Final video

We edited and added more scenes, to make sure the video was intelligible to our audience. During this process, we had to use a different camera called ‘Panasonic SDR S45’ as we were not able to use our originally used camera. Using the new camera ‘Panasonic SDR S45’ did not affect the quality of the scenes but instead, it made the boarder smaller than the rest of the video. When editing we made sure to change the border to its original size; so the different scenes were able to flow well during the transition to the next scene. However, even when we changed it into its normal frame size, it still contained a horizontal line of border at the bottom. We tried to remove the horizontal border at the bottom, but failed to do so. This is a result of using two different cameras. Thus, in the future I have to make sure to use the same camera for all the scenes, so the same problem does not arise again.  

On the other hand, I feel that over all our video was well shot and edited because we used a variety of different camera shots/angling, transitions, effects. The actors and actress also contributed to make the video successful. 

Final draft & Analysis

By showing this draft to a niche group of our target audience, we were able to receive some positive comments, as well as criticisms for our draft video. Some of the criticisms were that at the beginning, the font made the overall video look unprofessional. When Ethan was talking before the flash back of his nightmare, the audience were not able to hear his dialogue as it was too quite. In addition, during the over the shoulder view of Ethan, his face was supposed to be blurry at the start and then focus when he starts saying his dialogue; however the process of being blurry and focus happened twice.

By getting these feedbacks, we are able to improve our final video. In the final video, we will be using font that looks more professional. Moreover, we will have to make the audio louder, which will enable the audience to understand what is happening. In the over the shoulder scene, we will have to make sure to cut out one of the blurry and focus part because if we do not take out one of this then it will very sloppy. Furthermore, we will be adding some scenes to make sure that the audience will be able to understand what is going on. Also, we will be changing some editing to make it less confusing for our audience to understand what is going on in the scene.

However, near the end of the video we decided to keep some of the editing the same. The editing we decided to keep the same is when the colour changes, during a black and white (memory) scene. This is because the change of the colour empathise Eva’s split personality. This clearly shows how Eva’s split personality; Evie is trying to overtake Eva’s life.       

Evaluation 7

https://prezi.com/ucez7x9jjud1/as-you-can-see-our-preliminary-task-video-and-our-final-vide/

I have recorded this evaluation as a podcast. I uploaded this podcast in prezi. 

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the product?

As you can see our preliminary task video and our final video looks very different from each other because throughout the process of making our final opening, we learnt how an actual professional video should contain in terms of how editing/transitions are used. Not only that, we needed to take in account of what angles we included in certain scenes and the quality of shots used. When referring back to our preliminary video, I realised that the shots were quite unstable making the whole video look amateur and have poor quality. For my opening, near the beginning there is a scene of Ethan walking upstairs where I used my hand to move the camera. This scene looked quite stable as I was able to keep the camera steady whereas, for the preliminary task you can see how unstable the video was even if it was supposed to be kept in one angle without having to move the camera. This shows how I was able to focus on the small factors in the video to make it look professional.

We also, edited or shot some scenes at certain times to create atmosphere in the scene. For example, for the nightmare scene we had to shoot at a specific time to make the scene look dark but not too dark therefore, giving the scene an eerie atmosphere and creating tension which entertained the audience. However, in our preliminary task we didn’t focus on the lighting and this was one of the main factors which made the video look horrible as the plot was quite serious but the lighting doesn’t relate with the atmosphere making it look messy. Besides that, the actors weren’t acting properly because they were smiling in some scenes, especially when they were supposed to be serious making the video look messy.Adding onto that, this time around we made sure to focus on the costumes as well because it could affect the way, the video is presented. For instance, the costume has to represent the character’s personality as this technique is used in main-stream movies to show what the personality of the character is like. 

Not forgetting on the transitions, how the preliminary video’s transitions looked more like a slide show rather than a movie’s transitions as main-stream movies rarely put those kinds of transitions because it doesn’t look appropriate to have those kinds of transitions in a movie. By taking this into account, we have prevented using those kinds of transitions as we are aware how the video won’t looks as good as the main-stream movies; as our main target is to make the movie look like a main-stream movie.  

Evaluation 6

What have you learnt about technology from the process of constructing this product?

In the process of making the movie, we had used a variety of hardware, software and Internet sites. When using these tools to make the video, I had learnt various things while playing around with these elements to see which factor is best suited for the scene.

We have used a range of hardware such as ‘Samsung NX300 camera’, Manfrotto pixi mini tripod and microphone from the laptop (Toshiba). When using ‘Samsung NX300 camera’, we were able to zoom in and out without any problems. We were able to change the setting of how bright or dark you wanted the shot to look. The camera has a function to choose either ‘Manual Focus (MF)’ or ‘Auto Focus (AF)’, MF is when you personally turn the focus into blurriness either the background or the foreground but when you select the AF it automatically focuses mostly the foreground for you. When I had to choose between these two options, I picked the MF because it would be easier for me to focus in and out of the background. This is because we wanted the scene to look interesting rather than just scenes which included different shots of focused background and foreground. Therefore, to make the scene entertaining, we put together both focus of background and foreground together without having two different shots for it. Manfrotto pixi mini tripod is used to keep our camera still. We weren’t able to find a big tripod, so we decided to use this on instead. While using this tripod we faced with some problem such as not being able to keep the camera in the same height as the character. So, to overcome this problem we used either low angle or high angle where the actor is sitting down on the floor. This made it easier to keep the camera steady as I didn’t have to carry the camera in my hand, which would have made the scenes unstable. Not only that, when we had to shoot the medium shots I made that scene as a point of view so even if it was a bit instable it wouldn’t have matter that much as it’s from a point of view, but I had to make sure not to make the scene too shaky. Also, at the beginning of the scene, when Ethan was going up the stairs I had to move the tripod and the camera along the way he was walking towards and it was quite hard to pan when using the tripod as the red button to move the camera around was quite strong; making the pan scene have the stopping effect. Therefore, I didn’t use any scenes with had panning. In my opining, this scene was the hardest because I had to make sure the scene wasn’t unstable. Lastly, I used microphone from my laptop to record the breathing sound of Ethan when he was running in the nightmare. The breathing sound didn’t sound too bad as I had made sure there was no sound at the background.

Not only that, we has also used a range of Software: Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2014, IMovie, Garage band, Photoshop and voice recorder to make our movie. We had edited the video by using ‘Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2014’ and ‘IMovie’, we has used two different app to edit the video because we had two apps for editing and we wanted to perceive how these apps worked and find out what it is able to provide us terms of having different editing elements such as video transitions and effects. Garage band is used to produce the background music for our video. This is one of the main elements, which would make the video more appealing by creating suspense because in all the suspense scenes background music is used to create a certain atmosphere to make the audience feel entertained. Without the background music our video would look boring as it would be hard to deliver the suspense atmosphere without the background music. This factor is related to all the main-stream movies which would be tedious if the background music isn’t added. We had used Photoshop to create our logo for our production, ‘Big Dreams Production’. By making our logo we were able to make any kind of thriller based movie because we didn’t have to find a specific production which mostly releases thriller-psychological based movie. This means we didn’t have to waste time on searching for the right production. Even thought, making the production logo took long it was worth it as we can easily say that this production only releases thriller-psychological based movies similar to our own movie. Finally, we used a voice recorder to record the breathing sound because the actual audio for the video wasn’t too clear because of the noises for the background (aeroplane) and the wind.

Lastly, I have used computer software and internet sites to publish the work I had been doing: Blogger, Prezi, YouTube, Microsoft word, Microsoft Excel. I have used Microsoft word to type all my work and amend it when it’s needed and Microsoft Excel was used to collect all the results from my questionnaire and turn it into pie charts. This made it easier for me to analyse what my target audience actually preferred to watch. Blogger was the most important one out of all elements listed above because it is a website, which I used to publish all my coursework, which included all the evaluations and videos. Prezi was used to make the evaluations/information look interesting as it has a different format/layout than the one blogger had, which looked quite dull. I had used YouTube to search for the trailers for the movies I had evaluated and also, for the research to give us an idea of what our background music should sound like.         

Evaluation 5

My part only: 

One of the main reasons why the audience would continue to watch the movie even after the opening ends is because of the story as it catches the audience’s attention from the beginning. As this story is based on a psychological illness, we have to make sure that the background music matches with the atmosphere because in movies like this one such as ‘Insomnia’ contains a lot of background music which is used to create suspense and mystery. This means we have to be careful when choosing our own background music. We mostly used our own background music, which we created in garage band, so we are able to express the atmosphere/feelings more efficiently. Not only that, the editing will also make the audience feel entertained because if we don’t take our time in editing then it will make the video look very tedious as the video won’t look professional or even like a movie. Therefore, the video will be very unpleasant for the audience to watch and they will feel as if they are forced to watch the opening.

For this reason, we have spent a lot of time on our editing and the background music to make it enjoyable for the audience to enjoy it. However, we have to make sure to not go overboard with editing because when editing the video needs to look realistic and like a movie. This means that adding too much transition and effect on the shots will make the movie look childish, so we have to make sure the effects and transitions are effective and reasonable for that particular scene.

When showing the opening to my audience, they said that the video looked quite scary especially the nightmare part. This means our opening was a success as it made them were eager to know what would happen next and what would happen at the end. However, there were some negative feedbacks which were to keep the camera steady as some of our shots were wobbly particularly where the protagonist walks up the stairs in the beginning. This was because we had to physically hold the camera steady and moves it when the protagonist was walking towards the camera without using the tripod. Thus next time if I was to make another video I will have to make sure to keep the camera steady either by using another type of technique such as using point of view shot, so that even if it’s quite wobbly it would be acceptable as point of view shots are quite unsteady.         

Evaluation 4

Evaluation 3

http://mingma_jb56731ec786fa2.edu.glogster.com/glog-from-gb-dec-17-2015/

First of all, media institutions are major companies who distribute and market media products such as movies, music video, TV programmes and many more to their audience. Some examples of media institution include channels like ‘BBC’, ‘Film4’, and ‘CNN’. The production companies are in charge of finding the right director and actors/actresses for their certain shows/movies they feature. Not only that they have to check if the setting is maintained properly because they wouldn’t want their actors/actress to get hurt as they have to be responsible if they get hurt.

Our movie will be distributed by major film studio because there are a lot of advantages of choosing this distribution, one of the main reasons is because by using the distribution company’s name the movie will gain more popularity than being independent. As it will be promoting the movie in a way and if we were to choose an independent film studio it would have been hard to make awareness or gain popularity in the mass market especially to our specific target audience as there will most definitely be other new movies we need to compete against. Therefore, having a major film studio will be less time consuming for us to make sure people are aware of the movie. Not only that, we will be financially stable as there will be more investors who would want to put their money in a movie who is backed up by a major film studio as they are more reliable in terms of being successful in the future. We have chosen ‘Paramount Pictures’ as our distribution company because out of all the other major film studio, Paramount Picture would be the best option for the movie as it features a lot of thriller movies such as ‘Mission: Impossible-Ghost Protocol’, ‘G.I: Joe’, ‘Iron man 2’ and many other popular thriller genre movies.

In my opinion, Film 4 would be a great channel to put my movie on because this channel has a lot of different genre movies: horror (Insidious: Chapter 2), Thriller (Shutter Island), Comedy (Kick-Ass), Romance (Hairspray). This means that people who prefer to watch this type of genre would be introduced to our movie; when they are just flicking through channels and come to this channel to see what’s on. This would mean we would be attracting more audience, which would increase the movies popularity.

I would most likely use social media to promote our movie as it will be quicker and inexpensive/free to advertise in social media. Social media is used by mostly everyone, that too worldwide this means when advertising our movie people from other countries will also be able to see the advertisement; targeting mass audience from all around the word. From my research, I found out that ‘Facebook’ is one of the top social media used all around the world with the estimation of 1.1 billion users. In second place is ‘Twitter’ with the estimation of 310 million users. From this data I will make sure that ‘Facebook’ will be my first priority to advertise our movie on, I could also use twitter to advertise our movie if I want to spread more awareness about our movie. Trailer will be published in YouTube as its one of the most used app for people to watch movie trailers. In addition, if I was to invest money in social media for advertisement then I would probably ask ‘KingBach’ to promote the movie as he is one of the most famous viners, with 5.6million followers in Instagram and around 5.4million people liking his Facebook page.  Therefore, using him to promote will increase the popularity of our even more as he has a lot of followers all around the world. This means there are possibility of his fans going and watching the movie.

Lastly, I feel that making this movie straight into DVD wouldn’t be the best decision to make because now days people prefer to watch movies in cinema rather than buy a DVD and watch it there. This means releasing the movie on DVD would be useless and unprofitable. Whereas, releasing it in cinema would at least gain some popularity as it will be displayed and people would know about the movie.  Therefore, realising the movie in cinema would be better than DVD but later on we could release it on DVD for people would like collecting DVDs.