Note to examiner

Thank you for taking the time for looking at my blog, I liked the challenge of making the film, I mostly enjoyed the filming part, I would definitely like to have another go at creating a short film next year in A2, I hope you enjoy looking through my blog and watching my film.

Final draft

Evaluation question 7-"looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?"

Before A level I had never studied media, but now i'm glad that i have because its showed me that media is more than just filming, I've learnt about the effort and hard work that has to go into planning like making the script, storyboards and scripts. Before media I never heard of blogger and what it can provide, Starting the blog was an enjoyable task as we got the play around with the customisation options which is very easy to get used to. I enjoyed learning about how to create storyboards as I like drawing this was a fun task for me, It was good that the whole group contributed to the storyboard by generating ideas for different shots. The research was a very interesting section for me as i enjoyed finding out how big Hollywood blockbuster movies where made, I liked finding out how much it cost them and the equipment they used, so we could try to copy the shots they had but with less developed technology. I didn't really learn a lot about editing as one of my group was familiar with the Premiere pro software and it was quicker if he edited the majority of the film, I did get the chance to edit but it was very basic like cutting and adding a clip which I was okay with but after watching my group mate edit I felt like I learnt a lot from watching him. I have learnt how to create prezi's and how to embed and upload them to blogger, prezi's where a great way to present my answers to the evaluation question as they could zoom in to different sections and it made the answers less boring. I have also learnt how to embed you tube videos onto blogger, I didn't know how to do this until a fellow class mate showed me, it was a very beneficial skill to learn as it allowed me to embed videos so i could talk about them and how I got my inspiration from them. Overall I am happy with the amount of new skill i have learnt and hopefully they will benefit me in the future, but if there was one thing i could change is the amount of experience I had to edit as I had very little and think if I had more time then it would benefit a lot more for future independent videos I want to make.

Evaluation question 6-"What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product"

Before this as level media course i had never heard of blogger or how it worked, now i feel confident using the platform and getting my way around, i know how to edit any blog posts or change the layout of my blog and add a new background. the label feature on blogger is good because it allows me to organise my posts in to the respective category and then they are all under the same label. the customise feature is also good as it allowed me to completely change it to a thriller themed blog which is the theme of my opening.



I had never heard of premiere pro before my project and i took along time to get used to the program, but eventually i got used to it and it became very easy to edit clips. i was given a tutorial before sing the software which really helped. i am now happy with using this software and i am glad we used it to edit as it looks more professional.






We edited on an apple mac and I haven't had much experience with a mac before but i had briefly used one, so i only new the basics of them and how to navigate around the computer to find clips and to upload them into premiere.








I had never used prezi until i started this project and now I am confident with using the software and using the different transitions. i find it a better and easier way to present something than using power point. I like this software as its easy to edit and upload to blogger. I used the tutorials on the website and it was then easy to use the software.

Evaluation question 5-"How did you attract/address your audience?"

To attract my audience we used characters, editing and the story line. For the characters the audience was attracted to them because even though the audience couldn't relate to them, they could feel like them as the victims of the young girls. All the characters are stereotypical, they're genders are all linked tot the roles s girls have a lot of hair which is the target for the stalker. The stalker is stereotypical as he is a male which in films, the stalker is portrayed a lot as a male.
The editing in the film is fast paced in the build up scenes of the hair cutting. the editing in the CCTV attracts the audience looks very edgy and the black and white effect gives it more of a thriller theme.
The story line/plot is very strange and unique, the story line is quite realistic due to it being based on a true story, there was an article in the news paper about a man cutting girls hair on a train, we adapted the story line and made it so that we didn't have to film on a train we have to film on the train instead we filmed on the platform when there wasn't any people around .

Evaluation question 4-"Who would be the audience for your media product?"

After watching our product again, I feel that it is aimed at teenagers due to the actors being that age and anyone who likes psychological thriller films because the genre of our film is a psychological thriller. Our product would not be suitable for young teenagers or children because they might find it confusing and it really isn't suitable, the suitable age would be around 16 years and older.
Compared to another thriller like taken the audience would be different due to actors and genre. The target audience for taken would be young adults maybe early 20's these are the stereotypical target audience for action thrillers and the girl in the film is young so the audience could make a connection with her. In our film our audience might be able to make a connection with the victims who are all 16. The research I also carried out at the start of the year shows that my target audience would be 15-17 due to the majority people asked where in that age bracket.

Evaluation question 3-"What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?"

Evaluation Question 2-"How does your media product represent particular social gorups?"

For this question I decided to do it in the format of a prezi.

Evaluation question 1-"In what ways does your media product use develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products"

Audience feedback

We showcased our film to pupils in our year whilst in assembly. After they had watched the film we asked some of them for any feedbakc they had on the film. Some of the thing they said are:-

• Good opening which is intreging and makes me want to watch more to find out what happens.
• Good use of editing for the cctv which was really impressive, and the slo mos really added a thriller effect to the opening.
• Could be improved by using a diffferent camera.

After tehy made this comment i told them about the restircted resources we were given at the start of the year.

3rd draft of film

2nd draft of film

I am happy with the progress we made and we got more shots. to improve it i think like we had to add more close ups for the murder board to make it more of a thriller.

1st draft of film

This was our first draft for our film and as you can see we haven't got a lot as we didn't film enough before we went down the college for the first time, this was a good start to our project though and i'm happy with it to begin with.

getting permission to use the music

After commenting on YouTube videos and emailing the band 'Pavement' who produced the song, if we could be granted to use their music in our thriller, we haven't had a response from all of these options.

Storyboard final draft

Storyboard 1st draft

Here is our first draft for out film,

Choosing a name for our product

Today me and my group brainstormed a couple of ideas for our film. Below is some of the ideas that we came up with.


After discussing with our teacher we decided that 'close cut' is the best name for our film.

Script

In our media film there is no dialogue at all, we thought this might make the opening more sinister and spooky. We didn't produce a script for our film because we didn't have dialogue.

Group roles

To make our product successful we assigned roles so everyone new what they had to do, Oliver was the editor as he had experience and good knowledge of the programme, I was the director as i had a good idea in my head of ideas we could shoot and what the narrative could follow and Alex was the producer. Even though we have our individual roles we will all work on the storyboard and shot-list.

Shot list