as a prop, however, during our 9 shot, the audience know which actors are to appear in the title sequence. Both thrillers use an 'eerie' soundtrack which adds to the suspension. On the other hand, 'The Shining' have kept their actors away from the 9 shots, also creating suspense for their audience.

"SOLO" - Pitch

Our pitch will generate a rough idea of what our final title sequence, "SOLO", will look like. After having started filming, editing and blogging, our ideas have altered and we have either added or taken away minor things. We created our pitch before changing our initial storyboard, therefore, some ideas that our found on our pitch are either old or no longer in use.

Fortunately, there is no drastic difference with our final title sequence.
Below are pictures of our location:

"SOLO" Rough Cut

This is a rough cut edit, a preview, of our title sequence, 'SOLO'.

Skills Audit: Creation Of Soundtrack

We decided that it would make sense if we left sound till last, that way we would be able to create the sound according to our title sequence and how it would occur. Yet, this added more pressure on our group as we were determined to finish sound before the deadline and to finalize editing. Our sound does not vary as much yet there is a great use of instruments which creates tension for the audience. As well as that, we have used non-diegetic sounds to emphasis' on the actions shown on the clip.

Skills Audit: 'On Shoot' Photo's & Filming

Out of a 3-hour session, filming 'Solo' took approximately 2 hours. Our group was very unfortunate as our location had frequently been altered from a residential car park in Kings Cross, to N1 centre car park. After arriving at the N1 centre car park, we had to refer to our storyboard another of times as our ideas had to also be changed due to the change of location. When we finally drew u storyboard, it was decided to start with an outside location, yet as we were limited to an underground location, it would have been practically difficult to change scenes. In the end, we stayed in the same car park, but used different corners.

Though coming up and producing the storyboard is not very challenging, acting and filming it out askes for much more. Difficulties with handling the camera and using different camera shots limited us to how we could explore with our filming. To make the division of filming fair, whilst the actors were not needed to be in the shots, for example in the establishing shot, actors would film.
Over time, filming began to get stressful as we had started from the morning; each shot was repeated more than once and most times, the position of the camera was different from the previous one or, continuity had not been fulfilled.

After thinking we had finished filming on one day, we realised that we had necessary shots missing so another filming day was needed. Also, when we first started filming, we did not have all props at hand, for example the timer. Luckily, the shots that were needed with the alarm clock were able to get edited into our final title sequence. Also, as using 'FinalEdit' can be quiet difficult, we assumed that our clip had not even reached '01:30' when infact, it had exceeded 2 minutes. WE PANICKED! Therefore, we came up with a brainstorm of how we could extend our clips; from longer titles to clips in slow-motion the sequence would still not extend.
Randomly, I clarified with a media technician that I was reading 3 minutes something and now 1 minute, 3 seconds. After realizing what point I was adressing to, he higlighted that our clip was over 3 minutes and that it had to be edited down - of course, another 30 minute was spent on doing this.

The experience of filming with my group was enjoyable; especially as I have not done this before, but to explain in words to an individual who has not done media before is hard; it takes a lot of dedication and team work in order to produce a piece of work that is exceptionally good.

Skills Audit: Screen Grabs Of Editing

Personally, in our 'Final Edit' tutorial, i found this program straight-forward to use, however, learning in depth about the program and having to produce a lengthy clip does require a lot of concentration and over-time to work with. Overtime, I learnt how to use shortcuts and how to edit much faster than a beginner which helped with the speed of how my group worked at. I also learnt to understand what the program is able to do, and what it is unable to do.
To be able to upload our work in different programs and areas, i.e. on blogger or on powerpoint, it required different formats, different technicians also helped us to learn this, which in effect, allowed us to work independantly rather than relying on the technicians.
Initially, I did not think editing would take as long as it did take. Roughly, it covered about 3 sessions and even attending workshops; it required full attention and cooperation of the whole group.
Ideas of how to edit our clip came from all members of our group; however, this did bring conflict in ideas as different individuals had different likes and dislikes to others. Also, many ideas we found appropriate for our title sequence, were considered as unappropriate by teachers; being media teachers, we took their advicce.

Unfortunately, many problems occured whilst using this program including files going missing, not saving or getting placed in a different order on the storyboard (used on the program). Using this program to produce our final title sequence was very demanding as even the small mistake can effect the entire clip.
Towards the end of editing, as we werte very tired of having to come back and back to the same program, we would repeatedly press 'Crtl+S' to ensure our work would get saved. Also, we run through our clips over and over again and discuss brand new ideas to improve the final title sequence.
Editing brings together the whole group and really demonstrates the participation as this task is not easy.

Skills Audit: Screen Grabs Of Title Sequence

As a group, we decided to use serif-fonts to create a serious and suspense atmosphere for the audience as they would engage into our title sequence. Many times, we would create titles, yet we would not record the font name so we would end up wasting 5minutes searching for it, in the end, we would always end up using a different one each session. However, we came to a final decision to use:

- 'Century Schoolbook' for the titles including, directed by... featuring... starring

-'Courier' for the date that got typed across the bottom-right side of the clip

To start with, we chose our font to be in red, yet it did not seem appealing or "serious" so we changed it to white which automatically changed the way viewers saw our clip.

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