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

Our film is called Algorithm 404. Its plot centers around a hacker who hacks into a conspiracy organisation. He obtains a file which he transfers to a USB. He then gets a phone call from a fellow hacker to meet up. On the journey he realizes he is being followed so he begins to run. He runs to meet the other hacker but finds him being held at gunpoint by members of the conspiracy organisation. He is then tackled to the ground by one of the members of the organisation.

Form

Our opning sequence follows many conventions. Please view Prezi where I identified the conventions and showed how/why we used the conventions in our sequence.

An example of a real film opening sequence that uses the conventions mentioned is "Se7en"

Although "Se7en" is of a slightly different genre of psychological thriller instead of our genre of cyber-security action thriller, it still adheres to many of the conventions mentioned. It introduces the companies and institutions behind the film, it introduces the genre, builds suspense and includes titles.

Genre

Our chosen genre for our film is the cyber-security action thriller. This genre incorporates elements from the cyber-security genre as well as both the action and thriller genres.

Cyber-security

The cyber-security genre is a relatively recent genre. This made it especially hard as we didn't have much to work from. However we still managed to get inspired by the limited media that was already out there.

Firstly we made sure out titles connoted this genre. We took inspiration from "The Matrix" and the new TV series "Mr.Robot" as well as incorporating our own ideas such as trying to replicate the font used in CMD. For example a convention of the cyber-security genre is animated titles. This gives off a very tech vibe which we tried to replicate.

You can clearly see how our titles were inspired in the following GIFs I made.

Our Titles

Title from Mr.Robot

Another title from Mr.Robot

Other ways we connoted genre was through events that take place, props and themes.

 A common convention of the cyber-security genre is the event of hacking. We made this a key event in our sequence. This also linked into a common theme of the genre which is usually hacking a big organisation. In our case we had a conspiracy organisation being hacked. This screamed the genre of cyber-security really well. A main prop that we used was a laptop. This is yet again another convention of the cyber-security genre.

A snippet from Mr. Robot of him hacking on his computer

A snippet from our sequence of our character hacking on his laptop 

Action and Thriller

Typical conventions of the action/thriller genre are

• Fights
• "Cat and mouse" chase
• Fast-Paced music
• Tense atmosphere 
• Narrative revolves around an enigma
• Guns
• 
  

These conventions can be seen in movies such as "The Dark knight", "Inception", "I,Robot" and "Se7en". 

Our sequence adheres to all of the conventions listed. We have a chase scene followed by a short conflict scene. Fast-paced music is used throughout and I feel that a tense atmosphere is created. The narrative revolves around a mysterious file on a USB and guns are used. Using these conventions made sure our sequence is instantly recognisable as part of the genre

One convention we did challenge was having an adult male main character. We chose to have our character as a teenage male which is usually not done. Films of the genre such as "The Dark knight", "Inception", "I,Robot" and "Se7en" all use adult male characters where as we used a teenager.

Narrative Structure

We used many narrative theory's in our sequence by incorporating narrative techniques. Below is a slide presentation outlining the techniques and theory's used.

Style

Here is a prezi identifying how we made our film look and feel, and why we made it look and feel the way it did.

Evaluation Question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The social groups we chose to represent were age and gender. We did this through our main character who is a male teenager. We thought this would be a good social group to represent as our group consisted of teenage boys meaning it would be easier to represent this social group ,with accuracy, in our sequence.

We wanted to challenge most the usual negative stereotype of teenage boys in the media which are listed in the table I made below. However we had to follow some of the stereotypes in order to make the character recognisable and familiar to the audience.

This table I made shows what the stereotypes of male teenagers are in the media, examples of the stereotypes in real media and how we followed or challenged them.

We challenged some negative stereotypes of male teenagers usually seen in real media such as gang violence and consumption of alcohol. However we conformed to some stereotypes as we wanted to make sure our character was still recognisable as a teenage male and thus related to the audience. We did this by making our character look and sound like a stereotypical teenager.

Evaluation Question 3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Our media institutions

Our production company

Our chosen production company is Film4 which is a British production company.The company is known for producing British films and is owned by Channel 4. 

Film4 productions ident

Film4 is also known for producing relatively small independent films such as "Submarine", "Frank" and "Attack the block".

The following slideshow outlines why Film4 would produce a film like ours, our production budget and a real life example.

Film4 Channel ident

After the film is produced and distributed the TV channel "Film4" could then air the film on its channel after a period of time. This gives the film an extended way to make revenue after the "hype" of the film is finished. Revenue can be primarily made from TV adverts in the breaks of the film. 

Our distribution company

Our distribution company is StudioCanal. More specifically Studio Canal UK which is the the subsidiary of StudioCanal that is based in the UK. Since our film is based and produced in the UK it would only make sense to have the distribution based in the UK due to costs. 

StudioCanal ident

StudioCanal is known for distributing smaller independent films such as "Attack the block" and being involved in other independent films such as "The Bling Ring" and "That Awkward Moment". Thus StudioCanal would be suitable for our film in terms of films they have already produced. 

StudioCanal also has a good reputation within the film industry being involved in larger films such as "The Hunger Games" and "Twilight". This could help the reputation of our film and could potentially attract a wider audience. 

Below I have included a detailed slideshow I made about how our film might be marketed and distributed by our company.

Evaluation Question 4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

Below I have included slides displaying which audiences we had in mind whilst making the sequence and similar films our audiences enjoy

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

We used a vast range of techniques in film making in order to attract/address our target audience. Below is a Prezi going into detail in each of the techniques used and why they will attract/address our audience affectively.

Dark and tense atmosphere as mentioned in the film style

Then tube was used as it was a familiar setting

Audience Reactions

During the production process we showed our first version sequence to a group of people in order to get feedback on what was going well and what wasn't. We received the following feedback...

• "I hate the music its too repetitive and annoying"
• "The footage of him typing is too light and colourful"
• "Its not really dramatic enough, kinda boring"
• "Don't really get the shots of him typing, what is he doing"
• "Nothing really happens bit boring"
• "The running shots are artsy"

As a result of this feedback we changed these aspects of the sequence. We ourselves also found the initial music unbearable so we changed it. The "light and colourful" shots were graded to give a more dark/tense vibe. We also managed to make the sequence more interesting by making shots shorter and added many more in. We also added dips to white and black between shots, all of this added pace which made our overall sequence more interesting and dramatic.

After these changes were made and a final sequence was produced we displayed our sequence again to get feedback. This time feedback was much more positive for example

• "Music is much better much more dramatic"
• "Camera angles are very arty"
• "Gives off a really tense vibe"
• "It doesn't drag out as much, much more happens"
• "The first shot of the train is so aesthetic" 

Overall I think we managed to attract our audience quite well and our sequence is quite appealing. Although its not perfect, we certainly improved it drastically with the changes and Im happy with our final outcome.

Evaluation Question 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Before beginning the project I had a few basic skills in terms of editing and shooting however now, after the product is fully constructed, I have not only developed my previous skills but learnt new ones entirely.  I feel my ability to shoot and edit has greatly improved with the project. 

I have included two slides discussing my technological learning curve for both hardware and software below.

Canon Legaria HF G30

Libec TH6F-65 Tripod

Canon DM-100 Shotgun microphone  

Sennheiser HD 201 headhones

Premiere pro CS5.5 software we used

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

The Briefs

We were given two different briefs for our Preliminary task and our Production task. They were as follows

Preliminary task brief (prelim brief) - "Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. The task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180 degree rule."

Production task brief (film brief) - "To produce a 2-minute opening sequence for a fiction film. All video and audio material must be original, produced by candidate(s), with the exception of music and audio effects from a copyright-free source. It should be clear from your sequence who the audience is."

There are many differences between the two briefs such as...

• The production task brief stated a time-limit where as the preliminary task brief did not.
• The production task had a greater focus on audience and wanted the product to reflect the audience well. The preliminary task however did not mention audience at all. 
• The production task was more open in terms of creative control and we could do pretty much any idea we wanted to. The preliminary task was much more specific in terms of what it wanted. For example basic details of the narrative are given as well as specific techniques such as match on action were required

Below is a slideshow comparing and contrasting pre-production, production and post-production for both tasks. 

Overall we learnt a lot from the prelim task that enabled us to obtain transferable skills that made the production processes of the film sequence more efficient and professional.

link to prelim 

Construction Post 10: Looking back- reflections on our final outcome

Im extremely pleased with our final sequence. After the test edit the expectations for the quality end product drastically dropped. Our TA didn't respond well to the test edit however I now feel the final piece has passed these low expectations and works as a whole.

We really wanted to create a tense atmosphere and pace to our sequence which I think we achieved. I really like how the first two shots really juxtapose each other in terms of pace. the very first shot is a peaceful shot of a train going by this quickly changes to typing with dramatic music. I think it will really catch the audience off guard and create a good vibe for the rest of the sequence to follow.

One of the very first things we all agreed on was to have quite "techy" titles. After experimenting with Livetype we made some average titles. After showing our TA focus group they weren't keen on the look we were going for and said it was too basic.We revisited the titles during edit week 2 and created titles that look good and appealed more to our TA focus group.

If I could go back and change things about our final piece I would change the very first title of "Algorithm 404". It was made very close to the deadline so not much thought was put into it to differentiate it from the rest of the titles. I would also put more effort into learning how to do focus grabs/pulls with the camera we were given. We initially tried to adjust the depth of field with the camera however it proved to be very difficult and significantly harder to do than with say a DSLR. We eventually gave up on trying to change the aperture which changed the look of a lot of our shots.

Despite this I'm quite proud of Algorithm 404 and I hoped you enjoy it just as much as we enjoyed making it.

Construction Post 9: My technical learning curve (production and post-production)

Before I even started media I liked to make videos in my own spare time this was where my love for editing began. Recently I also began to really appreciate the cinematography of a film not just the story line. Re watching some films I use to hate I now love and vice versa.

I feel my editing skills have definitely improved through this project. I was first introduced to Premiere pro  just over two years ago however my skills have progressed more in this last month than in the last two years. I learnt how to key frame audio to make it change it over time, this was essential when a character was speaking as they often couldn't be heard over the music.

A screenshot of our timeline on the software

Another major concept I've learnt through this project is the concept of pace and atmosphere within a piece, For example an extra few milliseconds to each shot could completely ruin the atmosphere and pace desired. During the editing process I often found myself looking through each shot and "feeling" when to cut it, just from watching the clip and feeling the mood change. I grew quite strong in this type of editing and I'm sure these new found skills will help me in the future.

 This project has helped me strengthen my skills and made me realise how hard it is to make a feature film. We only made a short 2 minute extract from a film but extensive planning, editing and re-shoots were needed. It really opened my eyes to how hard the concept of continuity is to put in a film let alone film and edit a continuity sequence. I have a much deeper appreciation now for indie films which usually use the camera in strange and interesting ways to tell a story,

Construction Post 8: My personal contribution to the Edit Sessions

I feel my contribution to the editing sessions was much greater than my contribution to the shooting sessions. Editing is one of the skills I find easy in this whole process. Although editing was split between us I helped put the overall sequence in order and watched a lot of the footage and renamed the needed files.

I did most of the titles by myself. At first it was quite hard figuring out how to use Livetype considering I don't own a mac and the buttons are completely different to those of a windows computer. After a while I managed to get the hang of the programme and was able to make titles in seconds. This was useful as we changed titles such as "Starring [actors name]" to just the actors name. I was able to make the title quickly and put it into the sequence in minutes which was efficient. After playing with the cross-dissolves I realised a dip to black was a much better way to go in and out of every title and edited all of that. From this I began playing around with a dip to white and changed the very beginning and end of the sequence to dip to white.

Me editing

I also helped to sort a lot of the glitches out in the sequence, especially with split second black outs which happened a lot.

I also helped solve a reflection of the microphone in the laptop screen by masking it using a section of the same shot. I then added a Gaussian blur over to make the mask less noticeable. Overall I feel I played more to my strengths when editing and thus contributed a lot to the sequence.

Before editing where the mic is visible

After editing where the mic is no longer visible

Construction Post 7: My personal contribution to the Shoot Sessions

During shooting sessions I feel I contributed to all elements of the shoot. I shot some scenes with the equipment and directed some other scenes. These were mainly the outside of school shoots. I was acting in the scenes shot in the Seward studio despite my acting skills being next to non-existent. I helped set up the equipment and pack up. this had to be done quickly but carefully in order to keep the day going well as well as to make sure none of the equipment got lost when changing location. I used the clapper board which is an essential part to the shooting session. It makes editing much more efficient as it allows us to identify takes much easier.

Me attempting to act in the sequence

Construction Post 6: Reflections on Edit Week 2

Although we had progressed a lot during Edit Week 1 we had a lot of work waiting for us during Edit week 2. First we had to incorporate the new footage that we shot during the weekend and during the week, for the Seward studio shots. This meant adjusting the basic sequence in which we had secured in Edit week 1.

Next we had to do titles properly. For the basic sequence we just used still titles however we needed to make them more complex. Teachers and TA focus groups a like thought the titles were too basic thus we decided to have a complete revamp to our titles. We went to Livetype on the macbook and made entirely knew titles from scratch. The new titles were a big improvement to the old ones. They were slightly more complex to make however looked so much better. After realising the titles looked unnatural with straight cuts we then cross-dissolved the previous shot before the title into the actual title. This gave a much smoother and slicker look, it also added to the pace of the sequence. After playing around with the cross-dissolves we changed them into dip to blacks. These were much quicker and helped improve the pace of the trailer drastically. After showing progress to our TA and teachers it was clear our titles had drastically improved.

Our old titles

Our new titles

Looking over the opening there were many slight glitches in the sequence. These were small faults in the sequence nothing major but affected the video as a whole. Glitches were mainly due to the clips not snapping together and there being a gap or the audio messing up. Occasionally our TA focus group would spot the minor glitches before us as we had become too familiar with the sequence. These were small changes however they were extremely time consuming as we needed to zoom into the sequence and fix them. After all the glitches were solved the overall sequence improved drastically and flowed so much better.

However as we were fixing the glitches we realised the reflection the shotgun microphone could be seen in the reflection of the hackers laptop screen. This was quite worrying as the time fro re-shoots had passed so our only solution was to try and edit it out. After help from staff we figured out that we could mask the microphone with a snippet of screen from the same shot. We then had to play around with it to make sure it wasn't noticeable. We then used the blur tool in order to further mask it which helped a lot. This was hard as the laptop screen changed so we had to change the mask accordingly frame by frame.

Microphone visible

Microphone no longer visible

After the microphone issue was sorted we began grading. This was near the end of the week so we were under pressure to hand over a finished project by the deadline. This meant that the grading process was slightly rushed and was done in less than a day. When grading we mainly adjusted brightness and contrast to try and imitate a more gritty vibe. We colour adjusted a few outside shots to darken the mood but this was hard as grading is such a subtle process and has to be carefully done. This was hard considering the deadline was fast approaching, However we managed to do some form of grading to each shot before the deadline to give our sequence a much more professional look.

Construction Post 5: The Back-Up Shoot

By the end of edit week 1 we knew for sure we needed a back-up shoot. The main scenes we had to reshoot were the seward studio scenes. In our main shoot we turned down the lighting in order to try and get a "villainous" vibe. However this low lighting resulted in the shot having a lot of graininess. Since we had detected this early on we had time to book the seward studio again and reshoot.

Whilst editing it was pointed out to us that the final scene with all of the organisation members seemed too much at once. After showing our progress to our target audience they were confused to where the organisation members came from since they were literally not mentioned anywhere else in the sequence. In order to fix this we decided we needed to shoot a shot that shows one of the characters earlier on. We managed to film a few scenes with the actors the weekend between edit week 1 and edit week 2. We then edited the footage in during edit week 2. 

Shot to show one of the characters earlier on filmed during back-up shoot

The final scene that we reshot was a scene on the train. In our main shoot we thought it would be nice to have an third person view of the train doors closing with our main character inside the train. This shot wasn't necessary but we though it would be a nice touch to add.

Shot of character on the train filmed during back-up shoot

Although we only needed a few shots and our project could've gone without them for sure we thought a back-up shoot would really enhance and supplement the shots we already had. The back-up shoot did not take long and was significantly shorter than our test and main shoot. Looking back I'm glad we decided on going the extra mile and doing a back-up shoot. The sequence really benefited from the extra shots we did.

Construction Post 4: Reflections on Edit Week 1

In order to be efficient in editing in this week we created an editing schedule. This was to ensure that we could max out all the time we had to edit both individually as well as a group. We all put down the times we were free and filled in the schedule.

Editing was a lengthy process and we needed all the time we could get. Just the process of going over all the footage and renaming them took over a day which is over a fifth of the week. This initially was worrying as a large portion of our time was already gone despite not a single video being on the timeline. However after all the shots were named it was simply trimming down each clip and placing it in order. This was relatively easy for the first few shots however proved to be much  more complicated when we began editing the continuity sequence. This took a long time as we needed to make sure that when the shot cut the character was in the same place. Footage had to be seen frame by frame in order to do this which of course consumed a lot of time.

We had a big leap forward during this week by finding music. We had searched all copyright free music tracks in order to replace the one used in the test edit. We all agreed as a group that the music needed to change as it began to get annoying and no longer worked with our sequence. Our target audience recommended we look into the YouTube Audio Music library. This is an extensive library of music on the YouTube site that has a vast range of music available. After narrowing down a short list of tracks we decided on a track called "The Drive".

By the end of the week we had a basic sequence secured however we still needed to sort out grading, re-shoots and titles to come. Looking back I think we worked quite well and edited at a good pace. Although we had mountains of work ahead of us for Edit Week 2 we still managed to come a long way in the sequence.

Construction Post 3: Reflections on our Main Shoot Session

Our main shoot session was a success and the vast majority of the shots taken were of high quality and actually ended up in the final edit. During this shoot we were well organised with all crew members and actors arriving at the correct destinations promptly as requested. This allowed us to get straight on with filming without having to wait for anything or anyone. All of the actors turned up on time and were quick to learn what to do on set. This was the first time we were working with the whole cast as we only used 3 actors in our test shoot but used 7 in our main shoot. Having this many actors was less stressful than I had imagined. I expected it to be hard to keep track of everyone but this was not the case and all the actors were well focused throughout the shoot.

Since most of the shots we shot on the test shoot were carried over as our target audience responded positively so we knew exactly how to do each shot in detail. We immediately knew where to place the camera and which spots had the best lighting etc. However we had less spontaneous shots in our main shoot as we had done all of those in the test shoot to see if they worked. We also knew our setting quite well meaning we could set up much quicker. All of this meant that our main shoot was much more efficient than the previous test shoot saving us both time and energy.

Typing shot in test shoot

Typing shot carried over in main shoot

Running shot in test shoot

Running shot carried over in main shoot

The only fault in our footage this time was the scenes shot in the "Conspiracy organisations HQ". We had turned the blinds down and turned most of the lighting off. This created what we thought was a good look on camera. however when we watched the footage over during the editing with teachers they pointed out that most of the footage we shot in there was really grainy due to low light. Thus this footage needed to be reshot.

Construction Post 2: Our Post-production Kit

Our post production kit was all set up in the media department. We were allocated a edit suite that ran windows 7 to predominantly edit on. However we used a Macbook in order to make the titles using the program "Livetype". Our Post-production kit is as follows...

1. A Dual-monitor edit suite running Windows 7 
2. Adobe Premier Pro CS 5.5 for most of the editing 
3. A Macbook 
4. Live-type running on the macbook in order to create titles

Construction Post 1:Our Production Kit

All of our equipment was given to us by the Media department however we first had to sign contracts in order to ensure its safety during our filming. Alex was given the responsibility of transporting kit as he lived only a few minutes walk from our first filming location. Our kit is as follows...

1. A Canon Legria HFG30 
2. A Libec TH65-DV Tripod
3. A Canon DM-100 Shotgun Microphone
4. Sennheiser HD 201 Headphones
5. A standard clapperboard

Our kit in action on set