Final Film Opening

For our film opening, we were concerned that the video may be too complex for people to understand. To make it clearer, we created two versions, one with a voice over, and one with a alternate ending, which makes the opening far clearer.

On showing both openings to people, we saw that people found the voice over quite funny, and we feel that took away from the seriousness of the video we were trying to create. We also found that the alternate ending worked in explaining the opening as we had hoped, and got the reaction we wanted. Because of this, we decided the final video would be the one with the alternate ending. Both versions are below.

With Alternate Ending


With Voice over

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

1st shot: This is an establishing shot of the setting where the opening takes place. Three people are seen sitting in a car and their identities are hidden. The shot was colour corrected and this plays into why you can't see the characters faces

2nd shot: We used a 4 point garbage matte in order to make the reflection of the smoker dark and once again so you can't see his face. The shot was also reversed so the cigarette is brought down at the start of the shot.

3rd shot: This is the title of our film. It rolls down with Rob pulling down his balaclava and rolls up again to reveal a panning down shot of Elliott sleeping.

4th shot: We gained a lot of praise for this shot. We lit a roll-up cigarette and put it hanging out of an ash tray. We changed the camera setting to manual focus and changed it so the foreground (roll-up) is focused and the background (Elliott and bed) are out of focus .

5th shot: This was one of the few shots where we used the dolly provided by the media department. A slight tint of red was put on the clip when the shot gets to the room where Max is sleeping and starts of blue in Elliott's room.

6th shot: Again a 4 point garbage was used to tint out the windscreen. The shot shakes down in a transition we created in the edit. This meant we had to keyframe the garbage matte so it fits the windscreen for every frame of the transition.

7th shot: This is an other shot we received praise for. This was one of the shots where we used the fish eye lens. The camera was placed on the dashboard and the shot was arranged from there.

8th shot: This shot was collected after the official shoot day whereby Rob and Elliott went to town and filmed this shot. It's placed outside a bank as this character is meant to be waiting to pull of the heist. In the alternate ending the shot is edited with a dazzle effect and is shown as a flash back as the script was tweaked for the alternate ending

9th shot: This is a panning shot of Max walking out of the house to the car. We timed this shot so Elliott behind the camera would signal Rob of when to open the window as Max arrived to the car.

Evaluation Question Two- How does your media product represent particular social groups?

For this I chose the character that is played by Max, who at the end of the opening is revealed to be working with the people inside the car, rather then the people inside the car coming for him. This character is the only person in the car who's face is seen, suggesting he will play a large role in the film as it necessary for him to be followed throughout the opening.

Like Hans Gruber, Max plays a character that is calm, and knows thoroughly what he is doing, and both are committing an armed robbery. Max plays a character that is confident and gets about his day like any other with no problems, and his confidence is shown on screen, while Hans is also very confident, stating in 'Die Hard' "I am an exceptional thief". Both characters dress smart, as not affected by the possibility of being seen by cameras and want to be seen as someone with smart taste, Hans in 'Die Hard' compliments the suit of a man he is about to kill, saying "It would be a shame to ruin it", displaying a calm ruthlessness in both characters, as Max calmly takes the rub from Rob at the end of the opening.

Evaluation Question Three- What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

For this question we recorded a commentary for our video, it can be found below.

Evaluation Question Four- Who would be the audience for your media product?

In media we created the target audience for our film, the ideal person that would go watch it, to aim towards in advertising.

We went with the main characters in 'Superbad'

How old are they- 17 and a half
What are they called- Rolliax
How do they dress- Casual, Hoodie and jeans
Where do they live- Anywhere on earth
What do they spend their money on- Games (Quake, COD, Halo), clothes (Hoodie and jeans), movies (Snatch, Kidulthood)
Where do they watch films- DVD, internet, cinema
What kind of music do they like- Pop music (So solid crew), download music
Leisure time- Socialising, facebook
How much TV do they watch- 2-3 hours per day
What is their favorite film- Pulp fiction

Evaluation Question Five- How did you attract/address your audience?

For this we used the annotation feature that YouTube provides for videos. It can be found below.

Evaluation Question Six- What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

This was our Timeline at the end of our project.

using Final cut I was able to experiment with a new effect, the 4 point garbage matte, which I had never used before.

Other online and computer programs we used were: youtube, flickr, blogger, final cut,photoshop and vimeo

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

For our film opening we used a couple of skills we learned from the continuity task, and one of them is shown above. We used match on action for a door opening, the picture on the left side is the continuity task, and on the right is from our film opening.
We considered use of the shot/reverse shot (180 degree rule) for the brief moment two characters talk to each other, switching angles but decided against it, as we wanted the shot to be about the characters journey leaving the house rather than use conventions of a conversation.

Rating for our Film Opening

On the SBBFC (Student Board of Film Classification), there are guidelines for rating a film, and even though we have not had it officially rated, we can get a very good idea of what it would be rated.

Our film would have been rated '15', for strong violence, frequent strong language, strong verbal references to sex, and drug taking.

In order for our film to remain a '15', it must not encourage or promote the drug taking, which would not be the case in our film, as references would be brief.

Another reason the film would be rated '15' is because of the general dark tone of the film, and it's complexity, which younger people would not be able to understand and grasp.

Creative Risks

A risk that we took while filming was the use of the Fisheye Lens for some shots, this was risky because we did not know if it would truly work until we finished filming, and got the footage onto Final Cut, as we would not be able to re shoot the scenes.

I feel that it paid off, and the shots worked well, and it was a good creative decision to use the Fisheye.

Editing is in full swing

Today we made lots of progress in the edit for 'Crooks and Bones', and began to really get an idea of the finished piece. I was an hour late so when I arrived music was roughly in place and I got to hear it for the first time, which from then on I began hacking at the visuals to make it fit the music far better. I experimented with using the music as cues for the cuts and decided that it would be better to cut up the music more and make it fit the visuals more, rather than a solid audio track with nothing done to it. We recorded voiceover for the beginning in the car, and recorded the last missing shot all in 10 minutes. After getting it onto Final Cut we worked a lot more on the pacing of the video and the voiceover as one, changing shot ordering, length and speed to make it seem far more natural.

Feedback for 'Something Wicked'

L3 - GROUP 1 (Christina & Angelica) Film Opening Rough Cut from cmdiploma on Vimeo.

Feedback for 'Something Wicked' by Christina and Angelica

I like the darkness in the video, how everything isn't quite explained, it adds to the mystery of the scene. The close ups work well, I like the detail in the scene.
I Dislike how some shots fade in and then the camera starts moving, it makes it look a little strange to see things start and stop.
I really like the titles at the beginning with the shake effect, I think the video is strong and will look authentic as a title sequence.