Friday 27 February 2009
Thursday 26 February 2009
Thriller Project
After officially being set our media thriller project we came together in our group once more and bubble stormed our ideas of what we could do, building on what one of the groups had thought of as one of the ideas we became very keen on the idea and chose this as the basis for our project. We drew several more bubble storms on ideas but this time making them more specific to our chosen idea, from that we had created small sub sections such as the music and images, characters, camera work and mise en scene.
However although we had a clear idea of what we wanted to do for our project we seemed to encounter many difficulties our main one was that we developed the story too much and ended up with a whole film instead of the two opening minutes and began thinking of ideas that would be very difficult. So, we decided to keep it simple and choose one part of our story line and incorporate it with our key images and icons for our opening scenes.
We were definite on using a rose and photo images as our main iconography for the project and for the music which will dramatically have an effect on our work we decided to use a steady beat representing the characters heart beat along with an assortment of strings and others. During this time we also thought of the camera shot we could use to make our work effective and we thought about how we can make our work interesting by using various angles, effects and match cuts.
After we were confident and positive about what we would be doing for our thriller project we decided on what roles we would have to play, we concluded that everyone would help in editing, sound and camera work. Although I was reluctant to take part in the actual film and be shown I was willing to let that go and do what was needed to help the group Krisztina who also held the same view as me previously also agreed that she didn’t mind. Eventually the characters and roles were cast hoping to please every one in the group and meet the aim of our project.
We decided on the story line of; two people – a happy couple were being stalked by another girl who was jealous of the couples relationship as she was in love with the guy. Our main scenes that took up the bulk of the two minutes were of the girl at the guy (Hamsa’s) gravestone because she had killed him we would also work in our iconic images of the rose as intentionally we came up with the idea that everytime Fouzia picked a rose petal and threw it to the ground it would go to a flash back of the happy couple and by seeing her doing this it also linked in with out title which was; love me love me not. The next step after planning our skit was to decide on roles and start filming.
Initially I was going to play the role main character and Hamsa and Fouzia agreed to play the other parts but as I was away for two lessons me and Fouzia switched roles because it would be best for the group as most of the film was based around the obsessive character. We had agreed on this but unfortunately on the days that I was not in, my group had done little filming as they arrived at the place of filming only to realize they forgot the tape. We knew we had lost time and we were behind everyone else. This should have made our group more focused but it didn’t as we still messed around and had a very laid back attitude to the project also we had put a lot of effort and though into planning, we knew what we were going to do, where we were going to do it, how we were going to do it but it took us a very long time to get round to actually filming. Thankfully we started working and knew we had to finish our project and no longer take it as a joke. It seemed that we were just very unlucky because college was also closed on the day we had media so yet again we had lost time that we were becoming very short of then on Wednesday despite the undesirable weather conditions we went out and starting filming, this day we got everything we thought we needed to complete our project now all we had to do was edit.
When we had sat down to look at our footage we realized some parts we had filmed were missing so we had to go and film extra but we also knew we had to re-work our story so we could use all the clips previously filmed to make a new story line as we had no time to film a whole new set. Unfortunately on Wednesday Hamsa wasn’t in so we decided to quickly short a scene where I was being followed, chased then murdered by Fouzia. We done this as fast as we could then immediately returned to the edit suite to continue editing.
Lesson after lesson we edited but it wasn’t until the week of the deadline like the practical filming that we actually starting editing, we worked extremely hard on it and would often miss breaks and lunched to edit our work. When we finally finished editing our video, we needed sound and music. As I said I wasn’t very good with creating music I helped out a lot with the editing and Fouzia done the music and sound and we put the two together and were very pleased with what we had achieved. Our ending story line was still the same but instead of having flash backs of a happy couple it was; a happy couple in the beginning, a scene of me being followed then a murder. On Thursday 26 February at lunch me, Krisztina and Fouzia went to one of the editing rooms to see our work we were pleased with it so went to lunch me and Krisztina said we would come back after lunch and work on it as we had a free period, we came back but we weren’t allowed to enter the room because there were other classes doing their work. So disappointed we left the last and final thing we need to do is add in the titles and then our work would be complete, again me and Krisztina said we would come in at lunch on Friday – the deadline and add in the titles we also let the rest of our group know and hopefully they will turn up too.
Over time the media has provided a set of generic codes and conventions such as camera work, mise-en-scene, sound, lighting etc but everything and everyone who either works in media or is associated with it manipulates these conventions, they may not change it completely but in one way or another they tweak it and develop it to suit the needs of their project. This is what we done in our project we were aware of the general codes and conventions within the media and specially thriller movies. For example; the colour red has many connotations such as love, passion but on the other hand it is very symbolic for danger and blood. We incorporated one main iconographic images into our project which was a red rose, it portrayed love so we twisted it and showed it being broken and ripped in half –this suited our title for the film which was ‘Love Me… Love Me Not’ we were able to play with this image in several ways, with typical petal picking of love me and love me not and the connotation of romance.
When looking over our finished project I realised that we didn’t really change the codes and conventions much, we just conformed to it. I think we done this unintentionally and we weren’t aware during the course of filming and editing whether we were breaking the conventions or not but in a way I think we did because if we didn’t, then our film could be somewhat boring and too standardised. One convention I think we stuck to was in our editing and filming. We applied the 180° rule and checked rigorously hoping we followed it.
I don’t think that our film represents any specific social group but there are only three characters in our project two of which are females we were young people, at the age of sixteen but I don’t think we were playing the part of young individuals but more so those of grown ups. As we do not represent any certain social group via age, gender, race or sexual orientation I think that we are very flexible and may attract a large cross section ranging in differences from class to age if we had created a whole film.
As our film complies to the medias set of generic codes and conventions it would be suitable for institutions to distribute our film I don’t not think however that it will be a big Hollywood film but that it would be successful for UK release as its initial idea for the film was inspired by the title of another that was out at the current time in cinemas, the film that inspired our group was called “My Bloody Valentine”. It had a horror element with a small twisted romance somewhere behind it, although we hadn’t watched the film we managed to come up with a story and shortened it to make our opening sequence instead of horror we also decided to used thriller elements combined with romance to create our finished piece of work. Eventually after UK release like many other films our film will be suitable to TV viewing.
However although we had a clear idea of what we wanted to do for our project we seemed to encounter many difficulties our main one was that we developed the story too much and ended up with a whole film instead of the two opening minutes and began thinking of ideas that would be very difficult. So, we decided to keep it simple and choose one part of our story line and incorporate it with our key images and icons for our opening scenes.
We were definite on using a rose and photo images as our main iconography for the project and for the music which will dramatically have an effect on our work we decided to use a steady beat representing the characters heart beat along with an assortment of strings and others. During this time we also thought of the camera shot we could use to make our work effective and we thought about how we can make our work interesting by using various angles, effects and match cuts.
After we were confident and positive about what we would be doing for our thriller project we decided on what roles we would have to play, we concluded that everyone would help in editing, sound and camera work. Although I was reluctant to take part in the actual film and be shown I was willing to let that go and do what was needed to help the group Krisztina who also held the same view as me previously also agreed that she didn’t mind. Eventually the characters and roles were cast hoping to please every one in the group and meet the aim of our project.
We decided on the story line of; two people – a happy couple were being stalked by another girl who was jealous of the couples relationship as she was in love with the guy. Our main scenes that took up the bulk of the two minutes were of the girl at the guy (Hamsa’s) gravestone because she had killed him we would also work in our iconic images of the rose as intentionally we came up with the idea that everytime Fouzia picked a rose petal and threw it to the ground it would go to a flash back of the happy couple and by seeing her doing this it also linked in with out title which was; love me love me not. The next step after planning our skit was to decide on roles and start filming.
Initially I was going to play the role main character and Hamsa and Fouzia agreed to play the other parts but as I was away for two lessons me and Fouzia switched roles because it would be best for the group as most of the film was based around the obsessive character. We had agreed on this but unfortunately on the days that I was not in, my group had done little filming as they arrived at the place of filming only to realize they forgot the tape. We knew we had lost time and we were behind everyone else. This should have made our group more focused but it didn’t as we still messed around and had a very laid back attitude to the project also we had put a lot of effort and though into planning, we knew what we were going to do, where we were going to do it, how we were going to do it but it took us a very long time to get round to actually filming. Thankfully we started working and knew we had to finish our project and no longer take it as a joke. It seemed that we were just very unlucky because college was also closed on the day we had media so yet again we had lost time that we were becoming very short of then on Wednesday despite the undesirable weather conditions we went out and starting filming, this day we got everything we thought we needed to complete our project now all we had to do was edit.
When we had sat down to look at our footage we realized some parts we had filmed were missing so we had to go and film extra but we also knew we had to re-work our story so we could use all the clips previously filmed to make a new story line as we had no time to film a whole new set. Unfortunately on Wednesday Hamsa wasn’t in so we decided to quickly short a scene where I was being followed, chased then murdered by Fouzia. We done this as fast as we could then immediately returned to the edit suite to continue editing.
Lesson after lesson we edited but it wasn’t until the week of the deadline like the practical filming that we actually starting editing, we worked extremely hard on it and would often miss breaks and lunched to edit our work. When we finally finished editing our video, we needed sound and music. As I said I wasn’t very good with creating music I helped out a lot with the editing and Fouzia done the music and sound and we put the two together and were very pleased with what we had achieved. Our ending story line was still the same but instead of having flash backs of a happy couple it was; a happy couple in the beginning, a scene of me being followed then a murder. On Thursday 26 February at lunch me, Krisztina and Fouzia went to one of the editing rooms to see our work we were pleased with it so went to lunch me and Krisztina said we would come back after lunch and work on it as we had a free period, we came back but we weren’t allowed to enter the room because there were other classes doing their work. So disappointed we left the last and final thing we need to do is add in the titles and then our work would be complete, again me and Krisztina said we would come in at lunch on Friday – the deadline and add in the titles we also let the rest of our group know and hopefully they will turn up too.
Over time the media has provided a set of generic codes and conventions such as camera work, mise-en-scene, sound, lighting etc but everything and everyone who either works in media or is associated with it manipulates these conventions, they may not change it completely but in one way or another they tweak it and develop it to suit the needs of their project. This is what we done in our project we were aware of the general codes and conventions within the media and specially thriller movies. For example; the colour red has many connotations such as love, passion but on the other hand it is very symbolic for danger and blood. We incorporated one main iconographic images into our project which was a red rose, it portrayed love so we twisted it and showed it being broken and ripped in half –this suited our title for the film which was ‘Love Me… Love Me Not’ we were able to play with this image in several ways, with typical petal picking of love me and love me not and the connotation of romance.
When looking over our finished project I realised that we didn’t really change the codes and conventions much, we just conformed to it. I think we done this unintentionally and we weren’t aware during the course of filming and editing whether we were breaking the conventions or not but in a way I think we did because if we didn’t, then our film could be somewhat boring and too standardised. One convention I think we stuck to was in our editing and filming. We applied the 180° rule and checked rigorously hoping we followed it.
I don’t think that our film represents any specific social group but there are only three characters in our project two of which are females we were young people, at the age of sixteen but I don’t think we were playing the part of young individuals but more so those of grown ups. As we do not represent any certain social group via age, gender, race or sexual orientation I think that we are very flexible and may attract a large cross section ranging in differences from class to age if we had created a whole film.
As our film complies to the medias set of generic codes and conventions it would be suitable for institutions to distribute our film I don’t not think however that it will be a big Hollywood film but that it would be successful for UK release as its initial idea for the film was inspired by the title of another that was out at the current time in cinemas, the film that inspired our group was called “My Bloody Valentine”. It had a horror element with a small twisted romance somewhere behind it, although we hadn’t watched the film we managed to come up with a story and shortened it to make our opening sequence instead of horror we also decided to used thriller elements combined with romance to create our finished piece of work. Eventually after UK release like many other films our film will be suitable to TV viewing.
As mentioned above I think that our film will be suitable for several audiences because it is flexible. However our film will probably attract a more younger, modern audience. Someone who is either single or in a relationship it doesn’t really matter, it should appeal to all of them. We would also attract our audience by advertising, I think mainly in magazines and internet campaigns as we are a young generation it is certain that potential customers and our desired audience will see our adverts and then pay to watch the film in cinemas.
Through our media project I picked up numerous skills and developed many that I already had for example; I was able to develop my communication skills and group work skills as this project required commitment from everyone and also patience so everyone in the group could have their say. A more hands on skill that I developed was how to use the camera and camera equipment, but the basics such as blogging came naturally as I use the internet regularly. However where I learnt the majority of skills was in the edit suite, using such programmes as final cut pro, live type and sound track it was the most challenging but also essential to the project making it what it is.
Looking back over this task and the preliminary task I see what we have achieved, how we progressed and how we furthered our knowledge. In the beginning we were very much amateurs with basic skills and still are but have grown confident in using equipments such as cameras, tripods and the more technical aspects such as everything on the macs from firefox to final cut pro. I have learnt from this experience that it is very difficult to make a short two minute video and that planning really is best also overall with filming and editing I think we would have been better off and not in such an anxious state I we stuck to the work instead of being relaxed and messing around.
Wednesday 25 February 2009
Thriller editing
Thriller editing
This is a very crucial and important week for all thriller media students. Our group have an aim to finish our editing as quick as possible which is why me, Qiu-Ling and Krisztina were dedicated to stay in through our break and lunch time to try and do as much editing as we can. Unfortunately, Hamsa was not in today as he had a back pain however, he was determined to finish the work as soon as he comes back tomorrow. After college today, me, Qiu-Ling and Krisztina decided to get started on the sound for our thriller. As Krisztina, and Qiu-ling did a lot of work today I decided to stay for longer after college to put some sound on our video clip just to check and see what works. I kept on playing around with sound pro and came up with loads of ideas in the editing room. Because of this, I lost track of time and didn’t realise that I stayed at college till 6.30pm when everyone was gone and I was the only one left asking Mary who was a helpful media teacher to listen to my sound and see if she liked it. I received positive feedback about the sound I have created and I am quite exited to show the rest of my group what I’ve done. We will decide tomorrow as a group when we meet up at lunch time whether or not the sound fits in with our thriller and see if we could add any adjustments.
Before editing our video clip today, we decided to go outside and record a quick clip of me murdering Qiu-Ling as part of our opening sequence. We have decided this as we went through all of our footage to see where we could put each clip and realised that it didn’t make much sense without a murder scene. As a result of this, we used our initiative and asked Dan to give us a knife so we could use it in our college Basement and made it look it we was at the back of the N1 centre in Angel, where we shot the previous scene of Hamsa and Qiu-Ling. Krisztina was recording me and Qiu-Ling’s murder scene. This took up our break time but it was worth it because we got quite a lot done in one day. We are at a stage where we are almost finished and tomorrow we will just edit the video to make it perfect. We will add some finishing touches such as effects and make sure our clip lengths are correct. The sound is almost done so we will just make sure everything fits perfectly together. After this, we will add in our title and cut it with the key images in our sequence such as the rose petals.
This is a very crucial and important week for all thriller media students. Our group have an aim to finish our editing as quick as possible which is why me, Qiu-Ling and Krisztina were dedicated to stay in through our break and lunch time to try and do as much editing as we can. Unfortunately, Hamsa was not in today as he had a back pain however, he was determined to finish the work as soon as he comes back tomorrow. After college today, me, Qiu-Ling and Krisztina decided to get started on the sound for our thriller. As Krisztina, and Qiu-ling did a lot of work today I decided to stay for longer after college to put some sound on our video clip just to check and see what works. I kept on playing around with sound pro and came up with loads of ideas in the editing room. Because of this, I lost track of time and didn’t realise that I stayed at college till 6.30pm when everyone was gone and I was the only one left asking Mary who was a helpful media teacher to listen to my sound and see if she liked it. I received positive feedback about the sound I have created and I am quite exited to show the rest of my group what I’ve done. We will decide tomorrow as a group when we meet up at lunch time whether or not the sound fits in with our thriller and see if we could add any adjustments.
Before editing our video clip today, we decided to go outside and record a quick clip of me murdering Qiu-Ling as part of our opening sequence. We have decided this as we went through all of our footage to see where we could put each clip and realised that it didn’t make much sense without a murder scene. As a result of this, we used our initiative and asked Dan to give us a knife so we could use it in our college Basement and made it look it we was at the back of the N1 centre in Angel, where we shot the previous scene of Hamsa and Qiu-Ling. Krisztina was recording me and Qiu-Ling’s murder scene. This took up our break time but it was worth it because we got quite a lot done in one day. We are at a stage where we are almost finished and tomorrow we will just edit the video to make it perfect. We will add some finishing touches such as effects and make sure our clip lengths are correct. The sound is almost done so we will just make sure everything fits perfectly together. After this, we will add in our title and cut it with the key images in our sequence such as the rose petals.
Sunday 1 February 2009
Wednesday's lesson (rainy day)
The last lesson we had was for shooting. The people present were me, Hamsa and Krisztina. We planned to go to the cemetery that day and do our rose scene. We booked the camera for Monday overnight in order for us to get all our recording done. We were not completely sure about how to reach our location so we got on the bus and the journey took ages because of the traffic. The weather was also terrible as it was raining. When we got to the cemetery we were finally ready to start shooting. Sadly, we took our our camera to set it up and realised that I had left the camera tape at college. This was very unfortunate but it was a mistake. We got over the fact that we couldn’t shoot that day and made a stronger plan for our next shoot. We decided that we were going to spend our spare time outside college and record our clip because it wouldn’t work unless we used more of our time. This plan is hopefully going to be successful as we have decided as a team to work much harder and corporate more for the project.
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