Media Evaluation - Stephanie Brand

When we were planning our media product we made a decision and that decision was that we wanted our media product to challenge the typicall political movie. But with the difference that our Politcal media product was going to be different and we were going to challange this genre by using a Female actress to play the main role, the reason for this is because normally in political films men always play this role. Also this way we are showing the audience that Women can also do things that Men do.

We did take in consideration that these types of movies fully establish the location of where everything is taking place ie what country/city it is set in. So we thought about this carefully in our group and we decided that int he begining of our clip we were going to do this by showing off the location and buildings by using long distant shots of:

City Hall


Tower Bridge


By fully establishing where everything is taking place, our clip shows and fits in with what social group our media prodcuct represents. Our media product represents the Higher working class social group. We done this by making myself (the actress) look very sophisticated, quite wealthy and high statused. We dont this by the clothing that im wearing. I wore a Black smart knee length skirt, a Black smart blazer with a white shirt, Black heels and a rather expensive looking handbag.

My body language throughout the clip is quite secretive but at the same time i am dedicated to what i am doing and following orders. I personally think that where we filmed our media product, the way i am dressed, my body language all fit in really well with the fact that it represents a Higher class. We filmed in the heart of the City of London where ther are lots fo glass buildings, people walking around in suits and briefcases, this all links because the women in our clip has the power to enter these sorts of buildings because of who she is, he body language and the way she is dressed.

As we live in London and we wanted to show off the actress and the buildings properly, we wanted to make sure that the weather was nice and bright because we didn't want our clip to seem dark and dull. London's weather is unpredictable so this was going to be hard to do and it was! On our first day of filming it was bright and lovely, although it was a bit chilly there wasn't a cloud in the sky, so we took this opportunity to tape as much as we could. After that first filming session the weather completely changed, it even snowed which meant that we had to wait until all the snow had cleared up and completely dissapeared. Thankfully the weather did clear up and we succeeded on keeping our media product nice and bright, unliike most British movies which tend to seem grey and dull.

It wasnt hard to figure out who most of our audience would be. Most men like to watch politcal type movies because of the fact that it has thrill, mystery and some action in it. Our media product definatly has that bit of excitement, thrill but will attract more men becasue the main character isn't a man, this time round it is a female actress and men like to see women that are dressed up in smart sexy clothes but that all can be sneaky and mysterious. The age of our target audinece would probably be from early 20's to late 30's because people from these age groups are the ones that mostly attend the cinemas. They like to see what good movies are showing also they are aware of what is going on around the world and they like to analyse how well the movie has covered its expected storyline.

Using the different types of technologies was the easy part for me. I personally think that it was the easiest because before we stared to film our media product we had had practices using the cameras, the tripod and aslo Final cut pro on the iMac's.
I think the only hard part was using final cut pro right at the end of our editing. The reason for this is beacuse we had the whole clip ready, the clips were all in the right place, we had added the different transitions we wanted in it, we had also added the credits, our title clip but we left adding the sound and the voice over till last. This was a bit of a problem because we had to choose what sounds and what background music we wanted to add in our clip using Soundtrack but not only that, we had to add the voice over in the right place. We had added the sounds and the background music, we then recorded the voice over and inserted it in its right gap. But then once we played the whole toghether with the sound and the voice over, the voice over was playing to quick and didn't play according to what was going on in the clip. This is when we started to get a bit stressed out, but with the help of one of our teachers we slowed down the part of the clip where the voice over is meant to sound and made it fit in perfectly with each other.

Looking back on our task i learnt quite alot.
Firstly, planning and oraganisation are CRITICAL. If we hadn't of planned our media product carefully from the begining i dont think we would have gotten anywhere. There were parts when our group found ourselves a bit stuck because of the reason that we didn't follow our storyboard. This then leads on to organisation, we all had to be well organised and we all had to know what was going on, where and at what time. I made an error when it came to organisation, this was because when we first started our filming i had my hair straightend and clip at the back, but then when it came to our second filming session, my hair was naturally curly and tied at the back but the difference cud be seen just a bit. This was a bit dissapointing because i should have kept it all the same. So for our third filming session i had it stuck in my head that i had to be WEARING and LOOKING like i had looked for the previous filming session as we didnt want our film to look dodgey.
Research is also important because of research isnt made then there are no ideas of what kind of shots or sounds or what type of people to have to play the main roles.

Overall it was hard work, there were times when as a group we all got stressed because we felt we weren't getting anywhere but thankfully everything got done and we finshed sucessfully. We completed our media clip just how we wanted it and when we watched our clip in the Vue cinema in angel with the rest of our media students they really enjoyed our media clip, they cheered and clapped when it had finsihed.

Last Recording And Editing lessons

Our last filming sessions personally think it were the most successful filming session we had so far. The weather was good, which meant that we could actually film sometin useful.
We went down to Kings Cross Station, we placed our equipment accross the road from the station and carried on with our filming.
I had to walk down the pavement several times and record the same shot a couple of times until i got it right. We then needed a shot of me entering a buliding, we tried this before at City Hall but the problem was that we didnt have persmission to do so, so then we went to a building that is suituated just before King Cross and we got persmission from the people at reception which meant that we could record our last shot.

As we had finished our recording it meant that we had to start to log and capture all of our diffrent shots and get ready to start editing. This is when the pressure started as we only had a week to finish the whole clip and we had to add the sound, transitions anf fix up a couple of shots. We all took turns in our group to decide what we thought about the shots that we had recorded and to make decisions on what went where. It was really hard to make do with the time that we had as we had to figure what days we could go to the workshops to get out clip finished and some of us had lessons that we couldnt miss so it meant that we had to work extra ahrd in our media lessons.

In our last media lesson we had put all the clips together in the order that we wanted them in. We added transitions and slowed down some bits just to add extra effects. We had also chosen the name of our clip and the text font and transition type that we wanted it to appear in. We then showed our work to Rebecca and she sat down with us and showed us where she thought there things missing in the clip. She really helped us make the clip look even better. As now there was no gaps in the clip and everything else played along smoothly.

The last editing day me and Micheala had to come back and get our head down to work as time was running out. Oyin and Kirsty didnt attend to this session so the pressure was on. Our clip , was nearly done, the basic was done,the transitions had been put in and the only thing left to do was to add the voice over and the rest of the sound for the clip which is the hardest bit because you need to get every sound spot on. We started off by adding all the sound effects that we wanted and left the gap for the voice over. Once this was done we borrowed a camera and recorded the voice over. We had to go back connect the camera to a computer and log and capture the sound. This was the easy part, but it then got tricky as when we added the voice over, the voice over was too fast for the clip which meant that we would have to re-arrange the sound and start again. We were getting stressed at this point as lunch time was about to begin, and me and micheala couldnt stay any long as we had lessons after lunch. We had to call in Micky for his help, he helped us slow down the clip, add the voice over in the right place and make sure that the voice and sound fit in with the rest of the clip.
When this was done we were so relieved as we had finished on time and we didnt have to worry about not finishing for the deadline which was Friday 27th February 3:00pm. Me and Micheala had finished the clip and had posted it up on our blog by 12:15pm that same day.

3rd filming session ???

We werent able to record for our third filming session because of the fact that it snowed in London really heavily, this meant that it was far too cold for me to be recorded walking about and also the roads were full of snow which meant that it wouldnt fit in with what we have previously recorded.

2nd Filming Session

Our second filming session was very stressfull and not very successful as i could have been, The first mistake that was made was that i didnt have the same hair style as i did wen we recoreded the first session. This was my mistake and i personally thin it effected the mood of the day. The next problem was that we had to film in the college and use the lifts. The lifts were unfortunately under management so this was a big problem as part of the filming was to use the lifts. This made us just a little bit more fustrated but we got encouragement from out teachers and we still went on and done everything we possibly could to film the office scene. We had to make the most of the time we had.
Once we got started it seemed to be working, althoug next lesson we still have to shoot a couple more scenes in the office, like over the shoulder shots of me finding this " important document ".
In this lesson we learnt that not everything goes as planned and we have to try to stick to the story board adn work around the resources that we have.

1st filiming session picture

City Hall

1st filiming session pictures

Filming Sessions ... 1

On our first filming session we booked all the equipment and went out to Tower Bridge to film our 1st sequence. I changed into a Skirt with heels and a white shirt with a blazer to create the "office" type lady look but also to show that i have an important status for the opening sequence.
Our first shot was a pan of Tower bridge itself just to show the audience where the sequence is starting off.
We then crossed the Bridge to the other side and tried to film by the buildings where City Hall is. We had a problem though, that all the buildings that are near city hall have very strict security and we were not allowed to film in front of them without permission. The only building we were allowed to film was City Hall it self. So our second shot was of me walking towards City Hall with my important handbag.
If we would have got the permission to allow us to film infront of the other buildings i think our filiming session would have been more successful, but now we know that if we do plan to change anything from out pitch and we decide that we need to go filming in front of important buildings then we will remmber to get permission before we do.

19/01/2009 Stephanie Brand

This lesson was about our presentation to the class about our ideas of our opening sequences.
We all had time at the begining of the lesson to prepare our presentations and to finish off our storyboards, to wirte and to discuss all of our ideas.
Every group had ten minutes each to present our ideas to the class and a couple of our class mates had questions to ask and so did my teacher.
We had to briefly explain every point that we had written about for example what types of opening sequence we were going to use and why.

15/01/09 Lesson Summary

Last lesson was time to plan our opening sequence. We had to sit in our groups and talk about "Making A pitch", we had a big piece of sugar paper and we were asked to write down all our ideas down. We done it as a brainstorm, we had to write about the key images and the icons that we are planning to use for our opening sequence. We were asked to describe:

- Setting and Location

-Lighting

-camera work

-music

-audience

-storyboard

-production schedule

and then we also had to start drawing up our storyboard.

The Preliminary Film - Stephanie

Todays lesson was the second time had a go at making a practice film. We had to film one person walking down a corridor, to arrive at a door and to sit inside with someone else and have a couple words of dialogue. This time it was much easier to film our clip as we knew had to control the videa camera, how to shoot different types of shots and how to position the camera. Also because this was easier we could concentrate on trying out the new techniques that mickey had taught us. Between the first and the second practice, this time we learnt that it would be best not to talk while filiming because although the orginal sound can be cut out, its useful to keep the original sound, as we can see in the new film, we kept the orignal sound of the heels constantly making sound as i walk down the corridors, this made a bigger impact in the clip as it gave it a serious feeling to the clip. Also we had more experience in using the iMacs and arranging the shots in the right postions.
I dont think we challenged the norms and conventions of a real film, we took our assignment seriously but at the same time got down to the point, we kept the shots simple but at the same time tried to make it as interesting as we could. In a real film they have the right place to film, we had to make the most of the college's corridors and rooms.
No the clip doesnt give us a chance to make comments about the respresentation.
After playing the clip back i think that it could have had a couple of over the shoulder shots of when i sit down at the table opposite kirsty. Also my family had a look at the clip and they said that maybe some background music could have been added as all we can hear is the heels on the floor.
Overall i think as a group we worked really well together on this task, we were quick and snappy but still had a successful clip at the end of it.

Last Lesson - Stephanie Brand

Last lesson, Mickey took over the class and he was explaining to us what the term " Match Cut" meant. He showed us a clip that he has personally made and then we were asked to see if we could figure out when "Match Cut" had been used. After we watched the clip a couple of times and mickey explained to us how and when the "match cuts" had been used. After that we were given a hand out with an excercise that we needed to complete, it was a match cut exercise so we needed to complete about " a man in london at 3pm chain smoking and working on the computer, he is seen putting private files onto a disc, packaging the disk and then posting the parcel." We had to write how we would make a clip of this man performing these tasks, we had to say whether it would be an exterior or interior clip, we had to say what shot type we would use, what type of camera action and the shot description.
Finally mickey gave us a brief of what we were going to film the following lesson. We also had to do the same exercise for the brief, write about the types of shots, interior, exterior, etc.

"Watching" film openings - Stephanie Brand

Last lesson we got given a handout with questions from one to eight. We had to then watch a clip about film openings, and we listened and watched to what different types of directors thought made good film openings. Some directors said that it was better if the movie started off fast so that the audience could be attacthed to their seats from the begining, others said that it works best when the movie starts off slowly slowly because if this is done then you can gradually build up drama and the action. One director said that the begining of the movie lets thte audience adjust to what the movie is going to be like. If the audience don't know enough it means they have to carry on watching the movie to find out more. All the directors had different points of views towards how a movie should start, some gave me the impression that they like to discover new ways of starting a movie one director said "its a risk i wanted to take" so he really thought that putting new ideas to making a new way of starting a movie was a good idea.
After watching the clip of film openings, we watched 7 different movie starters that were made by other students from the college, this was for us to see what techniques the students used and to give us some ideas for the clip that we are going to film. The first clip we watched looked like it had lots of work put into it and it was very good but the only problem i found with it was that it was really long. It was also very religious iconography as we constantly saw crosses and a person crossing out words from the Bible. We then saw a couple more clips, clips that got A's and clips that got C's just so we could see the difference between the clips and so that we could keep in mind what to do and what not to do.
We also learn a new word "INTERTEXTUALITY" this is what some groups used for their clip making. Because intertextuality is when iconic clips are borrowed from another movie.
Near the end of the lesson we got given another handout with statistics of movie and audiences and in this handout there was the statistics between what movies womend men like to watch and how many people actually go to the cinema and spend their money to watch a film.

Last Media Lesson - Stephanie Brand

In our last media lesson before the holidays we started by making a brainstormn of the different thrillers that exists.
We aslo watched four clips from the following movies: "28 Days Later" "The Shining" "Collateral" and "What Lies Beneath".
The reason why we watched these clips was to watch them carefully and to write about the: Lighting, Use of the camera, Music, Editing and Setting & Location. By filling out the table we could distinguish water factors affect the clip that make it suspensful.

What Lies Beneath Analysis - Stephanie Brand

In the begining of the scene we are already tense because theres a slow but deep soundtracks playing in the background, its very quiet, it sounds like a very quiet high pitched squeek and as the lady slowly pulls the plug hole we know something is going to happen because of the reason that she takes her time to pull it and she looks like she is unsure about doing it. When she pulls the plug hole the sound of the water going down the drain gradually gets louder and when the camera slightly zooms out to see her reflection in the water going down, we dont just see her reflection but another womens too, then there is a LOUD "SHTOOM" when the other lady appeard and then the lady that has pulled the plug hole screams LOUDER! This makes the audience jump because all throught out the begining of the clip the audion is very low until she get s to the bath, pulls the plug and sees another womens reflection then there's a LOUD sound and a VERY LOUD scream!
Although we dont know what is going to happen we are still in suspense because as the audience we are eager to know what is going to happen once the plug is pulled.

Let 'Em Play God - Stephanie Brand

Alfred Hitchcock has worked in making pictures (thirllers, dark mysteries and chillers) for 17 years and does not believe that that puzzling the aundince is the essence of suspence. Alfred Hitchcock explains that the way to keep an audience on the edge of their seats is through "Suspense". His way of keeping the aundience in this "suspense" is to let them play God. He says that its a brutal act if the audience do not k now what is going to happen next or who the killer is for example because then the audience will be confused and will not know wether to cheer or weep.
On the other hand if the audience does know and they know more than the characters in the movie itself, then the audience will "work like the devil because they know what fate is facing the poor actors" this is what Alfred describes as "Playing God" and the perfect example of "Suspense".
He explains that if the audicence know everything from the start then the audience will not be puzzled. So if there is a murderer inthe movie, no one on the screen knows who the murder is except the muderer himself and the fact the audicence do know and watch the actors suffer then this makes real suspense for the audience. Questions that the audience will be asking themselves like "Will the muderers break and give themselves away?" or "How long will that blood lie in its grave without being dicovered?", if the audience are asking themselves these questions then the audience will want to be shouting at the screen constantly because they will know the consequences of one wrong turn is made.