Audience Theory + Terms you want to know!

Audience- Best understood as a catergory rather than a being. Being part of an audience is something we 'slip-in and out of', It is part of who we are, but does not capture or define us, or how we think. Each audience member will consume the media in a different way.

Demongraphics- The facts about a population as used in government, marketting or opinion research. Commonly-used demographics incled:

*Race
*Age
*Income
*Mobility (in terms of travel time to work or number of vehicles avaliable)
*Educational attainment
*Home ownership
*Employment Status
*Location

Psychographics- are based on opinions, likes, dislikes, their desires to fulfil human needs, as opposed to demographics of a group of people are based on facts.

Convergence- The coming togetheer of previously seperate industries (computing, printing, film, audio etc.) which increasingly use the same or related tech. E.g. Phone with a camera

Synergy- Large corporations developing merchandise related to products.

Conglomerate- A large company that consists of divisions of seemingly unrelated businesses.

Continuity editing- For example: one person walks out of a door (out of scene) walking into another scene straight after so seems like invisible editing.

The Hypodermic Needle Model- Dating from the 1920s, this theory was the first attempt to explain how mass audiences might react to mass media. It suggests that audiences passively receive the information transmitted via a media text, without any attempt on their part to process or challenge the data. This is called unmediated information.

Uses and gratifications- During the 1960s, as the first generation to grow up with television became grown ups, it became increasingly apparent to media theorists that audiences made choices about what they did when consuming texts.

Our Media Film

This is the final version of our media film!!! It's been a long few months but it is finally done and dusted! So please Enjoy!!! :D

Titles Everywhere!!! :O

So, in order to find out where the title would look best in our film, I tried moving it around and seeing where the titles looked best. As even though I personally liked it at the end the most I had to try it in different places just to be sure that my judgement was correct. By doing this, I asked lots of people about where they thought the title looked best and they had agreed that it does in fact look best at the end.
Here are the other test runs of the title places!

I hope that you will also agree that the titles do look best at the end, as I think it helps create an Enigma Code, and makes you think 'I really want to watch the rest of this film' This way by having the titles at the end, the name stays fresh in your mind!

I studied a few title openings by looking through youtube (mainly horror openings) and also looked at this website:
http://www.artofthetitle.com/ Which is great to find out about different styles of sequences!!!

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (I.e. of film openings)

There are many forms and conventions of horror films, for instance:
*Blood
*Graveyards
* Last Woman Standing (when the female character is left to the end of the film, still living)
*Male Killer
To see more horror conventions please do look at this post that is based on it: http://www.http://lewisnaomiasmedia.blogspot.com/2011/02/so-what-scares-you.html/

However there are many more horror convetions but the select ones here and on the other posts were the ones that were suggested by my class mates as to what scares them and what makes a horror movie scary for them.

Horror films that I studied for ideas for our film:
Psycho- Psycho is a 1960 Horror | Mystery | Thriller which was directed by Alfred Hitchcock (who made many other great films, including horrors such as The Birds) Now I absolutely love this film because it has a lot of typical horror conventions however, even though it is considered a horror, it is more pyschological than anything else, which is why it was a good film to study in terms of our film, if was made in full, would have a lot of the similar elements of Psycho, as in Psycho, you can see what is going through the woman's mind and that she is getting more and more paranoid about the fact that she may be caught for stealing some money. But also, the villain is also classed as 'crazy' because at first you think he is perfectly nice but throughout the film you think that made he has a mother-complex, and that infact he would classed as a 'mummy's boy', you then start to see that the famous scene of Psycho in the shower when she gets murdered, you instantly realised that it is infact the mother who murdered her! (the scene in the shower, the blood was actually chocolate sauce but with it being a black and white film, it works perfectly. At the end, you find out suddenly that the mother has been dead and that the boy had murdered her and now was dressing up and playing her role to cope with his guilt, so in the end it was quite a twist!! That is why I really enjoyed Psycho.

Trailer:


This was the original teaser trailer for Psycho, and it was set out a little differently to how modern trailers are now made (in this, hitchcock explains what happens in the film)

The Orphanage- The Orphanage is Drama | Mystery | Thriller genre, even though isn't typical classed as 'horror' it should be, but it really great research for my film, this is because it has a lot of pyschological elements, as it is about a woman whose son has disapeared and she starts looking for him, and is convinced that a boy in a potato sack mask or a 'spirit' has taken him and she starts to work out that he used to live in the house that they are now living in, however, the mother's husband starts to worry about her and thinks that she is starting to go a bit loopy and tries to convince her to leave the house but she does not, in the end, they found out that the boy was in the house all along but had been trapped and not been able to get out so he died, and when the mother discovers this, she then overdoses, the final shot is of the woman and the child happy together with all the other children that were once living there (as it was previously an orphanage-hence the title of the film)and that in the end they will all live together in harmony, happily ever after.

Trailer:


Our film's unique selling point is the fact that it is pyschological so that it will play tricks on the audience's mind and that by doing so it won't be typical horror films, as most horror films are slasher/chase movies or supernatural things, we have decided to do a bit of mix of both, so it is a person esentially fighting with her mind, however, to fit the supernatural criteria of a horror film we have had it so that the person never dies, but is infact trapped in a mirror, unlike most horrors, most people die, however in a way this would seem more traumatic and not only are they doomed to a life of nothingness but they also get brutally hurt.

Moodboard for our film

This was the moodboard that Skye made for our film, it includes the typical horror conventions of our film such as:
*Different types of weapons
*The type of alarm clock that would be used for our film
*What sort of props such as Mirrors, alarm clocks, weapons, Broken Glass
*Locations such as Attenborough Nature Reserve, Abandoned houses

It is just a mix of some of the films that you would expect to see within our film.

Our media film edited without music

This is our media film without any music, SFX and titles, please watch,
and hope you enjoy!!

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

Throughout the making of the film (which has been pretty stressful may I add) I think we've made a lot of progress from when we first filmed in our lesson with Michael Schillinger, as now in our actual film, we have edited it, instead of filming and rewriting over the film we had until we got the scene right, as before we did our real prelim task we filmed with a camera that had a tape instead of a camera with an SD card which is a lot easier as all the clips are seperated and you can delete the ones you do not like.

First and second time of filming:
http://www.http://lewisnaomiasmedia.blogspot.com/2011/02/first-and-second-time-round.html/
We learnt how to film from different angles, and that it should not always be filmed from the same height so it would seem more realistic and professional than just looking like it's another homemade video that you would make of family holidays.
Even inbetween making our actual film and the first time we did film our prelim showed that we had in fact improved in some quality.



In our prelim, we learnt how to demonstrate:
Match On Action:

This was the example we watched to explain clearly what Match on Action was.

Shot/Reverse Shot:

This was the example that we watched in class to show a range of editing techniques but mainly demonstrating shot reverse shot.

180 Degree Rule:

This was the example we watched in class, as since it was quite difficult to understand by word of mouth, we watched this clip on youtube and afterwards me and my class were a lot more clued in what the 180 degree rule was.

What we learnt throughout the process of the filming is that expressions are very important in the film. Because depending on the characters expressions could change the view of the film completely, for instance if a character was being murdered and the victim was laughing or even so much smiling, then it would ruin the verisimilitude, and the audience would start to become uninterested whilst watching the film as they won't believe it was real in any way what so ever. Close ups are very important within films, much like expressions (they are linked together), it means the audience could become close and understand the feeling that the character is going through.

Technical Codes and Convetions
Whilst editing, I came across a lot of techniques in order to make the film better.
Chroma Keyer-Chroma key compositing is a technique for compositing two images or frames together in which a color (or a small color range) from one image is removed (made transparent), revealing another image behind it. We used this in our film, when Jenny is looking out of Olivia's window and in which she should be seeing a forest of some sort to make it seem like Olivia lives in a really eerie place, so we had to replace what was originally out in the garden into the forest that is attenborough nature reserve, as this had a lot of relevance to the story in our film.

Pan/Crop- Panning was used so that if needed at some parts we needed to zoom in but have not done it originally with the camera, it means you can slowly pan in and zoom so that it looks like the camera shot was like that originally. Cropping was so that if there was anything that we desperately needed to cdrop out, for instance a person may be in the background that was not meant to be there or a prop that wasn't meant to be there because it totally goes out the context of the film.

Mask- Masking is a process meaning that you can essentially 'cut out' the parts of the scene you want and then put a picture behind that image, then you can do so, however this is very difficult to do and takes a very long time to do in the first place as you have to re-do it all every keyframe (about 0.1 seconds) in order to get it right and show smoothly.

Desaturate- I had to use this quite a bit as in some parts it might be too sunny or too much glare so in order to make it look all the same and not have some scenes too bright and some scenes too dull, I would use the desaturate option to dull the colour a bit.

Which Fonts to use?

I chose a range of fonts that I would thought be suitable for our media film and would suit its genre. And then brought in those fonts and showed them to the rest of my team, we then did a vote on which would be the best style.

Subtitles/Credits -(Please ignore the red writing, that's so I can remember what the text was called when editing)

The one that we chose was this one:

This style of text is called Dotum Che, the reason that I liked this font was because it was very plain, but because it is a little too simple and there are quite big gaps between the lettering, it gives off the feeling of 'coldness' and is a bit spooky as well it being completely white text.

Title
Again using the same system as I did before with the subtitles (using a tally scheme to decide which one we liked the most etc), I had a range of titles which I thought may be sutiable for the horror genre.

I really did quite like this text, I thought it had a 'spooky' element and much like the font we chose for our subtitles, it had very similar qualities, for instance it was also very spaced out.

A lot of my group didn't really think this one was suitable, and in someways I do agree however I think you could relate the font to the clock at the beginning of the film, and it would seem that it would be set more in the digital age of technology than perhaps the 60's, however this font would often be associated with Sci-Fi films.

Now, A lot of my team did in fact like this one and thought it was really 'cool' and we almost ended up having it (since it's based on an majority vote, and I did have to admit the font did portray some eeriness because the letters are all different heights and sizes and much like say a randsome note letter, but however, I was a bit dubious because althought it was nice, I thought it was way to detailed and that something a bit simplier would be required, after much talking my team also agreed with me.

So this was the font we chose:

I really liked this font and thought it would be best suited for our media film as it was very simple however, with the text being all squished up it had some sort of look that it was unnatural. Also, another reason I really liked it was the fact that it looked a bit similiar to the font that is used in Psycho (without the gaps within the letters)- which is a classic horror film which directed by Alfred Hitchcock who truely is an inspiration director.

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

Technologies that I have used
What I used to produce it
YouTube- I have used YouTube so that you can post your film, and any other progress you have made during the time of making your film for instance, what the film looks like without music, your preliminary task etc. and get some feedback from it.

Facebook- You can upload statuses about your current progress throughout your film, and get people interested, you can also upload any pictures from the shoot and even the film itself, or much like youtube, upload your progress as you go through the film.

What I used to edit with
Sony Vegas- I used Sony Vegas at home instead of the mac's version of Windows Movie Maker, IMovie because I already knew how to use it, and it was able to do everything that I need to do in my film, instead of the simple just fade in and fade outs, it meant that I could control the sound, every little detail in the video, even croping and panning, also using the Chroma Keyer (green screen effect) meaning that it was a lot more advanced than other editing software.

PROS AND CONS OF THESE TECHNOLOGIES
Youtube- There are a lot of people on youtube who post very negative views for the sake of poking fun at people and purposely trying to make them feel bad, otherwise known as 'Trollers', so there is a possibility of getting negative feedback, but not constructive critiscm. The advantage of uploading it to youtube is the fact that it does go worldwide, and it is a lot easier to send to people by link then sending the actual video to each person you want to show it to.

Facebook- Facebook is useful to show your video as, it is almost likely that someone will comment on it in your friends, however a con to this is that all your friends will see it and probably have a joke about it (not being mean)but not actually seriously comment on the actual video.

Sony Vegas- Sony Vegas is truely amazing!! It is a professional software that is even used in some industries of media, and you are able to edit every little detail like sound, video, speed, pitch etc. However, if you haven't ever used Sony Vegas before, it is not recommendable for a first time user of editing, as it is very hard to get to grips with everything but after you know how to use it, it is incredibly good!!

What worked well and what problems did you encounter?
What worked well was the facebook thing, it meant that I could get a lot of feedback (which I shall post in a different post)about my film and sony vegas worked very well (even though there was some complications of the files becoming corupted so I had to start over a couple of times before I discovered a way to get around it!).

However, Youtube, even though is a GREAT way of sharing your videos, you will only get really friend's opinions, unless you have many subcribers, which can be very difficult to get as you'd probably want to have at least 50 subcribers to your channel, to get a decent amount of feedback (as not all of them reply, possibly about 1 in 5 depending on the video)

Costumes!

The costumes in our film we specific, however you wouldn't really notice as you would think it's everyday clothing.
Here was the criteria for what clothes were to be worn in the shoot:
Olivia & Jenny
*Dark colours, preferably dark red, black, dark blue etc.
*NO GREEN!!! This was very important as in one or two scenes, a green screen effect had to be used, so in order for this to work you weren't allowed to wear green (otherwise when the effect was done it'd look like you didn't have a body!!)
*Hoodies- these were good as it was a typical teenage item of clothing, since teenagers and hoodies are associated (and not always in a good light)
*Jeans- another item of clothing which tends to be associated of those of the younger generation.

Joe
*Similar criteria to Olivia and Jenny
*Bandage- this would show that he probably handles dangerous items such as Knives, Mirror shards etc and that he probably has quite a few scars on his hand.
*Hooded Coat- This is so that most of his face would be covered up and he would supicious.