Welcome Moderator

Welcome to my AS media blog. My name is George Thornton. Here you can find the posts I have made throughout the year and links to my evaluation questions located in the pages above.

Film

Preliminary film

Film Title

Here is our film title for Faded. My group and I decided to keep it simple, yet the font suggests mystery. The title itself is simple, bold and creates contrast against the black background. We made use of a font that looks almost like handwriting. It doesnt have any special effects or anything particularly fancy and it can relate back to the film itself, which is very down to earth.

Music in garage band

I created the music for our movie using garage band, playing the notes in through the keyboard. The main instrument I used was an organ and piano, although there were others added every now and then for background effect.

Research into fonts for title

We went on DaFont and browsed for some fonts that we could potentially use for our title sequence. In the end we went with "Christopher Hand" because we think it suits the films simplicity.

Research on film titles

These are some already existing film titles. We looked at these ones because we think that our target audience are likely to watch these films. Film titles tend to be in bold and they must contrast with their background.

Our Ident

Here is the ident for our production group- THT Productions. The idea of THT is based on the last names of the members of our group, Thornton, Harrop and Tsang. 

The ident is quite simple, and it suites most of the genres of films, but mostly thriller. We made use of smoke, glittery, and a rough texture so that the animation becomes more lively and mysterious, rather than a boring plain background with plain text. The title at first appears to be shattered pieces which then combine to form the name of our production company 'THT productions'.

Creating our ident

Before we start to create the ident of our movie Faded, my group and I needed to learn how to use after effects, so we went on to video copilot and looked at the Aftereffects tutorials.

Filming in school

My group and I went to the care centre at school to film a scene where Karen is in a coma, lying on the hospital bed. The setting of the room is really clean and tidy, with the white bed and red blanket, so it looks very much like a real hospital room. This scene is a part of the flashback in our film opening and it will make our story more complete because it links everything together and creates enigma because it makes the audience wonder what had happened to the girl and what has the guy done to her, so they will be interested and will want to keep watching.

Researching idents

My group and I looked at different idents of production company, for example Lionsgate and Sony Pictures. We believe that the ident of a production company should somehow shape the image of that company or even films that it produces. However most of them have an universal appeal so that they can be used in all genres of films. We decided that we would create a simple ident for our production company, perhaps with some smoky effects to make it mysterious.

Rich Mix

Tomorrow we are going to the Rich Mix in London for a TV drama study day.


This event will take a close look at how the key elements of camerawork, editing, mise-en-scène and soundtrack construct representations of different social groups. I'm hoping to learn something form the speaker about camera work and editing for our movie.

Blogger App

I have just downloaded a blogger app for my iPhone, which will allow me to make posts on the move. This could be useful for making posts from on set for example, since I can include pictures

As a group, we have decided to use Metrodome Distribution ( features films and home entertainment in the UK). The distributed films like The Secret in Their Eyes, The Scar Cow, In Darkness and Shifty. They  don't distribute big Hollywood movies Spiderman or 2012 but they mainly distribute small scale British films, so Metrodome would be a suitable distributor for Faded.
They believed that good films don't have to be big Hollywood blockbusters, don't have to be about high-flying culture but instead, can be set in places we live in, and the people can be the kind of characters that we know. Just like our film, nothing fancy, not many special effects, just a simple but thrilling story that attracts the audiences and might even make them think about their lives.


Here is the link of Metrodome Distribution on Imdb

Colour correction

I had to do colour correction for our film in Adobe Premiere, since some parts of the film that were meant to be at the same time of the day were not filmed at the same time of day and this was noticeable. So I made some shots lighter and some darker.

Research on distribution- Shifty

Shifty- produced by Rory Aitken and Ben Pugh

From imdb:

Shifty, a young crack cocaine dealer in London, sees his life quickly spiral out of control when his best friend returns home. Stalked by a customer desperate to score at all costs, and with his family about to turn their back on him for good, Shifty must out-run and out-smart a rival drug dealer, intent on setting him up for a big fall. As his long time friend Chris, confronts the dark past he left behind him, Shifty is forced to face up to the violent future he's hurtling towards.

 See trailer

Metrodome is the distributor that picked up Shifty for release in the UK. There's a lot of urban films made, films like Kidulthood, Adulthood, Bullet Boy. 

As Jezz Vernon, the head of marketing at Metrodome said " I think one of the most important things we want to say in these screenings is that cinema can be about so much more than Spiderman and Star Wars and Hollywood blockbusters, there is some really fantastic cinema being made in Britain today and I think Shifty is a fantastic example of that."

We realised that it doesn't have to be set in London, it doesn't have to be about high-flying culture, it can be set in places you're from, the people in the movie can be the kind of people you know and the kind of stories that the movie focuses on could be familiar to you so we really hope in these screenings that you get an idea of how diverse cinema can be, and you can really enjoy film that comes from right here in the UK, it doesn't have to be an American view of the world.

Here are some of the films that Metrodome distributed :

From Imdb

Research on distribution

According to BFI Screen Online by David Sin:


Distribution, the third part of the film supply chain, is often referred to as 'the invisible art', a process known only to those within the industry, barely written about and almost imperceptible to everyone else.


Distribution is about releasing and sustaining films in the market place. In the practice of Hollywood and other forms of industrial cinema, the phases of production, distribution and exhibition operate most effectively when 'vertically integrated', where the three stages are seen as part of the same larger process, under the control of one company. 


In the UK, distribution is very much focused on marketing and sustaining a global product in a local market.
very much focused on marketing and sustaining a global product in local markets.

Sound Recording- New Technology

I used Logic 9 from the process of constructing the product. in my music tech lesson, I have been learning how to use Logic 9 to make my own music, but for media, it is totally different. In last week's lesson, we recorded Karen screaming and then we used Logic 9 to add in different effects in order to make our sound clip eerie and spooky.

Here's our sound clip:

Risk assesment

This lesson we created a risk assesment sheet. In doing this out group are able to asses and overcome risks of our various film locations. By following this, our group is able to be safer considering some of our scenes are quite hazardous for example a tall builing, water etc

Working on title sequence

I also worked on the title sequence for the movie. I have crated a short, simple animation for the title that fits it quite well. I added the fading effect which suits our title: 'Faded' and it creates suspense. It has been added to the sequence.

Facebook and Youtube

So we realised that the Internet helps distributors to advertise their films and raises awareness among audiences at a very early stage, even before the film is done.
So in today's lesson, we focused on how we were going to promote our movie opening in the future. We created a Facebook page where fans would be able to see the latest screen shots/trailers etc from the movie, and a YouTube account which we could host the videos on before posting them to the Facebook page.

Risk assessment

From our filming secession, we realised risks are involver, so in today's lesson, we made our risk assessment. We named all the risk that could be involved and wrote down solution for each accident that could happen.

Here's a screenshot of the document

Feedback

A couple of days ago, we showed our film to some people looking round on open morning. We had extremely positive feedback. People especially enjoyed and were stunned with the climax of the boy leaning and jumping over the edge of the tall building, especially with the cutaway. We heard comments such as 'I hope the boy isn’t dead' and "what happens next?". This is very reassuring and provides evidence of the feeling and emotions we wanted to create and it shows they want to keep watching. They also felt that the location was extremly realistic and made the situation of the boy even more shocking.
The viewing audience of our film included the targeted age group of 18-40+  with a mixture of genders. The movie seemed to appeal to both genres and all age groups well. We also had younger age groups which were very intrigued and grabbed by our film opening. This suggests that our film may appeal to an even wider audience than previously thought and so the chances of our film becoming a sucess is even greater.

Conventions of a thriller

In order to better understand the genre- thriller, we worked as a group and identified some key characteristics of thriller films and created thismind map using MindNode

Audience Feedback

After our first filming section yesterday, we started the editing during lesson today. We edited the part where I stand on the roof top and deciding whether I should kill myself or not. Then we carried out a small focus group survey, asking for feedback. Most of them thought that it was quite depressing but they could feel the tension and were interested to watch he film. Some of our focus group even gasped because they thought it was so realistic and this is pleasing to us as we aimed for verisimilitude. We think the opening sequence will be able to attract our designed target audience.

Sky investigation

In today's lesson, we had been doing research on the target audience for our psychological thriller. We took a look at how websites like Sky characterised their genres and audience. They provide different channels for example like Sky Sports, Sky Movies and Sky News, and each targets a different kind of audience. The channel we focused on was Sky Movies HD Crime and Thrillers. They say that the channel attracts young audience, about 34% of viewers are 16-34 years old, which is roughly the sort of group we are aiming to target for our movie intro.

Mood Board

This is a mood board for our target audience. It portrays everything from where they might eat out, to what other sorts of movies and T.V they will watch.

Preliminary exercise

This is our preliminary video. We did this exercise in order to better understand the shooting and editing techniques and get prepared for our final course work. We used an iphone to shoot this video so we can try and see what the qualities are but for our final project we will use a camera.

working process:

Our Call Sheet

When we filmed in Kingston, we needed to create a call sheet to show everything and everyone we needed. This was issued to everyone going along with all of our contact details incase we needed them.