CHHH CHH CH CHANGESssss...

Well we thought we were done, complete, finished! BUT, we changed the film opening a little, we found out that the music wasnt allowed as it was breaking copy right laws and this was obviously a problem! We used garage band and made a whole new track from scratch which actually sounds better than the music we were originally using!
We also added in an extra bit just before becky and charleys scene! it is a black screen with a title fading in saying 'one year later' this gives the film a better sense of a story and antually is much more understandable as a film opening. it makes the audience want to see more and this is very important as if the opening is rubish then the audience wont want to watch the rest.
But now we really are DONE!

What have I learned overall?

Compared to our preliminary task this film has taught us the importance of time management and team work, our preliminary task was shocking! Even though the preliminary task was pretty bad it did teach us the simple filming techniques and the camera shots and angles that looked good and the ones that didn’t work so well!
04:00 has many different camera angles and sound effects within the film. We have around found different transitions and we have audio tracking, time codes and more characters and locations than the preliminary task we did. If you watch the preliminary task and then watch the film you will see the difference in the two and how much we have progressed and learned along the way. If we were asked to do the preliminary task again we would be much more capable and would be able to create a much more detailed and thorough video!
Obviously there are things we would like to change about our final film opening such as, the soundtrack which is on loop but compared to the preliminary task it is amazing. Me and my group are all really pleased with our efforts and we are all really proud of the final product.

What have you learned about technology's from the process of creating this product?

We have learned that there is a lot more to film making than meets the eye. We had to go through the whole experience of filming editing and getting feedback from our target audience. We were pretty good at the filming aspect of the film but when it came to editing it would be fair to say we had our fair share of problems! Adobe premiere pro was really hard to get to grips with but after a while we did get the hang of it!
Charley did really well in making the soundtrack for the film and she will probably talk about how complicated it was to cut and make sound really good.
At the beginning we didn’t actually realise that it would take so much time to edit and put together! We really didn’t realise that the editing process was so laborious and complicated! I think that we have done really well in the making of this film even though the journey hasn’t been perfect.

Audience

Our target audience is 16 to 26 year olds, we knew this from a survey we did which is further down on the blog. We chose these people as they would be the type of age group that would want to watch the film but would e genuinely entertained by it! This audience are the type that will enjoy being scared and watching thrillers. They will also like to go and see it with their friends!
We attracted our audience by posting our film introduction onto youtube, posting links to it onto social networking sites like twitter and facebook. This gives thousands of people all over the world a chance to watch our film and feedback and comment on it. This is good for us as we can see what people really like about it and things we could do to improve it! We also got friends to watch the film and tell us what they thought this is good as they all liked it and told their friends to watch it on youtube.
Within ten minutes of Charley posting the link to youtube on her twitter we had a response from somebody asking if they could see the rest of the film! This is a really good example of our target audience wanting to see the rest of the film and it is good for us as it shows we did it right!

Distribution Ideas

If our film where chosen to be distributed it would most probably be the independent companies that would do this as our film is not a big budget block buster! And it is a little thriller set in Bristol which would not appeal to the huge companies which distribute to the mainstream cinemas. Companies like Warner Bros and Universal Vivendi are not the type of companies that we are aiming to appeal to! But we could appeal to Steal Mill Pictures as they are a small film company which also produced London to Brighton when it was shown at a film festival!
As we have no budget we would probably be able to get our film seen on you tube, and on the internet. We would be able to get anybody in the world to view our film and let us know what they think and if they like it, this is also another advantage as our film could be seen by a distribution company and they could support our film with money, and get it put onto a DVD !

Representing social groups

Our film represents white women, we have a blonde victim who shows vulnerability and victimisation, this is a common representation of blondes and why we used a blonde girl for our first victim. The blonde will die and this will be another common convention in the thriller genre.
Our second victim will be a brunette, the common representation of brunettes is gutsy, a little ‘tom boyish’ and strong, this is exactly why we used a brunette actress for the second victim as it would be conforming to the common representation of brunette girls and also good for the conventions of a thriller! Our brunette victim will be the fighter, the survivor the one the audience are willing to survive and make it through to the end of the film!
We also have an ‘invisible’ character (the stalker) it is obvious that this person is going to be the ‘antagonist’ of the film. This character is the one that has captured and killed the blonder girl. The only small sign of this character in the start of the film is the door opening and slamming shut off camera. This is indicated by a sound effect and the on screen reaction of the blonde girl!

Using, Developing and Challenging Conventions

My film genre is a thriller and me and my group (Abbie and Charley) have tried to incorporate all the major conventions of this genre.
We have used the typical convention with the victim being a blonde girl who ends up dying and the second victim of the film is a brunette who actually manages to survive the crazed killer! We have also used flashbacks which appear right at the start of the film in black and white and with a slight faded quality to them. We are also using cliff hangers and opening up a lot of enigma codes right at the start of the film, this is typical of a psychological thriller as it makes the audience want to watch more and really think about what is going to happen.
We challenged the typical stereotypes of a thriller by using a song at the start of the film with the lyrics explaining what was going through the character on
the screens head, this is challenging the stereotype as it is rarely/never used in a thriller! It is really effective in our film as it makes the audience really sit and watch the flashbacks and connect with the song and what is happening on screen! We where also going to take a big chance and use a voice over instead of song lyrics, this would have been like the voice over of ‘Bella’ in ‘Twighlight’ the point of it would have been for the main character (featured on screen at the start during her flashbacks) would be talking and explaining what is happening in a really cryptic way, this would open up enigma codes and make the audience really listen and want to watch more and more of the film.

EVALUATION

Evaluation

FINISHED!!! This is the finished film opening for' 4AM'

FINISHED!

This is the preliminary task we did before starting out film opening.

Nearly there...

I cant beleive we have nearly finished and the film is actually pretty good, i am really pleased with how everybody and everything has turned out. We only have a few more things to edit into place, these include the music which needs to be sorted out and also we are in diar need of a sound effect to use for the main title! As i am writing this Abbie and Charley are desperatly trying to sort out the music and they have managed to find two sound effects to use for the title and also for our company logo when it appears!

Our name for out film company is 'C.I.A productions' (Charley.Issy.Abbie) GENIUS!!!!

TIME IS RUNNING OUT!

So we have been editing for a few weeks now and we have pretty much finished, jess managed to help us with the effects that we wanted for the small room section and i have to say it looks AMAZING! Miss Street really likes it and now all we have to think about is the music. Charley said that we should leave that to her and she could find something really good for us to use.

Miss Street then watched the whole film and said that it was really good but asked what would happen to the girl (me) in the rest of the film, we said that she would die and there would be another victim, Miss Street said that we should actually film some more and introduce the new victim to the audience. We thought this was a good but risky idea, we have 1 week left and with some editing left to do we would have to go and film there and then.

PROBLEM! we wanted to use a brunette as this would be a perfect showcase of a typical thriller convention. As my character was blonde and had been killed, this would mean that the brunette girl will survive, this is very common in thriller films (the blonde pretty one dies, and the tough gutsy brunette survives) We now needed a brunette girl to act for us, Abbie refused and said that she didn't want to as she couldn't act! so we where stuck we wanted charley and the brunette girl to be talking and having a little pic-nic exactly where we had filmed the flash backs of my character being abducted!

I knew that our friend Becky wasn't in a lesson so i text her to see of she could come down and watch what we had done so far with the film. Whist she was on her way down we put her name into the opening titles, she watched the film and noticed that her name was in there! We then asked her if she wouldn't mind being in the film for us and that we needed to go and film it now! SHE SAID YES!!!!!!!!!

We went down to 'Magpie bottom' armed with a tripod, camera, tape and a pic-nic blanket! I was behind the camera, as Abbie was editing back in the main building, we quickly figured out what Becky and Charley were going to say to introduce Becky as the new victim. I filmed them having the conversation from a range of angles, i even did a establishing shot and a zoom!

In the conversation between Becky and Charley the audience learn that Becky is thinking of moving to the country (where they are sat) and she will quit her job as she is sick of the 'city boys' and Charley agrees and says that the 'country boys' really aren't that bad either!

I was really happy that we had managed to film the whole lot within the space of half an hour, we went back up to Abbie, and she had managed to find a 'door slam' sound effect to use during the small room section. It looked really good and the sound effect fitted really well with the rest of the clip! We managed to capture all the footage we had shot and add in the two clips we wanted to use for the film! I think we might actually make it for the deadline, thank god!!!

Miss Street was right the extra footage really makes it seem like a film opening and its good for us as we are introducing a new character for the audience. This also adds loads of new enigma codes for the audience to wonder about!

I hate technology

OK so i lied, now this new computer just allways freezes and we cant actually do ANYTHING AT ALL, we manage to do some editing but when it renders it will just freeze and wont come back to life :(

MOVING!!!

We are moving, machines that is!, the editing computer we were originally working on didn't have the right CCTV effects for the clips so we have moved on and up in the world and are now editing on a nice shiny new machine :)

This computer will be able to give us the right effects for the section where i am trapped in the small room. we want the camera to appear like its a CCTV camera in the room watching me and this will make the film really individual. So today something actually went right and we will be able to edit with no glitches!!!!!

Editing AHHHH.

We have filmed everything that we need and now the time has come to edit and make our footage look like a film! I was really exited to edit and see how the film would look, but when it came down to the first day we started to edit and we managed to do the whole of the flashbacks section, but i was so stressed after. editing is really complicated and i was so tired after, nothing seemed to want to work and we couldn't find the right slide transitions for each flashback and we couldn't make them black and white. we managed to put together all of the clips and in the end found a good dissolve to make each clip blend into the next.

We can also see that we will most definately have problems in the future when it comes to putting in the effects for the CCTV camera, and also when we need to do the titles the way we want them.

but putting all of the problems and stress aside i am really glad that we have managed to finish filming and get onto the long and laborious task of editing. i think that we need to just really focus on the editing and crack on with it because then we will have more time in the end to make the film look really good with all the effects and the music!