My Final Sequence

 Here is an attachment of my final opening sequence.

CCR TASK 4 How did you integrate technologies software, hardware and online into your project?

Here is a website which I made to talk about how I integrated technologies into the full production of my film.

https://rmckenzie-donovan.wixsite.com/ccr4

CCR TASK 3 How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

Here is a prezi presentation that I made talking through parts of the production process that I learnt about and improved on to help me with the final product of my film.

CCR TASK 2 How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?

 For our film that we made I would say that our main primary target audience would be around 16 - 17 year old men. Here is a link to my blog post about target audiences.

https://raffiea1media.blogspot.com/2022/03/target-audience.html

https://raffiea1media.blogspot.com/2022/03/the-bbfc-and-film-certificates.html

Here is a second link to a blog post about similar products that would relate to my film that i have made. 

https://raffiea1media.blogspot.com/2022/03/similar-products-and-conventions.html

The first key moment of my opening sequence to the film consist of the first 3 shots of the film. For example with the very opening we are shown part of a weapon that seems to look like a pickaxe leaning against the floor, the theme this is showing is showing is a sense of horror to the audience and suspenseful, this engages are audiences as they will want to know the reason as to why there is a weapon on the floor and from my target audiences work stereotypically male teenagers will be drawn toward the aspect of horror. 

The second shot of this 3 shot start shows a security camera
that is hanging up this plays into the idea that someone is being watched, which then makes as if the audience too is also being watched. This can relate to our audience watching the film as teenagers are always on social media and online on phones where there are theories that your phone listens to you and watches you engaging the audience to pay attention, so nothing is private like the idea we get here which is a part of the theory of Blummers and Katz uses of gratification. Which says that the media users are the ones who play an active role in choosing and then using the media, with the idea of our phones watching us this converts with our sequence.

The third shot from the opening shows a pair of hands that have been tied up by barbed wire which I think engages the audience in multiple way it firstly teases to the narrative which is part of the enigma code which is the theory of 'Producers want audiences to keep watching so showing this shot makes the audience want to understand why this person is here in this situation, which will make the audience ask questions about why this person has been tied up, what kind of conflict are they in. In thrillers there is usually a convention to do with conflict so here we are showing this to the audience what type of film this is going to be, the uncomfortableness of the barbed wire also will hopefully link with the audience. 

My second key moment from my opening sequence that I made, would be when the Villain is inspecting the weapons and deciding which one to use on his victim, this engages the audience through many techniques firstly you see the villain at a table with weapons, there is then a fast and dramatic pan to reveal that he has actually got someone kidnapped, when showing the victim the weapons that might be used against him this adds an element of suspense to the film, as the villain is basically taunting his victim this is a use of a convention of a thriller of creating tension and, suspense that continues to build throughout the scene. Now how this engages the audience is by showing the impending danger to then feel like they have to keep watching to see how this resolves later on in the film. Our target audience is aimed at 16 to 17 year olds so showing off these quite threatening weapons show a mature theme to the film making it clear who this film is suitable for. All these opening shots are giving us an insight to the location of this kidnapping and what this person is like so what we can tell is that he has a lot of weapons and they clearly have their own enemies.

The third key moment from our opening sequence that I feel like will largely engage the audience is from when you see the villain holding back the victim and smacking his feet with a wooden mallet of so it seems. This little action part of the scene, engages the audience by showing this is a man with power and authority, and isn't a person that you should mess with from clearly seeing what he is doing, this makes the audience to pay attention to him, also this links back to our mature and slight horror of the film which is target to a certain type of audience who we deem this suitable for which this part of action clearly shows what type of film and sense they are going to cover. along with this it can also very slightly link toward the narrative of the film which will be based around conflict which is a conflict of our genre having a victim, in mercy of a villain.

A 4th key moment from the sequence that I've chosen that engages the audience is when we see the victim break free from his restraints and take the weapon that was just used against him. With this dramatic change we see the person in trouble start to take control of the scene. This part of contrast and tension engages the audience be thinking what if the victim gets caught and then killed? what consequences might come from this? Is he going to escape? things like that opening the imagination of the audience to start asking their own questions on how the outcome might be from this scene. We can see from the heavy breathing of the victim that he is clearly weak and has a nervous sense about him which the audience will also be feeling like the victim in this time trying not to waste his one opportunity to escape.

a 5th key moment from the sequence is when we finally see the victim take control of the scene after knocking him out with his own weapon, i believe that this engages the audience because from the start we have always been in support of the victim in the scene, so finally getting to see him taking control makes the audience have a sense of hope, and adding to the theme of the genre thriller already telling the audience that the victim is going to fight back adding another part of action to the film and showing more to the narrative focusing on conflict between characters these are all the conventions all linking back toward the thriller. from seeing these 2 characters in this locations it gives off the idea to the audience that this film is going to probably focus on these 2 characters.

The penultimate key moment of our sequence is quite pivotal toward the narrative of the film showing the theme of greed to the audience and how people mostly have a massive need for money and the victim here only cared about the money before escaping. having the stereotypical black duffle bag filled with money plays into conventions of thriller like bank robberies etc. How this engages the audience here is we see the hand of who we can assume is the victim enter the scene and take the money with him, which seems odd as he has just escaped. Maybe this is implying to the audience that we have got it wrong and the victim is actually the villain. This allows the audience to heighten their sense to pay attention and ask questions about this character who we actually know little about.

The last key moment i would say i have in my opening sequence that I feel that would engage the audience is right at the end of the opening where we see the victim about to leave with the money and then turn around and give quite a sinister grin toward the container and we can get the idea that he is looking at the knocked out man on the floor who now seems to have become the victim of the scene, then leave where the shot over epoxes into a white screen. How this engages the audience is because we get a true sense of change within the scene and how the authority has changed between these 2 members of the film. This makes the audience want to know more about this characters motif and why he now seems evil, again giving the imagination to the audience and letting them think on which way the film could go from here as this has opened many possibilities, Like where is this man going now which leaves it on a cliffhanger wanting the audience to see more to see how the story develops.

In conclusion of my opening sequence to my film I do feel like that I did succeed in engaging my audience, and I don't think there is much else I should have done to make this engaging, I included small but subtle hints to the narrative including the money and a few twists from early in the story, like the change in authority between the characters, Then having the cliffhanger of the man leaving at the end will want the audience to know more about the film coming up making people stay engaged.

For my film I made a poster for my film that would help my film to get distributed on a high scale here is an image of my poster.

In my poster I have added details to the poster that can help link towards the film and what it may be about, here is an annotation of my poster below showing what i did to make this poster engage the the audience, wanting them to go and watch the film for themselves.

The company that produced my film is Sony pictures that was found d back in 1998. The reason that I have chose this film company to produce my film is because they are quite a big company which will help distribute, especially as they make their own TV’s a phones and laptops etc. on the boxes of these products they can promote the film with images from the film so that they will be more visible to people making people want to know more about the film. Using the newer media as well as the traditional media will help spread to a younger audience as well as an older audience. 

The reason I have also chose this production company is because they have produced multiple thrillers which are like my film. They have made films like escape room, baby driver which are thrillers too and relate to my film with baby driver relating to crime and conflict within the film whereas escape room places into the start of the film with the man trying to escape, so as Sony have made well made thrillers in the past and have had a audience come back to watch their films they would do a good job at producing this one.

Like I have talked about previously with marketing and distributing my film I would purely focus on using newer types of media to help sell my film to my targeted audience which are 16-17 year old males. As the plotifation of hardware and content is becoming more accessible to young people today creating social media profiles for my film is a smart move as it is free to do so and more people will see it especially if their algorithm of what they like matches with them, which will help get the film through to them which they can then share on stories and send to friends worldwide, which Sony already have their own technology which makes it easier for them to spread around without paying a third party company to help promote their films which results in less money spent. As i have mentioned previously having a cinematic release for the film gives the audience the chance to have a cinematic experience to enjoy the film more which generates profit for the company which can then due to the success of the film can allow them to start making merch for the film and even making limited edition DVD Steelbooks for the film for the die hard fans. Here is a design for a steelbook of my film also having it in a cinema for a limited time means that people have to go and see it quick before they can't see it again drawing more people into watch it during that time period.

 After the films released after the cinematic period Sony can then start making deals with streaming services like Netflix to have it on their streaming service which could help netflix gain more subscribers and generate more money for their company. This is also following the Distribution chain, because having a long gap between the cinema release and then the physical limited release creates a high amount of demand for the product once its released. Lot of films tend to do this for the die hard fans but also a way of generating more income for the company. 

for example 'Spiderman No way home' released in 2021 which is also produced by Sony. This shows that we are following the certain types of ideas that the film company tend to follow with their films. A second example of a film that we used a lot of inspiration of their film to help me was 'Nobody' released in 2021 also produced by the same company Sony pictures then had a limited edition steelbook for the fans like spiderman and my film.

CCR TASK 1 does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?

 Here is a powerpoint which I made to talk about the conventions which I either use of went against in the process of making my opening sequence.

Post production part 2

When it came to editing later on in the week there were a few changes that we decided as a group in the narrative and the order. The main one was at the very start of the sequence we showed the tied up hands first and then showed close ups of the container a bit later on, we decided to change this around as we thought revealing that there is someone tied up straight away is quite a shock and kind of gives away the plot instantly. We also changed the order when the radio player starts to skip to show the villains reaction first rather than a close up of the radio.

when creating the tension in our opening we used a diegetic sound effect of Jazz music playing on the radio player, adding a contrapuntal theme to the scene which in a way made it more scary to watch. Also showing the close ups of the weapons at the beginning with the blood on them allowed a sense of worry as why do these weapons all have blood on them. Lastly when the villain comes to choosing a weapon, we show the shot of the weapon in the foreground and the victim in the background foreshadowing that this is meant for him and showing them to the victim is a way to try and see which one the victim would prefer like he's giving him an option of what he wants to be beat with, which creates a creepy tone to the sequence.

I feel like that our target audience would want to keep watching for multiple reasons, one i think the action in this scene with the victim being beaten up, i feel like the audience will want to know the story of this man and what he has done to be here. Another reason i think is showing the victim at the end taking the money with him, as again the audience would want to know his reason behind taking the money with him. Lastly i think the choice of the colour mixed in with a thriller is an interesting take, which has an appeal to the audience watching.

When it came to choosing names for the opening we wanted to include the actors real names so we could show there hard work and let them be known to the audience the same went for when we did the crew names, as there was only four of us in the group we had to come up with a few extra names, for example one actor we called Jonathan Shute which i came up with as this is a person i personally know who was the first person to ever get me into filmmaking, so it felt right to credit him and show how far i've come. Another name I used was Finn Rauh for the music production as my cousin makes music and thought again it would be nice to credit someone close to me. For the others we used mixes of our middle names and random last name like Theo Louvard etc. For the name of our group we came up with the name Crystal house at random and really liked it.

Sound i think out of the whole editing process took the most time to try and prefect, The main issue we faced was after adam was hit on the foot with the hammer the scream was distorted which sadly there wasn't a way that we could fix it but to help the issue we lowered the volume a bit. The only other issue i could think that we had was when it came to making the radio player sart to mess up, aas it took a lot of time to repeat the sound, and make it sound realistic. 

We did include a diegetic soundtrack which the actors are hearing as it makes the scene feel more immersive and adding the reverb onto the music made it more ambient and in the room creating a realistic tone to the audience. We did not need any special effects in our sequence other than one at the end of the sequence when Adam is walking out and the camera exposes to a white screen to make it seem like he hasn't seen daylight in a long time.

Overall i think the finished outcome of our opening sequence looks incredible and i don't think there is much I would have done differently but that's not to say there's room for improvement i do think we could have had a few more nice looking shots like maybe from over adams shoulder looking at Ali. Another thing i think we could have done better was the pictures on the wall as i feel like you can tell they are really young i think if we had pictures of older people it may have looked a bit better. But I think the aesthetic of the scene looks cool and gives a light aspect to the dark realism of the scene taking place.

 

post production part 1

 When it came to the editing part of our media sequence, as a group we went through all the rushes from the shoot day and put the shots we liked the most into a rough timeline to start structuring our work, when reviewing the footage it was fun to watch and see our idea on the screen but there were parts which we felt like could have been done a bit better and added a few more shots. 

Throughout reviewing the footage I did realise a few mistakes that our group did make when shooting the film. The main one i realised was some shots seemed to be quite shaky on the review, but that problem was mainly caused from not being on a completely level surface in the container. Another issue i realised when looking at the footage was a continuity error with the antennae on top of the radio which in some shots was up but then in some other ones was fallen over on its side.

When it came to starting to put the final cut together we made a separate timeline called cut 1 we separated this from the log so we could go back to the rough structure to see how we originally planned out the opening. we started with the footage with Ali turning on the radio player at the start of the scene then also started where to show Adam.

Early choices we made when starting to edit was that we wanted to show adam subtly without giving it up instantly, which is why we have the first shot of the sequence of Adams hands tied up in barbed wire. Another early choice we had was to have lots of close ups in the sequence as it is able to give a more dramatic sense especially when showing the weapons in our scene. We didn't change any of our concept idea at the start of the edit s everything seemed to flow quite nicely.

One choice that we made for the editing process was to show parts of the container all in close, as it helps show the titles and lets us focus on gory parts of the set which might tie in later in the film. The second choice we made was to use Jazz music as a diegetic sound effect in the sequence as it is contrapuntal to the scene.