Monday 11 April 2016

evaluation 7

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

Overall I think the idea and creativity of our title sequence worked very well, I think this because compared to the rest of the class none of ours were similar in anyway. The class gave such a varity of genres and they all stood out in there own way however ours had a unique style like no one else's, we went for a not so popular genre compared to title sequences students have done over the years and by this ours stood out.

I feel like ours was based on creativity due to the book making and character story lines, this helped ours stand out as we know due to the feedback we got from students and teachers. All feedback we got was positive, they comment on how great the characters looked, how well the book was made, that the idea itself was amazing and we was told in the early stages by a member of staff that if it was done properly and had full attention payed to it that this title sequence will be a huge success. An as we posted the final cut the same teacher came back and told us that they knew we could do it, this was a huge eye opener in how good it was, we put so much effort into it and the hard work did pay off .

I learnt that by listening to all feedback that it can make your project ten times better, all the little things add up and when corrected it makes it so much better. For example by adding the pictures on the boarded colour paper on each character page looked so much better, plus by adding the flash at the begin of the page shot when they came to life gave it that yearbook look. When we showed the class our final copies and we got all that feedback we generally wanted to give up as we thought all the corrections given wouldn't be possible to do in that amount of time we had left, but we was wrong. I'm so glad we didn't give up as I'm very proud of how it turnt out in the end.

evaluation 6


evaluation 5

How did you attract/address your audience?

Because our audience are teenagers age 12-18 we applied the types of codes and conventions to engage with them.lys i think we did reach the target audience as being a teenager myself and being within the age bracket we had given i did enjoy it and so did my classmates.

Keeping in mind that my target audience are teenagers i got inspiration for the characters and how they will act from being in school myself. i go to secondary school and from year 7 to year 12 all characters i have used in the title sequence are people i have witnessed through my school years, elements on how they dress and act are all inspired from my classmates. however i did rely on american films about high school to help me deliver the performance, this is because i go to a British school and American and British schools are so different in many ways.  Any teenager knows that these characters are relatable to them as every school as students like this, they all know or have witnessed a freak, geek and a group of popular girls and boys. They face these people each day and by watching our title sequence they can clearly see that it will relate to their school life, and by choosing characters who will easily relate to the audience is a huge success for some reason teenagers love watching school films, i think this is because they can relate to the fact that they go to school as well plus they want to see how other kids act and behave in school compared to them. 

We are attracting our target audience by relating the storyline to their daily lives this automatically connects with the audience and keeps them keen and interested in whats going on. plus the bright colours and loud music will keep them engaged through out.

evaluation questions 1-4

Sunday 10 April 2016

Final Cut Pro problem

Today we began editing the clips together on Final Cut Pro, me and Brittany sat down and applied and discussed where and how the title sequence will fit together. As we started on the mac computers another class came in to use the rest of the macs, this was a problem as Final Cut Pro began to lag and when we tried to watch our footage back it kept missing out scences we need to see, this became a slight situation as today we planned to complete the freaks section at the beginning of the title sequence. This set us back as we wasted an hour waiting for the macs to become faster.

Saturday 9 April 2016

Geek page- accessories used

The geeks page was full of school related items such as a grade mark on a paper being a A+, books, a flag say "success" and a badge saying he'd boy. These are all elements that connect with school which connects with school equalling his character as a geek. The border of his video was green and orange, we chose these colours as they stand out on the black paper which makes his video stand out, the text saying "Ezra miller" & "the geek" are in orange and green as well, coordinated with the bordered rectangles.


Elite page - accessories used

The elite page had the colour pink all over it, the text was pink their characters videos were boarded in the colour pink and the stickers on the page were pink as well. This was because the colour pink indicates girly girls, and as they are girly girls we chose this colour to help the, represent the page. We had a pink love heart placed between Ellie and Ella's videos and underneath them they had a sticker say "perfect" I love the "perfect" as it states they are the popular girls and are better than everyone else, which is also how they are shown in American high school films. Then underneath Emma Roberts picture it say "Queen B" with a crown above it, this shows she the main girl and is most popular above them all, this also follows along with the stereotype of a high school, there's allways a main girl who's most popular. Plus we had a fruity cocktail sticker on the page as well to emphasis the girly ness even more.


Jocks page- accessories used

The jock page had the schools colours red white and blue ( which are also the colours of the American flag) their charcuterie videos were boarded in these colours in order for them to stand out. We also applied stickers such a a basket ball and trainers to the page, along with red bold text for the text staying "Jocks". These stickers and images on the page helps the audience identify that they are jocks who play basketball, the accessories placed were a good choice as it helped them deliver their performance.

Freaks page - accessories used

On the freaks page we didn't have much to it as her personality is plain and dull, we didn't give her a bordered to her character video like the others and put her name in grey. The colours used for her page were black white and grey, these colours represent her character as a freak as they a neutral colours and don't symbolise anything. The stickers given were painted black nails as they are the in footage and a skull to represent death, this is because freaks are steotypically connected with death as shown in the media.

Cinematography tips I had learnt

Being the cinematographer I wanted to make sure that the filming I had done was perfect, in order for this to happen I had to do my research. I learnt that hand held filming is okay but in our case wasn't a option as we wanted still shots, in order for this to happen a tripod was the best option. another shot we used was a angled ariel shot, this was hard as the only way to do it was handheld but as i said before we wanted still shots and handheld wasn't always the best as it can be shaky.  A tripod wasn't the best choice as the camera needed to be lifted from the ground at a angle and the tripod doesn't do so. So I used a steady cam, this is we're the camera is screwed on top of a chunk of metal which has a flat piece at the bottom, this flat piece enables you to rest it on our body so it's not being filmed hand held and the camera is not shaky. This steady cam allows a clean shot to be made as it's resting on something. Another tip I learnt with the steady cam is that if you breath in when using it the camera becomes even more still, because if you heavily breath when the steady cam is balanced on your chest you lungs are going to slightly move it, so by breathing in the camera will say still.

Text inside the book

Because our title sequence was set in a American high school when shopping for acsesserios for inside the book we did find it hard due us living in Britain and we don't have shops like America does. So when tryed to find things that relate to a American high school it was difficult however we did vist more than one shop to find as much American looking features for our book. After looking in a couple of shops we did end up finding something which was a huge part to the book, this was the text to spell out words inside the book. This text we found was bright red, bold, school font letters, when we saw this we bought them straight away because it helped the audience idently it was a American high school book and we knew it would look great in the book. This text was used throughout the book spelling out the pages of who it was directed by, who edited it, who the cinematographer was and so on. Many pages had this text on and a one point we did run out of letters so we then had to make another journey to the shop to buy some more.

Making the book

As a group we made the yearbook together, we went to a local craft shop and grabbed the supplies we needed. We originally was going to make the book ourselves by buying different coloured paper and card to make the pages and book cover, however when we visualised it in the shop we knew it wouldn't look as good as we thought it would of. So we looked around the shop and we found a all ready made plain book, we all agreed straight away that it would be the book we used. After we had found the book we then went on to buying accesserious for the pages inside. We had already made our story board and planned out the pages inside the book so we then had to find stickers and pictures that would relate to each page to make them stand out.
Geek page- pens&pencil stickers, number stickers, school related stickers. (Orange and green paper for the boardeds of the character video)
Freak page- skulls and scary gothic stickers and pictures
Elite page- pink girly stickers such as lover hearts and make up, also text saying girly words such as "OMG" "FABULOUS" and "BOYS" (pink paper for the border of the videos)
Jock page- sports stickers such as trophies, a basketball, (red and blue coloured paper to border the videos, we chose these colours because they match the school logo)


Sunday 3 April 2016

Update on the freaks scene

As I previously said about the bad lighting in the toilet for the freak scene which made the footage grainy, we've thought of ideas and ways in order to make it look better. Such as different lights, holding the book in different positions and moving locations to another bathroom but they don't look any better. So we decided to pick the best clip from all the footage we had from the blue bathroom and played around with the contrast and brightness, we did this because we had already filmed the freak walking into the blue barthooms and the passing the book scene to the other character. It looks better than original videos we took but could be slightly better, however when we fitted the clip in amgost the others it looked good.

Cinematography

Cinematography was the most important aspect to this project, because otherwise we would have no title sequence. i was the cinematographer and from a personal point of view i found it very challenging, i experienced new type of camera equipment such as a steady cam and a track. we wanted clean crisp camera shots and with the use of the equipment we was able to achieve great camera shots.

For example when the characters were walking with the book we used a track to get a smooth video of them walking because doing it handheld was a huge fail and using a tripod and pan the camera as they moved didn't look good. i said we needed a camera shot that followed the book along side it, we asked the media teachers about this and they suggested the track. we tried it out and it looked great, we then used the track multiply times after that.

At times being the cinematographer was hard because looking onto the scene where your filming through the camera isn't as good as you think it is in your head. for example the toilet scene for the freek, in my head we thought it would look so good with the toilet seat and the dirty floors in the background. however when actual filming it the footage was grainy their wasn't enough light in the toilet and when we applied more light it looked too much. plus having to re-shoot scenes in school was a mission at times, this was because we filmed during the school day so we interrupted with the change over of lessons and other students using our filming locations.

Editing

Editing the whole title sequence itself was one of hardest aspects to this project, its a huge part to the final cut and it needed full attention and commitment due to the effects and ideas we had in mind in order for this to be a success.

Our idea was for the characters individual yearbook pictures to come to life with them then doing a moving pose to the camera when the book had been turned to their page. for example the main jock photo of him was him with a basket pall on his finger, he then came to life an walked into the shot and span the ball facing the camera.

A problem we had with these videos was that when we placed the character video on top of the video footage of the book turning the character video began to move and made it look very messy. we
needed to find a away for them to stop moving. this was a problem we found when we showed our final cut to the class, they agreed that we needed to find away to fix it so on our last week went back and fixed the problems. however due to family matters our editor Brittany was unable to attend school for a few days which left us in a situation, me and Bronte then took on the role of editor while she was not present.

Together we found a tool that fixed the moving video problem and applied that tool to all the character clips and it made a huge improvement, we also added some small effects which made it a lot better. for example when the book reached the next page of characters we added a flash which gave the video that effect of a picture being taken and then they characters came to life.

Other things we had to work on was the font styles and colors, in our feedback session we was told too look into other fonts because they believed they didn't work with that particular page style, we also needed to add the sticker tool to the fonts as they also moved around the page due to the video footage it was layered on top of.

Audiance profile