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

Here I have done a directors commentary discussing the names mentioned in the credits of my opening sequence.

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

 Setting/location:
The opening image is of the main actor asleep in bed. This sets the location and mood of the following shots, as many other films start in this way.

 Title font and style:
Large size font filling up the screen, with scruffy style, all of the credits are this style but the title of the film. This ties along with the mise en scene of the following footage.

 Special Effects:
Not so much a special effect, but more of a mask, in this shot I have had to cover a mirror with a box the same colour as the wall and cut out the actor, frame by frame so that the reflection in the mirror is not seen.
Additional colour correction was applied to most of the footage in order to lower the mood, and enhance the effect produced on the audience.

 Costumes and Props:
Here we see for the first time a good view of the actor dressed up and with her bag (the only prop). The clothing and bag suggest to the audience that she is most likely still in education, this is suggested by the style of bag used.

 How characters are introduced:
The way that I have tried to really introduce this character to the audience is by videoing the majority of her face a fair way into the opening. It has taken a little while for the audience to be properly introduced to this character as they have not yet been able to really associate themselves with her, by not being shown any emotion up until this point.

 Story and how the opening scene sets it up:
After seeing the actor get into a car, in a following shot we see her leave the car at what looks like her final destination. This particular shot moves the story along and is aimed to focus the audience into what will happen next.

 Camera work and editing:
The POV (point of view) shot that I have taken a screen shot of. This was the first POV shot that I have taken and worked well, all of the other shots were either panning shots or were still shots as in my preliminary task.

 Genre and how the opening scene suggests it:
For me, this is the defining shot which sets the mood or genre of the opening sequence. There is a slow zoom as we watch the actor walk away from where she has been dropped off, and left her bag, which was only needed for the place she had been dropped off at.

The title of the film:
I decided to have the title of the film in a colder colour, with what is almost artificial lighting in order to illuminate it. This shows the 'coldness' and emphasises the genre of the film as well as reinforcing the subject of the following story.

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

In my preliminary task, I used no camera movement, just still shots. This is a change compared to my full product as I make use of moving camera shots, one pan, and one point of view shot.
As in the preliminary task, where I used a match on action shot, I used this technique again when the character leaves the house and we cut to outside where she continues from the door to the car.
For my full product I made use of better quality video cameras (with greater dpi) than the 'flip mino' camera that I used throughout my preliminary task.
For my full product, the 180 degree rule did not come into play as I was only videoing one person, I did however use this technique during my preliminary task during the conversation between the two characters.
The editing specifically in my final product is much more flowing and tells more of a chronological story.

Preliminary task:

Final product:

Evaluation: Who would be the audience for your media product?

The target audience for my media product would be others of my own age (16-21). In my view, I don't see any other generation being that interested in my product as they may find it difficult to relate to, with the whole story revolving around the main character (at 17).
The sorts of shops I would expect the typical viewer to shop at would be shops that sell not particularly up market shops, but way off charity shop level stores. Typical programs they may watch on TV would be late night movies, maybe horror, or true stories.

Evaluation: What have you learnt about technologies from the processes of constructing this product?

 The first of the apparatus that I used was a mini tripod. This I used to hold the video camera when recording still shots or awkward angles that would be difficult to hold steady by hand. By using this it creates the need for less editing (artificial stabilisation) in after effects or final cut pro.

 Here is one of the video cameras I used. It is a high definition video camera with image stabilisation, providing smoother shots when the camera is being moved my hand compared to a camera without stabilisation, which would give unstable, almost jerky shots.
The other camera that I used was my own high definition camera at home. The majority of shots take were with this camera as I found that there was an image with the quality of the recordings with the camera pictured. This is visible in a couple of the shots in the final product.

 Pictured here is a tripod, I used this for most of the shots that I took as it produces smooth movement if required and provides a more professional looking shot compared to a shot that was taken by hand.
The most useful thing about the tripod that I used is that the legs are very adjustable, this meant that I was able to get the exact angle needed for each shot, and hold it throughout.

 This is the laptop which most of my video editing was carried out on, in order to cope with the high needs for using After Effects I bought some extra RAM for £100 so that the rendering took a reasonable time, as well as helping the computer to cope with everyday tasks.

Here is the image of me and the apparatus used. Unfortunately I was unable to gather the additional items discussed earlier for this image, but it shows the majority of things used in the production.
One other piece of hardware I made use of was an iMac, the reason for this is that Final Cut Pro is not supported on PC, so for this part of the editing it was necessary to use one of the department's computers.





Software:
After Effects:

Here is the user interface of After Effects, mid edit in one of my shots.












Final Cut Pro:

Here is an image of the user interface of final cut pro which I found on google images (hence the inappropriate footage being edited).










Youtube:

Here is a screen-grab I have taken of my youtube channel, currently looking at my final video.
I used youtube to upload my final video and then linked blogger to it so that people looking at my blog can directly see my final product.

Evaluation: How did you attract/address your audience?

To attract the audience I was aiming at, I focussed on the Mise en Scene of my film. Untidy surroundings, early mornings,the typical teenage life.
This addresses my target audience as most teenagers can relate to the Mise en Scene in their own life, making it more interesting for them to watch than other films as it is always intriguing to have an outsiders look into, potentially, your own life.

Final Cut Pro

For a small part of the video I used a program called Final Cut Pro, this is a program only supported on Mac.
The majority of my work was made using After Effects, however for simpler editing, Final Cut Pro was more suitable as the interface is easier to work with, less complex and faster to render.

My final Composition

Additional Video Editing

Now that I have posted my first draft of my composition, I am going to talk about some other uses of editing that have influenced the final result.
I have made use throughout the video of using general colour correction, dulling some shots down so that they are not so whited out and have more contrast, as well as adding a slightly deeper mood to the shot. An example of this would be when the actor is walking down the stairs and to the door.. When whe walks in front of the door, a vivid blue is in the windows, so in order to dull this down I reduced the brightness and slightly increased the contrast as well as blocking out a small proportion of te white and dark extremities from the shot so that all of the colours are midrange rather than fully white or black. e.g. rather than having a red block in a part of a shot, its intensity would be brought down and it would look slighly more pink.

Another piece of editing that I had to do to this shot was cut out some (admittedly poor) acting from one of the actors in the shot. To do this I scaled up the shot and then positioned it slightly to the right so as to cut out one of the actors, and then carying on the zoom towards the door as the main character walked outside. I was lucky with this shot as the quality is relatively high, so pixelation did not become a problem after completing the virtual camera movement.

A problem shot which unfortunately I am litterally (and annoyingly) unable to reshoot or fix is the shot where we see the car pull up and the actor get out and stand just off the pavement (not road side) looking down and generally glum.

Still, over all of this editing, the most crucial, and by far the most difficult piece of editing was putting the mask over the mirror. Even now it is not perfect with a gradiented layer being masked around the actor, even with roughly a week of adjusting and correcting, the gradien't was just too difficult to manipulate throughout the shot  as the natural light shining on the wall around the mirror changed as the actor walked past, making the superficial box a little more obvious than is desited.

New Treatment Sheet (+Script)

As I have changed my storyline, here is the new treatment sheet that I have written up, although significantly shorter, there is a reason for this explaind within.

I have not included a script for this new movie opening as there is no diologue, this was not to get out of doing a script, a soundtrack just seemed a lot more appropriate than using the diologue that I already had recorded.

Masking

Within my project it was essential for me to learn how to mask.
The reason for this is rather embarassing as I thought it would be a good idea to video one of my shots oppoite a mirror, so whilst the shot itself was good, the camera man plus camera are also in-shot. In order to correct this i had to match the wall colour with a rectangular mask over the mirror, and then track mask around the actor as she walked down the hall. The overall finnish is a lot better, however i was unable to hold a steady match on the wall as the light intensity on the wall changed when the actor was near and so the shape becomes more distinguishable the later on in the shot it gets. But all in all I would say a great improvement considering my lack of experience with the program (AE), but then again this would not have been necessary if I had got the shot right in the first place.

The mask is particularly obvious in this screenshot, however there is not a lot more that I could have done to correct this mistake. Fortunately at full speed, the mask is barely noticible if you are not looking for it.