Kayleigh Umfreville
Candidate number: 8223
Centre number: 16121

Thank you for taking the time to mark my blog :)

The Handler.

Question 7

We started our preliminary task with no camera or editing experience, so the whole task was a learning curve for the both of us. The hardest part of filming our preliminary task was filming in the dark. As amateurs to filming, we threw ourselves into the deep end as getting the right light for the camera to pick up was extremely difficult. However, we used the lights from camera phones and torches which were enough light for the camera to pick up whilst creating a spooky atmosphere to go with the horror genre of our preliminary task. The editing of our preliminary task was tricky as the criteria for the task was very specific, for example, we had to match a door opening exactly to fulfill the match on action section of the task. As fist time editors also, this was extremely hard to master due to the complexity of the editing software and getting to grips with the preciseness of the film editing itself.  The researching stage was much simpler, we knew what we wanted to find and what we wanted to base our task around so the planning and the visualising our idea was straightforward. We then had to put our idea into writing by making a storyboard. This was a lot harder than we imagined as it was hard for other people to visualise our idea due to some drawings being very poor and inaccurate.

Our film opening now was much easier for us to get to grips with. We understood how to work the cameras now and we knew what the best shots to use and how long the shots had to be to keep the film interesting. The planning was much easier also; making the storyboards simpler and the research more in depth helped us, as a group understand what our film would look like. The final editing was simpler as we knew what we were doing and where shots and music should go. We used a range of camera equipment, such as tripods. This was to help us gain a good static shot and also help us to stable the camera for the clearest and steadiest shots. However, the hardest part of the making of our film opening was the titles and the making of the production logo. The titles were difficult because we had to find the perfect place for the titles to fit. Also we had to make sure that the names we were using weren't too long or they would take up half the shot. The production logo was extremely challenging as Adobe After effects was very hard to use and understand. We used a website called videocopilot.net to help us with making the logo. After one failed attempt we got to grips with the software and made a logo that was simple yet effective. The logo also represented the genre and the logo is Egyptian style and represents action and adventure. 

What have you learnt from your Preliminary Task

Question 6

What have you learnt about technologies ? by lolkayleigh on GoAnimate

Research

When researching into film openings and into genre of films it became apparent to us that there are a lot of different things we’d be able to do. We were able to attend a BMI conference on the art of film making. This allowed us to get a real insight into the art of film making and also allowed us to understand what the examiners were looking for. The experience was very interesting and enabled us to understand exactly what was expected of us. Also when researching into titles we were able to access a website called www.artofthetitles.com This website was extremely useful when looking into the order of titles and the different ways that they would appear on the screen. This is where we learnt the above and below the line for titles, this made me realise what we have to consider for each of the titles that will come up in our opening.

Pre Production
The planning of our shoot was extremely helpful, it gave us a clear indication of what needed to be done and roughly the time it should take. Also what each shot would look like and what it would have in each shot.

Story boarding
When we produced our storyboard we were able to breakdown shot by shot that we wanted. We probably should have taken a little more care in including the detail into the storyboard as when we came to shooting we found that although we knew what we wanted, we found it hard to shoot. This definitely something we learnt from this project, because next time we would make sure that our story boards and shot lists are very detailed and we would have everything planned ready to prompt us, because it would allow us to avoid mistakes and it would be more efficient with time as we did not have long to film it. 

Editing

Pieces of technology that I used frequently by lolkayleigh on GoAnimate
The internet by lolkayleigh on GoAnimate

Question 5

How did you attract your audience?

Question 4

As we was making an action/thriller film, we decided that out target audience would be more aimed at the younger generation as they are more suited to this genre of film. We felt this because most action/thriller films, for example James Bond, are more aimed at the younger audience due to their extreme, action packed storylines and younger, more attractive actors. In the opening this was key to establishing the genre and attracting our target audience. For these reasons we chose younger actors. We chose younger actors to relate more to our desired audience.

The main audience that we targeted was 16-25 year olds. We didn’t specifically chose a gender to aim our film towards, as we felt that our character and storyline suited both genders.  We considered the male gaze when choosing our main actor. We felt that a female lead would attract more of a male audience whilst also still appeal to a female market. Males would find a female lead role attractive whereas females find it easy to idolize a character of the same gender. Feminists view the theory in three different ways: The way men look at women, the way women look at themselves, and the way women look at other women. This was perfect for us to use a female lead as all three views will complement the film perfectly.

As the film is a high budget, it will be distributed to high profile cinemas across the country, for example, Vue and Odeon. This will give us a wide range of viewers; this also means that our target audience is directly targeted. The film will then grow popular as larger cinemas are more convenient for viewers to see our film.

Our target audience will tend to watch blockbusters as they are a higher budget, which means that the features that the film has, for example explosions will attract the audience because this is the type of features that they like to see within a movie. Also big actors and directs because this means that the film will have high expectations and the audience will rather go to see that instead of an independent film.  Independent films are more artistic which would not appeal to my target audience because they want a movie that will appeal to the mass market.

Audience Profile by umfrevillek

Core audience

Question 3

Question 2

In our media we wanted to focus on the two main characters from different social groups.

part 1 for question 2 by lolkayleigh on GoAnimate

When deciding how to portray the character we realised the importance of the following:

 Location

To represent this we made sure that the location of her house was a little bit messy showing that it’s quite homey and she works so she cannot always clean up. We thought that the paper chains on the wall would add effect to this because it shows that they are celebrating Christmas like a normal family would. Also a flower basket outside the house makes her look like she takes care in the appearance and makes them look normal.

In the house we kept up all the pictures of her family because it makes her look like she has a weakness. She is the type of person who is very secretive. This helped to represent this particular social group. 

 Behaviour

The behaviour of Megan represents being a normal person because when she leaves her house she does not close the window or locks the door, which shows how comfortable she is, with the people that live around her which show that she is sociable with her neighbours because she can trust them. Also she represents an everyday person because of her facial expression when she sees the man that picks up her bracelet. Any person in this situation would be quite scared because they do not know who the person is. 

Costume

We also realised the importance of costume for this character, because we wanted her to look a little bit scruffy because she is going for a run and as a mother sometime they just cannot be bothered with making an effort because they have so many things to do. In order to achieve this she wore her hair down but a little bit messy to make her look casual, also she wore her running clothes to make it believable, but she is also wearing proper running leggings and trainer to make it look like she does this on a daily basis which shows that she is very fit. She is wore a university jumper to show the audience that she is smart and old enough to have a child.

part 2 for qes 2 by lolkayleigh on GoAnimate

Next character Hayley “the spy”

The typical spy

Hayley’s character is the total opposite of Megan’s character. We wanted her to represent the other end of the social scale. She is quite loud and sarcastic and does not really care what people think. When casting for this character we wanted someone who was quite young and pretty.

When choosing her costume we wanted her to look as if she was wearing those clothes from a while, because she has been out on a mission that has gone wrong. She was wearing all black with a leather jacket which is typical for what a spy would wear. We also wanted her to look scruffy so her hair was quite messy to look like she has struggled to get out of where she is now. The makeup that we used was eyeliner at that was it because it gave her a edginess’ about her which was the type of character that we were going for. We did not use any fake blood because we thought that it would look really fake and unrealistic which would detract the audience away from what was happening , also we thought about how that the interrogator needed information from her that is why he has not hurt her yet.  

part 3 by lolkayleigh on GoAnimate

The Dark Knight Interrogation scene

Action/thriller movie consist of the person being interrogated to be loud, patronising and sarcastic. We used a similar idea to this. Slow shots were used to create tension between the characters, but as the interrogator lost his patients the shots get faster to show that he is getting frustrated because they are not getting what he wants out of them. In this way, this part of our sequence is represented of the age and the type of person they are. She is young and very defensive. 

Other social groups 

However our media does represent another social group because of the men that are involved. They represent the dominate men in society. We made them dominate by having the man in the first half standing outside her house and showing up when Megan least expected it. The fact that this man only had one line in the whole opening that just his presence makes a person feel uncomfortable. In the second half he was the different side of dominate to the first half because the interrogator was violent towards the spy, showing that he does not care about the person he only uses them. Their costume was the same, a suit. This represents the social group because it shows that they are in the same business, which shows that men who wear suits and that are in the hierarchy tend to be more dominate over people. 

question 2

Question 1

equipment used

feedback on our film opening

timeline

Word collage

Audience Feedback Session

These are only a couple of examples of the questionnaire that we got our target audience to fill out.

Overall the session was really helpful, as we got to know from our target audience if our film opening was easy to understand, because if it wasn't we would be able to find out ways in which we could improve our sequence to make it easier to understand. Our average score for understanding was 7, which meant that they could mostly understand what was going on. We knew that we were not going to get 10 out of 10 as we did not want the audience to completely understand what was going on, because from them not understanding what was going on it would intrigue them to watch the rest of the film. We also asked them if they would see it in the cinema, this was an important question because our film was going to be in big mainstream cinemas like Cinema world. From this we could find out if our target audience would actually come to see our film, and as a result we now know that we should go for big cinemas instead of independent cinemas because our audience will want to go watch it. 

rough copy

Actors

Actress 1: Megan

This is our main character Megan, she has left MI6 to have a family and settle down. During the rest of the movie her past will soon catch up with her, which means that she will have to go back to her agent days.  In the opening we want to keep her as simple and normal as possible. However we want to leave subtle hints to the audience. For example she goes out for a run showing that she keeps fit and active so she is still able to do the things that she could do when she was an agent. Also when she gets a text message from her husband saying that he has taken their child to school showing that she has settled down and now has something that she wants to protect.

 We have chosen this for her costume because it is very casual and shows the audience that this is a normal day.

 We wanted the actress to be younger so she would attract the younger audience. 

Actor 2:

This character appears in the opening sequence to create enigma. This man will appear again later in the film to make things clear to the audience. We wanted him to appear that he is following her because as a result it will make the audience feel disorientated.

We chose this to be his costume because it makes him look like he looks like he works in London and this is a typical outfit for an operative to have.

We wanted him to be older because from studying spy films the head is always a lot older that the actual spy because they would have been in this business for years. For example James Bond.

Good shots

 

These were good shots because the shot from the outside looking in was just right because outside it was dark so you could look in perfectly with not much glare on the window from the lights outside, because if you compare that shot to the one that we did in the day it looks better because it is clearer and the audience would be able to understand what was going on better, however we could not use this shot because it was shot in the night time when this scene was meant to be taken in the morning when it is bright. I liked the shoe shot because the colours look good on the camera and it was at a good angle from which this shot was taken. The shot when she drops her bracelet in the pile of leaves was good because you could actually see that she had dropped something as she ran passed and it was not just something that happened to be there at the time. The shot when the hand picks up the bracelet was good because the light was just right on the leaves to make it look quite dark yet you could see what was happening perfectly. My favourite shot is when the actress turns round because the light is perfect on her face and the expression on her face was perfect for that shot.   

Bad shots

 

These are bad shot because some of them something went wrong when filming, for example on the phone shot the phone was locked and we forgot to take the pass code off so it could flow into the message that was sent to her. Also the shot when the actress pulls out the draw and when she grabs the jumper that she wanted the camera feel down which ruined the shot. The shot when she was getting out of bed was ruined because you could see another person filming her from another angle. The shot when she was coming out of her room and down the stairs was a bad shot because I think that it does not get a very good view of all the pictures hanging on the wall because they were the main focus of that shot. The shot when she was running outside was not very good because as the stress ran passed the camera the camera lost focused and blurred her face. The next shot with the new actress was a bad shot because we did not get the whole of her head looking around the room and also it was not very clear. The shot after that was not very good because it was taken from behind to get as many angles as we could but it did not turn out well because the lighting was not as good. The shot when she laughs was bad because the light was too much on her face so it glared on her face. The last shot was not very good because again the light was not very good which meant that we could not see the actor very well, also when he got off the camera was not at the right angle to get the whole of his body in and as a result cut off his head.

Shot list part 2

Story board part 2

The Handler no.3

Risk assessment

Activity assessed: As media task filming	Assessment date: 15/12/13	Assessed by: Kayleigh Umfreville
Activity location: house	Who is at risk: actors and camera woman	Next assessed by:	Approved by:
Activity location: The street	Who is at risk: actors and camera woman	Next assessed by:	Approved by:
HAZARD:	Risk level Before High, mediocre  or low	Risk level After High or low	Control measures Reducing the risk to a minimal risk
Failing down the stairs	Mediocre because there will be nothing on the stairs that the actor can fall down, however, she could still trip over her feet, so there is still a chance that she could hurt herself.	Still mediocre because there is nothing that I can do to make her not fall over her feet apart from warning her before she goes down the stairs, but there is still a chance that she could fall over.	Make sure appropriate foot wear is worn so that there is a reduced risk of slipping and falling. Also she could look down as she goes down so she can see what she is doing and as a result reducing the chance of her falling over.
Tripping when running	High: because there could be certain cracks in the pavement where she could fall over them or there could be stones that could make her unbalanced.	Mediocre because there will always be a chance of the actor falling over but I will point out all the places that she needs to be careful of so when she gets to that part she can easily go over it avoiding her falling over.	Make sure appropriate foot wear is worn so that there is a reduced risk of slipping and falling.
Camera woman falling over and crack equipment	High: because when doing a tracking shot the camera woman could drop the equipment and the camera may crack.	Low because with all potential trip hazards removed and things that could injury someone if they fall are removed.	Make sure appropriate foot wear is worn so that there is a reduced risk of slipping and falling.
Family members getting in the way	High: Could get in the way of shots which will make the shot lose the effect on the audience because they will now be detached at what it going and will watch the people that are accidently getting in the shot	Siblings and parents are kept away from shooting areas so they can not intervene.
Hit by a car when crossing the road	High: because when crossing the road a car may come out and hit us.	Low risk because camera woman will keep the equipment away from the roads so they cannot get hit. However for the actor when she crosses the road I too have to look out for her when crossing so we avoid getting hit by a car.	Making sure that we look both ways when we cross.

Personal protective equipment needed:	Provided by:	Level of first aid provision needed	First aiders Debbie Gemmill
Nearest telephone: In my house		Nearest 24hr hospital/doctor	Orsett hospital