Evaluation - Part 8 - Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

I think that the title sequence that my group and I have created has been successful in terms of originality; I don't feel like this title sequence has been made before for the genre we were creating for and that we steered away from the typical narrative and expected title sequence that everyone else has done. To improve I feel like the title sequence could have been longer if we were given more time, we could have included more photos and videos to show or connote zombies/ zombie culture. I also thought that the recording was successful; after trialing with a DSLR camera, then a screen recording via QuickTime and finally HyperCam (on PC), I feel like the quality improved dramatically. The font also improved dramatically and put across our message of typical teenagers rather than the zombie font used beforehand, the colouring for the font made the title sequence look less childish and put there for the sake of it.

Evaluation - Part 7 - What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

As a group, we made the key decision to use mobile phones over DSLR cameras to film parts of our title sequence, as it would be more realistic for the audience, as on Facebook and other social media websites we tend to see videos being recorded on mobile phones rather than cameras. This is due to the fact our target audience are students and can't really afford hundred pound cameras, but instead the cheaper alternative of a cross media converging item like a phone that has a camera and can contact friends on the go. This decision was made so that the audience could relate more to the protagonists.

We also decided to film on a computer, after filming a computer screen with a camera. We made this decision so that it would be easier for the audience to view what was on the screen and to also emphasise the fact that our protagonists are a part of the modern digital generation; therefore allowing our target audience to relate more to the protagonists. The clarity of the screen made it simpler for the audience to read the screen and also made it less documentary like (like Catfish) and more of a Comedy/Thriller. Through this process, I have learnt that there a variety of ways to shoot; and it doesn't have to be on a DSLR camera.

Evaluation - Part 6 - How did you attract your audience?

Our target audience is 18-25 year olds and I think our media product did reach this target audience. When creating our audience profiling, we included things that the audience would like, such as; social media websites (facebook), Zombies, the protagonists are a similar age to the audience, socialising with friends, comedy elements and TV shows and films.

Our peers gave feedback to our title sequence. The elements that they thought worked well were: the idea of the title sequence being on facebook; choice of music; narrative; comedy elements; footage and pace of shots.

According to our audience feedback, our least successful part of production is the connotation of zombies; our audience wanted to see zombie action. This is what I wanted to achieve because it starts the audience asking questions; 'where are the zombies in a zombie movie?' and makes them want to watch the film more.

Some of our feedback complained about the choice of soundtrack; this could be improved by finding a song with lyrics that connotate zombies.

Evaluation Part 5 - How does your media product represent particular social group?

Evaluation - Part 4 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Evaluation - Part 3 - What Kind of Media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Evaluation Part 2 - Who would be the audience for your product

Evaluation: Part 1 - Brief

I was working to the brief of creating a title sequence for a film of our choice. My group; Aiden, Terry, Louis and myself got together. We came up with three ideas and eventually settled on the idea of a zombie movie. As a group we watched zombie film titles sequences, I suggested the idea of making the title sequence ‘online’ as our protagonists are three teenage boys. By using social media websites such as; Facebook, the idea of a zombie apocalypse is formed. As our subgenre is a dark comedy/ thriller / horror we kept the title simple by calling it; ‘A Zombie Movie’. The title sequence introduces the idea of zombies and the current modern culture of zombie movies. Zombie movies are in the 4th generation of film (parody) so we thought that making our zombie movie a parody version would fit in with the current type of zombie movie that the audience are not quite used to viewing. Our title sequence shows the profiles of our three male teenage protagonists and I feel is original, using social media websites for a title sequence is not normality. The images we chose showed the three protagonists being friends. Within some of the images and videos, there are some zombie connotations, but as the protagonists are not supposed to notice the start of a zombie apocolypse, this is shown through our title sequence by not including any actual zombie footage or awareness of zombies; instead a slight obsession with zombies as teenage boys have in real life; shown through games such as: Left 4 Dead, The Last of Us, The Walking Dead, Tv shows such as The Walking Dead and films like Zombieland. We wanted to show what a typical teenage boy is like in todays world; obsessed with the idea of zombies and social media. We chose not to adhere to the typical conventions of zombie movie by not showing the zombie to confuse the audience and set up an enigma for the audience to continue watching the film.

6th Draft - Final Piece

 As a group, we decided that our film may be hard to realise the genre of the piece. We decided to make the ending more horror related by showing another clip on Facebook of another attack but more horrific. We decided to adhere to the typical conventions of a horror by using low key lighting, weapons, fake blood, connotations of death and handheld camera work.

5th Draft - Final Piece

This is our 5th draft. We have included more zombie connotations and changed the titles to more facebook related ones. In this version some of the clips have been moved around.

Feedback from 4th Draft

This is the feedback we got from our screening in one of our lessons. 

Although I wanted the title sequence to contain no zombies (as it confuses the audience and makes the audience continue watching), that seems to be what everyone complained about and wanted us to improve. We filmed some more screen captures of more zombie related things and will edit that in today. 

Confusingly, the class complained about the music while others liked it. 

I do like the idea of the title names being facebook related, so I have filmed something to create that. 

It was suggested that the title didn't work and to perhaps use; 'Facebook Feed' instead. 

There is a really short time to complete all this work in time for the deadline AND finish the evaluation. 

My priority is to edit in the new bits to the title sequence

4th Draft

For this piece I made the shots a little crisper and added the titles for our title sequence.

I also made the decision to have the title of the film at the end of the sequence to intrigue the audience; also so they won't notice the zombie connotations within the title sequence.

3rd Draft

This is the 3rd draft of our title sequence. I have edited everything so it's in order and used better software (hypercam) for screen recordings. I tried using foley sound for typing and clicking of the computer but it can't really be heard due to the soundtrack.

To continue, we need to create the credits and then edit them in. Also, I would like to make the cuts of the shots a little bit crisper.

2nd Draft

This is our second draft. We found that the screen was blurred and jittery, and you couldn't see what was being typed. We played around with the scale on Final Cut Pro and followed some youtube tutorials, but was unable to make it work.

To continue, I think we should refilm at home on a software called Hypercam where you can crop and select what bit to film, doing this will hopefully keep everything within the frame clear (and hopefully HD).

If I refilm tonight, that means I can upload on thursday during free periods (as I have an exam tomorrow) and hopefully get a draft then.

The Right Kind Of Wrong Title Sequence Analysis

Lucy showed me this film and told me to look at the title sequence.

The Right Kind Of Wrong's title sequence is very similar as to what I envisioned  for our title sequence, mixed with a little of Catfishs' title sequence. I think that this social media title sequence shows modern youth.

Feedback from first draft

On Monday Terry and Aiden helped me to reshoot the blurry/ out of focus/ too dark frames for our title sequence.

I wasn't in on Tuesday for a double period lesson. The boys presented our first draft to Shaun and this is what I was told by the boys what the feedback was:

Need to:

• Add more images to the series of photos that contain girls or suggest that the protagonists are heterosexual 
• Screengrab filming on the macs
• Remove repeated photos 
• Equalize the amount of photos per protagonist 

Catfish Title Sequence Analysis

 I chose to analyse Catfish: The Movie's title sequence as it uses a similar style that we want for our title sequence, by using online/facebook within the title sequence.

Catfish: The Movie

The title sequence begins with the production companys' titles on the screen, however they have been edited so they are more pixel and look like they belong on a computer; which would suggest to the audience that the film is about the internet and what happens on the internet.

 

 

The sequence is slowly paced through camera work, editing and sound which could show that the film is a documentary, and also that the film is shot over a long period of time. Unlike the way this is filmed, I want our title sequence to seem quite fast paced (not only to fit it into 2 minutes, but also) to emphasise that the protagonists have fun together and spend most of their time together.

 

 

 

The use of extreme close ups doesn't tell you much about the people in the film and what it is about but hints privacy. The iconic symbol of a silhouette of a man suggests anonumity and hiding. The camera movement is clean but slow paced, again suggestive of the documentary style of filming. The font in the titles is simple and easy to read as it is a san serif font. The white font contrasts with the 'dirty white' of the computer screen which makes it easy to read instead of white on white being hard to read. Similarly I would like something like this for our titles font, maybe instead of white, use a red on specific words and maybe two different fonts to suggest the horror genre.

 

The camera pans down from the blue/white contrast. The blue reminds me of social medias, I think this is more of the stereotypical facebook blue colour. The font is easy to read and stands out (because of the contrast of negative and positive space), for our film I think this font would be too simplistic for the title.

Research

This is some more research into sound. We were worried that our original song would sound too 'Pop'ish.







Jump scare noises for our titles of 'A Zombie Movie'

A Zombie Movie Draft

This is the first draft of our title sequence. I think the opening the laptop parts need to be reshot as some of them are too dark or out of focus. I had some feedback from Lucy who suggested that we could film the title sequence actually on the computer, so it would look cleaner, professional and of a better quality. We also need to add a video that Terry has on his phone to upload.

Update: Over the Holidays

Over the holidays we had completed the taking photos and videos for the facebook profiles for our protagonists and uploaded them. We also filmed our title sequence clips (such as opening the laptop and the viewing of the photos and videos). The only troubles we had were the uploading (my upload speed at home isn't too great, and therefore that took longer than it should have done) and when other members in the group were unable to film on certain days due to other plans.

Now we need to:

• Convert all the clips on mpeg streamclip to dv
• start the editing process (first draft finished by 4th March)

• Sort out the sound (sort out the soundtrack and film foley sound)  

In one of our clips, there is footage of a zombie that the protagonists don't notice in the background, this is a photo to document what our zombie looked like, we decided not to be as detailed as the make up tutorial previously showed due to the fact that the video would be filmed on a phone and not on the zombie all the time as it was to be un-noticed. 

Sound

This is the first draft of our soundtrack, we decided to make the sound sound a little muted. It sounded fine on final cut pro but has distorted a little bit when uploaded to youtube, which we will have to correct.

-make foley sound (typing, mouse clicking???)



-Use this for intro titles (tall productions/ A zombie movie???)

Costumes (Plan)

This is a plan of the clothes that our protagonists would wear (of something to that effect). Throughout the shoot, our actors will wear something to this effect. 

Principal Shoot

We met up round my house at roughly 11.30 am. We then went to Bostall Woods (while it was raining).

We took a series of photographs of the locations we would take photos and videos for  our title sequence.

These are the locations we will be using for taking photographs and videos for our title sequence.

Update

During this lesson we went through our schedule and decided that tomorrow, we would go out and take photos for our principal shoot. Today we all updated our blogs and started to collect and create photos for the profiles of our three protagonists.

Production Plan

Font notes

In Leanne's lesson we began talking about font types and a class analysis of a few title sequences.

Catch Me If You Can
-Smooth
-Flowy
-Sense of constant movement (characters are constantly moving/running away)
-2 fonts represent two different characters
San serif font - outlaw, the font is changing and moving
serif font - official, government, western? FBI Agent
-clear fonts, easy to read
-Saul Bass esque (lines and colour)

Lord of War
-White font - dark background
-Small, centered
-Bullet - dehumanises - not attached to characters
-San serif font
-Soviet writing - Russian, cold war, warish
-military cap letters (serious, no humour, unemotional)
-printed in metal
-Actors names - centered, lesser actors and crew to side
-roles - simplier - rounded, constrast

Forrest Gump
-Serif font
-plain, long (stretched)
-white - purity
-older- more traditional font/film
-newsprint
-slow paced, soft and steady, gentle
-fades in, soft and gentle
-large font, centered

Fonts

Fonts

From our questionnaire, we had decided that this font was our favourite, however we had decided to play around with the font top make it more interesting. 

This is our font plain. As a group we think that this is a little plain and boring. 

I thought it would look great if there was a shadow, however as a group we decided that the light grey/white shadow makes the font look too comedic. 

Using the same shadow idea, we changed it so that there was a darker red shadow. Aiden likes this version of the font. 

As another design with the shadow idea, we changed the shadow to a dark grey. Louis likes this version. 

I am unsure as to which version I like. I think we should wait until Terry sees this (as he is absent today) and see which he prefers out of our final two. 

UPDATE: Terry came back in and decided that the one with a dark grey shadow over the red. 

Initial Storyboards

This is the second draft of our storyboards for our title sequence that we completed in Emily's class. We also spoke of preproduction plans and creating a schedule for which thing should be completed by and what we should be doing during the holidays filming wise.

 

 

 

 

 

Group Research

During one of our groups breaks and free lessons, we started to begin thinking about what sounds we would use within our title seqeunce.

These are some uncopyrighted tracks we are considering to use for the soundtrack. We are thinking about layering some of the tracks over each other, or even recording noises and making a song from that (showing the humour element in our film).




This is the sort of make up we want our zombie's to look like, maybe not as much detail like the boils and the veins, but definitely the dark eyes and emphasis on the chest.


We are thinking about use zombie screeches/cries during our title sequence. This is what we want our zombies to sound like, however we will record our own zombie noises.

 

Initial Storyboards

First Draft Story Boards: 

We started creating our story boards. This is the first draft.