My final media product

Evaluation question 7 

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

Here is a link to my presentation where I explain the whole process of preliminary task, what did I learn and which skills I used later on. 

Evaluation Question 6 

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

In this question we were supposed to add annotations to our thriller youtube clip explaining the technologies that we used in our production and post-production process. What microphone did we use, how did we set the lighting, if we used any transitions like slow motion, how did we create our soundtrack and if we added any special effects...
The clip below is our final thriller sequence with annotations.

Evaluation Question 5 

How did you attract/address your audience?

I attached a link to the audio clip that we recorded together with Tommaso and Hugo talking about the ways in which we attracted our audience. 

Evaluation Question 5

Evaluation question 4 

Here is a link to my video scribe where I created our target audience profile.

Evaluation question 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

As a reaserach to find our target audience we did few interviews with people in different age range.

Interviews

Evaluation Question 3

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

Evaluation question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our thriller starts with a scene where young girl (Katie) is being interrogated by a guy (Adam) that seems to be older than her. She is beaten up, looks like she 

He is asking her questions like „Why aren’t you talking to me?’, which suggest that she is refusing to asnwer. Later on from his monologue we can assume that it is not about her. The whole interrogation is to get to another man that she is potentialy protecting. In the next scene we have two male actors Adam and Ezra talking about how to make the girl talk. The second actor  is older than Adam. He is in charge of that interrogaion since he is telling Adam what to do. After the conversation Adam goes back to the interrogation room and the girl is gone. 

Katie is the only female character in our clip. She is curled up and she is breathing really heavily. Looking at her beaten up face we can assume that she is exhausted becuase of the interragation and she does not have any energy to protect herself, which is a stereotype of a weak woman that can not resist. However she does not look as she is scared of Adam screaming and threatning her. Which suggested that she is mentaly strong which is a positive feature of woman. Additionaly she doesn not break - she keeps the information for herself, trying to protect the person that she is potentialy in love with. This shows us how brave and protectful she is, which is a good representation of females. Furthermore Katie is a countertype of females, since she is untiring she does not give up even if the situation seems to be hopeless and at the end when she manages to run away.

Camera captures her mostly being  lower than Adam, which shows that he has more power over her, which is a stereotypical representation of men’s power over woman. 

Adam is always looking down at Katie, which shows that he has more authority than her. He is walking around the chair, which in comparison to Katie - shows that he has more freedom - he can do whatever he wants to her, which is a typical representation of a strong man. We can assume that Adam is the one that beaten up Katie, which is a negative representation of a violent men. The diagetic sound of Adam screaming makes the viewer feel more respect for him, it shows that he is confident about his actions and he knows what he is doing. The next scene is emphesizing the authority of men even more, when Adam is talking to Ezra, who is a boss throughout the whole clip. He tells Adam want to do with a really calm voice, which suggests that he knows what he is doing, he seems to be a professional which is a positive representation of males. They are also shown as being agressive and violent. The moment when Adam enters the main room and he sees that Katie is gone he gets across really quickly. He could not control himself, he needed to throw the chair across the room. This shows how men express their anger by agression, which is a negative representation.

Katie is a stereotypical representation of woman - she is submissive to Adam, she is really weak and tired. We are able to tell that she can not defended herself before Adam, her beaten up face is the example. Additionally throughout the whole clip Katie is looking down, she does not have a courage to look streight in his eyes, which is a typical representation of woman being scared of powerful man. However as soon as she manages to escape the basement she represents a countertype of women. Showing that she can outwit professionals and she found strength to run away. 

Men in this clip are portraied as really agressive and dominant to woman, which is a stereotypical representation. Both Adam and Ezra are shown as ones with power and authority throughout the whole action. Adam is the one to physically and mentaly torture Katie, and Ezra gives the instruction to Adam - he has no boundries, he would do anything to get the information he wants, which shows that man are fighting for what they want and they do not give up. Ezra is also appealing to be really brutal when he says to Adam ‚Do the nails and then the toes’, which suggest that he is able to do horrible stuff to women just to get what he wants. This is a negative representation of men. 

Evaluation Question 1

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

E v a l u a t i o n Q u e s t i o n 1

Behind the scenes and Shoot day

On 26th January we did our shoot. We all met in the media rooms besides Tommaso, who was preparing basement for us. We took all the equipment - cameras, microphone and lighting. Then we were waiting for Sasha, who did Katie's make - up. We asked her for a bruised forehead and chick also a cut above her eyebrow. While Katie was getting her beaten up make-up I got a black skirt and a picture of me as a kid, which was our prop. That girl in a picture was supposed to be Katie family member. I brought skirt in case clothes that Katie brought did not fit our idea about her costume. We were constantly in touch with Tommaso, who told us that it would be good for us to bring the lighting equipment becuase, the natural light in the basement was really bad. We forgot to bring a gun from theater equipment so we needed to came up with an idea how we can replace it. Fortunately, since we were in a basement there were a lot of useful tools. We found pincers, which we used as our tool for torture.
Afterwards we went to Ewhurst basement. W had a quick look around and decided to start with a scene with Ezra and Adam talking in a separete room. It was a tricky scene to shoot since the room was really small - only Adam and Ezra could fit in there and Hugo, who was kneeling with a microphone so he would not be seen in the shot. In this scene Kirill was camera operator I was his assistant and Tommaso was director. We started with establishing shot from outside of the room in the corridor and then we went inside to do close-ups on our actors to use it later on in shot reverse shot. Also we did an extreme close-up on hands to show the nail detail.  Then we moved into a bigger room with Katie and Adam. It took us quite some time to set up the props and the light so it can illuminate Katie's face, eventually we put it outside the window and put a gel on it so the light would be rather smooth. I helped Katie to get ready - ripped her tights and styled her hair so her bruises could be visible. Then together with Hugo we tied Katie up to the chair with belts.

Hugo still was holding the microphone, Tomasso was the director and I switched with Kirill, he helped me with operating the camera. I did close - ups on Katie's and Adam's face and a wide shot. My job was to control the camera, the frame, zoom in close - ups, focus n the main object so the shot was clear, change the exposure, follow the actors. Everytime when I started recording I needed to remember to say 'Rolling'.

I think this job was quite easy when it comes to steady shots since the camera was on a tripod. The main thing was to set the camera in a right place, bubble it and at the end press record. I found 'following' shots more difficult. I felt more pressure on me and I was stressed that I might ruin the shot. But looking back I think the key thing was just to get use to the camera and how it works while moving. It was just a matter of practise here. Few times it went okay but couple of takes I did not manage to follow Adam, so he could be in the shot and so the camera was smoothly moved. Later on I changed roles with Hugo, I wanted to try microphone and he wanted to operate the camera for last shots. My job was to sit on the floor so I did not get into the shot and direct my microphone into our actors. I was really careful with every move I made because it could be recorded really accuratelly.
At the end we recorded 'Atmosphere', which is a general sound in the room so that later on we could put in as a background sound while editing.
I enjoyed the whole process of shooting. I must admit that I was quite surprised how long we were preparing for this day and it went by so quickly! I prefered shooting in a bigger room with Katie and Adam, because then I had a chance to observe everythig and I was more engaged in this scene than in one with Ezra and Adam.
I think when it comes to shooting a movie it is never enough of preparation... Even if you think that everything is set up and thought through, small things can always come up wrong. I am happy that I could try a bit of every job.I founf camera operator a bit stressful, since you are responsible for the quality of the shots. Taking care of sound was rather tiring, because it was hard to keep still all the time, trying not to move so it wouldn't disrupt the dialogs. I have also learned how everything needs to be organised and dinamic on set. I think concentration is the key feature of the film set!

Post Production - Editing

Last week together with my group we started editing our footage that we shoot at the end of January. Editing is a part of post production, where our clips from production process are put together and subsequently cut and connected so the result is a right action order and smooth continuity. At the end we can add different transitions, sound and effects.  To edit our footage we used Adobie Premiere Pro.
At the beginning we watched all of our clips to have an idea what we have and how should we divide our editing process. Our sequence consists of three scenes and two locations. So we decided to put clips from one location in a group and from the other one together in general order. Later on we started concetrating on cuting it and connecting in a one scene. I was focused on continuity and aspects like shadows, sound, props, what was in a frame which was more useful in further editing. Also I did a bit of cutting and deciding about the order of clips. Since there are four people in our group we were always discussing the order of shots together. Sometimes each of us had different opinion which was ineresting, becuase then we were thinking about the further parts of sequence.
During our editing sessions we tried different variations of ordering our clip. We had main idea in our heads how we want it to look like but we end up having more detail shots that we expected so we thought that it would be good to play with it a little bit and see what happens. Sometimes we decided to delete most of our footage and place there close-ups and more detail. The results weren't always satisfing but it was a good experiment.
I have noticed a few issues that we did not see during the shoot day. While we were editing our first scene - when Adam was leaving Ezra from one room heading to the main basement. By the time he passed the camera you could tell that he stoped walking because of his shadow on the door, when he was supposed to keep on walking to the second room. It was our first problem. We had two takes of this shot - on one clip it was more visible than the other one so we decided to use the better one and to leave it till the end so maybe we will be able to crop it a bit more so the viewer can not see the shadow all the way through. The second thing that we found disturbing was when there was shot reverse shot on Adam and Ezra talking. We wanted to use both close - ups of their faces but the zooming on Adam was to close and becuase of that his head was cut a bit from the top. In this case we did not have another shot that we could replace the bad one for. Additionaly in many clips there was a sound of people walking upstairs, which was really interrupting. Matt and Katie told us that it is fine because we can easily correct it later on while editing sound. When we were working on the second scene. I considered exposure the main issue. Since it was a dark location it was hard for us to set good lighting. When we shot close - ups of Katie's face the lighting was incredible, one side of her face was delicately lightened up due to which the detail of her make - up was really visible and in my opinion it added a mysterious atmosphere to the scene. The problem was, when we were shooting Adam's face the lighting was a lot darker, which gave the feeling of a different exposure. These were the main issues in our editing.
While editing I used few tools like selection tool, which allowed me to select clips and drag in different places on the timeline. Also the most useful tool was razor, which cut a clip into two, due to that tool I could cut parts of different clips that were not useful. Additionaly tools like hand or zoom tool were important when it comes to dragging timeline view left or right, by clicking on the blue rectangular area or when we want to magnify the view of timeline by clicking command plus (+) to zoom in or command minuse (-) to zoom out. 
After working on our thriller opening sequence, I learnt that I should not edit (cut, move, delete) clip by clip but everything generally step by step, becuase if you do so by little steps it is easier to go back or change something, you never know what idea will come to your head while editing. It is also good to experiment to cross the boundries that you set to yourselve before editting. It is good to use as much variety of the footage that you have to keep the clip interesting and surprising. I learnt to be focused and patient during the work. It is really easy to miss out the continuity or objects that are unwanted in the shot. Also while working on our footage I have noticed that it is better to shot everything twice just in case something will be wrong with the previous take. 
I posted some pictures below of our time line and bits from our editing process.