Foundation Portfolio- Video Production

Audience response

2010-05-16T12:02:00.000-07:00

My audience response is with the list of cast just underneath my brief.

Continuity Exercise

2010-04-14T14:41:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eqPpO8HND4&feature=player_embedded

2010-04-14T14:36:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C98d0Wi18Ek

Evaluation first draft

2010-04-01T10:32:00.000-07:00

My media products use, develop and challenge the forms and conventions of real media products. I did this by making the opening sequence of a thriller, my media production uses the genre of thriller to some extent in media products. We decided on making my opening sequence involving a stalker and a vulnerable girl walking to her home after being out with some friends. A thriller genre has many conventions such as a dark environment and a main victim or a possible victim. Conventions of thriller typically have ominous music and editing or creating a story which itself creates an enigma for the audience. An example of this is Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’ 1960, this film holds backs information until the end therefore the audience are more intrigued and ultimately more scared. My media product has fitted to these conventions of the thriller genre by having the traditional classic characters of a ‘victim girl’ and a ‘murderer’, also by using enigmas by not showing the murderers face. In the opening sequence we have used some iconography similar to other thriller/horror films, based on the location, weather and lighting. Another way we have represented thriller films is by using the theme of stalking, which has been used in many famous films such as ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ 1997. In my media production I used low creepy chilling music to help correspond with the atmosphere of the opening sequence. We didn’t decide on sticking with Todorov’s narrative theory by starting with an equilibrium with a disruption that gets resolved because we wanted the audience more on edge throughout the opening sequence, then towards the end, wanting to see the whole film, which doesn’t exist. We had to look at the conventions of an opening sequence to give us ideas and techniques we could use, in order to create a 2 minute thriller opening, the conventions including were titles throughout, different types of music, sense of danger and symbolic/iconic images. The film ‘silence of the lambs’ helped a lot with the conventions.My group stuck to these conventions as there was a girl as a ‘first’ victim, we had titles throughout, the main theme ‘stalking’ because we introduced the man following her which gave an insight on what was to come, music mainly throughout also. We used many different shots in our film, including an establishing shot, a close up of the victims face as she reaches her house, a match on action shot of her entering the house, a long shot of her being stalked, and a reaction, there was some form of action shots as well, showing where she had walked to and from. The overall style of our film is very eerie, with close-up camera work to show the expressions of both stalker and victim face. The lightening is set in a dark location, showing little expressions.

Our media product represents particular social groups by using only two teen characters, a victim girl and the stalker boy. We used a middle sized guy, wearing a hooded jacket who looked very scary and menacing as a stalker. His hooded jacket showed that he didn’t want to be seen as a person, which represented the character very well. The clothes that he wore were casual, yet giving off an eerie, tarrying look at the same time, implying that he was used to following people. The location was very daunting, with left over snow, through alleys and dark streets, showing that the victim was carelessness to who was behind her. We didn’t use any form of weapons or violence in the opening thriller sequence, because we didn’t want to give to much away, keeping the audience on the edge of the chair. We used a young girl who looked innocent and vulnerable, who lived near dark street’s and alley ways creating a sense of danger, but this tells us that she was used to walking home alone in the dark, not knowing that anyone was around to watch or stalk her. Her clothes were casual day time clothes, showing that she might’ve been out with friends, she lived in a fairly middle class house, you can see this because as she’s walking home she has her mobile phone and Ipod either texting or listening to music. When we had to think about how to represent age, we decided on looking at the actors ages, to help us come to a decision on what audience age group we were basing our thriller opening on. Our audience is young adults ages between 16+, mainly because our actors are in that age range. The victim girl character wouldn’t have worked well if she were older, because to seem more helpless and vulnerable she had to be younger. The stalker character is seen as very disturbed mental boy, to be following a helpless girl who is none the wiser on what is about to happen to her. In one of the psychological thrillers that we were asked to analyse ‘The Butterfly Effect’ low key lighting was used to create a eerie and mysterious atmosphere, while short and simple cut out effects were used to focus the audience’s full attention on the action rather than the editing that probably took them a while to do, leaving the viewer fully unaware of these shots.

The type of media institution distributing your media product mainly depends on what type of film you have created. If you have created a film that was going to be a large Hollywood blockbuster film, it would be shown in every main cinemas such as the ‘Odeon and Vue’ to gain a greater profit and for the audience to see how good or poor your film is. On the other hand if you have created an independent film it would mainly be shown in small independent cinemas either run by the town, or at local events or at exhibitions, a lot of the time you can watch them over the internet. Most student films are posted online which may gain a large audience via the internet. I think our student film would be distributed well over the internet as I believe this would be the best way to target a wider audience. Even though our opening sequence is only a student film, I personally think that if our film was distributed in the real media world and if it wasn’t made on a student budget, I believe ours would be played in small cinemas in towns, or maybe main cinemas in bigger towns as well as a discerning few cinemas for a limited time. I think this because the opening sequence keeps the audience on the edge of their seats throughout the two minutes that it is, gaining the audience’s attention to want to watch the rest of the film. Therefore mainly smaller cinemas at first might want to distribute our media product, the product gives off a significant message showing how teenagers not just girls, are vulnerable to any type of danger, especially walking home at night through dark alley’s and streets.

For our audience for the media product, we researched audiences and what stereotype of audiences liked what, such as teenage girls preferring chick flicks and rom-coms, then teenage boys enjoying comedies, action and horror films, the odd girl preferred horror/thriller films. I looked into how gender and age could affect what an audience chooses to watch. A prime example being the elderly who would rather old classic films which they enjoy as when they were younger there wasn’t many horror/thriller films around. I also looked into families and how they would prefer to watch blockbuster films which are very modern with plenty of special effects such as ‘Transformers’, ’Night at the museum’ and ‘Up’. Families tend to watch films like these, because they are family orientated, with no unnecessary language. Young adults to middle aged people might prefer drams with an enigma or disruptions which lead you to think. Peoples live style’s and hobbies can also have a great impact on what films they watch, like art students as myself may be more inclined to watch in depended quirky films. We decided that our film is quite a serious matter to say the least, we made our film certificate 15. Our secondary, wider audience is people ages 17+, as we as a group believe anyone who enjoys thriller/horror genre will enjoy our film. We are targeting students as our audience because they are insightful and young who will enjoy the theme of our film, as well as the plot. The film appeals to the audience expectations of a thriller, they expect it to keep you on the edge of your seat, scared and trying to piece together the storyline. We found out all this information by conducting a survey an handing them around the upper school, we had a great feedback from this. Audience research is a major part of any media company, using questionnaires. Media producers basically want to know the income/bracket status, age, gender, race, location.

The way we attracted and addressed our audience was by sticking to the conventions our audience would be expecting. I used Levi-Strauss’ theory of binary opposites using hero vs. villain, good vs. evil but in our case victim vs. stalker. We had a stalker seeking the vulnerable girl for a particular reason which is a convention of a horror/thriller. We seeked the audiences pleasures of horror/thriller films by exploiting their fears. We used narrative twist’s towards the end of the opening sequence by not letting on what the motives of the stalker were, and how he appeared in her house, but not showing how he got in. People normally go to see a horror films because they expect and know they will be scared, they look forward to being scared and confused by trying to pick up the pieces of what’s going on. The audience have a tendency to get worried and emotional about what will happen next. Me and my group also used eye catching shots such as the figure of the stalker, as he leant down to pick up the vulnerable girls scarf, not showing his face, which not only looked effective but created a sense of danger. We used a cut away shots showing where the girl had walked from, this is showing the audience how creepy and dark the location was, and how no one ever walks down there at night. We also used a track shot to follow the stalker and his shadow making the atmosphere intense. Our audience will have chosen to watch our opening sequence because it is a thriller which doesn’t give everything away straight away, which then creates and enigma, therefore we are essentially appealing to our audience tastes.

I learnt a lot throughout this project, about the technologies needed, I developed my skills on both the PC and the Mac quite a lot. I improved my ability to use I movie on the Mac’s greatly as I had never used this software before, or the Mac’s, this task enabled us to be more creative with how we wanted to edit our piece. We were able to use the editing software before the editing of our film with our continuity exercise, to help us broaden our way of editing. I learnt how to use pace to create suspense, slowing down the shots to create more tension, I also learnt how to edit the colour of the footage. Using other technologies such as the blog site to book mark certain things that you might later on want to refer too. Also using a blog instead of a pen and book means you can plan and show how you have revealed certain aspects of the media project in much greater detail. In class we used You tube to look at other students thriller opening sequences from the past, giving us many ideas on what we could create for our own. This helped us a lot and gave us more inspiration on what to achieve. Our initial choice of music for our film was a low long lasting copyright free track, it mainly had violins in, creating a sense of rush, and mysterious atmosphere. The music was quite repetitive but it fitted well with the titles and the shots. The title’s are mainly at the beginning, the first title Is bold, and appears when the teenage girl appears, the same for the boy, and a few second’s later the director and producers names. Our main title ‘Pursuit’ appears when the stalker is walking down the alley way with the reflection of the dimmed light behind him, not showing his face with his hood up, the shot slows right down when he walks towards the camera, giving the audience a feel that he’s about to catch up with the teenage girl. It took us a while to pick the font of the titles, but we managed to decided as a group in the end. We didn’t use any of the title font’s from a website, and got the music from a copyright free retailer. The location on the establishing shot is used very well, showing the girl walking down the ‘getting’ dark street, on her own, but there’s no sign of the stalker. We had some problems with our shots, with the focus on the camera being blurred at some points, but luckily it fits in quite well with the rest of the film, the camera wasn’t the best of cameras to work with, we did have some difficulties working with it. As a group we learnt to manoeuvre the equipment and ask questions to check everything was ready before moving the tripod. As a whole we worked well as a group even if it wasn’t the people I would of liked to have worked with.

The preliminary task which was the continuity task which involved me filming and editing two characters walking across a corridor, opening a door, crossing a room sitting in front of one another and exchanging a couple of lines of dialogue to each other, and one of the characters leaving the room. This task demonstrating our abilities to stick with a match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule. Doing this task before making and editing our own film made me progress my ability to edit using I movie. For the main task to last two minutes or 3 minutes maximum, all video and audio material had to be original produced by the candidates of the group with copyright free music. This was a big step after only creating a continuity task, using hardly any of the above. But after working with that task it helped us a lot to approach our own film with care, and responsibility, our main task was asking a lot more out of us than the continuity exercise. Creating our own film made us think about every different shots, the location, what character would play what, the use of music, the font of the titles, the editing of the shots to come together as a whole etc. as a group we found the importance of planning before hand crucial in every aspect, and how essential it is to make sure something is possible before doing it. Every student in the group had a go at being involved in everything that was going on. The planning of creating our film task was an important part in creating the film, before creating the film we researched, and showed how important a shooting script and a story board is as they both allow you to shoot on the order of the sequence. These we very useful as we needed to know what shots to film first, and what days. To create our task we needed to research genre’s, audience types, and age to make sure they fitted to the convention’s and that it appealed to our audience. In our production we were able to re shoot, or even re film unlike the continuity exercise, but it showed us how important it was to plan everything first, during the production we as a group were more conscious of time, we needed to get things done quickly, but it wasn’t to be rushed at. As a group we felt that the post-production was more time consuming than the actual production itself, this is because we were able to do what we wanted to some extent and be more creative with how we choose to edit our film. It was very important that we discussed things as a group and to get our audience feedback along the way, we used our year 11 induction evening for this, we is on tape, which will be posted on to my blog. I felt like we didn’t discuss enough in our group as much as we should’ve. I used my blog to write down all the problems that we had producing and creating our two and a half minutes thriller opening sequence. Overall I enjoyed working and creating this project. It has giving me a excellent insight of the media world, and how to use Apple Mac’s.

Cast & audience response

2010-04-01T10:13:00.000-07:00

Richard Parrish - He played the stalker in our opening sequence.

Jordon McGowan- Me. I played the victim of the stalker in Persuit.

This week me and pupils from my media class organised a showcase, we did this for any members of the school to see what we have produced this year, we also did this to show anyone who is interested in media for AS level or even GCSE. It was a GREAT turn out! teachers attended and even Mrs Connick, Mr owen the head of sixth form and Mr George head of Pencoed came to see what we had produced. Mr George quoted " surprising quality from students of a young age". Many teachers said how surprised they were to see our film of such high standard!.

We also organised a tuck shop, that made a profit of £20.55, which will go towards the media department. In class the following day we evaluated each others film, our film had comments such as;. The title slow motion shot was very well received, as well as the heartbeat sound effect at the end, our main criticism was that our victim should have been wearing headphones to show she couldn't hear her follower being so close while walking. However our opening sequence was perceived successfully in the showcase, which we are very happy about!

Influences on our Narrative.

2010-04-01T08:50:00.000-07:00

Our original opening sequence narrative was influenced slightly by the 2008 horror film 'The Strangers'.

We looked at this film because it was on a similar to the ideas we had to create our opening sequence 'Persuit'. We loved the intrusion element, we as a group and some students in our class thought that the element and basis of this film was very scary and a good opening sequence to do based on 'stalkers'.

I also looked at other films such as

'The night of the living dead'(1968)

I decided on looking and researching this film because it was known as the king of low budget films. Even though it's not a stalker film as such, it is a horror and does involve people being trapped in one house, to get away from zombies.

'Scream' (1996)

Is a masked killer film that revitalized the stalker genre. Audiences were captivated enough to come back for two sequels.

Cape Fear (1991)

Creepers (1985)

Us filming the last scene

2010-04-01T08:22:00.000-07:00

Me with the scarf.
Richard, getting ready to pick up the scarf

Mel with the camera.
Chelsea with the girl's scarf.

Shot list again.

2010-04-01T08:06:00.000-07:00

Shot list..

Est. crane shot of light downwards
LS. from behind shows the girl walking down a suburban street
MS. from behind as girl walks down the street further
LS. from the left hand side angle as girl walks from right to left
LS. tracking shot follows girl as she continues to walk
BCU. of girl footsteps along the pavements
MS. of the girl as she turns the corner onto a dark alleyway as a dark shadow crosses the camera following the girl.
LS. of the girl as she crosses the street, the man in pursuit.
LS. as the girl walks along an icy path way under a creepy streetlight that casts dark shadows across the follower.
MS. from front as the girl walks towards and past the camera
CU. of floor as shadows are cast as the two characters pass
LS. of the girl as she crosses another road as she continues her walk home, she starts to feel conscious of her follower and looks around because she starts to feel on edge.
LS. of the girl who is about to reach her house as she turns around checking for her pursuer
CU. of the girls worried face
POV. shot as the non-diejetic music stops and is replaced by the girls heavy breathing as she checks from left to right with a hand-held shaky effect but there is no-one there
OTS. of the man as he watched the girl as she checks and walks into her drive.
CU. of the girls hand on the front door handle of her house
MS. starts in black then the girl comes in through the door and turns on the light, takes off her scarf and walks past the camera
LA. of the man's shoe as the camera tilts and slowly showing that he's there, with the scarf in his hand.

Story Board Shots

2010-04-01T07:59:00.000-07:00

Page one!:)

Page two!:)

Page three!:)

Our Opening Sequence Persuit

2010-04-01T07:39:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C98d0Wi18Ek

Continuity Exercise

2010-04-01T07:21:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eqPpO8HND4&feature=player_embedded

Journey & Development;

2010-01-24T10:08:00.000-08:00

Creating this opening sequence has been a long and time consuming development. We started of filming in November last year, re filmed a couple of weeks ago, because we didn't like the shots of the first one. We decided on started over creating a new storyboard and script (which will be up shortly).

I have enjoyed filming and working well with my group. I much prefer the second opening sequence compared to our first one. After shooting our second sequence we felt much better and well organised. We changed our location of the film to my house, therefore we felt more relaxed and could easily do the shots over and over which we did.

Audience Profiling

2010-01-24T09:55:00.000-08:00

Audience profiling is finding out what your audience wants from your film.

Soon we will conduct a survey which will tells us what people want to see. We will be creating a questionnaire for students in our school to fill out, therefore we will use this feedback in our 'Production Day' later on in the year.

Log line;

2010-01-24T09:28:00.001-08:00

A logline is a brief summary or whats going to happen in a film or television program. Its like a 'blurb' on the back of a book.

Before Christmas we decided on changing our opening sequence. We have now decided to start the opening sequence with Jordon AKA me being stalked on my way home, then getting home, and me knowing that I was being followed therefore I quickly rushed into my house and dialled 999, but was it to late...

We have included all the shots needed. We filmed on the 4th of January, we started at half four as it was getting dark, the timing was perfect.

We are now in the middle of our editing, all we need is copyright free music.

More delays.

2010-01-24T08:43:00.000-08:00

Also we couldn't get onto our blog's in school for about two months due to it being blocked by the local council.

The Term Thriller;

2010-01-24T08:27:00.000-08:00

Our film is based on the Genre Thriller, So I've decided to tell you what a thriller is..

A thriller is normally associated with danger, the setting of a thriller often takes place in exotic settings, foreign cites, high seas or deserts.A thriller is to provide thrills and keep the audience cliff-hanging at the 'edge of the seats' as the plot builds towards a climax. The tension usually arises when the main characters or character is placed in a menacing situation mystery

Christmas Half Term Delay

2010-01-24T08:13:00.000-08:00

After Christmas half term, we had snow!, we had roughly about two weeks off, due to it. This is a great concern because it gives us less time to do our editing and get everything done for our deadline on February the 5th.

Audience

2009-11-25T03:47:00.000-08:00

Producers need to ensure that the film reaches the audience it's intending for. All films will have some sort of markteing campaign attached to them such as; Posters, print advertisments and trailers.

Audience research is a major part of any media company, using questionnaires. Media producers bascially want to know the income/bracket status, age, gender, race, location.

Mainstream- is the largest and highing selling films, and are sometimes considered the lowest form of cinema.

Shooting Schedule

2009-11-24T15:17:00.000-08:00

We have now come up with a shooting schedule which is convient for everyone, this will be tomorrow night, 25th November, at around 5pm, if we don't finish, or need to do any final adjustments we will do so on the weekend.

StoryBoard

2009-11-24T15:10:00.000-08:00

We have now finished our storyboard, there will be a picture up very soon!

Group Blog

2009-11-24T15:06:00.000-08:00

In our last media lesson, we were given the choice on whether we wanted to make another blog, but created by the group as well as our individual blogs. We felt there was no need to make another blog, as it will only contain the information we all have on our own blogs, also we don't have a great deal of time to create this, therefore hope this doesn't affect our mark.

Opening Sequence

2009-11-24T14:55:00.000-08:00

Plot outline/summary- Girl is at home with her mum and dad before they leave to go to a party. A murderer is secretly behind a wall, in the garden. The murderer is waiting for the parents to leave. The teenager girl is on a chat messenger at the time talking to her friends, she hears a noise and goes to look.

Opening sequence- Establishing shot of a street light, making it ways down to see the the girl walking down the street..

Characters - The girl who gets stalked, and the stalker. Played by Myself and Richard Parrish

Locations- Two streets, leading to the girls house, The girls house.

Costumes- Everyday clothes, and a hoodie.

Props- The dark, A house phone, gloves, doors.

Lighting- Getting dark, to dark. Dimming of the lights inside the house.

Our Film Name.

2009-11-24T14:41:00.000-08:00

My group and I have chosen then Film Name, this will be 'Persuit', Richard parrish a member of the group created a list of Film names for the film, we decided on using this as it gives different impressions on what the viewer is about to see. The Film name will be in Red or White bold text, which will appear at the end of the opening sequence .

The Group members are; Jordon McGowan, Chelsea Langdon, Melissa Ece and Richard Parrish.

Narrative Theory

2009-11-09T01:43:00.000-08:00

The plot- the way the story is told.

The sequence of events put together within a text.

Narrative may be reduced to a simple sequence.

Equation:-

Equilibrium > When everything is in order harmony (balanced).

Disequilibrium > Something happens to upset the order harmony (un-balanced)

New Equilibrium > Equilibrium restored > harmony restored order.

Narrative theory was developed by Walter Fisher.

Narrative theory, is the study of narrative or story, written or otherwise. The founder of narrative theory is Aristotle.

Another narrative theory is by Todorov, he suggests that all the narratives follow three part structure. It begins with equilibrium, everything is balanced until something comes along to disrupt, and then it reaches a resolution when equilibrium is then restored.

Representation & stereotypes

2009-11-06T01:51:00.000-08:00

Representation refers to the construction in any medium especially the mass media of aspects of 'reality' such as people, places, objects, events, cultural identities and other abstract concepts. Such representations may be in speech or writing as well as still or moving pictures. There are four key themes in racial representation; exotic, dangerous, humorous, pitied.

Stereotypes are simple and one dimensional. Filmmakers often rely heavily on stereotypes, because they're a quick and simple way to establish a movie character's traits.

Half Term

2009-11-05T01:50:00.000-08:00

In half term, my group decided to create our script and storyboard.

And i was set to do the storyboard which I have created, I will soon get scan the storyboard and post it as a picture on here for you all to see.

Our script has yet to be created by one member of our group.

Yesterday's Media Lesson

2009-11-05T01:30:00.000-08:00

Codes & Conventions; we looked into detail and we discussed if we're going to use this in the making of our film. We decided to stick with codes and conventions in the end.

Codes-

Technical codes- camera angles- framing, lighting.

Verbal codes - Everything to do with typography language/written or spoken.

Symbolic codes- everything that links with our cultural reference/ experience.

Conventions-

The widely recognized way of doing something.

Film Stills

2009-11-03T04:21:00.000-08:00

P.S I Love You
Bridget Jones
Final Destination
Titanic

Group Production Roles

2009-11-03T03:50:00.000-08:00

Pre Production

Name Task/role .Task/role
------------------------------------------
Chelsea .Producer .Researcher
Melissa.Script Writer .Researcher
Jordon .Story Board .Reseacrher
Richard .Locations .Researcher
.& Prop Fixer

Production
Chelsea .Planner/Producer
Melissa .Director
Jordon .Director
Richard .Camera Man, Still shots

Post- Production
Chelsea .Editor .Share Roles
Melissa .Editor .Audience Researcher
Jordon .Editor .Poster Publisist
Richard .Editor .Share Roles

Title Sequence Anaylsis- Silence Of The Lambs.

2009-11-02T15:06:00.000-08:00

I have chosen to do the title sequence from the “silence of the lambs”, I decided on doing this as I have yet to have seen the whole film.

Before the film starts there is a main image which is a big close up of a woman’s face taken at eye-level. The use of big close up enables the audience to have a very good view of the expression on the woman’s face, The woman is directly addressing the camera, this makes the image more striking and attracts people's attention. The woman’s mouth is being covered by some sort of moth-like bug, which at first glance appears to be harmless, but in fact there’s a skull on the moth. This skull signifies death and it seems as if this moth is trying to prevent her from speaking.

The film starts off with an establishing shot of the woods and lake, giving an eerie feel to the viewer. The music uses tension and release, a trait commonly used in the music industry to build suspense. The building of the music, from low to high pitch, and from quiet to loud adds to the tension created in the opening scene. As Agent Starling starts to run, the pace of the music quickens in time with her footsteps. When the agent is called, a tension peak is reached with this digetic sound, but the viewer is quickly alerted to the reality of the situation when they realise that the voice is in fact that of her commanding officer, and she is in no danger at all. The sound of the birds in the opening scene signifies death to the viewer, as vultures and birds are often associated with death. The mist can be perceived as oppressive and it seems as if it obscures your perception off events.

In the opening shot there is no camera movement. The camera, still in one continuous shot, pans down and to the left deeper into the forest from the tree creating a high angle establishing shot. The camera then settles on Agent Starling in the distance working her way up through the forest towards the camera. As she reaches the top, we can hear that she is out of breath, the camera retracts slightly as she pauses and looks around. The camera then follows her from a distance, creating a long tracking shot. The shot then cuts to close up of her face as she runs, then zooms out slightly into a mid shot of her head and shoulders. The shot yet again cuts, this time to a side angle mid shot from her rights hand side, the camera still moving with her, as she runs through the trees with the crunching of the leaves underfoot apparent in the sound. The camera is still following her as she runs until someone off screen shouts her, and then runs into shot towards her, as a consequence she turns around the camera then moves towards, with Starling bending over, exhausted, making the commanding officer look very powerful.

The four words pinned to the tree - hurt, agony, pain, love-it, instil in the viewer a sense of wonder, and leaves them asking why these words are there, and they also add to the tension and suspense at the start of the thriller.

Agent Starling is dressed in male clothes and we see her surrounded by men at the end of the opening scene, this makes the viewer feel as if she is out of place and in a male surrounding. Her clothes are sweaty and some may feel that she is incapable of doing a man’s job. In the title sequence the viewer is unaware of the situation. Initially, it’s thought that she may be running away from something or someone, but the reality is revealed when we see the climbing frame. It then becomes clear that she is perhaps part of the police force or army and this is confirmed when her superior addresses her as ‘Agent Starling‘.

The lettering used is another feature of the opening sequence. The letters are bold, black and uppercase. The boldness of the letters imposes a sense of authority on the viewers, which may be showing danger or the authority inflicted on Agent Starling by her male colleagues. Black signifies death and secrecy which are two major themes of this thriller.

Psycho, the famous shower scene.

2009-10-07T11:46:00.000-07:00

In our media lesson last week we looked at the famous shower scene from the film psycho. We were asked to count how many cuts and the different camera angles used.

After that lesson i went home and researched it, I found out that the shot took 6 days to produce from December 17 to December 23rd 1959. There was around 50 cuts and the seen runs for 3 minutes. Most of the shots are extreme close-ups except for the medium shots in the shower directly before the murder took place and directly after it.

Story Board

2009-09-30T15:20:00.001-07:00

In our previous lesson, we created story boards. We learnt how to create them, using either a pen or pencil.

We paired up, and created our very own. Storyboards are a sequence of images or drawings that describes the planned content of a film.

Storyboards should include the use of dialogue, characters, movement and not forgetting the camera shot. I enjoyed creating them.

^^ There is an example of a storyboard, I found this on a website which helped me to create my own storyboard. Here is the hyper link; http://accad.osu.edu/womenandtech/Storyboard%20Resource/

For homework we were asked to look at the following websites, these were very helpful aswell.

longroadmedia.com and

6thformnoodle.blogspot.com

3rd Week In Media

2009-09-30T02:37:00.001-07:00

In our media lesson today, we analysed the title sequence from the famous film pyshco, and vertigo.

The opening scences of Pyscho has no use of camera or image. The music contains ostinati of staccato notes, therefore it makes it very dramatic and creepy to make the atmosphere tense, then the music starts to go slower. the Font throughout the title sequence doesn't change neither does the colour. The use of colour is very dark which makes it incredibly creepy and dull.
The image is dull, which consists of horizantal lines and vertical lines to create the title "Psycho", the image is very dramatical. The camera shots are very long. Its seems to have a very negative impact by using dull and dark graphics and colour.

2009-09-16T15:13:00.000-07:00

Saul bass was an American Graphic Designer, He was born in 1920, and originally brought up in New York. He was known for his motion picture title sequences. Saul is also remembered for the most iconic icons in north America such as; The bell telephone logo. He designed title sequences for 40 years. In 1958'a Vertigo, his first title sequence for Alfred Hitchcock, Bass shot an extreme close-up of a woman's face and then her eye before spinning it into a sinister spiral as a bloody red soaks the screen. 1959's North to Northwest, the credits swoop up and down a grid of vertical and diagonal line like passenger stepping off elevators.

Here are some of the title sequences;

Pyscho,

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad world,

The war of the roses and

Goodfellas.

"My initial thoughts about what a title can do was to set mood and the prime underlying core of the film's story, to express the story in some metaphorical way. I saw the title as a way of conditioning the audience, so that when the film actually began, viewers would already have an emotional resonance with it" - Saul Bass

My First ever Blog! :)

2009-09-15T04:24:00.000-07:00

Hello, My name is Jordon, and this is my first ever blog account! I set this up for media studies to contribute to my As level result. This is the first year of using blogs so its a whole new experience for us all. Im so glad to be using this instead of pen and paper!