AS Media Studies Foundation Portfolio Jessica Hall: 2014

Monday, 3 March 2014

Audience feedback after presentation of our project.

For audience feedback I chose to use social media and SurveyMonkey to collect responses. This is because I thought that if I handed out paper questionnaires people wouldn't be as honest if they are close friends or acquaintances of mine. The survey I created was anonymous so I couldn't see who had answered what and I feel that this is a better way to conduct a survey from my sociological experience. I asked a mixture of people to take my survey and I had mixed feedback. (PLEASE CLICK TO ENLARGE)

Sunday, 2 March 2014

Additional Materials Log - Logo

Logo:

After research into different film openings of my genre, I looked at different production company logos and decided to make my own for our group media product.

This was the first logo I created,
but after showing my group they
said they would prefer it without the
border.

This is the finished logo that we decided to use.

I came up with the name 'Galaxy Productions' as it is easy to remember and did 2 different logos before I was happy with it.

I created these logos on a website called PicMonkey. This is an online picture editing service. I crated them with shapes and tools on the website and didn't use any content belonging to anybody else, therefore I had the right to use the Production Logo in our final product.

Additional Materials Log - Music/Audio

Music:

We considered the fact that we couldn't use copyright music so have used Royalty Free Music from Incompetech.

Royalty Free Music isn't always copyright free but we looked into this and the source of our music states that we can use this as long as we credit the music in our video, which we have in our video titles and we also have in our video description on Youtube.

We also took out the natural video sound and replaced it in the scene where Alex sees Chloe with a 'Crow Cawking' sound effect which we used from a company called FreeSoundTube which provides free sound effects for use, we also used another sound effect from them called 'Ghosts Whispering'.

I messaged the owner of these sound effects using social media and gained permission as long as I credit one of the pieces.

This shows our Music Credit title in our video.

To the left shows our Music Source Credits in our Youtube video description.

Thursday, 30 January 2014

Health and Safety Notes

Reconnaissance Notes

Location: North End Park

The area we are filming in is a public park so there are members of public around the area walking dogs and there may be children. We are not allowed to film members of the public without permission so we will time it right to film when the park isn't busy.

We have previously had problems with the wind causing noise in our footage and the weather has recently been bad, so we are hoping to film when these won't be an issue.

Sunday, 26 January 2014

Time Management

We are managing our time by allocating certain times to get things done.

Filming: We have allocated a Tuesday Week B to get the filming done as it will take a few hours. We can film over lunch and in the 2 free periods we all have. We had to organise between us this time, as sometimes we have different frees and when one of us might be available, the others might not have been.

Editing: We have agreed all three of us will stay Monday after school as this is a day when there are buses after school for Chloe & Mal to get home on. At least twice a week we will edit in free periods and we will edit it in lesson time too, where available to do so.

Blog work: This was mostly done at home or in free periods individually.

As you can see, we have split our time between filming and editing separately from our blog work too, to enable us enough time on the editing suites to edit our film opening, and this also allows us to have enough time to sort out any problems such as technical issues or re-filming shots.

Saturday, 25 January 2014

Shotlists

Storyboard

Tuesday, 21 January 2014

Audience Research Survey

By using Survey Monkey, I looked into potential target audience of our thriller opening. The results of my research have provided a basis and starting point for our film opening.

Psychological Film Research (Thriller)

Out of the most popular sub-genres in my film research, we chose to produce a psychological thriller. I looked at the main conventions of this sub-genre and how these films meet the requirements of the target audience.

There are many codes & conventions of psychological thrillers. Mise En Scene features of a psychological thriller includes shadows and low key lighting, this adds tension to a scene, and also shows the inner dark personality of a character. Props such as mirrors are used for effect, for example to show a characters inner self or representing the dark side of a character. Costumes are used for example for villains. The location is an important element in a thriller, they are usually set in urban environments.

Sound most commonly used in thrillers is eerie and tense, which is used to put the audience on edge.

Choosing a genre

To decide on a genre for our film opening we ran a survey into three different genres. We asked 30 people at the age of 15 which film type we preferred and this pie chart displays the results of our survey. The results conclude that the most popular genre is Thriller Films, this ensures we are meeting the needs of a target audience of certificate 15 as this is the most popular choice.

Treatment

The storyline of Antidote follows a 15 year old girl called Alex. Alex feels isolated and starts to take an unknown drug which at first relieved her anxiety but the medication soon starts to have strange effects. Alex begins to see and hear a familiar face. The familiar face she sees is actually a dead relative of hers so seeing her dead cousin is all too much for Alex. Unknown to the audience in the opening of the film, these sightings aren't actually hallucinations - they are real, but she only sees her cousin when taking one particular brand of pills.

Alex is already taking Speed and LSD regularly, so both of these combined with her medication isn't good as she develops sleep problems, paranoia and hallucinations. The film opening follows conventions of a psychological thriller such as an unstable character through scenes of emotion and paranoia. The film also uses non diegetic music to emphasize mood and feeling and camera shots such as medium close ups and close ups to capture the emotion of Alex.

The film is a target audience of 15, and we are considering what we are showing. We are showing drug use, but not in a good way so we are not promoting the use of drugs.