Wednesday 22 April 2009

As Media Project - Evasion



As Media Studies



This blog is a way to report everything that went on in the leading up to the pre production, filming and editing to create our filming task. This task had to be a 2 minute piece of film that represented the opening credits to a whole film.



To begin we had to discuss and decide on a genre of film we wanted to portray in our 2 minute film. After a long debate on the pros and cons of each genre we then came to the majority decision of horror/ thriller genre. We chose this genre because we all enjoy watching horror/ thriller films so therefore we would have the background knowledge on those types of films and what editing and filming techniques to give the audience a sense of suspense and keep them on the edge of their seats. The thriller genre we believe would be challenging however we believed we had the skills and determination to make it work to a high standard.



Once we had figured out which genre we were portray through out our 2 minute clip we then had to come up with a general plot to the story and then translate that plot into a storyboard. This storyboard allowed use to put down our idea of the story. Each shot was explained in detail what would be in that shot. Things we would consider and note down on our storyboard would be things such as:


mise-en-scene


editing techniques


what characters would be included in the scene


camera angles and shots


dialogue

props we might need


the location and timings e.g. the time of day



This technique was very useful on planning a head what we might need for the shoot. These were some of the thing we planned before the shoot:


- The risk assessment, this was to make sure no one in the making of filming of the production got hurt. It also prevented equipment from getting damaged. This was a very important part because it prevent and one or anything from getting into danger or hurting themselves of damaging expensive or personal equipment.






Monday 20 April 2009

As Media Project - Preliminary

Hiya I'm Sarah,

I study media studies at AS level, at Mayflower High School. Through out the course we have different types of tasks to carry, such as the theoretical side to media and the physical side, which is the actual filming and production of a film or part of a film.

One of our first projects was to film a scene which had to be 30 - 40 seconds long. It also had to show continuity, a slight bit of dialogue, the 180 degree rule, etc to show our understanding of what we had to do and whether we could demonstrate that in our film. Some of the jobs we had to do in the production of our film were the editing technique, acting, creation of the mise-en-scene.

However before we even began to film our scene we had to include pre-production, this consisted of creating a relatively detailed story board which included what would be in the scene throughout the 30 – 40 seconds, the positions of the actors and dialogue, where the 180 degree rule would be included, close-ups and zooming in out etc. This was a complex task and had to be referred back and forth within our group.

There was also the choice of genre and what would be included into our film, what would be the idea behind the idea, and how the audience would react what was being shown. This was all referred to within the group to make sure everything was equal. This whole procedure was the preproduction with in general terms was just to have a detailed plan on what we were going to do and how we were going to achieve it.

We then went on to the actual filming process, this was also a complex procedure as there we many obstacles we had to over come to ensure continuity and also make sure it is not perceived as a amateur attempt. We had many problems such and lighting within the house we used due to there not being enough of it and also the sound this was a slight issue causing editing to be an additional complication, this was due to a lack of technology. This could have been easily solved with an external microphone.

I found the whole filming experience enjoyable but I also found out that there was a lot more that had to be learnt and that the lack of technology can also be a huge disadvantage, and also the lack of knowledge of editing techniques. However many of the problems we had during the filming processes we over come fairly simply.

After we had filmed and edited our film we then went on to write and evolution on what we have done. This was basically to outline what we have done, how we did it, what problems occurred and what we did solve them. We also discussed what we could do next time when we film our actual task and how to carry on things that we didn’t do as well the time before.