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

Looking at the 5 candidates I interviewed i can see what type of audience would be interested in watching our film. It is clear that our film wouldn't be appealing to candidate E, she was the youngest candidate we interviewed and i think  a lot of young teenagers would agree with her. Thrillers often have many twists and different plots in the one story to create mystery and as candidate C said 'they are harder to watch', meaning you have to concentrate more than you would with another genre because, usually each scene in a thriller is important and you have to watch it to be able to understand the storyline. Candidate A and D are our target audience, although candidate D wasn't very enthusiastic about our film title she did also say, 'you cant judge a book by its cover', i think she would actually enjoy our film. Both these candidates are women so they would be able to relate with the main character which is what we intended. We initially thought our film would only appeal to teens our age (16-19) but i think a lot of older people would also be interested, such as candidate D ( 20-30) giving it a wider audience.

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

We would attract our audience by using a film poster, these are still used all the time when advertising a new film, its a really clever way to get more people interested as they don't give any of the story away but give an overall view of the film, looking at this poster you would be able to tell what genre it is and possible things that may occur in it. This is our poster advertising our film 'delusion', this was my first time exploring photoshop and i found it a really useful programme and was perfect for making this poster. We got great inspiration from this poster

We really liked the idea of having an image from the film in the text of the title, although we didn't use one picture to cover the whole title we used different screenshots which i think looks equally as effective, the rings picture however is more shocking and clear whereas ours looks more mysterious and creates unanswered questions for our audience, as does the opening to our film. The poster helps represent our gene, the dark colours, blood and a typical forest as the background makes it clear to the audience that 'delusion' is going to be a horror/thriller. We also added the typical format of an advertising poster by adding a quote, star ratings, the cast and crew at the bottom and lastly the release date. 

We decided to add a short quote after looking at this poster, a quote gives the audience something else to think about without giving anymore of the storyline away. 'When two paths meet' this quote is clearly hinting at something bad, it could be suggesting two characters with a possible murder due to the blood in the title. We added 5 stars as this would get more people interested and wanting to watch the film. The only thing i would change about the poster is the font and size of the quote, i think to make it look more mysterious and daunting it shouldn't be as bold and big, looking at 'the grudge' poster you can see the obvious difference. 

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OSOWd9UWcY&context=C4f9233eADvjVQa1PpcFOQseKF3o9ER8h-i_HH4uWzm1LE-37t-8I=

Here i have made a tutorial on the mac using the programme 'imovie' which is what we used to edited and put together our final piece.
I demonstrate how to:
-Edit the colour
-How to clip trim a selected scene

Evaluation Question 7- Looking back at your prelim what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

In this short essay i will explain how my knowledge and understanding in media has greatly progressed from the start to the end of this years media course, looking back at the techniques and skills used in my preliminary tasks to my finished final product.

Looking back at the many attempts it took us to complete our prelim task I feel my knowledge and understanding in the skills and techniques has progressed throughout the course, enabling my group and I to feel confident in making our final product.

When watching our first prelim tasks we can point out obvious areas of improvement such as the 180 degree rule and the location of our films. However, although making these mistakes we were able to point them out and attempted the preliminary task a various of times until we were happy with the final product. Whilst putting together each preliminary task I have definitely progressed in accuracy and speed in my ability to editing the clips together on imovie and I now find it an enjoyable and fun progress rather than a struggle. At the start of the course I was unsure about how I would cope with learning about a new software that I had never used before, but after doing mini projects, practising and using the different areas and resources on imovie I now feel confident with editing the pieces of work we create. Also, when filming our preliminary tasks we never once planned the dialogue, the camera angles or the plot, we just assumed each time the idea would come to us, along the process i have realised how important planning is and how much your plans and intentions can change. In our first preliminary task we used muffled sound effects and music, this was my first approach to using a different part of imovie rather than just trimming and cutting scenes, it was useful to see how all the different tools work and gave us ideas for what other effects we could possibly use. Whilst editing clips on the macs i feel i have definitely progressed in using imovie, as it is a very complex programme there are still areas on it that i haven't used but i think we have used it wisely and used the correct areas for making our final product as good as it possibly can be. I have learnt through using imovie that you can never film too much and it is always better to film  more than you think you need, this is because you can cut parts that you don't like and add something else that you filmed. When filming our preliminary tasks this is another mistake we made we didn't always have enough to work with eg- if their was bad continuity between two clips and we hadn't filmed enough to use a different clip we would have to film the whole scene from the start. When filming our final piece we filmed lots of the same thing and different clips of the blood in the bath, this made it easier for us as if we spotted an error after putting it together on imovie we could easily replace the clip with one similar.

Due to the research at the start of the course on camera movements and camera angles we were able to use them confidently in our preliminary tasks, looking back at the premlims the techniques we used look very basic and a little unnatural especially when using shot reverse shot as the conversation is a bit hesitant. In one of the prelim tasks we had to film again as we made a major error in being very close to breaking the 180 degree rule, this made it really confusing for our audience and looked really unprofessional, this is something i feel confident in using when filming now without having to think about whether or not I'm breaking it as it comes across naturally. At the start i didn't like to film without using a tripod i think we all felt nervous about the accuracy of the clip without using it, however, gaining more experience with the camera and filming i understand that it isn't essential to use and a clip can come out just as good without it, we didn't use a tripod when filming our final piece, i think i have grown in confidence when being in charge of filming or coming up with ideas that we could use in a shot. We looked at typical conventions for thrillers so we could add them into our own: close up shots, isolated location?, dark colours and suspense music. One mistake we made when filming is that we didn't film during the day when a lot of light when shining through, we were scared this would ruin the effect completely as we planned on it being at night, however, we used our editing skills on the tools that imovie provides us, to edit the colour on all the clips to a greyish blueish colour, i am really happy with the way it came out as the colour change is really effective and gives the impression we filmed at night. This also relates to my understanding of the genre 'thriller', i researched the typical conventions that are used in thriller films and wanted to apply as many of them as possible to our film, we used dark colours, close up shots, smears of blood, music and we used a piece of plastic which gave a blury effect (this definitely helps build up a character and relates to the film title)  which all make it obvious to the audience what type of film 'delusion' is.

We are still not 100% sure we have finished our final product as we are debating whether or not to add a narrative 'voiceover', this is something i haven't used on macs but will be interesting to find out how it works. Looking back at our preliminary tasks and how simple and quick it was to film them and making obvious and careless errors, to looking at the techniques and time spent on planning our final piece i think i have progressed greatly in my understanding and use of the camera, camera equipment and using imovie.  

Film day

8th February2012:
Today we went to the location in which we filmed our main task- bathroom in a house
We had planned a lot before today ( see post below) which enabled us to be able to film all in one day making it easier for continuity reasons when editing the piece. We filmed scenes more than once in order to be able to use different pieces if something doesn't fit well when we are editing it.
Overall, the day was a success every member of the group was involved and we come up with new ideas whilst filming and. I hope this shows in our final piece.

Final plans for Main Task

We have finally come to the decision of using the murder in the bath idea, however watching the previous video i posted it still doesn't seem like an opening to a film as too much is happening. Eg- the knocking on the door this happens to sudden and i don't think this much action would usually happen in the opening credits.

Looking at the 'Se7en' opening it gave me inspiration and ideas on how we can change ours to look more professional. In the 'Se7en' opening credits nothing really happens, it is very straight forward and there are only tiny clues of the film could be about, none significant happens as there is no action and kept very simple. I really like the idea of having a girl cleaning a bath full of blood however i think we should take the knocking on the door scene out and just stick to one location- the bathroom. Like the Se7en opening i think it would be effective if we don't show the girls face and this will also add suspense. We plan on filming at night so the lighting wont be bright when filming which will help show what type of genre we have decided to use. Another reason i dislike the previous video i posted was because of the dialogue, they often don't have dialogue in an opening unless its a 'cold opening', this is due to the fact it would be giving too much of the story away in such a short space of time. I like the idea of using backing music throughout, this gives us an excuse not to use dialogue and i believe if we find something well suited to our piece it could make it look better than using dialogue anyway. However, we still want to use a typical convention of thriller, we have decided to film a  two shot mirror scene where the girl looks in the mirror and sees a figure of some sort ( the person she killed) Tayler will play this role, i think it will be appropriate to do this as the rest of the film is going to be simple and focused on the amount of blood in the bath.

Final plan:
Actresses - Shaiane Gallardo (me) & Tayler Osborne
Director- Kona Rogers
Camera Operative- Kate Morris-Millar
Editor- Tayler Osborne

Costume
I'm going to be wearing jeans and a dark coloured t-shirt, we want it to look natural as if I've killed someone in my everyday clothing.
We will add blood stains to my t-shirt and jeans
Mascara smudged round my eyes as if I've been crying
Hair tied in a loose bun
Tayler is going to wear a baggy white t-shirt that has been soaked in water (murdered in the bath)
Hair down dripping in water
White makeup to make her look really pale

Equipment
Camera
Plastic Screen

Props
Fake blood
Vodka bottle
Cigarette
Incentse (to create smoke around the camera)
Cloths

Location 
Bathroom in a house

New idea- rough video of 'bath'

After planning more of the storyboard we have realised that this wouldn't be a very realistic opening as there are two many events taking place. After watching a few openings of films such as 'juno' and 'se7en', I've noticed that an opening is mostly titles and gives none of the story away. If we did it completely like a real film i don't think this would give us a chance to show off many techniques, so we are going to keep it as basic as we can with maybe having just one typical thriller convention.

We filmed a rough draft of our new idea. We didn't use any props or costumes and we also didn't film when it was dark, but we will definitely film at night for the final piece. We plan on doing a  full rehearsal which we will post. We didn't use the previous idea at all, we started over and came up with a new storyboard. Our idea is that we have a girl who is cleaning a bath which is covered in blood, she also has some splatters of blood on her clothing, this will cause suspense, who's blood is it ? is she a murderer? We want to use lots of different angles whilst she is doing this, and hope the blood mixed with the water will give a nice effect. There is then a knock at the door and the girl panics, we use a point of view shot which personally I'm not too keen on, as i don't think it flows very well. The shot of my hands on the sink we think will be really good when we use the fake blood as it will be much more dramatic and have more of a purpose, this is followed by the point of view shot which will build character as you can see the fear on the characters face. I like the shot of the girl walking to the stairs when she is filmed through a half open door, this gives the impression that she is being watched which will add more suspense. When the girl is walking down the stairs we decided to film just the girls feet as it makes it suspicious the same reason goes for why he filmed from behind when she opens the door. We edited the woman's voice to make it seem as if the girl is in a daze and isn't paying any attention to what she is saying, i think this works really well. To end it we plan on the woman noticing that the girl has some blood on her hand and asks her if shes ok, the girl then tries to cover it up and just shuts the door. I think this idea will be more successful than our previous idea as we aren't giving too much of the story away. 

Below are some pictures of our new location, as you can see the bathroom is very small which i think will be convient to our storyline as the character will feel as if she is almost trapped and cant escape what she has done. The walls are very plain and with the wooden fall it has potential to show a cold feeling about it, which will really set the setting for our gene. We will clear the bathroom so it is empty. The white walls will have great contrast with the blood that we intend on spreading everywhere.