Classification of our film

For our film, we would give it a classification of 12A. This is because our film will overall, have a very dark tone throughout, such as that in the film Persepolis which is also a 12A. Also there is mild violence in our film.

1.In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e. of film openings)

We used the shot of a candle as the first shot of our opening, because it gives the feeling that something magical is going to happen and draws the audience in. Also the candle right at the beginning helps to set the mood for the rest of the film.

The title of our film opening comes in quite early, so that it doesn't make our opening like a trailer. We made our main title a lot bigger than our other titles, and also we changed the main title colour to yellow, because this is a bright colour and it also symbalises the colour of fire.

The setting of our film opening is set in a small woods, because this is the typical place people would expect to find magical creatures, such as fairies.

We had our main character (Alison Murphy) dress up in a hippie style dress, to make her seem like she has an interest in fairies and magical creatures.

We set the main title in the middle of the screen, to make it stand out, whereas with the other titles we had them set in the corners of the screen. We used the style of font 'Inked God', because it looks magical.

We used quite a few different shots, such as long shots, close-ups and medium shots for our camerawork.

The opening suggests that the genre is going to be supernatural, because the setting is dark and the flickering candle at the beginning gives the feeling something magical is going to happen.

We used quite a few special effects in our opening, when we put the fairies in. My partner used the programme Auto-desk Maya, to make the fairies, which we then green screened onto our footage in Final Cut. Editing the fairies onto the footage was very time consuming, because we had to move each individual fairy using keyframe motion.

Our main character is introduced near the beginning, walking into the forest. When we did the shooting of our main character walking down the pathway, it was dark, so you can't see her face. The main title comes up before we see her face aswell. We first see her face when she comes into contact with the fairies.

2.How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The similarities between our character and the character from the film 'Pan's Labyrinth' are that they are both wearing similar outfits, such as dresses. Also both characters are interested in magical creatures.

The differences between the two characters are that they are both from different time periods. Our main character is from now, whereas the character from 'Pan's Labyrinth' is from the war period.

3.What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Below is our director's style commentary

4.Who would be the audience for your media product?

Target Audience for Our Movie

How old are they?
Teen- 17 years old

What gender are they?
Female

What are they called?
Kelly

How do they dress?
Hippie skirts and tops.

Where do they live?
In a quiet village, but near to a town with a cinema and plenty of shops.

What do they spend their money on?
Clothes, films, books..

Where do they watch films?
In the local cinema e.g The Arts Picture house. And DVD's

What kind of music do they like?
Classical music, alternative music

Do they buy music?
Yes

What do they do in their leisure time?
Write poetry, listen to music and watch films

How much TV do they watch?
They rarely ever watch TV, because they prefer films.

What is their favourite film?
Pan's Labyrinth

Do they play video games?
Very rarely

5.How did you attract/address your audience?

6.What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Above is a screen grab of an annotated picture of all the technical equipment we used for our film opening.

We used several different computer programmes and internet sites to help with our opening sequence.

Below are some screen grabs of the different programmes/sites we used.

Youtube

Vimeo

Photoshop

Blogger

Final Cut Express

Flickr

Garageband

7.Looking back at your preliminary task (the continuity editing task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

Above are three screen grabs. Two are close-ups from our opening sequence and one is also a close-up, which is from our continuity task.



Above are two split screens. One is from our opening sequence, where the character walks down the pathway. The second one is from our continuity task that we did a while ago. Both of these split screens use the same match on action shot.

Final editing of our opening

Above is a print screen of our editing.

This is a screen grab of our editing of our fairies onto the glow poi.

Opening Evening Ident

In groups, we had to make an ident for Creative and Media, for Opening Evening. I worked with Charna, Ali and Alex on the ident. We used lego, and the programme iStopMotion to do our ident. I also made the soundtrack for our ident.

Creative risks whilst doing the opening sequence project

We had to use fire on our opening sequence, such as the bonfire and the fire juggling, and using the fire as a fairy.

The risks were that we could have set fire to things and burnt ourselves. But we didn't have any problems with these risks.

Another risk we encountered, was when we had to do the filming in the dark. We didn't think this would work very well, but the darkness meant the fire stood out better, and we originally wanted it to be set at night anyway. We also had the help of Kirk, who was there with us when we filmed the bonfire scenes. This was good as he has already had lots of experience with the cameras.

Screengrabs from our editing

Above are some screengrabs from our opening sequence. We have superimposed some fairies onto the flames, which Charna made on the programme Autodesk Maya.

Below are the two videos that Charna put onto Vimeo. We used both of the videos in Final Cut.

Fireball faery from Charna Hume on Vimeo.

White faery from Charna Hume on Vimeo.