Evaluation Question 7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt about the progression from it to the finished product?

Looking back to the preliminary, what we did was shooting a sequence of shots from a given story board. There were 4 persons in my group, 3 boys and 1 girl. After choosing the right content which was meant to be appropriate to the given script, we then decided that 2 persons took the acting bit, 1 boy and 1 girl. The rest would take the director part and the camera role. My role was to be a director. I think I did pretty well as a director. At first, I did not get used with speaking out “Stand by” or “Rolling”. However, as the shoot went on, I gradually got used with it and be confident in saying that. We decided to shoot the whole story board in 4 ways: wide shot, close up of the first character and the second character, over shoulder of the first and the second character. This means that for the whole story, we had to shoot 4 different times at 4 different shoot angles. Everything went quite well. The communication between the groups was clear. People understood each other. Thanks to that, the production stage went quite well and fast that we had more time to get on with some extra angle shootings such as: eye-line of the first character to the other one and opposite and the low-angle shooting... Even though we did quite well during the production, we were unprofessional in some ways. Sometimes, we had to shoot again because the actors forgot their script. However, this was caused due to the lack of time. Sometimes, the camera man did forget to bubble and I, a director, sometimes did not know what to direct the actors on how they could express themselves more in order to show their professionalism. On the other, I think that as new people in the making film production stage, we did quite well. Taking the advantages from the preliminary task, I had some experiences that helped us to save a lot of time in the day of shooting our project. Thus, we could prevent some mistakes and saved us lots of time.

The best thing I could learn is that team working for such a long time. In order to get everything organized in one group is not an easy work to do. This requires strong bonds within the team and every single member should show their respect from one to another and they should put all of their efforts into it.

In terms of constructing the whole piece in a professional way, I have learnt a lot. I learnt how to write a script in a right format (Courier type. Spacing of speeches) and to write a treatment. Also, from the whole process, I understood how important a story board is from helping us to serve our shoots.

Our Business Card ( Created by Thach Ta)

By forming a real company with its logo and contact details as well as writing contract helps I to understand more about the process and I feel that I am in a real working conditions, not like studying. Thus, this gives me convenience when I was working, rather than studying thus allowing me to have fun rather than to be being told to do something.

Company's Logo (Created by Jamie Haj)

Even though at some point during the whole process, I did feel frustrated under the amount of work and time pressure, I am proudly to say that I have put all of my efforts and energy in this project in order to make it look the best, though it could’ve been better. As a producer, apart from the main tasks, I have always kept up the enthusiasm of the whole group when we were tired of choosing hundreds of thousands of ambient sounds or when we’re stuck not to know which shoots we should choose during the whole process. I also tried to keep everyone on top of everything during the pre-production dates by keep reminding them to finish the storyboard, re-typing the script or constructing a prop list. Working in my work is just the greatest experience I’ve ever had where everyone respected each other. However, at the first dates of getting used with all the members of the group was quite hard for me as I wasn’t able to communicate with them well. Thanks to working in group, my communication skill actually gets better. This really helps me to get the idea of how it will work in the real life, in the real Industry.

If I could go back and do it all again, I would focus on editing sound effect. This is because I believe that if we had more sound effects, the project could’ve been more effective. However, I am proud with my Final Product that I don’t think it needs lots of changes.

Having posted the complete version of our project on YouTube, we have received several feedbacks from the YouTube members. Here is the link of our project on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZG5PwFJ6Quw&feature=related

I thought they were all useful that can be used to analyse the successes/weakness of our product. I appreciate for those valuable comments from those who have posted them. Overall, our opening sequence seems to have a positive sign in terms of getting the audience focused on our product when it shows “I thought this opening sequence was very good” by rubymcowan, “Good opening sequence” by katywebb7 or “Very good sequence” by lilliepounds. These comments show that they really like the way how we construct the mise-en-scene in our opening sequence which made it to be realistic and “depth/background history” that it actually “keeps the audience on edge at all times”. For example, “The murder was also realistic and the shots put together nicely - the close up of the sink for example” shows the attitudes of the audiences from this comment. This therefore encourages us a lot and these make I feel of everything is being paid off afterwards. Furthermore, the comments on special effects that we used for lighting, sounds and camera angles reflect the professionalism thus makes those comments more reliable. “I thought the colour palette was very effective with the consistent dark lighting”, or “The constant beep in the background is very effective in building tension” expresses their positive thought about the way we constructed mise-en-scene and the usage of sound to help building up the tension, which therefore helps to succeed the idea of “thriller”. However, there is a clash in opinions of the flashbacks that we used in order to give more history and depth for the product. “I also like the flashbacks as it helps fill in the back-story and gives it a more realistic element to it” shows that this member really likes the flashback that we added in our project. On the other hand, “the flashbacks felt unnecessary and detracted from the tension of the overall piece” from a member named HHMedia2009 shares an opposite attitude towards the flashback. I thought that both the comments are useful because my favourite part in the whole piece is actually the flashback because it firstly gives the audiences more information on the history of the story and also the sound of laughing when chasing in the wood from the guy actually creates the creepiness of him. I thought that the flashback could’ve been improved so that it would portray a scarier and creepier tension which could match the tension of the whole piece by lengthening the duration and adding more components to the shots in the chasing sequence such as more detailed in mise-en-scene with various camera angles so that it would not “detract” the whole piece. Finally, it seems that the sound seems to be successful in terms of creating the “thriller” tension, according from EllaKatherinMelhuish who said “The sound effect of the 'bleep' is very effective adding to the "thriller" genre”. Generally, I am still feeling proud of my project due to the fact that all the feedbacks are positive which express the same idea of a “a very successful sequence”.

Evaluation Question 6: What have you learnt about Media Technologies from the process of constructing your Product?

Throughout the whole process, I think what I learnt the most is from constructing the project from using camera, choosing camera angle and playing with it as well as the editing process.

To serve the shoot, we use a JVC Sony PD170. I think this camera is brilliant as it is not very complicated to use but still gives us perfect quality and effects. I also learnt how to create effective light by using transparent color paper to create lights we want to use. This gave us a stand out effect that we hadn’t thought about before. Moreover, I learnt in order to get a cool shot, we’ve got to play with camera angle a lot. This will then allow us to have a lot of cool shots that we could not think of when storyboarding.

In the editing process, I learnt that by constructing bins to put logged shot which we prefer would help us easier to edit and save a lot of time. Also, I learnt how to create a picture from a scene by pressing I (input) and O (output) respectively so that I can upload it on my blog. Also, I learnt how to create simple but professional text on screen by expanding the space between letters. For sound editing, I learnt how to fade in and out sound effect. Furthermore, I was taught that to create sound effect, it may need a lot of different sounds, which may not be related. For example, for the stabbing scene, apart from the sound of splashing blood, we also used the sound of hitting a metal and punch to create a more effective sound. Lastly, I also learnt how to control the pitch of sound to create an effect for sound.

Evaluation Question 5: How did you attract/address your audience?

Having a specific plan for marketing will not only give the highest effect for the film in terms of its fame to the public, it will also get the maximum audience to move to the cinema. To get a successful marketing campaign, it should cover 4 important factors: Product, Price, Promotion and Place. In terms of film and cinema advertising, I think that promotion, place and product are important as price will be determined by the cinemas and distributors. To expand the product, in this case is the film, I would use viral marketing as the decisive role. This could be done by celebrating events for the film such as talk shows with the main character in the films (Franky and Russell will be required to dress up as they are in the film). One factor that makes a campaign successful is to continuity take effect on the audience. It would take time to make the audience to take a decision to watch a film. So, the strategy for marketing for our project will be continuously small advertisements but the rate of spreading on newspaper, posters, social networks such as Facebook and MySpace will be constant. Also, the Psychotic may have his own blog on the internet just in order to make him more real. Also, we can publicize our reviews from factual comments from Facebook, YouTube (trailer/opening sequence) or MySpace in order to give a more detailed picture of the film to get attract. Perhaps, we could supply him an address on Facebook or MySpace just to get the psychotic nearer and livelier to the audiences. Also, we can advertise our trailer by selling them to technology company such as laptop, mobile phone so that they can put our trailer as samples on their phones/laptops when they try to show their customers the function of their phones/laptops i.e. laptops with bigger screen or mobile phones or iPods with their function of watching movie clips. Moreover, to promote more sales after the film is released in cinemas, we can then start the campaign on promoting DVD rentals/on sales which contains extra part or behind the scene of the film for fans and people who are unable to go to the cinema. I am also thinking of selling the props in the film i.e. the heart monitor, the visor if the success of the film becomes more than what we expected.

In terms of mise en scene, we try to attract our audiences by constructing the killing scene as horrible as possible. Also, as our main character is a teenager, this might attract more about the teenage group, who is the main target audience by exploring this theme. Also, by having cool shots from the interior such as scene of the location looks like an old dining hall but the use of the heart monitor would create tension for the audiences as they would possibly think that the girl was being kidnapped, thus this enables us to build more tension during this opening sequence which keeps the audiences on the edge of all the time from the beginning to the end of the sequence.

Beside, I am going to put sevel of these photos, which are taken from the actual film, to construct a poster. The reason why I chose those pictures is because I believe they have strong content that can actually get the attention from the audiences. Have a look at these. I think they are very effective in term of stimulate the audiences' curiousity.

I also produce my own film poster, which used several pictures I took from the actual shot. With the effect from photoshop, I thought this poster looks pretty cool and attractive to the audiences. For example, the broken wall layer I added on the girl's eyes looking up created a very sensitive tension. By having the girl's picture as the background, the audiences could understand that the victim, thus the theme, is about female. Therefore, this would attract the audiences as we have explored the typical common factors used for thriller. Below the main pictures, I used other shots from the opening sequence in order to build more depth/history on the poster to tell them more about the story. Lastly but important, I've got the actress's and actor's name on the poster. This would create the professionalism on our poster. In fact, it would be helpful to attract more audiences with the actor's/actress's names. Overall, I thought with this professional poster, this would help us to attract the audiences more.

................Created by: Thach Ta

Evaluation Question 4: Who would be the Audience for your Media Product?

Determining the target audience is an important step in the whole process of producing and releasing a film as it will save the cost (by having a specific plan for marketing to that group of target audience). According to the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), it typifies that '18' – No-one younger than 18 may see an ‘18’ film in a cinema. No-one younger than 18 may rent or buy an ‘18’ rated video. In “18”, the features in the film should be rated where material or treatment appears to the Board to risk harm to individuals or, through their behavior, to society – e.g. any detailed portrayal of violent or dangerous acts, or of illegal drug use, which is likely to promote the activity. The Board may also intervene with portrayals of sexual violence which might, e.g. eroticize or endorse sexual assault or the more explicit images of sexual activity – unless they can be exceptionally justified by context and the work is not a 'sex work' as defined below. For “15”, it is suitable only for 15 years and over. No one younger than 15 age may see a ‘15’ film in a cinema. No-one younger than 15 may rent or buy a ‘15’ rated video or DVD. No theme is prohibited, provided the treatment is appropriate to 15 year olds. I think our product is suitable for Rate 15 as no theme is prohibited, thus our theme would be explored with no problems. In addition, the violence in our project is unsuitable for people who are under age of 15 which might obsess them psychologically. “15” is the group of age that they actually control themselves and they know what they are watching. Also, if we rate “18”, this would narrow down the boundaries of target audiences thus reducing the revenue we might receive which might be lost. In conclusion, rate “15” should be our target audience as well as young adults.

Evaluation Question 3: What kind of media Institution might distribute your Media Product and why?

I would typify our media product as an independent low budget. The first reason is the limitation in financing budget for the film. I could only afford less than 200 pounds in this and I think so is Jamie and Alex. Thus, limited fund would limit our promotion values. Therefore, we will need to minimise the cost as low as possible but still making the effects. Also, the cast team was also simple with me – producer, Jamie – director, Alex- creative artist, Simon – our media teacher, Franky – actress, Russell – actor and Matt- in charge of camera. In terms of locations, we only have 2 where in the wood and the school’s dining hall. However, I thought that the team worked well together and the locations completely succeeded helping us to create our project, even though they both were simplified. Additional, the duration for us to start our project until we finished is about 3 months. This is a short time that in order to get detailed idea, get shot and get edited would have not been enough. Working under time condition is not an easy work to do. Generally, this project is an independent low budget. However, if we could raise the budget and have longer time given as well as having a detailed marketing plan, I strongly believe that with the content, our project could have been a mainstream that could bring profitable success as if a distributor was on board.

I have done several researches on UK Independent distributors and I found several ones who would offer me a distribution deal. Axiom Films International Limited is a production and distribution company of independent and world cinema. This company was established in 1997, it is a leading independent label that brings together a range of film activities, including the production of feature films and documentaries, and a flourishing distribution division with a rapidly expanding library of high quality film content under direct ownership. In addition, this also does deal with products which are serve pieces. The second distributor is Content Film. This is also a production and distribution company. Content Film plc is a London-based film and television sales company. It also owns or controls a significant library of film and television rights and assets, including over 3,000 hours of television and over 100 feature films. The last distributor I have found is the Dazzle Film Company. This is the distributor and sales agent of British and international short films. Overall, I think that the all 3 companies are generally suitable for us as they accept to release low budget horror films, which is our project’s genre. However, I think the most appropriate is Dazzle Film Company as they will offer to release short films. Our project could’ve been a short film that other distributors might not take it. Thus, Dazzle Film Company should be the best one.

Evaluation Question 2: How does your Media Product Represent Social Groups?

There are two main characters in our project: the innocent girl and the male psychotic. We want our female character to be a middle class and she is western. Also, she needs to be a teenage girl as it would attract more audiences as teenage is an attractive theme to construct. For the male psychotic, we want him to be a middle-aged man.

To support the representation of an innocent girl, we required Franky (our actress) to have a white top. The colour white usually brings the connotation of “innocence”. Also, white helps to reflect the truth in term of brightness. Further more, as we want our character to be a white female so we used Franky as her appearance is typically a European teenage girl: blond hair and her skin is white. In order to construct her class, which is supposed to be a middle-class teenage, her cloths will be very simple: a white top and black tights. In addition, we represented her as she had been through a horrible chasing in the woods. So, Alex (our creative artist) put mud and blood on her body. We also used a knife to tear off the tight to make it look like the branch of trees did it.

In order to represent the male psychotic, we used Russell, an actor introduced by our teacher. He is a perfect one for us as he is a middle-aged man and his profession is a doctor. To construct the form of a doctor, we borrowed the white operation coat from our school chemistry’s lab which looks perfectly similar. Again, the white coat associates with the white top that the girl wears which was established before, escalating the theme of innocence. Moreover, to make him look more horrible and peculiar, we got him a visor from the chemistry lab and an operation mask from the san. They all worked perfectly in terms of creating a bizarre doctor whom will confuse the audience not knowing if he is good or bad.
We mainly focus on the innocence of the girl as it will create more tension and nastiness in our project. The use of innocence to be treated horrifically will go against the original idea of “you have what you did”. On the other hand, doing good things will result in better consequences.

To construct the innocence in terms of using camera angle, we mainly had a close up of the girl and high angle to her face as well. The aim of these shots is to stand out the facial expressions of the innocence of the girl. Similarly to the doctor, we had his face shot closed up in order to construct the insanity/personal gratification after the killing scene. (I.e. the crossing eye could be observed after he had killed the girl).

Evaluation Question 1: In what ways does your Product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our foundation project, “Pulse”, is released at the beginning of 2009, directed by Jamie Hajigeogiou. This is a horror film that involving the central chanter being a psychotic member who prays on the innocent victims, mainly female, that later on one victim will destroy him. It begins of a mid shot from a girl, lying on a bed in an old and dark kitchen, connected with a heart monitor. Her dress is torn up, her body is covered with mud and she is unconscious. Then a middle-aged man, in an operating coat, goes into the room. After him walking out, the girl wakes up and get scared as she does not know where she is and being lonely. Hearing the sound in the room, the man walks back in and as soon as the girl sees the middle-aged man, a series of chasing sequence in the wood where the man tried to catch her comes up in her through a flashback. The girl starts panicking and shouting with a screwdriver. He raises his hand and starts stabbing her several times. Then the heart monitor goes off indicating she’s dead. The man walks out with blood on his dress and mask. This will lead to the next part of the film.

Our production project is typically a “Western/American horror movies” as the mains conventions of contemporary of ours are similar to the typical horror films such as using female as victims in vulnerable situations with a male protagonist killing her by a frightening weapon (the screwdriver) at an isolated location, in a large and empty old houses where it’s likely to be impossible to get help from the outside. We also constructed our project to be more frightened as fear; death and violence are all coming likely to be in a row after a very long duration of silence and slow moving scene. To get this done, we did several researches in order more information on how they successfully achieved to represent their idea.

Our influence is mainly from Saw as the most of the main themes we used for our project are from Saw. In Saw I (2004), directed by James Wan, there is a stabbing scene of a guy was made to stab another one in order to get a key from his stomach. The iconography of the stabbing scene looks horrible and describes the protagonist as a psycho. Thus, by having such this scene in our project, we can easily show one of the main premises of the content of our film such as psychotic. Also, in every single Saw, we can learn that the victims always wake up in an isolated room in a large and old house. This would create immediately the lonely and lost feeling of the main character from a place where we all do now know. Additional, in Saw, sexual equality is nothing. Female are taken and killed as horrifically as male does. To have a total psychotic who kills woman or man terribly as in Saw, this constructs a more atrocious protagonist in our film.

Our male protagonist appears likely a doctor. Here we tried to challenge the fact that doctor, who is always supposed to help/cure people generally, is a psychotic. At first, the audiences cannot know if the doctor is a good or a bad person as he seems to be taking care of her and he shows no sign of going to kill the girl. When it comes to the part that he stabs her horrifically, it completely goes against the idea of doctor “being an omniscient to help people”. This will therefore help us to exhibit our main themes of a psychotic killing people.

"Pulse" Final

Created by: Jamie Haj, Alex Newton and Thach Ta

Editing process

We're now moving to the editing process. In my opinion, this is the hardest part in the whole process. We have all the scene but gathering them and putting them together are eventually harder than shooting them. We face several problems during editing that really annoyed us For example, there were scenes that we needed to have in onder to serve the previous ones however we did not have so we had to change or cut that part. However, overall, from what we have so far, I think that our editing process is going very well and we're on sound now.


Tutorial of Final Cut Pro First part

We used Final Cut Pro and Soundtrack Pro on the MACS for our editing process. We have already used Final Cut Pro once so we had nothing to worry about i.e. scratching before actually start editing. We selected several shots that can be gathered together. Mainly, we have all the basic shots such as: long shot, mid shot, close up, over shoulder, point of view. To help us edit easier, we separately log the scenes in several bins such as: 1 bin for the scene in the old dining hall, 1 bin for the scene in the wood and 1 bin for sountrack and sound eddfect. By doing this, we won't be mess up between those shots and save us lots of time.

In the contunuity editing of the opening sequence, we start with a long overall shot of the scene, which is known as the establishing shot. This shot introduces the audiences where the main character is by the presentation of objects. Audiences can recognise that the girl has been kidnapped (her hands being tightened by ropes) and they can understand that she's in a very bad situation (mud all over her body) and they can learn many other information being given from the presentation of location, objects and character. Continuity, we put the scene had been logged into places to finish the story of our product.

For graphic relations between shots, usually we choose two shots which have similar movement of the character i.e. head grabbing from distant cut to close up of the hand grabbing the girl's head or a high angle shot of the doctor about to mark on the girl's neck cut to the clos eup of the movement downwards of the pen on the girl's neck. Also, we did put two shots together as they're opposite to each other. For example, the flashback of the girl. We have a close up shot of the girl wakes up. It was totally silent however we then cut in the scene where she was chased by the psycho doctor which was very fast in duration compared to the waking up scene and it was very noisy compared to the silence in the previous scene as well. These jumping scenes will therefore create nervous and lost feeling for the audience as they have to keep feeling from silence to noisy and back to silence and from dark to bright and back to dark again.

We basically divided our opening sequence in two parts which completely had different contrast in duration, in otherword, contrast in rhythmic relations. We deliberately put a long duration in the scenes where the girl was sleeping, the doctor went in the room to prepare, head grabbing, neck marking. However, as we approach the killing scene and the chasing sequence of the flashback, we rapidly increase the speed of the scene i.e. the flashback of the girl was quite fast and the stabbling on her was really fast. The sudden increase in speed of the scenes creates an effect that brings the audiences more attention to the audiences as they were thinking the girl wouldn't be killed so suddenly.

For temporal relations, we do have flashback of the girls after she has seen the doctor. As the beginging of the opening sequence, the audiences cannot assume how the doctor was. Is he good or bad? By the time the girl wakes up, when she sees the doctor, immediately we cut to flashback. This brings the girl and the audience together as they will understand more about the situation of the girl, of how she becomes so bad and of how she's so scared.

For sound editing, we use Soundtrack Pro and internal resource (from the school's iTunes) to create sound effect.

Because we have no dialouge in our opening sequence, the main sound for it will be ambient sound and diagetic/non-diagetic sound. We have had the "beep" of the heart monitor and the "long beep" of it when the girl dies. Also, we put the sound of low pitch wind throughout the whole piece in a very low volume to create the suspense of the scene and as the scene moves towards the end, the sound gets louder and the "beep" gets faster and faster to create the feeling of death is coming.