Question One

'' In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop Or Challenge Forms And Conventions Of Real Media Products? ''

             The Return                                                                            The Panic Room

  
 





   

Here Our thriller challenges panic room, as their titles appear early

                  



























In Our Thriller 'The Return', The Title Of The Film Appears At The Very End Of The Opening. Therefore Our Thriller Plunges Straight Into The Storyline. This Idea Challenges The Opening Of Panic Room As It Starts Of With Establishing Shots Of High-Rise Buildings. Although we both have the titles/names running on the screen while the opening is playing.

 

















Both 'The Return' And 'Panic Room' Start Of Their Opening With The Film Production Company. Compared To Columbia, A Well Known Film Production And Distribution Company.. We Have Used Our Very Own College Studios Also Known As A Low Budget Company!                       
                                    
                                             

     





                                                            
                                                       

Question Six

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK;

            

 Today's media lesson was very interesting and exciting as we were able to watch each others thriller openings!

At first when Bernard told us that this was going to be the motive for this lesson, as part of our evaluation, I started to get a little nervous. And to make matters better our group was the first to be shown. What a coincident right? 

After the whole class watched our opening, they had to write a little paragraph based on these two points;

- The Strongest Points Of This Opening

-How It Made You Feel 

( Include; Mise En Scene, Lighting etc )

Then as soon as all the openings in our class was watched, it was time for everyone to go back to the desk (in their groups) and review all the feedback's. To be honest I was looking forward to this part because It was the first time we showed our opening and I wanted to know what the audience thought of it; Good And Bad Points.

Overall I was really pleased with the feedback we received. The majority of the audience commented on The Good Choice Of Soundtrack, Editing, Colour And Title Appearance ( Of the thriller and credits ).

Although some feedback given were not as good as the ones listed above, I still appreciate the fact they mentioned it. As it makes you aware of what you have to look closely at next time, you come across editing/making a film/opening.

Baring in mind my group had a lot of ups and down when it came down to both filming and editing, therefore it was really good to see that the audience in our class thought 'the black and white effect' for instance was effective, when actually we weren't sure ourselves about the idea. So it was nice to know some of them understood the fact we were trying to show 'it was a dream'. 

I believe its very important for the audience to understand what is happening in a film or opening otherwise they remain clueless...

Out takes of The Return

Hey guys,

Now here's the out takes of our opening sequence. As you can clearly tell, we had fun during filming and we will definitly miss the whole experience.

The Finishing Touches Of The Opening Thriller- FINAL EDIT

Wow, all the hard work and stress is coming to an end, and now its time for everyone to have completed their opening sequence, do any last minute edit in order to post them up on the blog as the FINAL EDIT. Sounds simple enough but no it was the complete opposite as everyone was in panic and rush just to get everything sorted (exactly what my group was trying to do). The whole of the media department was chaotic and loud.

As today was our last 3 hour media lesson before the deadline Annabelle advised me and the group that its best if we completed everything including the titles + effects during this time and preferably workshop because we all know tomorrow is going to be even more packed and you may not even find a Mac available. So technically today seemed like a deadline for us, which built the pressure even more but I guess it wasn't as bad and was benificial for us. 

Playing about and testing different fonts.

 

Our ideas about how the titles should look like and how they should appear on screen kept changing, thats why it felt even more longer to choose the best one. I think my group had that feeling (at some point) when we felt like giving up. Myself, Hanifah and Max took turns in positioning the fonts, adding the shadows and other effects as it was quite long and tiring just to have your eyes focused on the screen especially when some features are tiny. So there was alot of sliding the mouse across the table to each other.

(This was all happening in the morning session, so the fact we were tired didnt help much either).

Choosing the effect for the opening 'dream' 

Again we looked at the various effects listed and played around for abit to test out which one would look or not. Their was many points you had to consider when choosing the effect for instance, whether it would work well with the whole outline and atmosphere or if its completley not with what your trying to show. The important bit was to make sure its visible so its easy for the audience to understand and comprihend.

 No idea what Max is doing sorry and Hanifah looks slightly bored! :)

Thankfully we had the media teachers and technicians nearby so if we wernt sure about an idea we could ask them to help.










Dan (the teacher shown) told us in the nicest way possible (i guess) that the font we just worked on and installed from the website 'dafont' looked slightly odd and didnt work aswell with the 'thriller atmosphere'. Instead it looked more towards the animation category. Although we did agree with him because we kept saying to ourselves something doesnt work well but could not figure out what it was. Therefore thank you Dan! 

Me and Max decided to do the font straight on Adobe Premier which was definetley a much simpler and straight forward programme to use. We decided to go for a more neutral font to avoid any complications and hassle like the previous fonts we used, so we decided to use Century Gofic.

The Return Opening Sequence (Final Edit)

Today was our last lesson before the deadline for our thriller openings and our blogs. You could feel the rush and the stress everywhere in the media department! Everyone were trying their best to finish off editing today. Our group managed to do a lot during this last lesson, including opening titles and last minute editing + effects. Said like this, it sounds like it could take you maybe 30 mins or 1hr but no! It took us 4 hours 30 in total! (9 - 14.30 without a lunch break!)

Working on the titles...

Adding effects...

Titles again

Hanifah, Sharmin and I started off adding the effects in. We spent a long time on that, as we didn't quite know what we were looking for at first. We were looking at some kind of effect that would make our audience understand that the first part is a dream. After some research, we found several effects that were suitable to that. First, we found something that would allow us to put a dark circle around the video. We thought it looked quite good, so we added a black a white tint to the first part of our video, to go with it. However, we asked for a feedback from a media teacher who said that that first part was too dark. Therefore, we decided to take off the black circle and to keep the black and white tint.

Rendering... It's cooking!

We then moved on the opening titles. At first, we tried to do somehing on LiveType. However, the process was long and not that straight foward. We ended up being "fed up" with it and we rushed to finish it. After asking feedback, we were told that the font did not match with our film. Therefore, we decided to re do the opening titles all over again. This time, Sharmin and I did it straight on Adobe Première and we found it easier to do. We chose the font Century Gothic, because it is a lot more neutral than the other font we used. We added effects to the title "entrences", and after fixing a slight sound problem on the City & Islington College jingle (the sound of the clip was in mono, while the rest of our film was in stereo) we finally finished our film opening!

Opening of "The Return"

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I think that our opening sequence was quite good, taken in mind that we had to rush to finish it. I must say I'm quite glad it is over, eventhough I will definitly miss filming and editing. It was quite stressful and after changing our storyline 3 times, we started to loose confidence and we started to panick. Then we started to find meeting up a bit of a trouble because everyone has different timetables and other work to do! But we felt reassured when the teachers and people from our class, but not only, got the story and found it good! It gave us back the energy we lost.

However, I think that the film would have been better if we had more time to film and to edit.

On Tuesday 5th April, we will find out how it will look on the big screen, as our film openings will be shown in a real cinema! I can't wait to see how ours, but also the other film openings look like!

Final Edit - The Return

Here is it guys!!!!

Analysis - Rough Cut of The Return

After a lot of rushing, in order to get the filming done, we finally managed to film what we needed. Today, we finished our rough cut. This DOES NOT reflect the final look of our opening sequence. It only contains the raw shots that we will use in editing. Therefore, you may notice that the sound isn't that great and you may found that the editing could be improved.

All the files we have to go through...

Hanifah is working on the titles (already?! Yes.) and trying to find an appropriate font.

When we arrived in the edit sweep, we saw that everyone kinf of started editing their opening sequence already, which made us panicking because we only just finished filming and we didn't do any editing yet. Once we had our hard drive and our memory cards, we tried to organise ourselves and to try and see which shot we will be using or not. This took us a long time to do because the shots from our two previous practices were on the memory cards, and it wasn't sorted out correctly so we couldn't directly know which files were the one to use. After a lot of laughter (we will keep the shots for an outtake!), we finally got ourselves organised and we made a start on our rough cut.

Rough Cut - Opening Sequence of The Return

 

While I was doing the rough cut, I had an instant of panick: WIll our opening title meet the timing imposed? ( more or less 2 minutes)

Luckily, it is a bit more than two minutes which means that it is perfect, considering we have to make some cuts and include the titles.

I think that our film is quite promissing and it made us all happy to finally see our film, coming together.

Rough Cut - Analysis to do

Okay guys, take the video and make a new post with your analysis :)

Behind The Scene Pictures Of 'The Return'

Please leave a comment if you wish..

Not all the shots were as serious as they look. We had a great laugh.

I Think I managed to capture really good shots, so it would be good to look back at our 1st day filming.

Applying the makeup to create the 'bruise'

Simple use of eyeshadow, blusher and a touch of wipes to smothen the edges. We wanted it to look realistic.

I dont know what you think, but I really think this looks real and PAINFULL!!

Filming of "The Return" - Day 2

Today is our second and last day of filming. We planned on "renting" flowers, however it didn't work. Therefore, we filmed some Over The Shoulder shots, close ups and the shot of the memorial paper.

We could have done this during the first day of filming, however we ran out of time.

The memorial

Filming of "The Return" - Day 1

We are currently busy filming our opening sequence, "The Return". But here are some pics, behind the scenes...

Me, setting up the tripod...

Sharming, having a laugh with my phone's camera!

Hey Hanifah!

Serious please... ACTION!

The character is on her computer, talking to her friends on Facebook. The actor... is actually doing the same thing!

Sharmin, with the camera :)

It's time for a make-up session... (making of bruise)