Evaluation Question 6

1. Evaluation Question 6 What have you learnt about technology from the process of constructing your product? By Azhar Choudhury

2. Pre-production Technology has been a massive help in allowing my group to produce our media product. It has helped us through the pre-production, production and post production build of our product. Without technology, it would have been impossible to actually produce such a product. • Research- we each individually researched in to the genre thriller and had a look at various thriller opening title sequences. We used Google to search for the information and multimedia. After having looked at various thriller opening title sequences, we wrote up a textual analysis for each one of them. We mainly looked at Mise-en-scene, camera angles & shots, editing techniques and sound. We then uploaded these to a blog.

3. Workshop and preliminary exercises- before we created our actual OTS, we got a chance to practice shooting with the camera and the tripod. For example, we done an exercise where we had to create a restaurant scene similar to the one in the movie ‘Sexy Beast’. Another exercise we done, was one where we had to practice the 180 degree rule. We then had a go at editing this footage so we had practice when we came to do the actual OTS. This meant that we could familiarise ourselves with Adobe Premier 7. We also practiced setting up the camera in terms of white balance, exposure & focus. • Film day planning- The planning of where to shoot our OTS was pretty simple as it was all set indoors. So we decided to shoot the OTS inside of one of our colleagues house. Before we set of to our shoot, we drew up a time management chart, which helped us calculate approximately how long each scene would take us. This also enable us to add slippage time, if for some reason one scene was taking longer than planned.

4. Production • Filming- A lot of things had to be taken into account before we began our filming. We had to set up props and had to make sure to get rid of odd looking things out of the rooms so that the audiences concentration doesn’t go elsewhere. We also had to adjust the white balance, exposure and focus for each shot, so that it looked natural. We also had to look the weather conditions, in order to maintain continuity in our OTS. The tripod also has to be adjusted so that the camera output looks levelled. When we had began our filming we had to shoot the same shot but from a variety of angles so that when it came to the editing process, we would have a variety of shots to play with. We also had to leave a 10 second gap at the beginning and end of each shot, so that it isn’t difficult to edit as the scene ends too quickly. We also had to set up the boom mic, so that each sound could be heard perfectly. We had to collect additional non-diegetic and diegetic atmosphere. For example, for the bathroom scene we recorded a the sound of water running separately to the actual scene. This is because we could play around with the sound if we had to cut bits of the bathroom scene off. • Reshoot- There were some scenes which looked better on the camera to what it actually looked like on a big screen. We put a rough cut together to see what was missing and what looked out of place. After this we went away to reshoot the scenes, taking into consideration of what mistakes we made last time. On many occasions we had to re-schedule our reshoot as the weather was poor, which would ruin the continuity of our other shots.

5. Post Production Editing: We used Adobe Premier 7 to edit our footage. With this software we were able to cut and edit scenes and then put them together. It also enabled us to add non-diegetic sound, saving us from reshooting scenes again. We had around 20 minutes of footage recorded and we had to turn that 20 minute footage into 2 minutes for our OTS, which was very difficult to do. Firstly we started of by doing a rough cut of our OTS. This enabled us to get an idea of how all the edited scenes would look like put together. It also meant that we could reshoot and add extra scenes. We then added some royalty free music, which gave us an insight of what our OTS will sound like in addition to what it would look like. After we had produced our rough cut, we added in some new footage from our reshoot. We then added GFX to some shots, so that we could freeze frames for the title and product/distributor/actor names. We also added a black background scene at the beginning of the OTS. This is where we had party music playing, dialogue and then a female character screaming, which cuts to our protagonist waking up from his sleep. The sound effect had a massive impact on our media product, as it made the product more chilling to watch.