Classroom Feedback

Now that we have completely finished our opening sequence we spent a lesson watching every ones productions and evaluating them as a class. This gave us an idea of how well we had done and if our intentions came across. Overall the feedback was very positive and we we're please with what we received. Here is a general overview of the answers given to each of the questions, in which the class had to answer about our opening sequence: 


In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Identify films that you think are similar to this opening sequence. 
The most popular film the viewers thought it reminded them of was Taken staring Liam Neeson, this is because of the girl being taken in the car. This was surprising to us as it wasn't originally one of our influences but now that the it has been mentioned we can see why people would think that. Other films were Adulthood and Kidulthood, and this was because of the the soundtrack we had chosen to run throughout the opening sequence. 


How does your media product represent particular social groups? Identify social groups identified and whether you think their representation is positive/negative; stereo type/alternative. 
Here we got the feedback we were looking for as they said that it stereotyped the male cab driver and the venerable young girl. They also said it gave a negative representation towards teenage girls as she was acting drunk and getting into a strangers car. Nothing new was brought to our attention here and we had spoken about all of these representations as a group before the class had seen it. 


What kind of media institution might describe your media product and why? Big studio or independent production? 
Here the feedback varied as some said a Big studio because of the professional look it had where as other people said independent production as it may only appeal to a certain type of audience. Here we agree with both, however sway towards the independent production as like the feedback said not everyone enjoys horror films and could be quite disturbed by our film, and it is obvious that someone who loves romantic, comedy's and chick flicks, may not be interested as it contains none of these elements. 


Who would be the audience for your media product? Target audience - approximate age group and possible preferred gender. 
Again we received different feedback, some groups recommended 18+, where as others said 15+ late teenagers. Another group however said 18-30 and we think this is because of the horror genre and storyline, as well as some of the scenes that a young audience would not be able to view. Regarding gender, the majority of the feedback said it swayed towards females due to the main character however both would enjoy. 


How did you attract/address your audience? 
"tense and dark, suspense music" "mystery makes audience want to see more and find our what happens to Katie and the male driving the car" "Interesting, keeps the audience thinking" "tense horror soundtrack" 


Provide any other comments about the production-any particular shot or moment you thought was good? 
With this question we received feedback that the story line was interesting and the opening sequence was well constructed and thought about. Another group mentioned that the actors were very good, the violence was realistic, it was very interesting and made you want carry on watching, and that it included a variety of shots. In addition to this we had another comment about our use and good range of camera shots, as well as the camera movements relating to the story of the character, such as the car scene where we use a hand held camera effect to show that Katie is drunk and disorientated.

Film Credits

Now that we have decided our overall filming and editing is finished, the group and I thought it would be a good idea to get the film credits done also. Instead of fitting all of our seperate names to gain credit for every minor detail we instead just one name per role g.g Directed by Florence Dodd. We felt that this looked more professional that trying to fit all of our names under each role as an attempt to show that we have all put in the same effort as we know we have been doing so anyway. The titles are the same font as the main bold font at the very end as we wanted the film throughout to look simple and pleasing to the eye rather than having too much going on as this may draw attention away from the content of the filming.

In addition to this the music in which we chose fits perfectly with the filiming we produced. So much so that we hardly had to make any changes only here and there in order to perfect the timing of beats and so on. Seeing as the deadline is drawing ahead I feel that so far we are well on our way to producing a well thought out piece. Only minor tweaks here and there are left to look at and once done so I'm sure that the finished outcome will be a pleasure to watch.

Warner Sisters.

As over the weekend we were unable to film the extra shots of the party scenes at the very start of the opening we felt that we had enough filming which was good enough without the extra scenes. Therefore the group and I thought it best to start making our production company icon. Myself and the others all came up with seperate ideas of how the title "Warner Sisters" could look. After looking at eachothers creations we all agreed that Steph's was the most imaginative and professional looking. I then drew the final outcome of the icon and we scanned this drawing into the computer. Once uploaded we started to use photohop in order to bolden the letters in an attempt to make the icon look more professional. However we didn't have enough time in the lesson to carry on so within the next lesson we know what we have to do in order to make sure that the overall piece is ready by Friday's deadline.

Filming Process

During this lesson we asked our teacher how we were to go about filming a fast paced section of the nightlife in a car and have texts passing through it with the name of the company and so on. However, our teacher gave us advice that this may be a waste of time as the it will be an hours worth of filming in order to film one specific area for a long period of time. Therefore, as this aspect of the sequence isn't necessary we thought it best to leave this idea and focus on more important sections such as the main title.

Our ongoing idea for the title was t have the word "Twisted" to literally twist in a spiral as an influence by Saul Bass which will engage the viewer and refer to the entire film as a whole. However, our computers which we use are not well equipped with programs that can do such therefore we have instead made a steady impact of the Title appearing in bold slowly from a fade. The white text on a black background is also menacing as it in a way signifies the innocence within the exterior of a darkened person; Katie.

FIlming Session

After watching through all of the footage we have already made we realised that adding an extra scene of "Katie's" gradual process of drinking was unnecessary. This was due to the fact that her good acting skills made it obvious to the viewers of her being under substance and adding extra filming of her at the house party before hand would have been extra time added which we were already quite close to the limit. Therefore we made sure to focus all of our energy into making the shots we had to the best of their ability by starting to look at how we can apply shot transitions from location to location.

Final filming schedule

A filming schedule has already been posted onto my blog, however this was only a draft as some vital parts were missing. Here is our final filming schedule completely filled out which was given to each member working on our project and came into great use when filming, helping us to remember what to bring, where to go and what times to be there.

Editing of Film

Editing:
After a very succesful filming day on the 25th February we came into the classroom positive that we had some really good footage to work with. Just to be safe we filmed a lot more than we needed to, which was extremely helpful when deciding which shots looked best and worked well together. An hour later we had cut our filming down to four minutes that included the best angles, shots, and camera movement filmed that session. However we were worried as the maximum length of filming for our opening sequence is two minutes, 30 seconds, we had double that and still had more filming to do! Therfore the next lesson we carried on cutting down our filming and we managed to make it two minutes long. Although this was still too long, we came to the conclusion as a group that we would again cut down. however once we had filmed our last scene and could put it all together to decide what works best.