The final piece of A Soul's Redemption

Question 7- Looking back at your preliminary task,what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the main task ?

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

Premier pro was used a lot throughout our thriller. I felt that we were able to use various
different programmes e.g. Premier pro and Movie maker which we used in order to create the trailer
made our thriller successful. I feel that our ability to adapt our skills to different programmes
quickly enabled us to work to the deadline and also create a successful thriller film with a keen knowledge
on the different effects certain lighting creates and different set effects premier pro provides us.

We watched a Tutorial on YouTube on how to add the devil eyes effect
using Adobe After Effects. Due to lack of practice and the fact this was
at an advanced level made it difficult to create this meaning we used premiere pro in order
to aim to portray the devil.

We also used the go pro camera which also wasn't to hard to use. Although
it did create this great point of view shot, the quality wasn't the best and so made the clip very blurry. However, we did
speed the clip up to show time passing which may have disturbed the camera quality.

Question 4 and 5

Q4 5 from 10lowean

Question 3- What kind of media institutions might distribte your media product and why?

Question 2- How does your media product represent particualr social groups

 Hey guys so this is my question 2 for my evaluation. Enjoy :)

Part 2- Question 1

 

 

 

Part 2- Question one

 

 

Part 1 Question 1- In what ways does your media product use,devleop or challenge forms of conventions of real media products

                                                          Part 1-question 1         

My group's opening to a thriller; A Soul’s Redemption challenges your typical thriller expectations. A thriller usually consists of a battle between the protagonist character and the antagonist, when there is a disruption in the equilibrium, the aim of the protagonist is to restore justice while the antagonist seeks to destroy it. Even though our thriller does keep the typical ideology of a thriller film, both our protagonist (the one who’s there to save the day) and the antagonist (the one who wants to destroy) are both Bertie. The antagonist is the devil in which possessed Bertie and the protagonist being Bertie trying to fight the demon. You would typically expect there to be two characters one who you love and want to save the day, and a bad character, the one who you want to disappear. We aimed to make Bertie seem both a loving, innocent boy and both this demon taking out his anger on the world for the death of his family. Throughout our opening we aimed to sustain conventions of a thriller by using low key lighting, quick cuts and changes in the angle of shots. We used these conventions throughout to give our thriller a more adrenalin rush feel to it. The use of the low key lighting was easy to create as we filmed our thriller in January making the weather seem gloomy anyway. We felt by using these conventions such as quick cuts and different angles/shots would keep the audience well gripped onto our film and give the impression of this constant jumping.

The use of this ‘big eye’ effect aims to show the clear divide between the protagonist and antagonist. We wanted to show this in order to show that Bertie was clearly not himself; the use of the big eyes represents the devil that has possessed Bertie.

We used Cabin in the woods as a inspiration for our opening to a thriller film. We felt Cabin in the woods had a similar target audience to us and like the title ‘Cabin in the woods’ its filmed in a wood, which is a similar location to us. I feel that even though I did previous research on Cabin in the woods, it didn't influence our final piece as much as I wanted it too. It still incorporated the jumpy element and a dark feel to it but wasn't as similar as I previously anticipated.

Establishing shot for A Soul's Redemption

Establishing shot for Cabin in the Woods

Within the opening sequence of Cabin in the Woods an establishing shot is used to confirm the setting. Similarly in our opening we used an establishing shot in order to show the audience where the film will be set. However, within Cabin in the Woods the director used a high wide angle showing in the horizon it is still a forest emphasising the effect on how big the forest is, whereas in our opening we used a point of view shot in order to give the audience the effect that they were stood there looking at the forest.

 

Bloopers

I decided to make a bloopers video including clips that may not have gone to plan but I felt keeping them and making a bloopers video gave you more of an insight of the 'behind the camera' process that took place

Film contributor release forms

 

 

 

Trailer for A Soul's Redemption

Trailer for A Soul's Redemption from Elsie Williamson on Vimeo.


Elsie decided to make a trailer for our thriller film using Windows Movie Maker. I think the use of making a trailer would draw attention and advertise our film and promote it to other companies also  using a trailer to advertise our film enables us to use social media e.g. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in order to promote our film. These clips are our 'extra' clips which  Elsie filmed with just her and Bertie, which we decided not to use within the film as we had similar clips which we thought looked more effective.
When Elsie showed us the trailer, we all decided to cut our names out and just have the main actor's name on show as bigger film trailers tend to only advertise the main actors within the film.
This is the background music Elsie used: https://soundcloud.com/unseenmusic/dramatic-epic-piano-orchestral and the beginning violin sound clip which is overlaid over the Logo is a original piece made by Bertie (the main actor and Elsie's brother).

All shots put together

We've finally finished all our filming so Elsie thought of putting together the shots we filmed, just to give us an idea of how it'll all looked when finished and edited. Elsie used Windows movie maker to create this, whereas in our final piece we will use Premiere Pro in order to add all soundtracks and produce our final film opening. Hope you enjoy this so far, just remember this isn't our finished piece, that will later be revealed...

hey everyone, so when we did a bit of filming on Friday, we decided instead of having the title on the trees having it appear on screen before the thriller film starts to draw attention to the title more, however we're still keeping the idea of having character names and people who were involved in the production appear on the tree's, leaves and other woodland objects.
So today I created this title on serif draw plus photo shop, the same programme I used to create the logo's, I used the shapes tool and also 'Broadway' font which I thought when put together, looked effective. I also liked how all the words interlinked making it look more of a full image rather than just a title.

Bertie's Character profile

                      I found a good video on YouTube of the narrative codes which I thought was a useful clip to watch :)

Storyboard

We finally finished our story board for 'A Souls Redemption'... Enjoy our illustrations:-) 

Final Logo

My group and I decided this was the best logo for us, However we decided to add our production name at the bottom in order to give a clear indication as to who we are.

Narrative Codes and Binary Oppositions

Narrative codes and Binary Oppositions


        ^.... you know what to do *click*

Locations

Movie Maker: Location for thriller opening 


In my logo ideas blog, I said I would post a blog on the different locations within widderson spring woods we experimented with. I used one of these backgrounds for the bitmaps for the logos.

Our screen play

Screenplay for A Soul's Redemption from Elsiew

Cabin in the woods research

So our film uses Cabin in the woods as an inspiration for the type of atmosphere we want to create for our audience. Even though Cabin in the woods is a horror film, it still uses key conventions such as dark lighting, quick shots and the different angles and shots which we aim to use during our film in order to give it more of a scary and thrilling atmosphere.
Cabin in the woods is about Five friends who go for a break at a remote cabin in the woods, where they get more than they bargained for. Together, they must discover the truth behind the cabin in the woods. I feel even though this film is a horror, in some aspects the lighting is more softer and gives a brighter feel to it contrasting with the scary elements to the film, making them even scarier as the audience is aware that its not the norm.
Similarly to the Cabin in the woods, we have a similar target audience. I found research that suggested that 65% of the audience for Cabin in the woods were from teens to young adults making this the most significant as the next highest was 25-35 which was only 26%. This clearly shows that younger people from teens to young adults will most stereotypically be attracted to this genre of the film.
A Souls redemption uses similar themes as Cabin in the woods. Themes related around the devil and sin can often be attractive to young audiences as they contain many real life enigmas which enhance entertainment for certain people. I think taking this into account it will help us to produce our film. However, we also have to take into account that Cabin in the woods is a thriller and even though we have similar ambitions to create something similar to Cabin in the woods, our task is to create a thriller so we need to make sure that we don't make it as scary and gory.

Logo Ideas

 Today I decided to make two logos for our production. I liked this title as it incorporated all our names and I used a different font for each letter to represent our initials. I used a bitmap of one of our shots used when we went into the woods which I will post as a blog soon, to colour in all our logo which gave it more of a theme and related to our thriller film.

However, I think this logo is my favourite out of the two as all our initials interlink and you can see more of the background to the wood, making it more obvious of our actual theme we're going for, I really liked the use of the different font and how it all fits together into one image, but all our fonts are different to show our individual differences.

For both of these images I used serif draw plus which  allowed me to crop, Photoshop and cut anything I needed too.

Our practice piece

One of our group members decided to go to Widderson spring woods in which we hope to film our final thriller film in, and did a practice piece with our main actor Bertie. This was to give us a initial idea of the potential shots we could use and help us to decide an appropriate time of day as we're using natural light for our film but as it becomes darker earlier this time of year, we have to test when a good time to film would be. Here they used Windows movie maker to edit all the clips together, which isn't the same programme we will be using in our final thriller, but for this practice piece I think it is helpful just to use in order to visualise and give us a hint of how it may look. I think higher quality of equipment will help us to achieve a more realistic opening and make it seem more professional, here, only an IPhone was used to shoot this and so won't be as high quality as a DSLR.

This was filmed at around 4:30-5:00pm which I think is too late to film as we're lacking natural light, we aim to try avoid the use of artificial lighting and so I think if we film around 2-3 pm it still is getting darker, but not too dark to the point where we struggle to see and have to use aftereffects to brighten up the film.

This is our one page pitch, one of our group member's wasn't here for the filming (Connor), and so we had to do it without him. Enjoy :)

IMDb A Soul's Redemption

IMBD Page for a Soul's Redemption

Audiences

Risk assessment

excuse my handwriting, but we finally completed the risk assessment, from what we've thought of from the environment we're filming in, there are not many risks, however, we also thought of the equipment which we didn't mention in the risk assessment, but due to the slippery surface on the ground, we may have to be careful where we place the tripods to reduce the chances of any camera equipment being broken.

uses and gratification

According to Bulmer who was writing about media in 1950 5 years after the second world war, During which he concluded that most propaganda protests where through media such a newspapers, poster art, radio and films, which attempted to persuade mass audiences to follow their polices, Bulmer concluded that media must have seemed like a dangerous weapon in the wrong hands as it was capable of persuading millions to follow evil men, showing how powerful media can actually be to an audience.

The uses and gratification theory is a popular approach to understanding mass communication. The theory places more focus on the consumer, or audience, instead of the actual message itself by asking ‘what people do with media’ rather than ‘what media does to people’ (Katz, 1959). It assumes that members of the audience are not passive but take an active role in interpreting and integrating media into their own lives. The theory also holds that audience are responsible for choosing media to meet their needs.

It is suggested that the uses and gratifications theory has to fulfil one of the following when we choose a form of media:

• Identify- being able to recognise the product of a person in front of you, role models that reflect similar values to yours, aspiration to be someone else.
• Educate- being able to acquire information, knowledge and understanding.
• Entertain- what you are consuming should give you enjoyment and also some form of ‘escapism’ enabling us to forget our worries temporarily
• Social interaction- the ability for media products to produce a topic of conversation between other people, spark debates.

 

This could relate to our thriller due to the fact people use thrillers and horrors to put others in that position and make them think it is them in that situation, I think this is a good use due to the fact that we aim to make the audience feel involved and part of the thriller rather than them just watching it and not identifying with it, we aim for the audience to be entertained, be educated and identify with our thriller.