AUDIENCE FEEDBACK

here is the REACTION CAM video of our audience feedback video.

in this we showed our piece to the WHOLE class and asked for feedback whilst videoing them hehehehehe.

you can find it at lydia earl's blog here.

LINK TO PREZI

If that embedding was not for you, which I can understand, here is a link.

oh happy day here is my prezi

EVALUATION

here is my evaluation that I did on the site PREZI,

a site that I would not applaud for efficience as it takes forever to do, and not very user-friendly.

happy reading!

DAISY CONWAY MEDIA EVALUATION G3323(or whatever) on Prezi

OUR FINAL PIECE

happy watching!

FINAL OTS

here is our final piece, which you can find at my team mate Lydia Earl's blog
HAPPY WATCHING

SOUND EFFECTS + NON COPYRIGHTED MUSIC.

For our film, which is in the film noir styley, we will be including some music, typically jazz, and because we had a gunshot involved we will be including a gunshot scene, we will of course be needing a gunshot noise. Because of our lacking of a working gun or the ability to play the sax or piano, we needed the use of a special effects CD. From what I hear, an old student's father used to work at the BBC, in the editing department, and he gave a heck of special effects and non copyrighted CDs to the school. Thank you, good sir. After searching long and hard for the right music we chose a plinky plonky piano number - which is quite unsettling. To make it even more unsettling, we put this weird eery screeching noise underneath - it doesn't sound quite as weird as it...sounds. We also chose a gun noise - now I can't be certain if the shot noise if suited to our plastic gun, but hopefully noone will notice that. This brings me to the subject of foley artists - ie. the people who find the noise to suit the situation. Whilst on a media trip to New York, we were taught about these and I discovered that to make the noise of a foot step in the snow they put custard powder in a bag and squeeze it! The thought of that actually makes me quite queasy, but more interestingly, they showed us a clip from titanic where a barrell falls over mid ship sinking, and the sound for it is actually a lion's roar backwards! I wonder where they came up with the idea to use that? I couldn't find a clip of this (thanks, copyright), but here is a shot of the scene, and you can see the big barrell starting to tip.

BIGGER PICTURE RESEARCH

I have become quite addicted to blogging these past few days I'll have you know! So I finally went and had a look at the Bigger Picture Research website, a blog written by freelance writer and researcher specialising in film, and on it, there's pretty much everything about everything. Having looked at the quality and depth of his posts, I don't know when this man finds time to eat or sleep or go to the toilet. A post in particular that interested me was the UK Cinema Admissions 2009; which shows how many people have been going to the cinema in the past year, and as it turns out it has gone up by 5.6%, meaning it is the busiest year since 2002, and December saw the highest sales of tickets since 2005 - was this caused by blockbuster Avatar?

UPDATE - IT'S FINISHED.

Today, we are sorting the wheat from the chaff, and I think we have finished our film PRAISE JESUS. We have managed to get rid of what grinds my gears - see WHAT GRINDS MY GEARS post to find out what was bugging me about our film - we sorted out the hug (kind of, somethings just cannot be fixed), sorted out the gun shot, special effects issue by cutting pre-gunshot and moving the bang noise to the next shot. This also gave it a bit of mystery - did he actually get shot? We made the slow mo shot a bit less cheesey by getting rid of the scream - a special effects CD scream - because it sounded absolutely ridiculous. I feel a lot better about this now. Phew. We also removed some scenes from the walking around - minimising camera jiggle. We also removed one scene from where she is putting her make up on, and cut it down - I think the indoors scenes, where she is putting her make up on were too long, especially the part where she was putting her lipstick on - I often find myself waiting for this shot to end whilst I am watching it,although I have watched it more times than I have had hot dinners. Currently we are asking people for their feedback, in time to make any last changes, and my finished piece will soon be hitting my blog near you. AND ALSO, next week me and 11 other privileged members of my media are doing a short week long course with a local media pro, David Lloyd (who also helped out whilst I was doing Media BTEC to film a short animation piece that went on to win, among others from our BTEC group at a local animation festival), where we will be filming another short film - so keep your eyes peeled for when that features on my blog!

CONTINUITY TASK EVALUTATION

As you can see from my post before, featuring the continuity task IT IS FAR FROM PERFECT. The aim of the continuity task was to show and be able to film good continuity; which is when the shots 'blend together'; for example, if you had a shot of someone wearing a pink jumper in one shot and then in the next shot they were wearing a blue jumper that would be bad continuity. For example, have a look on this site: Movie Mistakes. Our task is good continuity-wise, but the content is NOT SO GOOD... well, it was only supposed to be a quick task to show we know how to use a camera. We had some technical issues, for example, the camera struggled to pick up the glamourous actresses voices, and we filmed without a camera, so it is kind of shaky - we can justify this by saying it is the point of view of her stalker, and the camera of life, or our point of view is shaky but we are used to it.

CONTINUITY TASK

HELLO THIS IS OUR CONTINUITY TASK.

WHAT TO CALL OUR FILM?

We struggled with what to name our film noir. They are normally quite elusive - i.e. you haven't got a clue what the film is about, apart from the fact that I have informed you they are famous 'film noir' films. For example, The Blue Dahlia - what springs to mind? I'll be honest, not much, apart from the question what exactly is a Dahlia? Maybe I will find out in the film...so now you have people hooked in. Like all the great film noir before us we decided to also have an elusive name. We were informed by Miss Moore, that film noir titles including a main character of a femme fatale, often have one very feminine word mixed with a very dark, contrasting word - par exemple, Angels with Dirty Faces, which after IMDBing it doesn't sound like such a great film, but is a good example of a title. Miss Moore suggested we get on t'thesaurus and find alternative words for words like women; which was the worst search we did, as the results were poor, such as 'seawoman'. Not exactly film noir material. We also searched the word violence which came up with a much more successful search - and stealing inspiration from  Touch of Evilvoted number 4 on IMDB's top 50 film noir titles, we came up with the title Touch Of Vehemence, meaning a touch of violence.

UPDATE. WHAT REALLY GRINDS MY GEARS ABOUT OUR FILM.

In this post I will be telling you pretty much how our project is going so far. So far, it is going alright. We have finished filming, and neearly finished editing and the titles are on the film. I think the film just needs some polishing - for example, at the end of the film we have a shot where the gun drops to the floor in slow mo. I am not too keen on this shot as it just looks cheesy as hell, and is also bad quality - and the gun broke on the first attempt so we could not attempt to film it again. Also there is a part where we shoot the man in question, and because we are slightly lacking in the special effects department the gun goes bang and nothing happens. I think we could before the trigger is completely pulled and let the bang go in the next shot.  I think there are some errors that detract from the quality of the film - for example, we used a tripod for the reshoot of our film, but we didnae use one for the first shot. This makes it annoying as hell to watch - one minute it is shaky and then the next it is not. I don't know if I notice this more than the examiner will because I have watched the film going on a million times. I don't think there is much to do about this other than a full blown remix and frankly we are running out of time. I think we can sort out the errors such as the cheesiness and I will get on that.

RESHOOT - HOW SHOULD I SAY HELLO?

We recently decided to reshoot our media following feedback from members of our media class ( you can see this feedback on Lydia's blog, who you can find at http://lydiaearlasmedia.blogspot.com/), so we went out and reshot again, adding on our extra bit, which you can see your 'storyboard' for in my previous post. We had previously tried to film another evening but it was just too rainy so there was noooooo way. One part we struggled with for our film was how there were to greet eachother when they met - all of our hugs were just looking a bit too matey. If you do not know what a matey hug looks like, please see the picture on the right. If our femme fatale was trying to kill this man, I do not think she would be that pleased to see him. Anyway, as a rule a femme fatale should be alluring and aloof. We then asked her to not hug back when he hugged her - this just looked ridiculous, frankly. We then suggested they peck each other on the cheek - this looked even more ridiculous as they kept having an awkward 'WHICH CHEEK AM I KISSING?' moment. We then suggested she shoot him on sight. This also looked daft. So we were brought right back to square one qand decided to go with a hug, but cut it so it looked a bit more lingering, and alluring, rather than full-on and friendly.

RESHOOT 1

We discovered we had a number of problems with our footage; the footage was too dark, it was wobbly and we even had my other teaaaaaaam members in the background.
We also decided to add some new shots - a scene where our femme fatale meets her prey, I won't reveal tooooo much now.

Here are some pictures we took as a storyboard for our new scene.

This is our first shot from our new sequence - This shows the character of the femme fatale walking towards the man.

This next shot is of the femme fatale approaching the man she is going to meet - she goes in for a greeting embrace.

This next image is of the femme fatale arming herself with her 'weapon', which in our film will be a gun, instead of a screwdriver, whilst still embracing her gentleman.

This next image is a shot of the femme fatale going to stab the man she met that evening - this is where we will end our film.

FEMME FATALE.

In our media product there is one character and one character only - and she will be a typical femme fatale. The conventions of a typical femme fatale is that she is the 'anti-heroine'.  She would normally be mysterious, duplicitous, subversive, double-crossing, gorgeous, unloving, predatory, tough-sweet, unreliable, irresponsible, manipulative and desperate women. Usually, the male protagonist in film noir wished to elude his mysterious past, and had to choose what path to take.goInvariably, the choice would be an overly ambitious one, to follow the dangerous but desirable wishes of these dames. It would be to follow the goadings of the traitorous, self-destructive femme fatale who would lead the struggling, disillusioned, and doomed hero into committing murder or some other crime of passion coupled with twisted love. When the major character was a detective or private eye, he would become embroiled and trapped in an increasingly-complex, convoluted case that would lead to fatalistic, suffocating evidences of corruption, irresistible love and death. The femme fatale, who had also transgressed societal norms with her independent and smart, menacing actions, would bring both of them to a downfall.

Dita Von Teese is a pefect example of a mordern day, real-life femme fatale. It is obvious she has adopted style from this style of character.

We will be styling our character much like Dita von Teese in this picture in the left - red lips, pale skin - very much classic glamour.

CAMERA EFFECTS

because we are doing our short product in the film noir styley, we are going to put some effects onto our product to make it look more dark. I have been looking at films where they use colour effects in an interesting way. For example, the film Hard Candy, where the colours of the surroundings change according to the main character, Hayley's mood. When she is angry, the reds in the room become very exaggerated, like in the picture shown, but when she is calm, the rooms return to their normal colours. We will look to use a similar exaggerated reds effect on our product, but our budget is limited. This means we may just have to stick with changing the contrast on our product or start using final cut.

CONVENTIONS OF YOUTH DRAMA

Youth dramas often tackle youth issues, whilst trying to keep the porgramme lighthearted. These issues often include; sex, drugs, alcohol, romance, fashion, friendships, relationships and love. Examples of these programmes include: skins, shameless, hollyoaks, misfits, waterloo road, coming of age. trinity, waterloo road, being human, hex, grange hill and doctor who. These programmes often try to be provocative, and portray adults as 'the evil'. They are often very high-fashion and lead the way in relation to music. We will try to include some of these features in our product.

CONVENTIONS OF FILM NOIR

'film noir' literally translates to black film.  It was coined by French film critics and was used to describe how dark and moody many American crime and detective films looked at that time, around the 1940s and 50s.
Fear, mistrust, bleakness, loss of innocence, despair and paranoia are common themese in film noir, and the triumph of evil is also a common motif. Film noir often uses the 'anti-hero', a criminal, violent, misogynistic, hard-boiled, or greedy man. These protagonists were often morally-ambiguous low-lifes from the dark and gloomy underworld of violent crime and corruption. Distinctively, they were cynical, tarnished, obsessive (sexual or otherwise), brooding, menacing, sinister, sardonic, disillusioned, frightened and insecure loners (usually men), struggling to survive - and in the end, ultimately losing. It optimised a time of the Cold War period when many people thought the world was against them, and at the same time in ruin. The females in film noir were either of two types (or archetypes) - dutiful, reliable, trustworthy and loving women; or femmes fatales - mysterious, duplicitous, double-crossing, gorgeous, unloving, predatory, tough-sweet, unreliable, irresponsible, manipulative and desperate women. Usually, the male protagonist in film noir wished to elude his mysterious past, and had to choose what path to take (or have the fateful choice made for him).


Invariably, the choice would be an overly ambitious one, to follow the dangerous but desirable wishes of these dames. It would be to pursue the goadings of a traitorous, self-destructive femme fatale who would lead the struggling, disillusioned, and doomed hero into committing murder or some other crime of passion coupled with twisted love. When the major character was a detective or private eye, he would become embroiled and trapped in an increasingly-complex, convoluted case that would lead to fatalistic, suffocating evidences of corruption, irresistible love and death. The femme fatale, who had also transgressed societal norms with her independent and smart, menacing actions, would bring both of them to a downfall. We will be using these three stereotypes in our own film noir production, but using the point of view of one of the female characters to put a new spin on it.

Source://www.filmsite.org/filmnoir.html

CONCEPTS FOR OUR PRODUCT.

My groupmates, Danielle Bissmire and Lydia Earl and me recently brainstormed ideas for our film noir piece. We decided we would combine typical conventions of film noir with conventions of a youth drama. Doing this would enable us to film our piece with a lot less difficulty. This way we could include people of our age in the product rather than having my dad in the starring role. It would also make it easier to come up with ideas, seeing as we know what popular teen issues are, but putting a darker, more dramatic twist on the typical youth drama.  One of our biggest changes to the typical film noir is that our main character will be most likely a girl. This will make it easier, especially when sourcing actors to star in our product, however, she will have the typical attitude of the protoganist of film noir, meaning she will be a loner, dark moody, etc. Our main poltline ideas are a love triangle, from the point of view of the femme fatale or the home maker. This will put a different spin on the typical concept,. However, as always in film noir, evil will triumph.

CINEMA LISTINGS:BRISTOL

Ms. Humpleby recently set us homework to pick a city and find out what films are showing there. I chose Bristol, which is home to NINE cinemas, of which about 2 or 3 show independent and cult films.
The Cinema De Lux, based within the Cabot Circus shopping centre is currently showing:

• Alvin and The Chipmunks 2: The Squeakuel
• An Education
• Astro Boy
• Avatar
• Avatar 3D
• Book of Eli 1
• Edge of Darkness
• Invictus
• Last Station
• Lovely Bones
• My Name Is Khan 12A
• Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief
• Ponyo (Gake no ue no Ponyo)
• Precious
• Princess and the Frog
• Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll
• Sherlock Holmes
• Single Man
• Up in the Air
• Valentine’s Day
• Wolfman
• Youth in Revolt

So, all in all, quite a few films, 23 to be precise. I decided to look at listings from an alternative cinema aswell - which I imagine will be showing a lot less films. I looked at listings from the Watershed House - which has been reviewed as 'an independent cinema that shows film that are harder to find'
 Here are the films they are showing over the next week:

• A Single Man
• Ponyo
• Food, Inc
• The Last Station
• Micmacs
• Capitalism: A Love Story
• El Mariachi
• Decalogue 2000: Dancer in the Dark

As you can see, the Watershed cinema is showing only 8 films, compared to the Cinema De Lux's 23. However, the Watershed are showing a broader range of films, including films from the oast, and subtitled films.