PAPILLON // AS MEDIA FILM OPENING COURSEWORK - FINAL CUT

3/08/2017




This is the final cut of our coursework and there are quite a few things that changed after the rough cut. The most important thing we needed to change was to get the time down to just 2 minutes. Due to an inconvenience of deleting the rough cut from premiere pro, we had to start editing the video from the beginning which made it possible to be more restricted with the footage. We shortened the opening clips showing bits of the house from 29sec to 12sec and got rid of the black slides between the clips. We then tried to cut out unnecessary bits out of the conversation and soon got down to 2:08. 
The video needed a bit of colour correction to make it look more airy and to fit the old house and the location. We put an effect of an old broken tv on top of the scene of the moving horse and looked for a fitting sound effect to create a mysterious vibe. The created distortion at the end of the opening scene is done by putting the same footage twice on top of each other with one of them slightly moved to the right, and a greenish filter on top, which makes it look more mysterious. 
We then searched for some old music to cover the scenes that don't have any dialogue, used two different typewriter fonts for the credits and used the same font for the title at the end.
(PA)

PAPILLON // AUDIENCE FEEDBACK

3/08/2017

We asked ten Year 12’s to come into our lesson and watch the finished cut of our video. We had written a set of 4 questions for them to answer based on their opinions of our video. 
The questions we used were:

Do you understand the storyline?

8 people understood the storyline and 2 people said that they didn’t understand the storyline.

Would you want to continue watching if it were a whole

film?

All ten respondents answered yes to this question.

What did you like about the film opening?

6 of our respondents said that they enjoyed our film opening because it was intriguing and made you want to find out more about what’s going to happen. A few also said that they enjoyed the mysterious feel that it has to it. 2 of our respondents also mentioned that they liked our use of different camera angles and the editing, especially at the end.

What did you dislike about the film opening? 

The main thing that was said we could improve on was that our audio was quite quiet and they sometimes struggled to hear what the characters were saying. Five of our respondents said this was an issue for them and the other five said that they didn’t dislike anything.

EVALUATION QUESTION 6

3/05/2017

Question 6: What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this product? Since the beginning of year 12 when we started media our group has learned a great deal about filming and editing. One of our group members, Paula was already very experienced in making and editing videos because she regularly keeps a video diary for her own personal blog. However, the rest of us didn’t have any experience at all and therefore we were able to learn both from our lessons and our group member Paula. The rest of the people in our class used the cameras which our school provided (Cannon HFM 306) we could’ve done this but given that Paula had her own and more advanced camera we chose to use that instead. The camera we ended up using was a Nikon D3200 with a 35 millimeter 1.8 lens. This lens had the advantage of enabling us to be able to focus on a certain subject and blur out the background. This was a benefit because it meant that it eliminated any other distractions, which could have altered the viewer’s attention. We decided to use Adobe Premiere Pro to edit our video because it was more advanced than other options such as iMovie but was still simplistic enough for us to be able to use efficiently. Premiere Pro allowed us to use short clips of under 3 seconds which you aren't able to do on iMovie and we used a lot of in our film opening. We used short clips because it meant we were able to show a variety of different camera angles and skills within the two minutes. Paula had experience of editing videos but not in the software we decided to use so, therefore we were all able to learn and help create our video. We progressed a lot from our preliminary video which we did in the first few weeks of starting media. We did not know many people and this meant that filming was a bit awkward. We used two boys in our year and filmed one of them walking through a door and then sat down having a conversation about their subjects. There is lots of laughing in the background because the actors weren’t comfortable. In our final media product, our actors were more comfortable being in front of the camera. We did a number of practice tasks before completing our final film opening and one of these was the mise-en-scène task. We were given 5 features of mise-en-scene and told to cooperate them into a two-minute video. We used the young male actor who was also used in our final piece as he is one of our group member’s brothers. The video that we produced had a few areas that were not as professional looking as we would have liked so we aimed to and succeeded in changing that in our final piece. One of the main criticisms of our mise-en-scene task was that we had a clip in it which lasted 21 seconds which was way too long and got boring. Therefore in our final video, we made sure to use short clips to ensure we avoided repeating this. We also learned how to do special effects in our editing and this meant that we were able to incorporate them into final film opening. We used both diegetic and non-diegetic sounds in our video. The diegetic sounds were sounds that our actors could hear when filming such as the sounds of the gravel when Eve walked towards to the house in the first scene. The nondiegetic sounds which we hear are the sounds that were put in after over the top such as the sound of the walking stick throughout the two minutes. (JN)(EH)

EVALUATION QUESTION 3

3/03/2017

WHAT KIND OF MEDIA INSTITUTION MIGHT DISTRIBUTE YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT AND WHY?

We believe that our media product can be used for most distributers as it has a wide age range for target audience and horror films are seen everywhere. However there are some distributers that are better than others based on our target audience and the day and age that we live in now.

From research, we have found that most teens and adults prefer to stream videos rather than watch them directly from the TV. This means our media product would be viewed more on sites like Netflix rather than be put on TV as our target audience prefers this. Netflix has had millions of new subscribers since 2011 reaching around 90 million overall subscribers with nearly all being our target audience. 

The other distributer we believe will distribute our media product successfully is cinemas. Every year, cinemas show hundreds of horrors gaining lots of profits from them. We have found out that most of these viewers in cinemas are also teens and adults. Horrors are especially good in cinemas for adults and teens as they like going watch it with their friends and have the adrenaline/emotion running through their bodies from the film.

Both these distributers work really well together as it means that when our target audience gets home from work or school, they can watch our media product on Netflix. it then also means if they want to go out they can still see our media product as the cinema is an attractive place for teens and adults when going out and socialising.

EVALUATION QUESTION 1

3/01/2017

In what ways does your film opening use, develope or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?




  1. The first frame represents the title of our opening scene which is shown at the end of the opening scene to seperate the 2 opening minutes from the actual film which would be following.
  2. The second frame shows the setting we chose to film at. Even though the story is set inside the building, we chose to give an overview of the building so the viewer has a better imagination of where the story is taking part.
  3. The third frame shows the chosen costume and most of the used probs. We kept the costume very simple, partly because it fitted best with the characters and their role but also because it set the scene and did not destract too much from the happenings of the opening scene.
  4. In the fourth frame we tried to represent the camerawork and editing we used, our video however has quite a range of camera shots and angles so we thought the shot of the young boy Jack is a good represantation for our filming style. We mostly show close ups of the characters talking or filmed subjects from a closer view point instead of filming from a wider point of view to make the viewer feel like they were involved in the storyline. The editing focuses on shot-reverse-shot to make the scenes more interesting and again make the viewer feel like they are part of the plot, so that all shots are kept under a max. of 3 seconds.
  5. The fifth frame is an example for the font we used. We were looking for a typewriter font to fit the plot which is about a journlist researching for one of her articles. Instead of looking for computer writing or a neat typewriter font, we wanted a washed out and older looking style to fit the setting of the old house and the mysterious atmosphere.
  6. The genre and how the opening scene suggests it, is represented in the sixth frame. We tried to create a mystery drama so the chosen scene as the sixth frame seemed quite fitting.
  7. The seventh frame represents the story which is the mystery of an old house and makes the viewer question what is going on, so the scene of the houseowner holding back the journalist from entering a locked room felt like it best describes the mystery behind the old house.
  8. The 8th frame shows how characters are introduced which is by letting the viewer observe their behaviour and letting them follow a conversation between the characters, slowely showing characteristics and personality.
  9. Special effects occur in the last seconds of the opening scene and some of them are shown in the 9th frame. By overlapping the same futage and putting a green and grain filter on top we created a vintage looking scene which should look intriguing and mysterious.  
(PA)

Final Elements of Video

2/06/2017

Props

Clipboard -
Wooden Aeroplane 
Camera-
Notepad-
Pen -
Glasses-
Walking stick
Rocking Horse
Paintings
Door

Characters

Journalist
An aristocratic man who owns a very large house
Young boy

Casting

Evie Holness - the journalist
Michael Holness - the house owner
Herbie Holness - the young boy 


We chose Evie to be the journalist in our film opening because she is related to Mike and Herbie and therefore they all worked well together. It was also convenient to use Evie because she would be coming to Voewood anyway and therefore we would not have had tp provide transport for anyone else. Evie worked well as the character because she’s very confident and is able to adapt her personality well to fit the character. 

We chose Michael to be the house owner partly for convenience because of the situation with the location availability. Another reason we chose Mike for this role is because he has done acting before so was easily able to fit the character he was given. 

We chose Herbie to be the young boy (Mikes nephew) because he again has a lot of experience in acting and he was played the main character in our practice video and we were really happy with his performance and the outcome so we wanted to involve him in this too.


Film Location

The location we are using for our opening two minute of a film is Voewood. Voewood is a very large country house. It’s an arts deco house that is filled with bizarre objects. This made it perfect for filming our movie in because it came across as eccentric which suited the character mike played.  We also chose this location as Evie’s mum works at the house and was able to give us the connections to be able to use the house for our film opening. 

Filming Schedule


We are planning to film on the 20th December during the Christmas holidays as it has been a hard task managing to find a time when we are al able to get there. Also Voewood often gets hired out for the night and Christmas is a busy period for this so its been hard to find a date where the house is free and we are all able to get there.

Final Script

Evie: Hi, I’m Evie I’m the journalist who’s come to look round for BBC reports
Evie: So, is there much you can say about Voewood?
Mike: Bugger all, actually?
Herbie: *Aeroplane noise*
Evie: So how many of you are there that live here?
Mike: Just the two of us.
Evie: So what was one of Voewood’s purposes?
Mike: It was a school for a long time.
Evie: Why is it no longer a school?
Mike: There was an incident that meant it got closed down.
Evie: Why? Sorry, if you don’t mind me asking.
Mike: A young lad died.
Evie: Oh and what’s it used for now?
Mike: It’s just my home.
Evie: Just you and… you’re son?
Mike: My nephew, yes, just the two of us.
Evie: So what’s your name?
Mike: His names Jack, he doesn’t talk much.
Evie: Oh so what’s in here?
Mike: Nobodies allowed in here.

FINAL IDEA - RESEARCH TASK

2/03/2017

The final idea which we have come up with for our AS media coursework is the genre of horror. We will have 3 main characters in the opening two minutes; a journalist (Evie), the homeowner (Mike), and the homeowner’s nephew (Herbie). We are going to have a journalist come to look round a very large house called Voewood. The journalist is going to arrive and walk up the driveway and look up at a window and see someone looking out and quickly shutting the curtain. She will knock on the door and Herbie will open the door quickly followed by Mike. She will go in and ask lots of questions about the house and its old purposes and the story behind it. She will find out that it used to be used as a school and it got closed down because a young boy died there in an accident. She will then be shown around the house and in a couple of different rooms and as she walks out of one of the bedrooms a rocking horse will start rocking without being touched. Towards the end of the two minutes the journalist will be shown towards the door to leave but a locked room next to her will catch her attention and she will try to open it. Mike will quickly stop her and explains that no one is allowed in there. The very last scene of our 2 minute opening sequence will show what is inside the locked room. Inside there is framed photographs along the walls of young children who have perhaps been involved with 

Mise-En-Scene The Setting

2/01/2017


For our mise-en-scene video we used the location of a nearby park to film, the park had old-fashioned style equipment, which added to the feel of our video. The park was deserted at the time when we chose to feel which added effect; the loneliness of Herbie was exaggerated by the emptiness of the park. The weather when we were filming at the park was gloomy and a little foggy which made the video look more depressive and miserable. At first Herbie is in the park with his mum, he wanders further and further away from the park creating a increasing the sense of his isolation. As he heads more into the wilderness this makes his seem more alone. When he finally arrives at the lake it appears a more open space, which creates a sense of opportunity and possibility. When Herbie arrives at the opening at the lake the weather has picked up which added to the sense of opportunity.