Tuesday, 30 April 2013

Final Opening Sequence. Tracker.

Below is a copy of our opening sequence called "Tracker". In our opeing sequence we decied to go against the stereotype of the male protagonist and have a female protangonist and a male antagonist, this tells the audience that the stereotype of male "bad guys" can be broken and that it is possible and can be done well. Instead of dialouge we have a soundtrack to overlay in our sequence.

Friday, 26 April 2013

Sony Music Entertainment

I have to compare two record companies, one independant(XL Recordings) and one of the Big 4(Sony EM).

Sony Music Entertainment is an American Global music record label, controlled and owned by Sony Corporation. It is a parent company to smaller ofshoot record labels such as RCA, LCA and Jive ect. This allows the audience to have a better range of artists and ablums to purchase/listen to.




Here is a list of just some of the top artists that are signed with Sony EM:

-Alicia Keys
-Beyonce
-Calvin Harris
-JLS
-Justin Timberlake
-Rita Ora
-The Script
-Usher

These artists are very well known through out the industry and are listen to across the world on a global scale.

XL Recordings

XL Recordings

XL Recordings is the record lable I have chosen to compare to Sony ME.

XL Records is a indepentant record lable based in London and was founded by Richard Russel. It was a previous offshoot of Beggars Banqute records, the label was launched to release dance and rave music.


Here are just some of the artists that are signed by XL Recordings:

-Adele
-Dizzee Rascal
-Giggs
-M.I.A
-SBTRKT
-Radiohead
-Basment Jaxx
-Tyler, The Creator





All of the above artists are very well known and listened to by all generations, they have a mix of past and present artists which create a mix music generation of listeners.

Wednesday, 24 April 2013

Evaluation. 2013.

This is my evaluation on my media product "Tracker" which is my opening sequence. I have answered seven questions on my media product.


- Who would be the audience for your media product?
- How did you attract or your address audience?





- How does your media product represent praticular social groups?
- What kind of media instatution might distrobute your media product and why?







- In what way does your media product use, devlop or challenge froms and conventions of real media products?
- What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing your media product?









Monday, 11 March 2013

Music Industry

Distribution
Distribution is a term that is meant by the moving of physical CD's and merchendise. It is also covered by gig's and live shows and music.

Production
Production is the recording, art work and merchendise designing of the songs and albums from artists.

Marketing
Marketing of a ablum or a new artist is putting them on music channels(MTV) and playing the songs on popular radio stations. The songs are also promoted by using them on adverts. A example of this would be, Ellie Gouldings Explosions on the advert for ITV, this was then made a popular song as people heard it and wanted to know who sung it.




Consumption
Consumption of a product that the artist created that people buy or stream. Like buying a CD from a shop or from iTunes.




Synergy
this is when a record label works with another media company to promote two products simitainiously. This includes sound tracks of films (Avril Lavigne) doing a song for Alice in Wonderland and the song then appears on an Ipod advert. With this each party benifits as all the profits go back to them, they are losing out on anything from another company.

Convergance
A economic strategy in which comunicates companies, The companies seek financial benifits by marketing various media outlets they own. They "work together" by having the same product distrobution across these different media. An example of this is Simone Cowel, he owns alot of record labels and he tells them what they are going to publish and what they can sell or who they collaberate with.

Thursday, 7 March 2013

Production meeting

The production meeting that we had cosisted of disscussing the editing that we need to do and what we want it to look like. e.g. transistions and tinting.

With the tinting, we want a light blue filter over the sequence because that links in with the colour scheme from our prodcution pitch.

With this blue filter, it makes it look darker than it is, this is the look we are going for to put a darker filter ontop of our scenes to make it emphasise that something bad will happen, it also adds to the feel of the film and looks like it is all hazy to think that maybe it is all just a dream of the protagonist and that maybe it isnt actually real.

Adding fading into our chosen clips will add an extra effect on that they are merged and somehow their lives will collide without them knowing and it will happen fast and without them noticting.

http://www.mediacollege.com/video/editing/transition/types.html

this link shows you to a website that has all different transistions that we would want to use and a video of a example.


Action points:

Bryony M- To look at different colour filters and which would be more suitable
Dionne Franklyn- To find the certain clips that need more tinting than others
Bryony W- to create examples from what Dionne has come up with

Wednesday, 6 March 2013

Split Screen shot ideas.

For our opening sequence we want a split screen of our two characters opening their eyes in sequence and then another shot of them walking out the door.

I have found examples of split screen shots in films.


This is a shot from "Mean Girls" the shot is titled phone trap. the screen splits every time one of the girls is added to the conversation. this is emphasized by the thick black line between the scenes. It also says a lot about each character on the screen, this is because only two of them have a close-up of their face and this I think portrays the fact that they are the ones that planned the 'phone trap' and therefore why the close up is on them.

This is kind of what we want to do, we want the eyes on both sides of the screen and to make sure the eyes open at the same time. 

Thursday, 28 February 2013

Amzing world of Gumball- Animation analysis

In the child programe "The amazing world of Gumball" the characters are all animated and the props they are using are animated aswell, however the rooms and props they arent using are not animated.

I noticed this when watching it with my little sister, I noticed that she enjoyed it more than other childs TV that she watchs, this got me thinking about how hard it must be to create a suitible creative, imaginitive programe that captures their attention.

As childrens TV is created and directed by adults they have to think about what they would be interested in and what would capture them, the other animated TV shows that are popular are: "Jonny Test" "My Fairygod Parents" and "Aventure Time" these all capture her imagination and her and her friends create their own charaters from the TV show, this shows that alot of work goes into creating the characters to make them memrable and loveable by the children.

I asked my sister some questions about it:

Why do you like it so much?
"Because it looks real and its funny"

Do you like how the characters are drawn?
"Yes, I think they look good and I like the colours"

The answers from her friends where the same and this just shows that Ben Bocquelet might be on to a new kind of childs animation TV shows.

Here are some examples of the show "The amazing world of Gumball"



This is a shot of the family of Gumball in their living room. As you can see the charaters are animated and the living room isnt, however their food and TV set is, if you glance at it the you dont notice that the room isnt animated, this is cleaverly done as they over animate the characters to bring an emphasis on the room.



This is a shot of their school. as you can see there is alot of different ways of animatiting their characters, like for example the dinosaur, it looks more sculptured than animated, then there are drawings of characters and then objects with googly eyes stuck on them. There are just normal everyday things turned into actual people/characters. Like the other shot the classroom looks animated this is also emphasised by one of the characters hanging off the light which makes it look like it is part of the animation.


In this shot, the houses behind them have had characteristics animated onto them, this makes you look more closesly at them and take notice that the structure of them isnt animated and it has been drawn on, also they sky isnt animated but the sun and bushes are, this gives it the childish look that captures their attention.

About the director:
The director Ben Bocquelet is a french born english animater, writer and producer. He is best known hor his creations on Cartoon Network. For his rejected characters from adverts he put them into a show with a school setting, hense "The amazing world of Gumball" It came out in United Kingdom in 2011 and then in the United States on the 3rd of May 2011.








production pitch

Our production pitch contains our opeing squence details and how we are planning to film it. we presented it to the class and got good useful feedback, this helped as they said we have a good clear structure about what we want to do and what we want it to look like. However we need to focus on where we are going to film it who we are going to cast as our actors and what props we need to use for it. We also need to figure out a message to get across to the audience and how we are going to do that.

We then disscused our next action points for the next meeting, these were:

-to discover a suitable location
-put together a shot list
-produce a final copy of our storyboard.

Friday, 22 February 2013

21st Febuary 2013

In todays lesson we re-shot our first two shots of our antagonist, we shot our opening eyes scene and the bathroom scene, these proved hard after changing our story line as we didnt really know how to start shooting, it took longer than expected but as we got into the swing of it, we tried different angles and shots to see which looked better and didnt bring up as many questions.

With the opeing eye scene, we tried closing eyes for 3 seconds and then opening them straight away looking dead intot he camera lense, which proved effective as you cansee the actresses pupils contracting. We then tried opening her eyes and her looking around the room in a fast motion then landing on the camera at the end of around 10 seconds. the last on we tried was opeing eyes slowly and looking round the room and then closing eyes again, this however didnt work as we came to the conclusion that it didnt bring the effect we wanted from the scene.

The eye scene will be on a split screen with the same shot for our protagonist, this is going to be played by our friend Josh, he will do the same shot as me and we will edit it together to make it look like we are doing it at the same time.

The second shot we did was me putting on lipstick in a mirror of my bathroom, this proved hard aswell as I couldnt see what I was doing with the lipstick so we have to put it at an angle so it looks better and so that the lighting projects of my lips into the camera.

This will be a joint scene with Josh shaving, this is to show that he is obviously going somewhere important which leaves questions for the audience to ask.

Saturday, 2 February 2013

Change in our opening scene

In today's lesson we watched the band Alt G's breezblocks music video, as it is showing a fight scene but backwards so it makes you wonder and ask questions.

After watching this we thought it would be a good and different idea to make our antagonist a female, this would make the audience wonder which is the antagonist or the protagonist because they wouldn't find out, we also changed our first couple of shots as we now have the protagonist shaving in the mirror with a close up of the bottom of his face and the top of his torso and then the bottom of the antagonists face putting on bright red lip stick and the top of her torso.

We are then going to have a shot of them putting on their shoes and walking out their doors, this will then add onto the sequence we have already created.

Thursday, 31 January 2013

"Tell" by Ryan Connolly

For our independent study we had to watch Ryan Connolly's "tell". We had to comment about the camera shots and angles and sound. "Tell" is a short psychological short film about a man ed Taylor who psychologically disturbed after he murders his girlfriend Jenny.

To watch the short film click the link below- http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PGgRH7-Qs9g

My view on "tell" was that I thought is was very well filmed for a low budget short film, I think the camera angles that err eased were extremely effective in getti g across what was going on and why it helped web he was upstairs as the mirror gave different angles. Over all I think the use of shots were effective in keeping with sound effects they both grabbed the audiences attention.

British film institute

On Tuesday my class went to London to cost the British film institute, I took notes on the lectures we were given information by various amounts of people such as, Pete Fraser and the chief examiner of OCR media studies, Simone frame and the writer of "attack the block" Joe Cornish.

First of all Pete Fraser gave us information on how to improve and enhance our coursework.
The key features in opening sequences ar followed:
-genre
-narrative
-character
-atmosphere
-setting

This allows us to create an opening sequence which will attack the audience straight away and hopefully keep then watching. Every creator of an opening sequence the jus of things in general first and the. Elaborates on them more specifically and doing research at the same item as well.

After speaking about opening sequences that we way he's numourus of past opening sequences in order to see what makes a good and bad opening sequence taking into consideration the key features. The opening sequence is there for the audience to make a judgement I. What they think the film is you f to be about, we were the. Give. A list of six opening sequences that where common in which we should avoid doing for our final piece there include:
-saw- mysterious stalker
-se7en
-lock,shock
-someone waking up
-flash backs and to the future

We then got information on problems which occur in an opening sequence
-making it look like a trailer
-making it look like a short film
-not many opening titles
-poor lighting and sound quality
-actors which were not directed correctly
-making it complicated for the audience

Pete the. Told us about the sets we should take when filming our own opening sequence

Step 1: take shot
-building on skills, research and planning
-time and giving yourself e Pugh time to shot and edit

Step 2: setting up blog
Step 3: build up skills
Step 4: investigate

Step 5: brainstorm ideas
- mood board
-realism
-feedback
-pitched

Step 6: planning
-experiment-story board

Step 7: shooting
-costume, light, actors, movements, props and setting (CLAMPS)
-rehearsals
-keeping track or record of processing

Step 8: editing
-screen grabs
-audio and titles
-foley
-peer feedback and set a deadline

Step 9: evaluation
-evaluating everything that has been done and filmed

Over all, I've learnt a lot from what the class has taught me, the steps we have to make our final piece realistic and what we should and shouldn't do while filming. Also that we need to plan everything ry well and avoid creating an opening scene that is common.

Sunday, 27 January 2013

How to make a video.

In our media lesson we watched a DVD sequence on how to make your own video, it explained everything you needed clearly.

Pre-production
What we need to do first is the figure out which roles will go to each person as there are a lot of roles to make a film or short video successful.
-executive producer
-director
-writer
-production manager
-camera operator
-lighting director
-sound technician
-actors
-editor

All of these roles are what makes a film work smoothly

Shot list
-where we should shot our scenes
-how much time we need
-the different angles we will use
-the date we need it finished by

Post production

We need to take into consideration the purpose of the opening sequence and the target audience and the limitations of what we can and can't do.

- shooting the project
-time management
-the quality( image,sound)
-potential criticism on the limitations

Production meeting 5

During this production meeting we discussed the earlier action points a d we also finished up and discussed our final copy of our shot list

We also discussed the needed new locations for other scenes and we came up with that we will need a man/boys room to film our first shots we then asked around and finally found one compared it to our production schedule and made an appropriate date.

Action points
-discuss what dates are appropriate to film Oxford scenes
-plan date for editing film

Thursday, 24 January 2013

Production meeting 4

In this meeting we confirmed our ideas and drew out a rough sketch of our scene table and schedule.

We then had to contact the Oxford City Council to ask permission to use West gate car park as our first scenes. We got an email address but haven't heard any news yet, if we are unable to use this location we will use the streets and subway if Oxford or London as a backup location as we do not need permission and past groups have not had any trouble using it in the past.

Action points

-finish shot list
-discover more locations for other scenes.

Production meeting 3

In our third production meeting we presented our production pitch to the class. We explained our idea and how we would like to approach it a set a clear idea of what we wanted. We had a lot of positive points and feedback like, good clear mind set on your ideas a d we know what we are talking about, also our focus points were to order out our location, cast, props and what the message we want to send across during the film.

Action points
-to find a suitable location
-final shot list
-final draft of storyboard

Production meeting 2

Our second production meeting was in the 13th of December 2012.

In this meeting we discussed our previous action points and if we had trouble or not, we also spoke about the ideas we came up with and we all decided that our best one was our action sequence. This was our first idea, the protagonist in bed, title, action, gun and alarm. We went with this as it isn't that common and it didn't revel a lot about the 'rest' of the film in the first couple minuets. We also thought it would create tension with builds and makes the audience want to carry on watching.

We then looked at various sounds and tracks we could use that Dionne found, we narrowed it down to one soundtrack and two sound effects.

Our action points were:

-create mood board
-create PowerPoint to show idea and what we would like to do
-discuss cast and locations



Production meeting 1

Our first production meeting of our team( Bryony Mann,Dionne Franklyn and myself) was on the 6th of December 2012. In this meeting we came up with three different ideas for our opening sequence. These were:

ACTION SEQUENCE
In this opening sequence we would have our protagonist asleep in bed snapping to a title on black background, flashing to action shots then back to the protagonist waking up to an alarm and gun shot, however the gun shot would be non diabetic as it would be foreseeing the future and what his fate would be.

MIRACLE DRUG
We got this idea from the film "Limitless" we thought we could reenact the opening sequence but in the end we thought it would give too much of the film away.

PHYSIOLOGICAL
We thought about a physiological thriller/horror opening sequence but the. Realised that this may have been done too many times and would have to be done very carefully and very planned out for it too work as it hasn't been extremely i successful in the past.

Our action points for the meeting were:

Myself- creating and putting together the storyboard and shot lists.
Bryony- to find suitable locations that are easily accessible
Dionne- to fine a good soundtrack and non diabetic and diabetic sounds for the gun shot, alarm and the action scenes.