All images copyrighted to Rosie Hartley Photography 2010 (c)

Animatic

The Importance of Storyboarding and Planning.

It is important to plan any work, but planning a film or short video can make the whole production process so much easier. Storyboarding is probably one of the most common ways to plan shots, camera movements, lighting, audio and what is revealed to the audience in an order that works to build suspense, tension and emotion.

I prefer to use storyboarding because I can visually see what needs to be filmed and what order

Character Costumes (cont.)

These are the costumes that our actors/actresses will be wearing, or something similar. We decided to draw what we thought they should wear to clearly show our ideas to one another and decide what looked best. It also allowed us to identify between them and ask people who they thought would wear that, to see if we were representing the people we wanted to portray properly.

The Importance of Target Audience.

"In marketing and advertising, a target audience, or target group is the primary group of people that something, usually an advertising campaign, is aimed at appealing to. A target audience can be people of a certain age group, gender, marital status, etc. (ex: teenagers, females, single people, etc.) A certain combination, like men from twenty to thirty is often a target audience. Other groups, although not the main focus, may also be interested."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Target_audience 17/11/2010)

Target audience is important because it allows the creator to know or investigate what that group are interested in, which helps shape their work. It also allows the creator to know what language to use that the main audience will understand. For example, using colloquial language in a film aimed at women aged 60+ wouldn't be suitable because they wouldn't understand what the language meant.

Target audience allows the creator to

Character Costumes.

Costumes are important it represent characters and to help give them personality.

In our opening of a film we have 5 characters, the abductee, a school girl aged around twelve, the abductor, an older man around his forties, the girls parents who are both about thirty, and the detective, who is in his forties. Costumes for our opening are important, because there is hardly any dialogue for personality to be built up from, and there is no initial display of the roles the characters. 

The school girl will be in uniform, which is a navy blue jumper and blue trousers, because the opening scene is split between the cave, where the abductee is being held, and the place where she was abducted from, outside the school gates, which is why its important for her to be in uniform, so that the audience can identify her age, and that she is a member of the school, automatically putting her in a vulnerable situation. It is also important for mise-en-scene because it helps the audience to identify where she is. 

The abductor will be wearing a long black coat with a black hood and dark trousers. This is important because it doesn't reveal anything about who he is and what his intentions are, keeping him mysterious, which adds to the suspense of the opening because the audience should feel slightly confused as to who he is. Also, by only having him in black nothing about his personality is revealed, which again adds to the suspense and confusion of not knowing who he is.

The girls mum will be wearing a cardigan, comfortable bottoms and nothing on her feet, showing that she feels secure in her house, which is a contrast between her situation, and her daughters. The set clearly shows her surroundings to be her living room, with her husband, again adding to the feeling that she is safe and secure.What the mum could be considered as stereotypical, and the audience would be able to see that the character is meant to be representing a mum, because its 'easy' and is typically what you would think of a mum wearing. The costume doesn't really add to showing her personality, which kind of keeps her in the dark, and leaves the audience wanting to know more about her.

The father will be wearing darker, more stereotypical, clothes, such as a dark jumper, jeans, and maybe slippers to show that he is in a comfy setting and that he has no idea about what has happened to his daughter. It doesn't really add to showing his personality, other than he is a dad and this adds to the suspense, a long with what the mum is wearing, because it shows that they are quite happy and have no idea of what has happened. The mise-en-scene adds to this feeling and helps the audience understand why he is wearing what he is. The shot is set in their house, which shows them quite clearly in their living room, sat in comfortable chairs, but also with a clock, showing that time has passed. The only dialogue is used here with them querying as to where their daughter is, again showing that time has passed.

The detective will be wearing a suit, color dependant on which one we can manage to get a hold of. By putting him in a suit it automatically puts him in a higher position that everybody else, because he looks smart and presentable. This adds slightly to allowing the audience see his personality, because it shows that he likes to look well presented, setting him apart from the other characters, not only because of how he likes to be seen, but because he is the only character who allows elements of his personality to be revealed, you see him at his workplace and learn that he likes to look well presented. The mise-en-scene allows you to identify that he is in his workplace and that he is a detective, because of the whiteboard with case studies, files scattered around and his assistant, putting him in a place of importance. We allowed elements of his personality to be seen in the opening scene because he is the main character, and for the ending to shock, the audience need to develop an attachment to him, or at least be able to see elements of themselves in him.

Evauation of Preliminary Task.

For my preliminary task I had to to produce a short video that included shot reverse shot, match on action and the 180 degree rule. 

Storyboarding my groups piece was initially a breeze, until we decided to change our storyline to un-complicated things. This also became more difficult as we were recording because we kept straying from the storyboard and kept adjusting shots during shooting to make them look more effective. We also changed some of the shots around when we were editing because we found out what we could adjust and make look better.

I think that out of everything that we had to do, the filming was the easiest because we already had it down on paper what we wanted to include and we knew what we wanted it to look like in our heads. This made it easy to transfer when it came to shooting and where the camera should be placed, what shots should be used and for how long. The main problem we faced was trying to find an empty classroom to record in that looked like the one that we had previously used, and because we were recording during lesson time, we were restricted on which ones we could use not only because it had to match the one we had used before, but also because we didn't want to disturb any working classes. Remembering to stick to the 180 degree rule was the simplest to integrate into the camera work and abide by out of all of the things we had to include, because it made sense not to move the camera to the other side.

We used video editing software called Pinnacle Studio to edit the footage captured. At first this was hard because we had never used it before, but once we got used to it and were shown how to use it properly it was really easy and quick to change what we wanted to change to the footage. We had some difficulty transferring the footage we had captured from the camera onto the software because of trouble with fire-wire connection and not understanding how to do it. Once we were shown how to get all of the footage onto the software in one go it was really simple. Getting the match-on action with the door perfect was really patience testing because it took a lot of time and re-runs to make sure we had got it as point on as possible.

Overall I am very pleased with how the video came out, especially for a first try. If I had to change anything I would only change the speed that we worked because we were slow at times and it had repercussions further down the line, such as not having enough time to edit and having to film across several days and forgetting what we had already done. If we had worked quicker it would have also meant that we wouldn't have to have worried as much about finding classrooms that matched the one we were in before, because we could have gotten it done in one filming lesson.

Preliminary.

Why I chose Media Studies.

I chose to do media studies because I got a good grade at gcse and also because i enjoy it.