Final Film Opening

this is our Final Version of our film opening. i feel that we have acheived what we wanted to achieve within our film opening.

The Directors Commentary

The final part to add to our film opening was our directors commentary. as a group we were given a sheet of paper with questions to answer. as a group we then decided we would split the questions up so that everyone could answer at least on e question each as everyone had to speak on the directors commentary. before we split up the questions we went through all of the questions and decided that some of them were not suitable for the directors commentary so we will then be evaluating them in our blogs. once we had decided who was doing each question we then wrote down our answers and began to practice them as we were not allowed to sound scripted this was hard for us as we had to speak in detail and it meant learning it. we continued to do this for a few times then we began recording and carried on untill we believed we had got it right. we then uploaded our commentary oneto the computer and listened to them we then realised that amys one was missing so while she re recorded we uploaded the others onto pinnicle studios we then cut parts so that they fitted into the part of the opening correctly we also added screen grabes to show what our directors commentary was talking about. after this we then added in extra screen grabes because our speech was alot longer then the opening. once amy had re recorded hers we then added that in and completed our directors commentary. this proved not to be as stressful as making the film opening had been.

Evaluation

For my evaluation i will be answering 3 questions which will evaluate the film opening our group hs made i will be doing these seperately as we have answered the other questions in our directors commentary.

How did you attract/adress your audience?

to attract our target audience we first had to think of an age group and gender to attract. we looked closely at our film story line nd opening and discussed what would be most suitable after discussing we then decided that from the ages of 15 and above to young adults would be best we also decided it would be better for girls. from creating our film opening we decided this because we thought that the opening would be interesting so we then hoped other girls our age would also find our opening intresting. we also had been researching seeing what the most popular films for our age group were. we then saw that thrillers were. This was because most young people love the idea of escapism and the feeling you get when you watch it, you become scared worried you get an adrenaline rush even though you know your safe. Also from watching films in class we then saw that our class mates also enjoyed thriller and horror the most. Another factor we used to attract our audience was the steorotypical stalker storyline. we decided on a man stalking woman storyline. this was chosen as it is most likely to happen today. it is often heard about on the news and such things so it would also be interesting for young girls. another way that we hoped to attract the audience would be the age of our actors these being in the same age bracket 16-17 years. while discussing and thinking about other factors to attract our audience to our thriller opening we looked at the thriller conventions that are used. we decided for our opening scene to start with the stalkers point of view and how he is stalking her while she is unaware. this would then hopefully show that the way the begining is set att out it will put the audience at an un ease. as its not natural. also this way you know he is stalking her but you dont find out why which would make you want to carry on watching the film. these are some of the ways we used our opening to attract our audience.

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

from the begining of this project myself and our group have learnt a great deal more about the technologies that are involved. If we were to start from the begining the first thing we had to learn about was the camera, we looked closely at the angles we wanted in our film opening so we had to learn how to shoot them for example if we were doing a point of view shot we were not allowed to zoom in, because the persons eyes would not zoom, we learnt this after our first filming session and had to re film that part, we also used the tripod to achieve different shots that we wanted, our filming was a success as we only had to film twice as we had lost some of our footage due to someone rewinding the tape. next we had to develope our knowledge with pinnicle studios, we have used ti previously for our preliminary task but we had to use more editing functions such as transitions and fonts and slowing a part of a scene down. when we edited our work in pinnicle it was best that we worked as a team because everyone had different ways of how they liked it so we had to decide as a team what worked best in the end. another part of technologie we learnt about was the edi-role. we used this when we recorded our directors commentary, we had to figure out how to upload it into pinnicle and cut at certain points. for the music we found a non copywrited website and looked through many pieces of music and decided on one we believed fitted the most. we then uploaded it onto pinnicle and edited it so it fitted in with the opening. overall from constructing our film opening i have learnt many new skills. i am now more aware of a camera and what you can not do when filming certain shots.and to never delete film off the camera or re wind the tape. in pinnicle it was a whole new expirence but i know feel i can use it anid be confident with it. and the many different ways you can edit a shot. such as cutting down a scene or making it longer.

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

when i look back at our preliminary task i can see how we have progressed as a group and also me on my own. one of the main things we made sure that we had no continuety errors. as we did have one in our preliminary task but we managed to cover up. Also we looked at our camera angles we could use in our film opening. we used different and more extreme camera angles such as titled camera angles and extreme close ups.These helped our film opening look more effective and created more tension then to film it normally. As well as this when we were editing our film in pinnicle studios we then learnt new ways of editing we hadnt known before such as the zooming in and out of shots. as well as this we then also learnt how slowing down a shot can make it fit in more with the thriller conventions by adding suspense. from our preliminary task we learnt and made sure we followed the 180 degree rule this was something we knew we could not break. when we did our preliminary task we focused mainly on making sure we did not break the rules while doing our film opening we had to think about whole reasons why the opening would be happening and what the whole film would be about. other factors that went into our film opening that did not go into our preliminary task were our audience and deciding who would be the target audience as we did not have to think about this in our preliminary task. Creating an anamatic storyboard was also new to me and our group as we had never done this before but we worked well as a group and completed it this then helped us film our opening more smoothly as we had a better idea of how we needed each shot.

I feel that i and our group have progressed a lot from our preliminary task, because of all the new skills we have learnt each factor that went into filming our opening allowed us to do that. i hope our final piece shows that we have improved by what we have learnt from our opening. i feel that if we were given a longer time then 2 minutes and a longer period of time to film we may have been able to improve even more so if we were able to do this again it would be interesting to see what we will be able to improve on as a group and individualy.

Editing Our Opening

This week we were able to start to to edit our film opening. before we were even able to begin editing our group had another problem. Our laptop. this problem was that when we were uploading our film to pinnacle studios the frames kept dropping this meaning as we watched each take it was go in double time like it was in fast forward mode. we tried to re upload it but we then finally decided that after waisting this import time it was better to give up and switch laptops. we decided as we were desperatly running out of time we should split up. this worked by me and charlotte looking at the background music to go into the film opening and deciding what we should use. while Amy and Chloe re uploaded the film opening.
While they did this me and charlotte went onto a non copywrited website to choose the music we wanted to use for the film opening. we found 5 ones that we liked we then let amy and chloe listen to them and as a group finally decided that "Mystery Killer" fitted our film opening the most so we put it onto the memory stick to upload later. the good thing was that while we had done this amy and chloe had managed to upload the opening to pinnacle which came with yet another problem that our clips had all merged together it was still okay but it meant that to edit our film opening it just took a bit more time than planned. another thing, due to our laptop not working we lost the scenes from our first filming session, this meant that we had to use the only scenes from our second attempt at filming. we managed to film the shots in order so this helped us alot as we were able to put transitions in between the takes. one of the main editing parts we had to was to slow down the zoom on the clock. we did this by making the timing of this shot longer which made it slower. finally our editing had all paid off as we had managed to finish our film opening. but once again we had one final problem which came when we had changed our film into a M.peg our own logo we had created made it not work as a M.peg we had to then remove it for it to play.

Film Certificate And Target Audience

An important part of our film opening was choosing a film certificate and a target audience. As a group the four of us decided the certificate 15 was suitable. we choose this as we believed certifcate 12 would be too young and it would not be as intense and scary for a certificate 18 also that if we were to create the whole film, the story line and scenes would match up to a certificate 15 another main reason for choosing certificate 15 was from doing research by watching other certificate 15 movies these also show the similar conventions as ours we decided this would be suitable. For our target audience we decided it would suit teen aged girls to young women as our film opening has the stereotypical boy stalks girl relationship - the vitcim stalker relationship also.
The other main reason we choose this certificate and age bracket. this reason being the costumes our characters wore. these costumes show the age bracket because the fashion of the two characters. also because the characters also have the same age bracket of the certificate.

Re Filming...

We Refilmed our Film opening on Thursday 26th November, this time from learning from our mistakes it went a lot better then the last time. we were able to re shoot shots from different angles such as the first shot we see of our stalker. we changed it from an over the shoulder shot to a shot that goes up from the floor so we see the shot of his whole body, then over the shoulder to reveal the photos of Elizabeth that he is looking at. We still did not have any problems filming as we had learnt from our mistakes,if anything our filming was quicker and a lot easier from our experience. we managed to include extra shots that we could not include the first time around. I hope that we have everything we need for our editing.

Filming So Far

After our problems we began filming on Thursday 19th November and we managed to film everything we needed we included the shots that we needed and it did not take as much time that we thought it could of taken. We soon realised that we had a few problems when it came to the following mondays lesson that from rewinding our film during filming to see what we had recoreded so far. we saw that some of our film had been wiped away , these being some of our most important shots that we needed. Also from looking at what we had achieved we saw that some of our filming did not include all the camera angles and shots that we had hoped for these being extreme close ups, tilted camera shots for example . so we learnt that we should re film the whole film again so that we had the shots we have already and also the shots that would have been improved. Also from looking at our thriller film opening, we saw that it was not as thriller like as we hoped. it looked a bit more romantic. So we discussed it and decided that we needed to add the camera shots that we had missed out and we choose to add an extra part where the stalker (Edward) would look at the clock so that he can then look at elizabeth out of the window, this showing that he knows the exact time she was going home. As a group we also decided to change our lighting effects so that the photographs of elizabeth, were more light and you are able to see them clearer. we hope that our next filming session goes how we hoped.