Repost of our Preliminary Task and our Opening title Sequence

I have simply reposted these 2 videos so they are visible at the very top of my blog so they are easy to view:

The Depot Opening Title Sequence By Blood Rush Studios 2012:

Our Preliminary Task:

Evaluation 7 - What kind of institution might distribute my media product and why? (Made using "Kizoa")

Please click the right arrow/triangle button ON THE SCREEN/PRESENTATION itself to move through this presentation - not the keys on the keyboard. As it automatically plays itself, please make sure you start from the begging by either pressing reply or going back to the beginning by clicking the arrow on the left repeatedly:


Made using "Kizoa":

I suspect our media product to go far in cinemas, I believe it is original in the way the horror aspect converges with the thriller conventions. However, with our media technology constantly evolving I suspect films such as The Depot will be mainly be viewed on mobile devices such as iPod Touches and mobile Phones.

Evaluation 6 - What I have learnt about technologies in the process of constructing my product?

However, I did run into numerous issues that either prevented, delayed or decreased the quality of an aspect of my media product. For example, after making the company animation in "Aurora 3D animation", when I exported it into mp4/Quicktime format there was a watermark of "TRAIL" across the animation. Nonetheless, I increased the contrast of the animation so the watermark was nearly invisible to the naked eye. Another technological issue that I encountered was when my computer suddenly turned off, I was in the middle of writing a post on "Blogger". When I opened my Blog again, all my work was not present anymore. Therefore I had to re-do the post a second time. When editing in Adobe Premiere Pro, if I needed to delete a transition, the software would automatically delete the footage that was involved in the transition, therefore I had to add the footage again from the rushes - this took time and delayed edited. Unfortunately, our computer that we were allocated for editing did not have access to the internet, this made downloading and uploading data became far more time consuming and complicated as everything had to be transferred to and from my computer using my memory stick.

Evaluation 5 - How did I attract/address my target audience? (Voiceover)

Please make sure the sound on your computer is turned on/up

Evaluation 4 - Who will be the audience of my media product?

Evaluation 3 - What have I learnt from my Preliminary task in progression to the full product?

Evaluation Q3

I feel that by having a detailed storyboard, scrpit and schedule helped us achieve a better product as we were defiantly more prepared and organised. Preparing to film is incredibly important to achieve a good film, therefore in hindsight, a plan for our preliminary task would have been very useful in making it appear more professional. When filming our Preliminary task I didn't really know all the shot types and their purposes. However I was aware of them when filming our full product, so I used this knowledge when filming. As I have mentioned, a wide variety of shot types are needed to prevent the video from becoming monotonous. Unlike our Preliminary task which mainly consisted of medium long shots.

To conclude, I believe becoming familiar and knowledgable with the camera, equipment and editing software where vital in developing my skills in film making which allowed me do my best when making our opening title sequence.

Evaluation 2 - How does my media product represent particular social groups?

Our media product represents numerous social groups. The pictures on the left are the two characters in our opening title sequence:

1

The antagonist in our thriller is shown above (on the left), his clothing resembles the clothing of the KKK, the pointy hat is typically worn by an antagonist in thriller films. The pointy hat may be a sign of poverty characterising their background i.e. a poor man who has recently been released from prison. The dark clothing can also represent the clothes worn by thieves (as shown in two pictures above). Furthermore, the black leather coat resembles the one worn by Renard (Robert Carlyle) in the James Bond film "The World Is Not Enough"(1999). In addition, the harsh tone that our antagonist uses represents an aggressive man. Furthermore, simply through the narrative it is clear this man is a violent man, as we see him suffocate another man with a plastic bag. We have created the image of this character as a working class, aggressive thug.

2

The protagonist in our title sequence is represented as a white, young man with a rather low income as he is working the night shift at a freezing cold bus depot. Simply by looking at the way he walks in the opening title sequence this man is portrayed as timid and withdrawn. We hoped to represent a lazy, shy, single depot worker who lives by himself in a flat who is struggling to keep up with the rent. We did this by choosing an actor with long hair, overweight who is shy when he is not acting; therefore he didn't really need to act to be someone he is not. 

Evaluation 1 - In what ways does my media product use, develop and challenge conventions of real media products? (Voiceover)

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Editing our Thriller Title Sequence - Final Tweaking

Our post production questionnaire gave us some important things to change, mostly small details, yet they were incredibly important. For example the actors name was spelt wrong, and in the very last shot a significant error is visible; as the antagonist closers the 'door' of the cab it, the actor (who is meant to be at the back of the bus) is standing in the shot; in front of the bus! I was easily able to fix this by cropping the shot as show below:

1 Before cropping (actor in frame by accident):              2 During cropping:

3 After cropping:

Moreover, I had cropped a shot midway throughout the sequence to get rid of another error (the antagonist was standing in shot when he wasn't meant to be). However this caused there to be a empty space on the left as I has dragged the whole shot over to the right, i didn't make the crop quite so dramatic so there is no longer an empty space on the left of the shot.

A title that we did not use is shown below, the night before we timed we asked Steve (the man who kindly allowed us to film at the Depot) if it was possible to print a title on one of the destination blinds, he was happy to help so we sent him the following:

We filmed this shot however we felt it did not fit in to the title sequence. The place (in the timeline) that it needed to go would force us to deviate from the traditional title order (shown in one of the previous posts) as the name of the director must come towards the end and this shot would not fit in if placed toward the end of the title sequence:

Furthermore, it was pointed that numerous shots needed to be brightened using the editing software as they were difficult to see due to the poor lighting in a shot. For example - the long show of Steve (antagonist) holding the bag over the protagonist:

Unfortunately, some shots (such as the one above) were not possible salvage simply because it was not lit well as you can see from the poor lighting. However other shots could be improved by using lighting effect tools such as these:

Finally, there was something I noticed in the sequence that may confuse the audience and go against the 180 degree rule. When the audience see two shots of the antagonist's feet walking from 2 angles, they are shot from directly opposite sides. So the first match on action shot is the man walking from right to left of the frame, then the second is the man walking left to right. This is very confusing. Therefore I deleted the second match on action shot so the man is walking from right to left into the next long shot. These pictures illustrate this:

1.

2.  Deleted shot was here, but now there is continuity so the man walks from right to left in both/all shots

3.











I also rendered our whole title sequence so frame is improved, to when all frames are played one after the other, it creates a far more fluid video:

Post-production Interview