RESEARCH: OCR EXAMINERS REPORT (2015)

I have looked at the OCR Examiners report for 2015 and the G321 Foundation Portfolio for 2015. It was a useful thing to read as it shows me how i should keep my blog in a professional manner and how I should be working individually to develop my blog.

PRELIMINARY EXERCISE

On Tuesday the 22nd of September, we made a short film for our preliminary to test what it was actually like to film. I was in a group with Alex and Shehzad. We had to follow the guidelines set by our teacher which was to include: someone walking into a room opening the door, have a conversation with a shot reverse shot and to remember about the 180 degree rule in the room. We then went on to make the film in the lesson which took us around an hour to film a minute of footage. This can be used as a guideline to how much time we would need to have while making our actual film later on in the year.

There were many things that we found out with are preliminary which we need to improve when it comes to our actual film. For example, the rooms that we filmed in were quite dark and it was hard to see what was happening mostly at the beginning as it was a dark corridor going up to the room. The second problem we noticed was the sound and voice, this is because when it came to the conversation we realised that some things that we said you cant quite hear in the recording. This shows us next time we will need to either move the cameras closer, speak louder or get some external sound recording systems.

RESEARCH: DISTRIBUTION OF FILMS

I have been researching how films are distributed and have used Prezi to show this.

RESEARCH: PETE'S MEDIA BLOG

I have read Pete's media blog and its a useful resource for us to use. This is because we can find examples of many posts from his blog which can help with our productions. Such as, there is a post where it shows good productions that can be used for me to learn what people have done in order to succeed.

Pete also has a twitter account which is a good resource as well because there is tweets by him related to media and also re-tweets by media companies.

Pete's media post

Pete's twitter feed

Finally, I have looked at Media Magazine and an article called Selling Youth by David Buckingham which tells us about attracting a target audience for younger people. This is a helpful tool for me because this is what my production target audience will be. For example it says, "Youth marketing strategies are participatory: they aim to get us involved in a dialogue, to enable us to create and distribute our own messages, to feel as though we are the ones in charge."

RESEARCH: PREVIOUS PRODUCTIONS

Today, I have looked at 10 previous productions made by people at our center in order for me to learn new techniques and skills when it comes making a short film/opening myself.

Firstly, I learnt how lighting can have a big effect on a certain shot of the camera and can improve the overall shot. For example, one previous film we saw showed natural light coming in through the window as the girl was lifting her wedding veil and gave a very nice effect as she was flooded with natural light. This relates to my preliminary we filmed, this is because I realized that the room we filmed in had no natural lighting and not very bright lights so it was hard to see what was happening.

Secondly, another key feature that I learnt watching the previous films was editing. This is because in some of them they used editing programs such as Adobe after effects or iMovie in order to make their opening title sequence and then to edit their clips. This was effective because it meant it had nice animations when it came to the texts on the opening. However I also learnt that the titles can also be made without editing software. For example, one that I watched had guitar picks along the guitar showing each of their names which related to their rock and roll style film. Therefore, it is just as easy to make the title sequence while filming than on software. 

Finally, the last thing I learnt from watching the previous movies was the sound. For example, in one that I watched was a horror movie where it had a voice over of a poem. (The Raven by Edgar Allen) This was effective for the movie because it created the atmosphere with the movie and the tension and up building of the movie. I learnt that the sound is very important and a voice over may have helped in our preliminary because our speech was very quiet and sometimes couldn't hear what was being said.

UPDATE: TRELLO

I am continuing to use Trello in order to help me organize myself and know what I have done and what i am doing. This is my Trello
I will create a new Trello post for my construction and then evaluation.

RESEARCH: AUDIENCE

I have created an amaze to preset my research on audience.