this is the strory board of some of our shots

Final Piece

This is the final piece of our video and it has taken a long time for us to make the music better than it was. we stayed for a long time making it better and we have now used garageband and we think the music fits the genre of the film and we're happy to name it our FINAL PIECE.

this is the preliminary task we were given to do when we started the course

Video

this is our draft video

Film Evaluation

Film Evaluation 1

Character Representation

this is a picture of me as i was being filmed and at first we tried to make me look richer but then it turned out that this look worked well with the filming. This representing the typical teenager walking through the woods with his flat hat and his drink in his hand. It also represents me as being very mischievous.

Character development

In the video we had to make me look a little bit richer. This is to make me look like I am from an important family. The plot of our video is that a hitman is killing off a family. This is shown by the pictures of my family being crossed out showing who has been killed and who is left. Joab is the latest victim of the hitman.When the Camera cuts to an extreme closeup of my dad's face on the picture it shows who the hitman will be targeting next and also introducing the main character.

I had to change a lot of things to suit our film ambition and one of the changes i had to make to myself was to wear smart clothing, a new walk, a more alert me. I also had to think about the way my posture was in the video and i think it helps me that i do drama so i had a clear idea of what to do in thriller movies so i had to walk a little bit steadier than i usually do and i had to try and keep a straight face throughout the filming. most importantly i had to generate a lot of patience.

By Joab Magara

Camera work

At the start of our film it starts with an establishing shot of a street and the name of it which in the long run is the name of our film.
This is what our shot at the start would look like as it pans around the neighbourhood giving us an idea of where we are.

Most of the shots we had were all long shots of the actor and we did this so we can show the effect of him being followed.
A great shot in my opinion in the film is the one when we put four different shots together to make the CCTV cameras and put the time underneath to give it more effect. it has worked quite well with the concept of the film.

By Joab Magara

Editing

Editing has been a bit of a struggle for us. We've been using a lot of innovative things to our film and some of those being; slow motion, dissolving credits, darkened effects and so on. Our editing has been good for the genre we are planning on portraying.

Today's the deadline and we're developing and making changes to our film opening which is now looking a lot better than it did before. Our main form of editing in this film is continuity as we are following one person throughout the film.

What I think we need to make a bit better is the way we show the shots, i think some of the shots will need to be a bit more gritty and dark and some shots might need a little less time and some need more time its just the judgement of when and what we edit at the right time.

By Joab Magara

Music

In most or every film opening music is always needed. Music tells you the story, it captures the audience and shows them the genre they will be watching. for example, romantic films will consit of songs sung to make the audience feel happy and in musical term, they would play only in major keys, whereas horror movies use very discorded keys and ones that dont make sense which give the audience an insight on what the genre is straight from the start.

In this case i have decided to make music myself, because i felt that i can make it to what it should be easier than looking on the internet, even though it would be easier, it would be harder to find the exact one to put in our video.

My decision to make it myself i think is paying off because it goes very well with the thriller genre we are trying to portray and in the music i have used a lot of high octaved notes which i think fit very well with the genre as i found out from other films like "Enemy of the state" and "The Net". In the end i think the music will pay off.

By Joab Magara

First day of Filming

Today we finally started our filming and we have kept to our plan and done most of the shots from where we took the pictures and put on our storyboards.

we found some of the filming quite hard because some of the time the camera would wobble and then the next time it would zoom in too much and lose focus, but overall our ldeas have potential to be better and can be better but this means that we need to put in more effort.

Today as planned, Joab did the acting, Sam did the filming assisted by Matt, Luke directed it and Matt also did the editing. this is good to know our roles because then know one is confused with each other and Ideas would come better and more organised.

We have now decided to start to get together at weekends to get the work done and this will help us to get better grades and is relevant for the quality we want to show in all areas of our project whether it be filming or the quality of song choice.

By Joab

Today's Lesson 25/2/10

Today we have been thinking about filming but the rain has kept us at a holt. we have been going through some Ideas we can use for the filming and some of the new ldeas we came up with were:

- grittiness

- tension

- clear genre

- music to be slow

- opening will be a bit dark

- camera sound to create more tension

- we need the right font at the start to establish the genre

All these ldeas are so we can show that we do have clear understanding of the concept of our film opening. lt is so we can show that we know what we would be doing and normally when people dont plan, they end up with a bad result and planning this is a good way to get a good mark and still understand our task.

My Intentions

Through the analysis I understand a lot of things to do with doing a thriller based movie. It needs to be gritty, have a sense of mystery and a way to shock the viewer.

I have also did a questionnaire which has showed me who my target audience is and is relevant for us as a group to know who we are doing the film for. The questionnaire showed that more people from the age of 14-18. So our film is going to be in film context a rated 15.

I therefore plan to meet these conventions by always coming back to my questionnaire when l'm making the film and we could also look at the camera shots to see if the age group is beeing met, by this I mean that if the shots look too elementary and if it looks too feminine then the age we have informed would have to be overwritten.

However i plan to challenge the conventions by making it diffenent to a typical thriller film because it would look good to keep the same genre but doing something different with it.

l have chosen to analyse the opening of phone booth because its very well directed and lures you in to the story.

At the beginning of ‘phone booth’ you see space and satellites flying around, the sound track is male voices singing a slow song about the’ operator’. Next they show an image of earth from space and zoom in to New York. It then changes to a circuit board inside a mobile phone of a business man in Times Square, New York. To the left we see the people singing the song on the pavement. Then we are shown an establishing shot of Times Square. After that they show some street performers and lots of people using mobile phones. Throughout modern but simple font styles are used to show names. The things I might use in my opening could be mobile phones, establishing shot and modern fonts.

American gangster is a great film about a man with so much authority and power that he uses it to kill people who have either offended him or his family. l have chosen to analyse this film because l think that it gives you the fell of a thriller which is relevant to our group's film opening. lt will also be good for us because then we can use the experienced shots, music choice and many more important elements such as setting, colour. l also think that it is also a film which makes you think really hard about what's happening and that is what we want to portray in our film opening

Questions
1) How often do you go to the cinema?
1-3 per week (2)
1-5 per month (3)
1-10 per year (15)
Other (2)
2)What’s your favorite type of film?
Thriller (12)
Comedy (3)
Action (6)
Horror (10)
Drama (1)
Romance (4)
3)What is your age?
12 (1)
13(13)
14(4)
15(1)
16(13)
17(5)
18 or over(4)
4)Do you watch low budget films or just big budget films?
Low budget (4)
High budget (17)
Both
5)What is your gender?
Male (16)
Female (11)

In media we have been doing a lot of preparation and have been planning what we will be doing either Print or Film.

I have looked at the choices and have now chosen to do Film. we have to analyse the first two minutes of films linked to the genre we will be doing. The reason I chose film is because i think that i can do more and exceed more because of how many films I watch and have analysed such as:

I have analysed Firewall and found the genre instantly which is well portrayed as action/thriller. We get this idea because of the music, the text and the camera shots being blunted.

I also analysed Phone Booth, which is a very suspensive thriller/action film and l found it the best to analyse because it drew me in even with the trailer.

I then lastly analysed Die Hard 3 and it was a clear indication to me that it was an action film but the first two munites were to help me get the types of shots, music, editing i needed for making my two minute film opening. My film opening being a thriller.

In films like these, there is a similar element they all use in their film openings and it is the establishing shot. This shows us the setting so we know where we are

Lucky Number Slevin is a great thriller film about a boy who loses his parents because of a bet his father did and vowes to get his revenge from the two men that are having a rivalry as they have a long past.
The target audience for this kind of film is mainly for an age group in the 14-30 region. The reason being that, kids younger than that would probably be watching films produced by Disney and the people older than 30 could most likely be watching more educated films. I also picked this film to analyse because it is also related to the kind of flim l'll be doing.