Horses heAd

by harrisOn hoodAnd robin shElleyAnd steffan crystal

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

EDITING

When editing we used numerous programs, some of these are After Effects, Final Cut and Logitech SoundSytem.

The editing is a main part of the movie as it brings continuity and realism to the film.

USE OF V/O

Monologue.

My name is Tom Johnson

We chose to use voice because it is an effective way to show the thoughts inside the characters head

CAMERA WORK

We used numerous camera techniques, such as shallow depth of field and the rule of thirds.

These are both interesting shots and make the movie look intellectual, in the way we try to show our character to be.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

TEENAGERS

INTELLIGENT

SENSITIVE

PHILOSOPHICAL

NO FATHER PRESENT

We intentionally mentioned he has a father who is constantly at work to show that the character is alone when he is at home, to reinforce the fact that he is constantly in solitude.

What kind of media institutions might distribute your media product and why?

INDEPENDENT VS MAINSTREAM

The media product we created does not follow ordinary conventions in terms of genre, and the film was shot on a HD camera with a very low budget, so it is more likely to appeal to an independent distributer, like Warp Films.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

16-24

The expected audience for our media product will most likely be from the age 16-24 because any ages younger may not understand the more adult themes.

We intentionally made the character young but somewhat philosophical to attract both teens and young adults, much like the film “Brick”.

ADULT THEMES

Tom Johnson is not your typical teenager. We made him so that he could be interpreted as the quiet person in his social group.

CERTIFICATE

We believe this media product should be certificate 15+ because of the adult themes and language

How did you attract/address your audience?

ENIGMA

We chose to begin the film with a small enigma, where Tom Johnson’s silhouette is seen on a roof smoking a cigarette. This makes the audience want to see his face, the the shot afterwards shows a group of friends talking, which makes the audience wonder which person is Tom Johnson.

The second enigma is at the end of the opening where the main character is seen underneath a giant horses head, dead. This would make the audience want to know why he is dead, so they will watch the rest of the film.

SFX

Our film does not use any artificial sound effects apart from the voice over.

We recorded the voice over in an acoustic sound room, to make sure the sound quality would be of high standard.

MUSIC

For our film we got a classical piano tune, then altered the tempo and sound on Logitech Pro, then we added a drum beat on from garage band.

The music we chose for the opening scene gave a very specific atmosphere to the scene.

V/O

We got the idea of adding a voice over for our film from other films such as American PsychoAmerican Beauty, and Kickass

We added the voice over to make the audience want to know more about Tom Johnson.

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

BEING CREATIVE

We learned that being creative with the media product we created used many different technologies, both hardware and software.

FINAL CUT EXPRESS

Final cut express is a simpler version of final cut pro , it has less features and editing cuts.

AFTER EFFECTS

We used After Effects to create our title sequence and titles over the beginning of our film. We used a short clip of a cork board with screen Polaroid's to add short movie clips to the title.

CANON 5D MK2

This is a digital SLR cammera that shoots movie

It is good because it is compact, easy to work with and had HD quality

It is also good for indipendnt productions because it dose not need film or tape

LOGIC PRO AND GARAGEBAND

We found a piano song we liked, we then got one of our film crew to play it on the piano. We then put it on logic pro then looped sections and changed the tempo. We then got a sample of a drum beat from garage band and put it on the song on logic pro.

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

full product?

IMPORTANCE OF EDITING

Creating the preliminary task changed the way I thought about editing. Before, I did not think about vital rules such as match on action and 180 degree rule.

We learned allot about how editing films can completely change the way the audience interprets it.

Without editing, our film would have either been hours long, and it would have been one wide shot, because editing essentially removes space and time in a film to shorten it.

VARIED SHOT SIZE

We learned that each different type of shot size tells the audience different things about the situation in the film, and what each one is most suitable for.

We also learned that in other films, there are many different shot sizes in every scene, and they all work together to create the scene.

PLANNING/RESEARCH

We have learned the importance of researching successful films which are in the same genre as our media product, and successful films which also use the same camera and editing techniques as our media product, such as brick and the invisible.

MISE EN SCENE

We chose to use Mise en scene in terms of the areas we used to film, for example the first shot in our film was well constructed with the sunset in the background with Tom Jonson’s silhouette in the foreground with the balcony around him, all in the rule of thirds, which is a very useful skill we had learned.

SOUND

We learned from our preliminary task that sound quality in both digetic and non digetic sounds is crucial. We learned that when filming, it is best to use a camera with a microphone that will not pick up “noise” from the environment we are filming in, or to record the sound separately, in a silent environment.

In some situations, some sounds are edited into films, like explosions, we decided to edit in a voice over.