Luke Bamber's Media Evaluation

MY MEDIA EVALUATION!!

LUKE BAMBER

Forms and conventions

An OTS (Opening title sequence) is there to hook and attract the audience. It is also one of the most vital bits in a film because its an insight of what the rest of the film will be like and if the viewer likes it they will carry on watching. Like other OTS's we decided ours would be the ending of the film so the audience dont expect it and are interested in the rest of the film.

After talking as a group we decided to have some conventions of Film Noire, but not all of them, For example- Black and White. We decided against having a typical good guy and bad guy because we have a killer that kills the victim but then later on the victims brother kills the killer.

We chose to make our antagonist/protagonist characters to be less obvious as to which catergory they fit in because we wanted to add mystery to the film. By doing this, we thought that this would keep the audience more entertained because they know straight away who the antagonists and protagonists are.

The sound we used in our OTS are from iMovie and Garageband on the Apple mac. When looking through Garageband we came across some stringed instruments which really suited the mood of our OTS and sounded good. We then went on iMovie and found sounds that were catergorized for different genres of film such as thriller, comedy, action, sci fi etc. We found a good one from action and it is used during the first murder. We also used wind in the background to keep the OTS interesting and eery.

Our original OTS had a lot of diegetic sound such as voices, footsteps, traffic etc. After looking at Film Noire videos on Youtube, we realised there isnt barely any diegetic sound so we got rid of all of it and added more voice overs.

Progress made and planning

Filming our continuity task was fun because we got to explore with different techniques when making a film. However, when uploading our film we witnessed our mistakes with continuity errors and an un-steady camera because we didnt use a tri-pod so it didnt look very good when tracking. Also we didnt take a lot of time planning the task we just went straight into recording.

Our group was pretty unorganised. Its because we didnt do much forward planning and went straight into recording without much research. However, for our final piece we did alot more planning and research and decided when to meet up to film and edit. If i were to do this task again i would:

• Research on Film Noire more heavily
• Dont leave important tasks to the last minute!

To start of our production we made a stroyboard to get an idea of locations and camera angles/shots, this helped us a lot to know when to start and finish. After filming our original OTS, the feedback we got was mainly negative so we decided to start again and although we were quite an unorganised group we still managed produce a high quality film the second time around. We then uploaded it onto iMovie to check for any continuity errors then added them to some of the original scenes we kept from the original OTS.

My main improvement was our actual final piece. This is because after getting feedback for our first OTS we knew not what to do for our second one. I have also improved in filming because with our project we decided we would all film so we could all share the experience. I have also become more familiarised with iMovie because we used it for a long period.

Every so often as a group, during the filming and editing process we would sit down and evaluate our OTS. Everytime, we would say we like it but we could do better but when we added sounds everything finally fitted together perfectly and now we are really happy with it. We also asked a few class mates to watch and evaluate it and we recieved mostly positive feedback.

Audience

We decided to classify our OTS as an age 15. This is because it has a violent meaning but doesnt involve swearing, drug abuse or sexual content. I think that a Hedonist viewer may be more likely to watch this film than any other audince group because it fits into the action/thriller genre.

I believe that the gender most likely to watch this film is male as it is quite voilent and doesnt involve any women actors which could come across as sexist. However, if we were to carry the film on we would of had included women.

Institution and distribution

Before we started filming our OTS we spent two or three lessons learning how to upload onto the apple mac's. We also experimented with editing. This helped a lot when it came to the real thing because we had a good idea of what to do.

We presented our OTS to our class. We played it through once with no interuptions then the second time we kept stopping so we could explain about locations and camera angles and other important information we thought they should know. After this we let the class ask us any questions they had on our OTS. This whole presentation was filmed so we could upload it to our blogs.

Attracting my audience

We believe that our OTS will fit in quite well as just a clip because the audience are left with a cliffhanger. This could be consumed through Youtube, Facebook and Twitter. I also believe it could be a trailer for an actual film, as it doesnt show the whole story but shows what happens like a summary.

Throughout the assignment we all kept a blog which is a great way of keeping a diary on what your doing in class and research of Film Noire. I could also see the progress of our OTS. I think blogs attract an audience better because nearly everyone goes online and because its on the internet more people will see it.

Representation of social groups

Like the bad guy we didnt want to create a hero. In theory the victims brother would be the hero but in the end he ends up shooting the bad guy for killing his brother. We didnt want to create a typical Film Noire good guy, bad guy as we wanted to twist it slightly which i think worked quite well.

A typical bad guy in Film Noire would be 'bad to the bone'. But we didnt want to creat a bad guy. We wanted there to be killers but didnt want them to be labelled as the bad guy. We explain this better with our voiceovers explaining why they kill the victim.

After researching Film Noire clips on Youtube we decided to film in woodland areas as it seemed creepy and we needed somewhere with a lot of shadowy areas. We used an alley for the murder scene which we liked because alleys are normally quiet. The alley we used is very long and seems endless so the victim cant escape.

Critical theories

The main thing we aimed for with our OTS was to leave it with a cliffhanger so the audience are left wondering what happens next and makes them carry on watching the film. Cliffhangers are one of the most popular conventions of Film Noire.

The main semiotic used in the OTS would be the villians clothing. We first see the villian wearing a jacket with his hood up, to hide his identity. The jacket is black which gives him a bad/dark impression. We chose to have our villian wearing a hood as many people fear people who hide their identity with a hood etc.

The production process

Weaknesses in our continuity task

Film Noire

OTS

Antagonist & Protagonist

Improvements shown and my strengths

Organisational tips

Diegetic

Non- diegetic

Sound:

Users & gratifications

Semiotics

Technologies & contructing my film

Meeting my audience needs

Review & evaluating

Editing

Audience types

Our target group 15+ was decided because we thought our OTS would be better if we had some violence and a dark story.

I enjoyed editing and found it relatively easy when you use it a number of times. As our footage was in colour we had to change it to black and white to fit the conventions of Film Noire. We also trimmed the clips to make them flow easier. For the audio side of things we used iMovie and Garageband where we found for example blowing wind which we play all the way through the OTS. All in all I think editing was the most successful part of our project.

Locations for action

Hero

Distribution & exchange

Blogging

Preferred reading

Bad guy

Online presentation

Learning to upload