Final Cut - Backlash

Here is our 3rd and final cut of our short film "Backlash"

During editing our Second cut it was clear that many things needed to be added and changed. We then went on to analyze every scene to make sure that it was well explained. We cut certain scenes that we thought went on for an unnecessary amount of time and also ones that we thought didn't really need to exist. We also went through and regulated the volume on all of our clips, this was done to make our film more pleasing to listen to as certain scenes before had background noises in that ruined not only the scene but also the setting of the film. An example of this would be in the scene where our antagonist walks out of his office we could hear allot of background noises that clearly made our whole scene appear to be in a school. To fix this problem we turned down the sounds in that scene and added music and sound effects to it. We did this for all of the scenes  where we could see inconsistencies within the clips to make our final project more believable. We also added other sound effects such as doors clicking when they are opened and closed and also things such as keyboard noises in the office scene.

When looking at and reviewing our second cut we also saw that in some scenes music was missing, we then went on to understand that these scenes could greatly be improved if music were to be added to these scenes. To do this we made use of royalty free websites to find suitable music that would add quality and to improve our use of good mise-en-scene in the film.

Evaluation

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

Our Short film, Backlash could be considered a film that fits the action thriller genre, it also has themes that we could associate with other types of sub genres such as films that are Spy themed. By looking at our film you could associate it with films like Stormbreaker, in fact this was one of the films we tried to develop ours into. During our early planning stages we found that there weren't as many films out there that could be seen to be like ours, but as we carried on developing our ideas we soon found out that the film Stormbreaker was actually quite close to the type of film we wanted to/ were in the process of making. We also saw that the key themes in our film closely matches the ones in Stormbreaker, an example of this can bee seen when we compare our Main protagonist with that of the one in Stormbreaker. By comparing them we can see that they are both Male teenagers who are entering into adolescence and are also both being dragged into some situations that they may not know anything about.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

During the shooting and planning of our film we noticed that because of the lack of dialogue in some way we had to show the audience and give them an impression on who the protagonist and who the antagonist's were. To do this we tried to make the scenes featuring our protagonist out to be more innocent and helpless. This also was done to help tell the story and also to develop the plot. From looking at our film we see that our protagonist is often in helpless situations where he is defenseless  from looking at other films such as ones from the James bond series we see that the good guy is often put in helpless and seemingly impossible situations. Before shooting we knew that we would also have to accomplish this is someway so that the audience would have positive emotions to our "good guy". When looking at our antagonist we didn't have much of a problem in finding a way to make him out to be a "bad guy". We accomplished this by making his identity mysterious and also suspicious, combining this with a deep and very depressive voice we knew that this would definitively help the audience distinguish between the two.

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

When looking at film distributors and institutions we found basically the perfect one, all we had to do was look into the making of our inspired film Stormbreaker where we found "Entertainment Film Distributors", We recognized these as being perfect as from our research we could clearly see that the films they distributed were often smaller projects but ones that had allot of potential. We also had the impression that as they had worked on distributing Stormbreaker they would have allot of knowledge in films of our genre.

Who would be the audience for your media product and why?

When looking into the audiences that our short film could appeal to we could see a clear pattern emerging that showed us this would be a film aimed at younger teenagers, roughly aged 12 - 15, we could see this by looking at other films and how they were also placed with age ratings. From this we could easily distinguish that our best option would be to aim this at younger audiences. When also thinking about our audience at initially we knew that roughly this would be the age range we should aim for as we knew that when we were younger these sort of films were the ones we liked to see.

How did you attract/address your audience?

When making our short film we knew there would be violence involved in it, To address our target audience 12-15 year olds, we had to make sure that the violence wasn't too extreme. We did this by deeply expressing that our film mainly had connotations of what people would expect to see in a Spy film. We tried to heavily make it so that the violence wasn't unnecessary and avoided using blood or gore. We also tried for instance in the flashback with the dead parents to make it so the older viewers would understand fully what has happened but to make it so the younger ones sort of knew what happened. We did this by adding special effects to lighten the situation and make it less impacting on our younger viewers.

What did you learn about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Whilst making our short film we had to use some technologies that we only had a little experience in using such as using the iMacs to edit our recordings and using the DV Tape Camcorders we were given to record our project.  From extensively using these technologies i have learnt about how they work and about the methods you can use with them to get the full benefits from them. An example of doing this is when recording each scene instead of stopping recording and starting again when something is wrong you can just carry on recording through, by doing this once the recorded video is imported you will be able to easily find the separate scenes you are looking for. This is because the software on the iMacs, iMovie, can analyze your data and can determine where you stopped recording and when you resumed it.

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

During the planning and early stages of our product we were told to make a Preliminary task to show things we learnt in previous lessons, we were taught about rules such as the 180 degree rule and other techniques that film company's often use to make their films more entertaining and easy to follow, another example of this would be the shot reverse shot and continuity editing techniques. After learning about these techniques and developing our understanding of them we were asked to produce a short video that was to include the said techniques. During this process we learnt about how to use the DV Tape Camcorders to our full advantages and we also learnt how to import our short video on to the schools iMacs through the use of a Fire-wire. This was all done in preparation for making our short film so that we would be confident and familiar when it came to using the equipment we were given, it was very beneficial to us and enables us to go onto learn about different techniques that would furthermore benefit us when it came to making our short film.

Preliminary Task - Short Scene

Here is my preliminary task that i worked on in a group with 3 other people, In the group my job was to write a small script mainly made of dialogue and i also did allot of the editing, as we shot this we made sure we added rules and techniques such as shot reverse shot and the 180 degree rule. We also tried to use editing techniques such as continuity editing.

Props, Actors, Music - Plan

Here, as you can see our Initial List of Props, Actors, Locations m Shots and Music/Sound effects, we made this so that when it came to filming/editing we had a better idea of what we needed.

Film Script

Here is the Script we planned to use in our short film when we were originally planning it, although it was a well planned out script we may have adapted it during filming to make it suit the genre better.

Filming Schedule

This is our filming schedule that we planned out before we started to film and edit our project.

Title Image

This is our  design for the title image we were going to use on the final cut of our project. We decided not to in the end as we felt that our project would look more professional and would suit the genre better if we were to go with a more simple design.

Story Boards

Here you can see the storyboards we Designed in preparation for filming our project. As you can see although they are only basic drawings they are also very informative and explanatory, this made it incredibly useful when setting up scenes in our film. The space underneath the drawings also allowed us to be able to write exactly what music and what effects we were going to use in certain scenes and also allowed us to add small stage directions to more difficult scenes that were going to be harder to re-create. When drawing the stick men in our story boards we made sure that they were easy to identify so that when it came to shooting the scenes we would be able to tell apart the different characters.

Film Plan and Intentions

I intend to make a fast paced action thriller for my film. The film i make will be about a boy who's parents were killed ion cold blood by a secret organization. Later on in his life he is kidnapped by the same organization who plan to try and get information about his parents out of him. After he escapes and starts training so that he can fight them and take them down.

The opening section of the film is about the boy escaping from the facility he is trapped in, during the opening section the boy gets interrogated and us the audience see his past through a series of flashbacks. The interrogation scenes are shot in a small dark room and the protagonist the boy is tied to a chair near a dim light. The initial shot of the scene will start with a wide angle shot of the room to help set the scene to give the audience a better sense of what is happening. Next the interrogator approaches the boy and starts to beat him up this is where we are shown 2 flashbacks,  1 of him being captured and one of his parents lying dead on the floor. after struggling out of the ropes that bind his hands he breaks free and escapes the facility.

In this short section i hope to be able to establish to the audience clearly who the main character is and help them understand his background/story. I will try to make the flashbacks quickly edited to establish they are very vivid memories this would intern hopefully make the audience more interested in the actual story. I will also add special effects to the flashback scenes such as blur to make them more visually obvious to what they are, I will also try to experiment with colors to see if i can make the flashbacks appear as i would like them.

Music will play throughout the Opening section and the music will be tense and fast paced to create a sense of danger and intensity.

I will try to use props such as weapons like hammers/screwdrivers ect.

After Researching films i found "Stormbreaker" was a good example that i could use to influence my final project, this is because it as allot of fast paced action and fast editing that i think if could be re-created would look really good.

Backlash 1st and Second Cuts

To See Our Second and 1st cuts of our AS Media Projects Click Here - http://www.danieljohnsonasmediastudies.blogspot.co.uk/

Differences Between the Cuts

After exporting our 1st cut we could clearly see that more work needed to be done, in our second cut we added more music and sound effects to create a better sense of depth in our film, it also helped to make our film more immersive and entertaining. We also added a better introduction to our film as we thought that our characters identities weren't well enough explained in our 1st cuts. By adding this scene it enabled our audience to be able to engage more with our characters identities.

Editing and Importing Films

We learnt how to edit our footage using imovie on the Mac’s. We learnt about how to safely connect our cameras up to the Macs through the use of Fire wires. We then went onto import our footage and as we got used to the software we learnt how to edit it too. After experimenting with effects we reviewed our newly edited footage and checked for inconsistencies.

Planning - Storyboards - Editing

We planned out our storyboards for a piece of footage we were going to record, we were told that we had to use the 3 rules that we had previously learnt about and we also had to plan a script that contained someone opening a door and entering a room

Today we also learnt how to turn on and set up a camera, we also learnt how to use a range of features that have on the camera such as how to record using it, and also how to layback your footage. We also got shown how to load a tape without damaging the camera. We then went on to learn how to put the camera on to a tripod and also how to set the tripod up to use.

Next we learnt about continuity editing and how we could apply it to our footage and how we recorded it.

Shot Reverse Shot

Shot reverse shot is basically a couple of shots, which is used to display characters reactions to things and also to emphasize the events in the scene. make the audience less bored while watching. It can consist of as many shots as you want as long as you repeat the pattern.

180 degree Rule

What is the 180 Degree rule?

The 180-degree rule is a rule used when recording. It basically makes sure that the scene that the audience is seeing isn't too confusing.

In this scene we can see 2 characters, the 180-degree rule makes sure that the characters on screen don’t cross the “180 degree line”. The 180-degree is an imaginary line that separates the scene. The line cannot be broken unless it is shown to be broken by use of the camera. This ensures the audience doesn’t get disorientated and can follow the scene better.

In both pictures we can imagine a line that best describes the 180 degree rule. This rule helps the audience orientate themselves, as no matter what side of the scene the camera is on, the characters should always stay on the same side of the scene. If person 1 were to sit where person 2 is and visa versa the 180-degree rule will have been broken. This can only be achieved if the camera shows the audience the change.