Evaluation activity 1- In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e. of film openings)

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

Title of my film
The title of my film is "the Pursuer." The reason why I believe this is a good idea wis because it puts more emphasism on Aran and people know his job role but is still asks a lot of questions such as who is he working for. In my research of other opening two minutes, I had found that they never give the story away too early but a good movie will always keep you asking questions. I believe that thanks to this title, more questions will be asked. One of these could be Why is he pursuing people? and who is he working for? The reason for Pursuer as opposed to The Pursuit is that it brings more attention to the main character and that's what we want. The title connotes our genre as well as the Pursuer is linked with action.
A similar Movie to us is the film Taken (2008) and we took inspiration from this. This is because the fight scenes were not too over the top yet effective and the title is similar as well as the font. The title Taken is similar to ours because it's one word which describes the entire movie such as the pursuer.
 

Setting and Location

What was done well with this is that we wanted our film to be of an Urban/Action movie which I believe we accomplished for a number of reasons. Our first location was an alleyway with graffiti on the walls.  The name of this location was Waterfields in Leatherhead. It wasn't the longest of alleyways but the lighting was perfect. Moreover both walls were different colours withone of them being white which was helpfull when filming in the dark. We essentially wanted to film at night as we thought that it would support the fast pace action scene which it sure did and thus I believe filming at night was more effective that it would have been if we were filming in the day which we would of had to with the other alleyways we were looking at in our location research.

First Location: Waterfields, Leatherhead

                     
     The secondary location was a bridge overlooking the M25 and both of these have urban meanings. In many urban movies, the use of an alleyway is used and ours follows this rule.
Furthermore the use of language and his accent was helpful to show this genre as minimal dialogue was used but it was used effectively through the use of colloquial and urban language. The secondary location was especially helpful as it showed that the movie was still going at a fast pace rate due to the cars flying by underneath but it slowed down from the previous scene.

This is our secondary location overlooking the M25.

                       

The Use of Costumes and Props.

 What was done well was the use of fake blood. It helped show that Tom was hurt very effectively and complimented the X-Ray effect. Moreover the weapon we used was a knife connotes the fact that our movie is an urban/action film and so is a good weapon to have. A similar movie which used a knife was Attack the Block. We didn't use many props as we were afraid that it may give away too much about the story.
   We also dressed Aran in all black which was good because it didn't give much away about him and we dressed tom casually so that it puts more emphasism on Aran and the audience will be wondering why he's wearing all black.


Filming and editing
One strength of our filming is the use of our time. As seen in our film diary, we didn't rush anything and so it helped us in our editing stage. We knew that we wouldn't really get this chance again so we wanted to ensure that nothing would set us back in the editing stage.
Moreover we set ourselves good and realistic day to day expectations which we followed and this left us additional time after the completion of the filming and editing for any extra touch ups that were required. Sure enough there was as we had to film the ending all over again which supports this.

Another strength of our filming was the use of our shot types. We used a whole arrey of shot types but we didn't over do it. We put in the shot types which were required for that specific part. An example could be when Tom was running towards Aran so we done an over-the-shoulder shot which made it most effective.



Special Effects:
Something else we done well was the use of special effects. We used the X-Ray effect to show that Tom was hurt critically. We done this twice; once when Tom was hurt and the second time when Tom got stabbed. The use of effects in our opening two minutes was effectively to connote feelings but later on it helps dictate the pace which I believe is an additional bonus. For example, the title fades in just after Tom dies which slows down the tempo from a past paced action scene to state of comfort when it fades into the next day.
What also was done well was the way we tried to show that it was the next day after the death of Tom. The idea was good firstly because I believe that it helped us differentiate from a trailer but more importantly, the other videos we had witnessed. Moreover what helped with this transition was the visual effects once again.
We also used a number of camer movements but the shot that we used most was the pan movement. We used this in the alleyway when we used the knife and at the end when the camera overlooked the M25.

Costume and Props:
The use of costumes and props were used for a number of reasons. Firstly, Arans costume was all black as shown below. This helped differentiate himself from Tom who was dressed as a normal person. Furthermore, the use of all black would make the audience want to know more about the character as we didn't really want to give much away about Aran. Plus there are many connotations that go with the colour black such as the night and something that we wanted to show is that he is a quite assassin which is helped through the black costume.

Here is a medium screenshot of what Aran was Wearing.

The use of props were also helpful with the identification of a Urban/Action movie. For example, we used a knife which is more associated with a British urban action movie than a gun and we used blood to show the action aspect. Movies that have used knives are Kidulthood and Adulthood which are both similar movies to ours and also aims for a similar audience.

                                                     
                           


Camera work And Editing:
Camera Editing:
Mohamad and I focused on the editing stage the most as Tom and Aran were doing the filming. The production of effects was a long and dreary one where we had to spend around half an hour editing a few milliseconds of editing. We found this to be the hardest part of the whole assignment. When we had thought we finished, we found additional bits that needed editing along with constant rendering which finally paid off.
               
                                        
                                        

Camera Shots:
   Another strength of our filming was the use of our shot types. We used a whole arrey of shot types but we didn't over do it. We put in the shot types which were required for that specific part. An example could be when Tom was running towards Aran so we done an over-the-shoulder shot which made it most effective. Our use of camera shots were similar to movies such as the Dark Knight Rises (2012) and Taken (2008) in which they used a high number of shots such as ourselves and a good example of this is our pan shot of the knife.



Story and how the opening sets up
   The story of the film is of a pursuer who is the main character (Aran) who hunts down and kills others under bosses orders. The reason he does this is because there is good money put of killing people and this is shown via the ending of the movie where he has his next target in an envelope (which is me) and will be payed £12,000,000 to kill me. This gives the audience a clear idea of what the movie is about but also he is getting payed a lot to kill this next target as well so the audience might feel as if this is his final mission. The reason for this is if he was getting payed 12 million pounds to kill every previous target, then he would be rich and the setting of the film will be different and this is why he pauses when he sees the picture of me. For the opening two minutes, we didn't want to give much away as not many action movies do so we put in an action scene straight away. This also gives an indication to the audience about the pace of the movie. We wanted to show that it would be fast paced and action packed throughout the whole movie and even towards the end of the movie, the pace may have slowed down but the use of sound still stated that the pace of the movie isn't going to get any slower.

Here is a screenshot of me as the next target.

The Genre and how the Opening Suggests it.

  Our genre is Urban/Action and we have portrayed this in our movie via a number of different angles:

1. The location was one which would be associated with an urban action movie as we used a very urban pathway around an estate whereby similar locations have been used by movies such as Adulthood and Green Street.
2. The use of dialogue and accent- We attempted to use dialogue which has been stereotyped with urban movies but more importantly, people from council estates. This is why Aran Said "stay the Fuck Down" which will give the audience an indication of his class thus linking it to the urban section of the Urban Action movie.
3. The actual start of the movie probably shuns out the genre the most whereby there is an action scene right at the beginning of the movie. 
4. The use of the knife also shows the genre as a knife is a product which is very much associated with the Urban Action genre whereas if we were to use a gun, then this may have turned it more like an American movie. A movie which uses knives as well as a number of different weapons is the award winning Urban Action Movie Attack The Block.

How the opening Characters are introduced.

    In the opening two minutes, three characters are introduced; Aran who is the main character, Tom who dies but is shown a lot in the opening two minutes and myself who really sets off the movie.

Aran:

Aran is introduced with the camera looking over his shoulder wearing all black. Throughout the action scene, Aran is given most prevelence and also after the action scene as he was always shown as the bigger character in the opening two minutes but also had the majority of camera time. We had used a number of shots in the fight alone to try and attempt to show that Aran was the main character such as long shots, close ups, extreme close ups, ECU and high angled shots.

Tom:

Tom is first introduced via panicking which was shown through the distorted camera shot at the beginning and the use of the heartbeat sound. This showed that he was in danger and not dangerous. 

 

Me (Nadib):

  I was introduced right at the end on a piec of paper as shown on one of the pictures above. I'm seen as the next target for Aran as the camera focuses on the paper after Aran opens it.

Evaluation Activity 2 - How does your media product represent particular social group?

How does your media product represent particular social group?      


                   
This is the main character who is called Aran (the antagonist). I believe that he can be compared with Bruce Willis as they both don't speak much and are main characters. Moreover they both let their actions do the talking. This is identified with Aran because he only had to say three bits of dialogue throughout the whole movie.
   Their costume is also pretty similar as he normally just wears casual clothes which is similar to Aran to show their relevance to society. There is the odd movie where he does much formal roles such as RED (2010) where he is a retired lieutenant but at the beginning of the movie, he is dressed casually.
    Their role in the movie is also very similar in which they got to kill other people even if there is no justification and then they can just move on to the next target. This is shown in our film by that letter that Aran received with a picture of his next target which was actually me.

               


One way they both differ though is the genre which can be identified through the use of props. In all Bruce Willis movies, he tends to have a number of guns as weapons which is something that I have identified to be linked with Action or American Action movies. Whereas Arans main prop is a knife which is linked with the urban/action genre. This product is also used in similar films such as the ending of Kidulthood. A film that shows a lot of guns being used is the Die hard series where they went through an unfathomable amount of guns.

  Although they are similar movies and similar actors, the target audience may be different because Bruce Willis is a much older gentleman appealing to the older audiences whereas Aran is younger and attempts to appeal to the younger audience. In hindsight, maybe it wasn't a great idea to set Arans character around Bruce Willis but it was a risk worth taking as he is a well respected actor.

Evaluation of sound - Evaluation 1

  I will now evaluate the use of sound in  our opening two minutes. Sound is split up in a number of ways in media studies:

    Firstly, we have Diegetic Sound  which is sound that the actors can hear as well as the audience. An example in our opening two minutes could be when Aran tells Tom to stay down in the alleyway.
    The opposite to this is Non Diegetic Sound which is audio that only the audience can hear and the actors won't be able to hear. Again using our film for an example; the audience can hear what is supposedly Toms heartbeats when he is running but I doubt that he can hear his own heartbeat so that is an example of non-diegetic sound.

One strength of our sound is that our music was used very effectively and helped dictate the pace of the video. An example of this is the next day when there is a fast paced tempo showing that Aran is in a rush or was in a rush because he just killed someone but it gradually slowed down showing the start of a new chapter.
   One weakness of the use of sound in our opening two minutes is that we didn't block background sound well enough and because of this, Arans dialogue was rather distorted. This applied especially in the next day when Aran was overlooking the M25 as his dialogue was blocked off by the cars on the motorway. This tells me that we were focusing too much on the music and not enough on the dialogue.
   Another strength of the use of our sound again was the production of our music. For this, I believe we have Mohamad to thank. This is because he knew what music he wanted and where. He worked extremely hard in order to get the correct sound and so he used three different sound applications to get what he thought would suit the specific areas of the film. These applications were Traktor 2, MP3 Direct Cut and Mix Meister Fusion 7.

Traktor 2

Mix Meister 7

     

MP3 Direct Cut

    Overall, I believe that the use of sound in our overall video was excellent and helped the movie make more sense. This was particularly thanks to the non-diegetic aspect and Mohamads Ideas. Despite this, I believe that the distortion of Arans voice was a huge shame but fortunately there was only three bits of dialogue within the whole opening two minutes so it didn't affect the video as much as it could have done.

Here are some screenshots of the sound editing:

                                   
                                    

Film Evaluation- Storyboard

 In this post of my evaluation, I will look at our storyboard as opposed to the real filming and seed whether both are similar and whether our storyboard was successful.
   The first problem with the storyboard is that I was supposed to be the character who dies but we changed that to Tom who preferred filming so I had to do the editing.

                              
                              
This shot was very similar to the one we planned but the costume was different and the reason behind this shot was different but it was still at one persons point of view  The dialogue is very much similar but instead of footsteps, there are heartbeats.




We completely went against this description but but we still used the idea that the camera should be behind the actors shoulder.




This part of the storyboard is right where I die (which is replaced by Tom) and the title comes in.

   One strength of the storyboard was that it helped us gain a vague idea of what our movie was going to be about. This helped things to be easier at the filming stage Moreover it gave us a good idea of what film shots to implement. As we had a good foundation which was the storyboard, everything was a bit easier than it could have been.

   Despite this, our storyboard had a lot of flaws. The three picture comparisons above are the only thing you can compare between the storyboard and the actual film. This shows that a lot of things have changed since the production of the storyboard. Moreover the comparisons above are not 100% the same. For example the dialogue will be completely different when the actual shot may be similar.
   Another problem was obviously the fact that I was supposed to be the victim in the storyboard which wasn't the case when it came to filming.

   My conclusion is that although my storyboard was rather helpful when we were thinking of an idea, we didn't really follow it and we were filming through trial and error rather than looking at the storyboard. Moreover, the whole plot changed which would have affected the relevance of the storyboard as a whole. This is probably the main reason why the storyboard wasn't as useful as it could have been. Many things we had done was improvised on the day which in hindsight tells me a number of things; firstly, we were not too confident in the filming and secondly we still didn't have a sure idea of what we were going to do. Fortunately, we were quite pleased with the video but I believe that the storyboard didn't play a big part in this.

Our chosen Film production company - Revolver Entertainment

                             
This is the film production company that we have chosen. Only recently, it has gone into administration but was known as a medium sized film production company specializing in the production of many English movies but more specifically; urban movies.
    Such movies that they have produced are

This itself is an urban action movie that goes against certain products that an action movie must have such as the main character is a girl who kills people.

Here is a fairly famous British action movie.

As you can see, Revolver produces a lot of action movies and so it is perfect for our movie.                                                    
                                         

Film Tiltle and Font Evaluation Activity 1

     After a long time of thinking, we have finally thought of a name. We have already finished the filming and almost finished the editing so we were running out of time but we have decided to call it the pursuer. It was me who thought of the pursuit but that had already been taken and then Mohamad said the pursuer which we all believe goes hand in hand with the story line. Aran's character is very much like a pursuer in the opening two minutes which shows a picture of his next target with a money reward which is actually me. At first I thought that having the word "the" in a title of a movie may not be the best idea but the pursuer is perfect for our movie so I'm not too worried.
    Although I have done a blog on font; I done it at a time where we didn't know the title and so it was very difficult to decide what font we were going to use but we have decided to use a bold tahoma style with a chrome finish which shows that this person is going to kill people but is professional in the way he does his business.
                   

Here is a screenshot of our title with the bold font titled The Pursuer.

This was the final chosen font of our movie but below are some of the examples we were contemplating:

                                                             

  We chose a rather plain title so that the transition would be much easier and effective to the next day whereas the fonts above are too dramatic for us even though the one in the top may have looked the best.                        

How My Research Has Impacted The Decisions I Have Made

My research has been very helpful with the development and decisions that I had made in the opening two minutes of the movie for the following reasons:

1) Audience Profiling
    I have done 5 different blogs on audience profiling with a similar genre and it helped me in a number of ways.Firstly it helped my group and I decide what age rating would be appropriate for our movie as similar films such as Hot Fuzz and Green Street had ratings of 15 and 18 but all the others also had a rating of 15. This helped us make the decision that our movie will be a 15 rated movie.
   Another thing that audience profiling has helped me with is to find what my target genre was going to be and the film that helped me the most with this is Green Street. This is because I believe that our movie would best resemble Green Street in the sense that there won't be any female characters. The majority gender that watched this movie was male so we knew that our target gender would be mainly male as we also wouldn't have a female character. If the movie were to be longer than the opening two minutes, we would probably have a female character but one wasn't really necessary for this opening scene as it will be an action scene.
   A final thing that I have identified from my audience profiling is that all classes would be interested in watching my movie which I was rather surprised about. I will use Green street as an example again. This is a movie that I personally won't associate wit the upper class but the upper class watched it as much as the middle and lower classes.

2) Opening 2 minute annotation.
   I have done about 7 blogs annotating the opening two minutes of other movies. It has helped me understand what should be included in the opening two minutes of a movie. For example Hot Fuzz would open via giving an introduction of the main character; Sergent Nicholas Angel played by Simon Pegg so this piece of research effectively helped me gain some ideas about my movie way back in September.
    Something else this has helped me with is to identify different camera angles, movements and mise-en-sine. From these opening two minutes, I could see different camera shots being used in practise and also films abiding to certain rules such as the 180 degree rule.

3) Film Certificate Research
   What I found from this is reassurance that my the certificate rating for my movie should be 15 as my movie would include moderate language but it does involve an action scene which includes a knife.

                  

4) Prelimination Task
     This was helpful to me mainly because of the experience of filming. Moreover it showed us who was a good actor and what shot types should be required and where.

5) The Storyboard

The storyboard and the production of the storyboard was very helpful in the making of our actual movie as it gave us an idea of what to do. In my evaluation, I will look into points of comparison between our storyboard and finished project.










































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Cast/Actors

Cast

This is Me

Not much information is given to the audience about me and you don't see me directly but see me in a picture that Aran (the main character) is holding in his hand. This is the actual picture that Aran will hold in his hand on the next morning but it will be in black and white to give it more emphasism. I will be the next target for Aran. The reason I was good for this specific role is because it was just a picture and I tend to get out of character whilst filming so I didn't mind just a picture of me being taken. This was why the preliminary task was so important.



This is Aran. He is the main character; The Pursuer. Although he is the main character, he works under the authority of a boss who doesn't have to be seen in the opening two minutes. Arans job is to hunt people down and kill them. The reason Aran is perfect for the role is because he is the biggest and more importantly, , he can stay in role all the time which we found out in our preliminary task.



 

The final cast member is tom. We have chosen him to be the victim. The reason being is because he is the smallest height wise and so this builds prevelance on Aran who we are trying to show to be the main character.

Scripting

As our film is of an Action genre and the opening two minutes consists of an action scene, we have no need to include much dialogue as we wanted to show that it was fast paced and I believe that dialoge would slow down the pace of the movie as it is a chase scene.


Aran: Stay on your fucking knees
    This will be when Aran catches up with Tom and punches him to the ground. This shows that he is strong. 

Aran: Job done.
This is when Aran has killed Tom and confirms that he has killed him.

Aran: Yes, Yes, I'm Ready
    This is towards the end of the movie where Arans next assignment is set.

The main reason we only have Aran speaking is because we want the audience to identify that he has more prevelence than Tom and is the main character. Moreover as it's only two minutes, we don't really want to give much away which is what my research from action movies has tought me. We may include dialogue for Tomin order to give Aran more prevelance. The reason why the dialogue is going to be so blunt is for the audience to identify the true personality of the Aran's character. We want him to show his words through his actions. Someone who we can compare Aran's character to is Bruce Willis who does more action scenes than speaking in movies such as Die Hard which I have anootated during my research.

Costume research

Costume

In our opening two minutes, we really only have two characters; Tom and Aran. Tom is the victim and there is Aran who is the assassin. That being said we had to find something that denotes assassin qualities as well as something that a victim will wear. I played a big part in this area as well as make-up and fortunately Aran and Tom both had the clothes i had visioned them wearing. 

Tom:

    Identifying costume for Tom was quite simple.What I thought would be good for tom is casual clothes to make the audience feel as if  he wasn't expecting what was going to happened and so I want him to wear a jumper, dark-blue jeans and trainers. Something like this would be good:

                 

Aran:

     Finding the right costume for Tom was much more difficult but then I thought that an assasin is denothes as doing his job quietly and then though of the dark which then lead me to the colour black which is when I decided that Aran should wear a Black Coat, Black Scarf, Clack Shoes and Black trousers which will hopefully look like a uniform.