Evaluation - Question 7

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

I feel that I have gained many skills during the progression of this project, for example, I think that my editing skills have improved dramatically ans that I have developed my own unique style. I also believe that my skills, such as the use of Photoshop (to make titles) and After Effects (to make my production company logo) have also increased and have been made better.
   From the 180 degree task that we were challenged with, I feel like both my camera work and my editing skill have increasingly improved.

Evaluation - Question 6

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

Evaluation - Question 5

How Did You Attract/Address Your Audience?

Evaluation - Question 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

I believe that the audience for our film sequence will be in the age range of  15 - 24 years of age. Both males and females will enjoy our film as it has an action and thriller element, which will appeal more toward the men, and a strong female cast, which will appeal towards women.
   We conducted some research into our target audience and asked them five questions about the genre that we have chosen and their thoughts. The questions were:
   1 - What narrative would you expect from a dystopian/post-apocalyptic film?
   2 - What type of characters would you expect from this genre?
   3 - What locations do you think would be used?
   4 - What props would be involved/used?
   5 - What is your favourite film within this genre?

   Here are some of the responses from our audience that we have gathered.

   After looking at this feedback, we made sure to include in our film a mix of these ideas and conventions. For example, in our film sequence we included a protagonist with a friend, rural areas and weapons. We also took inspiration from both I Am Legend and The Book Of Eli.

Evaluation - Question 3

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

I believe that Lionsgate would distribute our film as I think it is as suitable company. Lionsgate is an independent American entertainment company and has a range of films, but specialises in Horror, Thriller and action films. The company is famous for producing film series such as Saw and The Hunger Games. Lionsgate has many partner companies in which we could also distribute through, such as Momentum Pictures (which is a UK company).

On the other hand, Colour Force, another small American company, which is owned by the producer of The Hunger Games, Nina Jacobsen, could be suitable for our film, but specializes in films that are from book adaptations, such as The Hunger Games and Diary Of A Wimpy Kid. Although proving successful in independent films, this company may be suitable.

Alternativly, Film4 could distribute our film. It is a renowned British film company that is famous for producing well acclaimed British films. Film4 produced How I Live Now which is one of the films that our film was inspired by. How I Live Now was also distributed by Momentum Pictures, which Lionsgate use regularly .

Evaluation - Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Evaluation - Question 1

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

I have selected 7 frames from our film opening which incorporate or challenge the post-apocalyptic/dystopian genre. Some of the screen shots used show how our film is similar to other films of our genre, how they have influenced our work and some show how it defies the natural stereotypes of our chosen genre.

FRAME ONE: STORY & OPENING SCENE

   The film starts off with a panning shot of the surrounding area. The audience can see that the area is desaturated, which gives the environment a damaged appearance. By using a panning shot, this gives the audience a chance to dictate what has happened/going to happen within the rest of the narrative. The shot then pulls into focus of the background so the audience can see the un-populated landscape.
   We chose to open the film with a natural setting because in most apocalyptic/dystopian films, when our man-made society has failed us we always go back to nature to shelter us.

FRAME TWO: CAMERA WORK & EDITING

   To create a dramatic opening that our audience will be attracted to, we thought about the use of camera work and editing and how this will affect the audiences viewing of the film. In this particular shot, our character his seen holding a rifle. The low angle shot portrays her as intimidating to the audience. With the threat of the gun, this makes the audience feel uncomfortable as it is handled by someone so young. Throughout the film, we desaturated all of our shots to make the event of the apocalypse look more devastating to the audience. The thought that this was necessary because the environment that we used was too green, so we decided that the desauturation would 'take the life' out of everything that is natural and give it an 'un-natural' and decaying feel, which would also hook in the audience.

FRAME THREE: TITLE

   Our title includes many elements. It not only includes the title itself, but is also placed upon an animated background, which was inspired by the sci-fi thriller Under The Skin. The dark background contrasts with the film title which makes it stand out to the audience. The audience will also be able to notice the ash falling from the sky, which is also an indicator to the themes and narrative of the film sequence.

   We created this title sequence using a mix of Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere and Adobe After Effects. After creating the title in Photoshop, we then downloaded a greenscreen version of the ash, which was formerly pure white snow, into After Effects. There we changed the colour to a more grey-ish, brown hue to separate the audience from thinking that it was actually snow. After doing this, we added both elements, the as and the text, into Adobe Premiere and then also layered it with an image of dark clouds, similar to that of the 'Under The Skin' title.

FRAME FOUR: SOUND

   The sound for our sequence starts at the very beginning of our film, and is its most intriguing at the start. As the distributors titles role, an authoritative womans voice can be heard, alerting the audience of a possible nuclear strike against the country. The allowed us to immerse the audience into the situation of the film as the woman is addressing the audience. The sounds of bombing and people screaming in terror can also be heard. This also lured the audience in as the sounds are the key factor at this stage in the narrative as there is no important visual at this current time in the film sequence, so all of the audience are drawn to the aural sound. We thought that by having a large amount of sound of a certain theme at the beginning of our sequence would pull in the audiences attention, as said before, the visual narrative has not yet started.

FRAME FIVE: PROTAGONIST

   Our protagonist in our film challenges the conventions of a typical dystopian genre film because its lead protagonist is a female. Not only is she female, but she is young. She is portrayed at strong and determined, which are the main characteristics of a male lead. We chose to have female lead because we wanted to challenge the conventions of this genre and make it fresh and appealing to our audience.

FRAME SIX:
FRAME SEVEN:

Finished Film

Here is the complete opening of our final finished film. We have uploaded this footage onto YouTube and are awaiting comments on feedback and reviews. 

Ending Inspiration

   The inspiration for the ending for our film came from a few different places. The main inspiration came from James Cameron's Avatar, which we then linked to the cult, and now world-wide phenomenon, Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1

 All three shots stars by a slow zoom onto the characters face, then soon later, their eyes open and the film ends. As the eyes are about to open, we can also hear the music build in tension and volume, which we have also replicated. We decided that this would be a very effective ending as it leaves on a cliffhanger and has potentially unanswered questions lingering.

   We also believe that we have successfully replicated this sequence and that it will also work effectively within our final product.

Under The Skin - Inspiration

   The Under The Skin trailer served us as some inspiration for our title for our film. At the very end of the trailer, ash/snow is seen falling from the sky whilst showing the title of the film. We thought that this was really effective and thought that something similar would look great in our opening sequence.

Here is a screenshot from the title used in the trailer for Under The Skin. We want to try and re-create this look in our film by finding an effect that is similar then layering it over our chosen title.

Firebird Films Sequence

   For our film, I have included my own film company's logo and sequence. I made the logo using Photoshop, which took about 1 hour to create. It is a second design of a previous logo that I had made. I made the sequence on Adobe Premiere, the same software that I am using to edit the film opening sequence on. The sequence for FBF is played directly after the Lionsgate and Color Force sequence.

Firebird Film Logo

A screen shot from the Firebird Films opening sequence.

Process Of Making Titles On Photoshop

for this title, i first started with a white backgound. I then chaned this layer to a black background. I thne added a different layer and added in text. I went through the different fonts avaliable and chose one that I thought suited our genre. After doing that, I added anoher layer and begun the ash/fire. This consisted of repeatedly printing a slelected brush onto the layer and then changing the colours. I then added in a fog/mist effect on another layer. The overall process of making his title took about 20 minutes.

Title Design Progress

   Here is an array of different titles that we have designed for our film. This post will show the progress of our titles and will also include the design inspiration behind each of them.

This is one of the early concepts for our title. We liked the idea of the fog in the background as it ties in with the 'cloudiness' of our protagonists mind. This title was inspired by The Hunger Games and it uses the exact same font. We wanted to keep it simple, yet effective and wanted it on a black background.



The inspiration for this tile was I Am Legend. We liked the use of the font as it looked dominant and stoic. This also links back to the protagonists personality as she instantly takes charge of the situation at hand.

This title is similar to the one above in terms of font, but we placed it on a pictured background that we took and then edited. We thought that this was effective because it showed the audience a little more about what type of film this may be and what it is about. We chose to change the opacity of the text because, again, it links to the loss in the protagonists memory.

 

The inspiration for this title came from The Book Of Eli. The desaturated background and blended text match/replicate that of TBOE's tile. The picture in the background is also slightly blurred, in which again leads to the idea of our protagonists mind. The text has been blened in to the background and they both contrast with each other.

The inspiration for this came from an earlier design that I had created. We wanted to include themes or ideas from the storyline into the title, and for this title we chose to incororate the dystopian world that our protagonist now lives in. We included the 'ash' and fire embers from the world in which she now lives into the title, which we though worked very well. we then layered a fog effect onto the title to again link with the hallucinations/surrealness of the film.

 

Editing Style

I am editing all of the footage together for our film. I have tried to create a sense of displacement or surreality to this film as I think that it works well with the genre. I have used fast paced editing and duplicated scenes and distorted them to add a more surreal effect to our film.

Audio/Music For Short Film

We were very foutunate enough to be able to use a cover of our original song 'Feral Love' by Chelsea Wolfe perfomed by Sinking Skies and aqquiered by Andy Ross. We will use this song for the duration of our film. It is an electric guitar cover of the original song and still retains the darkness of that which we need. We may edit it in GarageBand to add more atmosphere and depth, but that is yet to be decided.

https://soundcloud.com/andyrosss/sinking-skies-feral-love

Research In The Target Audience

   The target audience for our film would be in an age range of 14-21 years old, appealing to both male and female. The target audience (14-21 year olds) are attracted to this type of genre as it is becoming more prevalent within film, both blockbuster and independent.
   With films such as The Hunger Games, the upcoming film Divergent, Elysium, Book of Eli, I Am Legend and How I Live Now making their way into cinema, audiences young and old have been drawn into seeing the problematic future being portrayed on screen.

   We conducted some research into our target audience and asked them five questions about the genre that we have chosen and their thoughts. The questions were:
   1 - What narrative would you expect from a dystopian/post-apocalyptic film?
   2 - What type of characters would you expect from this genre?
   3 - What locations do you think would be used?
   4 - What props would be involved/used?
   5 - What is your favourite film within this genre?

   Here are some of the responses from our audience that we have gathered.

Filming Process - Video

New Title Design

    This is the new title design for our film. We included flames/embers in this design as is represents the landscape and events of what has happened in our film clip.

Film Editing - Desaturation

We will be using a desaturating effect on all of our footage to give it an extra feel for the apocalypse. We have edited so of out still shots taken from filming and have applied an effect to see what our footage will look like once finalized.

 Unedited Still                                  Edited Still       

Unedited Still                                          Edited Still      

Unedited Still                                   Edited Still    

Unedited Still                                          Edited Still         

Research Into The Genre - Dystopian

The prevalence of dystopian genres within film have become greater over the past decade or so. There are many sub-catergories within dystopian cinema, here are all the examples:

Government/Social - A typical dystopia paints a picture of government or society attempting to exert control over free thought, authority, energy, freedom of information. Others focus on systematic discrimination and limitations based on a variety of factors - genetics, fertility, intelligence, and age being a few examples.

Some examples of these types of films are:
- 1984
- Batman Begins
- Blade Runner
- Book of Eli
- Children Of Men
- Cloud Atlas
- District 9
- Elysium
- The Hunger Games
- Looper
- The Matrix
- Total Recall

Alien Controlled Dystopias - Alien controlled dystopias are separate from general dystopias in that they are enacted on a people by an outside invader rather than members of the oppressed's own species.

Some examples of these films are:
- The Chronicles Of Riddick
- Dark City
- Monsters

Corporate Based Dystopias (nongovernmental) - A corporate based dystopia is similar to a government/societal dystopia with the exception that the repressing power is a private company or small faction rather than a government. These stories generally include the motive of commercial profit instead of, or in addition to, the benefits of increased power and authority. 

Some Examples of these films are:
- The Alien series
- Cloud Atlas
- Dredd
- I, Robot
- The Island
- Looper
- Resident Evil series
- Total Recall 

Cyberpunk/Techno - Cyberpunk is a science fiction subset, characterized by a focus on "high tech and low life" where advanced technology itself is dystopian. "Classic cyberpunk characters were marginalized, alienated loners who lived on the edge of society in generally dystopic futures where daily life was impacted by rapid technological change, a ubiquitous datasphere of computerized information, and invasive modification of the human body".

Some examples of these films are:
- Blade Runner
- Looper
- Pandorum
- Repo Men
- The Terminator
- The Matrix
- WALL-E 

Post-Apocalyptic - Post-apocalyptic storylines take place in the aftermath of a disaster - typically nuclear holocaust, war, plague - that justifies a civilization's restructuring itself with dystopian like behaviors. These dystopian traits commonly insure some societal/technological system's continuing existence or some attempt to restore/preserve some desired pre-disaster qualities. Although not a requisite, many post-apocalyptic visions have a man-made cause. However, there are some simplistic post-apocalyptic films that mainly have desperate survivors engaged in some struggle over scarce resources. These films are more heterotopian in nature since there is a general lack of some greater societal goal being served and thus becomes people merely justifying their survival over others.

Some examples of these films are:
- 9
- 28 Days & Weeks Later
- The Book of Eli
- Children Of Men
- City Of Ember
- The Hunger Games
- I Am Legend
- Oblivion
- Planet Of The Apes
- The Road
- Terminator Salvation
- WALL-E
- Waterworld

Filming Progress

On the 20-21st of December we continued filming for Media Studies. We managed to film over 10 min of footage and also took photographs of the surrounding area. We also took screenshots of different scenes within filming.