Audience Feedback

We had a very good response to our video from the audience. We had really posotive feedback.

We recieved comments such as:
-"great :)"
-"Great video, love the tracking shots, it works really well and the music incorporates really well into the video"
-"Good job guys, love it!"
-"Awesome shots, love the fades into the other shot great stuff and the tracking shots are really creative too!"

This shows that it appeal to our target audience.

Task 7

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

I think that I have learnt a great deal in the progression from our preliminary task to our Thrillers. I think my technical skills and creative skills have both greatly improved.

Planning
When we did our preliminary task, we got given a script, told which angels to shoot and then got aloud out to shoot it in the space of one period. On the day our group grabbed two people that were not doing anything and got them to be our actors. Once in the room we shot from a few different angles and then finished up. There was not a great deal of preparation or organisation.
With our Thrillers we had much more time to plan and organise. We had to look far greater into the detail of our video, the mise en scene, the set and the actors. Everything needed to be planned and had to be organised in time for the day of shoot. Luckily we had much more time for preparation and for the shoot, we had a whole day to shoot which gave us enough time to get all the different sets and shots we needed.

Development
With our prelims our dialogue did the story telling for us and also we only had basic shots of wide, medium and close. This meant that there was not a great deal of things to worry about or think about. However when it came to our thriller we had to figure out how to convey what our movie was about within the space of about two minutes. It took a lot of planning, we had to make many different storyboards to best figure out how to tell the story and figure out the best angles to shoot from. The whole process is far more complicated as you have to plan out a sophisticated sequence with a visual narrative. I found that trying to tell a story visually as apposed to with dialogue is harder but I felt that it was a lot more fun. I personally felt it gave us a chance to creatively work on an interesting way to portray a story in the best visual way.

Camera Work
I think that work produced in the thriller has greatly developed from when we did our preliminary tasks; I think the camera work is more sophisticated and our way of thinking in terms of angles and framing has improved greatly. Our group used tracking shots that we didn’t even look at in the prelim task. I think that this made our shots look far smoother and more professional, as a group I think it gave us the opportunity to explore a greater range of camera skills and how shots work. In terms of our thriller I think the use of the tracking shots made the whole sequence work better and allowed to piece it together a lot easier in the editing process.

Sound
In the prelim task our sound was simply what was recorded through the boom mic on the day. Our thriller however used many different sound clips laid over the top so that it would sound better but also to portray the story of our movie more interestingly. If we recorded the ambient sound off the television in the studio then it would not have sounded good when it came to editing. So it was better for us to find the track and lay it over the video. This meant lip-syncing it up with the video shown on the screen, once again this is far more sophisticated than the preliminary task. Also by laying tracks over the top of the video it gave us the chance to put in other tracks and sounds such as a radio report of Marilyn’s death.

Technology
The use of technology in our thriller was far different to the prelim task as we used ‘Final Cut Pro’ far better than we had before, this is because we explored the programme a lot more and experimented. This meant we got the chance to add titles to our thrillers that we didn’t use in our prelims. We never got to explore this before so it was very interesting to figure out how to best put in the titles. This was a big step up from our prelims, as we didn’t need to think about where to place names. The whole development from the prelim task to the thriller was really big in terms of editing as for the prelim all we had to do was concentrate on matching up the different shots and make sure the dialogue sounded fine. For the thriller we needed to match up the shots, add sound and check it sounded appropriate for the video, add titles in the correct places, change the sound to make it sound like it was coming from a television and edit the colour to make it appear as if it was a fifties video. The whole process was a lot more complex but looking back on it I am glad it was more complex as it made it challenging and from that I learnt so much about the editing process and technology involved.

Task 6

Task 5

How did you attract/address your audience?

Task 5

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Task 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

With making a film about Marilyn Monroe we would already have a basic audience of fans who would come to see the film. However our target audience would be aged between 18-35. They would be reasonably educated, as the movie is very thought provoking and involves a bit of concentration. They will most likely have a decent job. I think both genders are included in our target audience; this is because there is something for both in the movie. There are good looking actors for both genders to enjoy but also there is romance for the woman and action sequences for the men.

This is perhaps a typical viewer of our film.

Task 3

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

We as a group chose ‘Fox Searchlight Pictures’ as our distributor as they do international pictures. They pick up film from the UK, Europe, America and distribute them internationally. This would be great as our film could become international and therefore be very successful. Our film would obviously be to small for the ‘20th Century Fox’ but a company such as ‘Fox Searchlight Pictures’ usually take risks on small medium films such as our one. It has picked up films such as ‘(500) Day of Summer’ and made them very successful and hopefully they would do the same for our film.

Task 2

How does your product represent particular social groups?

Our product doesn’t really represent a specific social group, however it does challenge the viewer’s perception of political figures and figures in authority in the 1950s. Also as you can see from our opening sequence there are no black people, this is because in the fifties the film industry was very closed shop and no black people where aloud. This is because it was still the time when black people where not treated as equals to the white people. We where considering getting a black person to come across the set at the end of the fifties scene, we were going to have him sweeping the floor at the end. This will have shown the viewers that black people still had no power at this time.

Also as you can see in the opening sequence we cover another fifties issue this being that most people on film sets at this time where men, this is because stereotypically in the fifties woman did not have powerful jobs. All the significant jobs as you can see were given to men for example the director, the producer and the main film crew where all male. The only jobs given to women were the ones who stared in the movies and also assistant, jobs that didn’t have much power. This is why in our opening sequence there are only two females; one playing the character of Marilyn Monroe and the other is an assistant. Throughout the movie the viewer would have seen that the issue of men being more powerful than woman is dealt with hugely as the movie focuses on Marilyn who spent most of her time in a man filled world for example in the film industry and in her political involvements with the Kennedy brothers.


Many other films deals with the issue of men being more powerful than woman, even in modern day films the issue is still addressed, this is because it is a common issue and still to this day you could argue that woman are still not fully equal to men.

Task 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our titles do not challenge forms and conventions of real media. However we as a group put a great deal of thought into how to portray our titles. We decided that because our video includes a lot of mise en scene our titles shouldn’t be to flashy in case they draw the focus away from the mise en scene in the video. So we tried to incorporate our titles into our sequence in a interesting way.

For example in this frame here in front of the iconic picture of Marilyn Monroe and the famous wig of her hair we put the name of our actress playing Marilyn Monroe. This lets the viewer connect the actress to the character she is playing.

As you can see in this frame the titles shows the name of the ‘Production Designer’. We put this here as at this specific point in the video you can see quite a lot of mise en scene. For example the laptop, pens, books, paper, camera and a board full of writing. This is a good way to incorporate this specific title as the production designer takes care of set design and mise en scene. Also in this shot as there is a laptop it is a good way to show that it is modern time.

This frame shows the title of the director of the film. We thought that this would be an interesting place to put this title as movies end up on a screen of some sort and by putting the director’s name in front of the television screen it helps the viewer connect the director to their visual job in reality.

We were going to put the title of the film ‘Monroe’ in the sixties camera as we thought it would be a nice transition from the modern day to the sixties. However it did not work well with the style of our video and disrupted the flow of the video.


This frame here shows the title of ‘Director of Photography’ we did this because at this part of the video there is an interesting track up the suspects board and therefore we thought it was appropriate to put this title in at this point.

This frame here shows that our film has a distribution company and as you can see in the title it is 'Fox Searchlight Pictures'.

This frame above shows that we have now moved into the 50's film set of the you can see this as Marilyn Monroe is wearing here dress from 'Diamonds Are a Girls Best Friend' and she has the dancers round her. This portray to the audience that they are now in the 50's.

Editing

Every Monday and Friday our class gets to go to the editing suit to edit our thrillers. This means that we get access to Final Cut Pro which is what we used to edit our preliminary tasks. The program allows us to piece our shots together smoothly, add sound and put credits in.

When we first started the editing process we logged all our shots. Because we only had three different set ups we managed to put the clips together quite smoothly as it only involved piecing them together correctly, this took us quite a few lessons because we had to get to grips with the program.

After we finished putting the shots together we started adding sound. We chose to lay over a couple of Marilyn Monroe’s actual songs to keep it all in the theme of Marilyn. We also found the sound byte of her singing happy birthday to the president and put that over the shot of her singing on the monitor. Also we managed to get hold of an actual radio clip of a presenter reporting her death and we put that sound over the shot of the suspect board. This works well as when the reporter breaks the news of Monroe’s death the shot slowly tracks over the suspect board implying to the audience somebody is investigating her death. Then when the track moves onto the monitor of her in ‘Diamonds are a Girls best friend’ that tune starts playing and the shot transitions into the fifties film set. So we changed the sound in this part the tune sounded like it was on a television and then transitioned into sounding like it was in a big room.

Then once the sound and visual parts were done we started to add in the credits. Because none of us had never done this before it took us quite a while to get the hang of it. When we put in our credits we decided that they shouldn’t be to flashy, this is because our thriller contains a lot of mise en scene so it was not necessary to use flashy titles.

Pictures From Set

These are just a few pictures that I took on the day of our shoot.


This picture above is the guy we got to act as the fifties film producer we even managed to get a really old camera to make him look authentic. Also you can see he is sitting on the deck chairs that look like a producer and directors chairs.

The picture above is from the fifties film set you can see in the middle of the picture our home made camera is on a tripod and just to the left is the real camera ready for the shot. Also as you can vaguely see the set has people dressed in fifties clothing like the guy on the right with the bowler hat.

The above picture is of our office set as you can see it is filled with pictures and documents. This took us a long time to set up.

Shoot Day

On the day of our shoot I turned up to school rather optimistic with the preparation and organisation of our group. I thought that hopefully everything would run smoothly. Unfortunately I was wrong. After all meeting in the editing suit we found out that our actor due to play Marilyn Monroe was unable to do the shoot which was quite a setback. So our group straight away got onto finding a new Marilyn unfortunately everybody was busy and wasn’t aloud out of class. So we thought we would maybe but Gabby in the Monroe outfit as we didn’t have many other options. Unfortunately by this time Luke one of our media teachers had still not arrived at school, so we took all the male actors down to the top canteen near the studio to get them into costume so that when Luke arrived we could get shooting straight away. But just as we got all the guys into costume Luke arrived and said we were doing the office scene first. This was another setback as we were all prepared for the 50s film set scene. So we had to send all the actors away and set up for the office set. Luckily all the actors were able to return later in the day to shoot and also our Marilyn Monroe actress was able to come in the afternoon, so even though it was a big set back having to prepare a different set at least this meant we could finally have our Marilyn.

We all started preparing for the office scene. This involved sticking up lots of posters and
documents on the wall, because it was quite a big wall it took up quite a while to fill it with pictures. We got the monitors in and placed them around the room, we then also got in a white board and made it into a 'suspect board' so we filled it with pictures of suspects and writing about them. We had to set up the monitors so they would play the DVDs we had brought in, then we had to scatter documents everywhere to make it really look like somebody was investigating her life. After setting up the set we lay down the tracks for the losmandy spider dolly to go across the tracks on. This allowed us to get a smooth tracking shot of the room without the camera shacking. We managed to then get a good few tracking shots of the office scene and decided to move on to the 50s film set scene.

To prepare for the 50s film set the floor of the studio had already been painted red the day before in order for it to be dry and ready for our group using it. Also the treads that we needed were already painted red as well. We then drew a big white curtain across the back wall of the studio and flooded it with red lighting. This made the room seem like it was just like the 50’s set of ‘Diamonds Are a Girls best Friend’. Once we had the background lit and ready we brought in our home made 50’s camera and put in on a tripod, we brought in deck chairs to look like directors chairs and then filled the room with people in 50’s clothing. We also had light placed everywhere to make it look as much like a film set as we could. The tracks where laid down and then we got our smooth tracking out shots.