AS Media coursework

Lauren JohnsonAS Media Studies at Aylesbury College

The Risk Assessment

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8xdSaWCGNw

Please click the link below

What is the…Preliminary Task?

The preliminary task is a task in which we work in small groups of no more than three and produce a short

clip of a character opening a door, walking across a room and sitting down on a chair opposite another

character and they exchange a few lines of dialogue. For the task we have to have to understand and include the use of match on match actions, 180

degree rule and shot reverse shot.

180 degree rule

Shot-reverse-shot

Match on match action

Person walks through the door, walks across the room and sits down. The camera stays on this person

throughout these actions

Monday 17th January 2011Storyboards

Sara-Jayne & I decided to be in a group together for the preliminary task.

We produced a story board for each shot that would feature in our filming. Producing the story board was interesting as we had many ideas on which shot-types to include. We think our final storyboard is successful.

PlanningProp list, shooting schedule & title

Props:A hat

A table

Two chairs

Shooting Schedule:

24.01.2011

26.01.2011

‘The Dodgy Deal’

Wednesday 19th January 2011Dialogue

Sara-Jayne and I wrote the dialogue for the task, we chose the location (our Media classroom), the cast (Alex & I) and chose

each others roles.

DialogueA- [opens door slowly, walks in slowly and sits down]

B- ‘I’ve been waiting for ya’

A- ‘Have you got it?’

B- [slides over a hat]

A- ‘It’s been a long time’

B- ‘This better be worth it’

Monday 24th January 2011Filming

Today Sara-Jayne filmed three shots for the task. She got used to how to use the camera and managed to film the

three shots successfully. She could not film the other shots as we did not have the props that were needed.

This did let her down slightly as she could have got more shots done but she managed to film the first 3

shots fine.

Wednesday 26th January 2011Filming (Day 2)

Sara-Jayne finished the filming. She had a time limit of an hour to perfect the last three shots as the room was being used by another group. I feel she handled working under a time limit very well as she managed to finish the shots

without a rush but within the time limit. We didn’t have the correct prop for our filming so we replaced it with something different. This meant that we

had to change our story board but this did not seem a problem as we worked well with the other prop.

Monday 31st January 2011Editing

Today I edited our film. At first I found it difficult getting used to the all the different things I could do to edit our film.

First of all I went through all of the shots we produced and deleted the ones that I felt weren't necessary; this made it much easier to edit as I didn’t have as many shots to deal with. I then put the relevant shots in order.

I cut out the background noise and added a heartbeat sound to create a tense effect as I felt it would go with our storyline.

I then added the title in a font that would get noticed. I also decided to slow down part of our film for again, a tense effect.

Me Editing

Preliminary Task Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZYuVbgNzQU

Preliminary TaskConclusion

Overall I feel that our task has been successful. In the beginning we had some difficulties such as learning how to use the camera and how to produce each shot type /angle with success, but we soon learnt. Sara-Jayne got used to how to use the camera and I learnt

by watching her.

The editing was also successful, but at first it was difficult to know how to use the editing programmer, but I soon got used to it and

know how to use it for the future.

I have learnt a significant amount from the preliminary task, including learning from mistakes that were made. This will make

our next task even more successful.

Monday 7th February- Main task

Today we started to plan our main task.

Sara-Jayne was absent so I started to write down some ideas for the task. This is all I could do because the task is mainly group

work.

The Main task

The main task consists of a small group producing the credits and opening to a new feature film. It should last a

maximum of 2 minutes.

Sara-Jayne and I decided to partner up again as we worked well together for the preliminary task.

Wednesday 9th FebruaryPlanning

We started to plan our main task. We started by thinking of a story line and genre. We came up with a horror genre about a 15 year old orphan girl who gets haunted by

her parents. This is because her parent blame Sarah fro their death. They were moving away because Sarah kept getting into trouble. With all the rushing around they had a car crash and Sarah was the only one to survive. Sarah’s parent blame her and seek revenge. We decided to set it in a graveyard as this will add to the

theme.Characters profile:

Name: SarahAge: 15

She’s a school girl, a rebel until her parents died.Title: ‘Come Die With Me’

We decided each others roles and also made a prop list.

We found that coming up with a story line was quite difficult a there were a lot of things we could do and many genres to chose from. Coming up with the characters profile

was enjoyable

PlanningShooting schedule, Props and Roles

Props:A locketFake bloodWhite shirt-dressTightsScissors

Shooting schedule:

28.02.2011

02.03.2011

Roles:

Sara-Jayne- props, mise en scene and editing

Me- Filming

Research

Sara-Jayne and I researched the horror genre to get inspiration for our main task. We decided that ‘Carry on Screaming’ is a good example as well as the recent film Scary Movie. With our research we learnt that in the horror genre there is a sub-genre which is quite

comical horror. Our research shows that over the years horror has been seen as quite over-dramatic and

exaggerated causing a tongue-in-cheek genre. Sound effects especially make this as they are usually exaggerated such as a really loud, long scream.

ResearchCarry on screaming (1966)

Directed by Gerald Thomas & Written by Talbot Rothwell

Genre: Comedy/horror

Summary: Dr Wyatt kidnaps beautiful young women turning them into mannequins to sell to local stores. A detective tries to solve the case.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlopRoLe_d4

We watched the above clip which shows a snippet of the film and by this clip we could see the comical

elements of the horror film but also the horror elements such as the dead Dr.

This clip also shows that the film features eerie music which compliments the genre. This influenced us to include music which would add to the theme of our

film.

ResearchScary Movie sequel

Directed by Keenan Ivory WaynesAn American dark comedy

Parodies the horror, slasher and mystery genres. Spoofs many mid/late-90’s films such as Scream, I

Know What You Did Last Summer, The Ring, The Haunting, The Exorcist, Signs,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCJDZwVwJaY

In this clip of the film Scary Movie the actress is exaggerating her actions such as the scream and her running movements. This gave Sara-Jayne and I the

inspiration to exaggerate parts of our film to make it more comical.

Monday 14th February Sara-Jayne and I produced the storyboard for our main task.

We found drawing it enjoyable and deciding on shot times and the length of each shot was quite difficult but in the end we

produced a good storyboard which was easy to understand

Monday 28th FebruaryFilming (Day1)

I started filming today. I went to our location (a graveyard) and got the permission from the church to film in the

graveyard. We didn’t have any of our props so I filmed 3 of our shots which went well. I was limited on what I

could do as we didn’t have our props but the shots I did film went well.

Wednesday 2nd MarchFilming (day 2)

The second day of filming was lot more successful than the first as we were more prepared. We had all of

our props and we felt confident. I had some distractions when filming as a man started talking

to us but I managed to get on with the filming. I managed to get it finished succesfully within an

hour so with the rest of the time we went back to our classroom and uploaded the shots onto the

editing programme. Sara-Jayne deleted the unnecessary shots. Today went well as we got more

done than expected.

Our location

We used this particular location to film as it went with the genre. The look of it is rather spooky and it is very old which adds to the scary theme and also exaggerates the comedy of our film.

LOGO

‘SJL Productions’

This our logo because it is simple and the font used is bold so it will stand out.

Monday 7th MarchEditing

Sara-Jayne started to edit our film today. She had already deleted the unnecessary clips so she went straight into cutting some of the clips down as some were too long. She decided to change the lighting of the clips to a day-to-night effect as she felt it went with or horror genre.

Sara-Jayne listened to some sound on the editing programme and this took a while as she wanted the perfect eerie music to go with the genre of our film. She managed to find the music to fit into the story and genre. It worked well. She also added some sound effects to create a scary atmosphere for the audience.

When Sara-Jayne added our credits she wanted a simple font as they were going over a background and she wanted the background to be noticed too. The font did stand out but not so much that the background wasn’t noticed.

Editing went well. Even though the music took a while to find it was worth it in the end as we were both highly satisfied with the end product.

Sara-Jayne Editing

Monday 21st MarchScreening and Feedback

Today the class viewed each others main tasks and completed a questionnaire on each film. I produced a questionnaire for our class mates asking questions about our film. A copy of our questionnaire is shown below. We produced

this questionnaire so we could get others feedback and use it to improve our film.

The Results

100% of people said that

They think our

target audience

Is teenagers

NoneA fewMore than 5I don’t know

100% of people said that

our film made sense

How many horror movies have you seen?

Does it follow the conventions of a horror/comedy, if so what conventions?

Yes the Scary music & tension

Yes, the use of blood

Yes, paranormal but

funny

What film would you compare our film to?

2 people said Scary Movie

Others compared it to The Sixth Sense

On average people gave us a 3 star!

100% of people said it was effective not to include dialogue

On a scale of 1-10 how would you rate our camera angles/shot types?

1 person- 8/10

1 person- 5/10

And the rest out of the six- 7/10

MAIN TASK VIDEO

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMyJFdtp0sk

Main task Conclusion

I feel that the main task was a big success. This is because Sara-Jayne and I worked well together and by combining both of our ideas we produced the opening of a film to our best ability.

I enjoyed filming and I feel that we were more successful on our main task than our preliminary task and this is because our filming and continuity editing was a lot better, we learnt from our mistakes that we made in the preliminary task.

If we could do it again I think that we should be more organised with our props.

The Evaluation…

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media product?

My media product uses features of a real media product such as music and sound effects which also challenges the forms as it can be compared to

some other films which have similar music. As we do not have any dialogues in our film this can also challenge the conventions of a real media product as it is something that you don’t see in films very often so in a way

we were breaking the boundaries of conventions of a modern film.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

I think that an American distributor such as Wayans Bros. Entertainment would distribute our film . They have

produced & distributed films such as Dance Flick and Scary Movie which are both intertextual films. Scary Movie displays elements of the horror and comedy

genre which our film also features so I think that they might distribute our film as it includes elements of comedy and horror which are the type of films this

media institution distribute.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

How did you attract/address your audience?

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxKNmSt19tU

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

I have learnt a significant amount looking back on the preliminary task.

The continuity editing improved vast amounts from the preliminary task and I learnt that this is an important factor in the final product as I wanted it to be

something both Sara-Jayne and I could be very proud of, and we are.

I learnt that I enjoy working with a video camera as I never though I would, I thought it would be difficult and that I wouldn’t enjoy it but I did and I now feel

more confident about working with video cameras in the future.

I also learnt to be more organised with thing such as props as this could be a let down if I’m not organised.

Bibliographyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Carry_on_screaming_(film).jpg

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060214/

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Mg2m6Hu__sY/TL724fn7RYI/AAAAAAAAJQw/NW0PfxPPHsY/s1600/srs.jpg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_R0CcSTDUKmA/TGRPmkcS0aI/AAAAAAAAAE4/-4GyacnrIXI/s1600/Shot-Reverse-Shot.png

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0175142/

http://174.122.2.131/~cali925/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/wayans.jpg