Wednesday 6 April 2016

Evaluation Part: 7 " Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? "

For our title sequence, I decided to work in a group along with Danny and Jacob. Danny decided to take the role of cinematography, Jacob took the role of finding the fonts, soundtrack and costumes, whilst I took the role of editing. Throughout the majority of the process, me and Danny decided to work closely together on cinematography, as well as editing. This mainly consisted of both of us just giving eachother feedback in general in order to help improve and benefit the outcome of our title sequence.

Overall, in my opinion, I feel as though I have learnt and expanded my knowledge in terms of the different varieties of skills and techniques on things such as Final Cut Pro, compared to at the beginning of the editing task for the title sequence. I feel as though I have properly learnt how to use the software correctly and to a higher and greater level. For example, I have learnt how to add effective colours and filters in order to either improve the lighting/colour quality of a scene or to tone it down. I felt as though it was essential for me to learn this due to the fact that on the day of shooting our 'Rebels' scene, it was an extremely bright and sunny day and our cameras managed to pick this up, meaning that this affected the overall look of the scene on Final Cut. So, by knowing how to correct the lighting and tone down the saturation/hue of this scene, I was able to solve the issue and overall make the tone much darker in order to fit the rest of the title sequence. Furthermore, I also learnt how to layer different filters and effects in order to convey across to the audience our idea of the plot through the title sequence. This proved to be most effective on The Rebels scene and The Scavengers scene, giving the audience a more found footage feel/effect, along with a CCTV feel/effective. Furthermore, I also took it upon myself to learn how to incorporate a video playing over an existing recorded video by using our green screen. I managed to learn to do this when our group was recording our 3 evaluation answers via video. I learnt to have our title sequence continuously playing throughout our responses. I did this by simply going on to Final Cut Pro, finding the 'keyer' effect and placing that over our recorded response. This them made the background black, which allowed me to them drag and drop our title sequence underneath allowing it to repeatedly by played throughout our answers.

Personally, I feel as though it is most essential and vital to prioritise planning time and, keeping track on times in terms of when everybody is free to shoot or edit. This is because at the initial beginning of the creating process for the title sequence, we didn't necessarily have a time schedule/production log to work with. However, we - as a group - learnt from this mistake, sat down and made a production log and we made sure that we stuck by this at all times, meaning that we achieved what needed to be achieved within reasonable time. I also found that planning and preparing is most essential as it meant that we had a clear perception, a clear image and a clear direction in terms of the route we wanted the title sequence to follow.

Looking back at our preliminary task, there were inevitably difficulties in working within a group. However, we learnt that it was important to overcome these difficulties and co-operate together as a team. Initially, at the beginning of the process, we didn't necessarily communicate appropriately as a team, resulting in some of the group members not appearing or coming to some of the shoots. However, to solve this difficulty, we made a group chat in which we all interacted with each other in order to avoid this difficulty occurring again in the future. Another difficulty we faced was that we would essentially have to re-shoot scenes for our title sequence (even after being edited). For example, our first draft version of our title sequence showed the same actors acting twice in the Scavengers scene and the Rebels scene. Furthermore, after the class feedback, we found that people couldn't distinguish the difference between the two groups. So, to solve this problem, we felt it was necessary to re-shoot the Rebels scene completely, with a new different set of actors and a different representation of them. Essentially, I found that feedback is key throughout the process of creating the title sequence as this gave me and the group an opportunity to listen to what our audience wanted and, for us to improve whatever is necessary in order to please the audience.

Evaluation Part: 6 " What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product ? "




Our group response via video

Tuesday 5 April 2016

Evaluation Part: 4 " Who would be the audience for your media product? "+ 5 " How did you attract/address your audience ? "

For questions 4 + 5, we as a group decided to answer them together due to them being very similar.



Our group  response via video

Furthermore, I also wanted to add that in order to attract/address our audience, we listened and read through multiple amounts of feedback from our classmates and teachers. We ensured that we took their feedback, listened to their wants and needs and made sure we made the improvements in order to please and appeal to our audience.

Friday 1 April 2016

Evaluation Part: 1 " In what ways does your media product use, develop or chalenge forms and conventions of real media products? "


 My response for this answer was via PowerPoint

Title Sequence Evaluation

For our title sequence, I made sure that I worked and followed closely to our given brief and specification for our title sequence for our movie of 'Genesis: The Uprising'. I decided to work in a group, consisting of me, Danny and Jacob (aka Bobby). Initially, for our title sequence and movie, we decided as a group that we wanted to essentially make a movie that would hold as a Dystopian/Sci-Fi movie - which is essentially a sub-genre. The narrative of our movie consists of a dystopian future with different cults and groups forming who aspire to take down the government of this society, however, the government is in fact one step ahead and are planning to overthrow and eliminate these groups and, they are tracking their every move via CCTV and found footage being sent to them. Our title sequence sets up for the rest of our movie as the plot/narrative is briefly introduced through the beginning of the movie via our title sequence.

 Purposely, the title sequence creates and sets up enigmas for the audience to question, hopefully making the audience intrigued and wanting to actually stay on and watch the rest of the movie to see what happens next, such as: why the government wants to overthrow and eliminate these groups/cults and why these cults wants to overthrow and destroy the government.

In my opinion, I feel as though the title of our movie 'Genesis: The Uprising' fits well with the narrative of our movie as genesis means the beginning or creation of a narrative. This links with the idea of the dystopian future society forming and creating cults in order to overthrow the government and, how this society simply has to find a new way of living due to the new world order set by the higher classed government. Furthermore, uprising is something I found fitting for the narrative of our movie as this links well with the cults rising upwards together in order to overthrow the government and, come out on top successfully. The genre of our movie is a sub-genre of both dystopian and sci-fi.