Welcome to my blog

For our coursework this year we will be creating a film opening of maximum 2 minutes. The name should be similar to an actual movie and follow the institutional conventions for commercial cinema. All images and text must be produced by the candidate. Can be individual or in groups of max. 4.

Why did I pick media?

- Well I picked media because I took it last year for my GCSE's and I found it very interesting and fun.

What am I looking forward to?

- I am looking forward to all the film shooting and editing because I enjoyed that last year.

What am I nervous about?

- I am nervous for the exam and all the deadlines and preparation work.

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Taken from CIE syllabus

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Exit Light: Final Cut

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This is the Final cut.

Improvements from final rough cut:

• Moved 352 ident to end and added audio bridge
• Added zipper sound effect when guy zips up black jeans
• Made stalk shot shorter
• Made lair scene shorter
• Added movement effect to title at the end

Evaluation Q1

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How we used or challenged conventions

Evaluation Q2

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How did we engage with audiences, and how it might get distribution

Evaluation Q3

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Development of skills throughout course

Evaluation Q4

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How we used technologies

More detailed Vodcasts about FCPX, Blogger and Youtube:
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Call Sheets and Storyboards

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Rough cut 4

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Improvements:

• Added Idents
• Added Titles
• Added phone voiceover
• Added more sound effects when final girl feels like she is being followed, jump-scare sounds and music for chase scene
• Also added Title at the end when final girl gets killed

Bride of Chucky: Analysis

Directed by: Ronny Yu
Domestic Release date: October 16th, 1998
Box Office US: $32M
Box Office Worldwide: $51M
Production Budget: $25M
MPAA Rating: R for strong horror violence and gore, language, some sexual content and brief drug use.
Franchise: Child's Play
RottenTomatoes: 46%
IMDB: 5.4/10
Distribution Company: Universal Pictures

Sound:

• Non-diegetic music
• Audio bridge
• Ambient sound
• String instruments (slow/high pitch)
• Slow long drum beats (bass drum, soft) 
• several seconds apart
• slow heart beat (impact your psychology)
• makes you holding your breath (tense feeling)
• single beat kicks slows down heartbeat which messes with your heart
• (if fast pace music it speeds up your mood / adrenaline)
• change tio faster notes (drum kicks)
• mess with somebody heart, it combines fast and slow notes which is very effective

Editing:

• Titles:
• Serf font (sharp edged)
• Bubble font attract young audience
• White font and black background coyotes seriousness
• Bits of fonts are faded (decay)
• Also kind of a Bubble font (thick font)
• Hybrid (slasher and comedy)
• Crane shot:
• panning + tilting shot
• we get the sound of lightning and rain (Ambient sound)
• shot of a hand (narrative enigma crated)
• The girl on the phone is the scream queen because she already talks very stupid
• killing with a nail filer signifies that it is a slasher film
• They have challenged the convention by letting the scream queen be the killer

Pre-production Evidence

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In this video we see various behind the scene footage and evidence.
Some of the things you can see is:

• Unboxing
• Footage of directing
• Behind the scenes for establishing shots
• Location scouting

Titles evidence vodcast

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This evidence video shows how we researched different fonts to come up with a shortlist of our favourite fonts with which we engaged with our audience to find the best font for our general and main titles.

FCPX special effects Vodcast

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Gant Rule

This Gant Rule was made up  by someone called Charles Gant a boy office analyst. He believed that the box office of a film will be successful when it makes ten times as much in the US as in the UK. One good example is Maze Runner (2014). It made  £4M in the UK and $40M in the US.

However this is not always the case, some movies can do incredibly well in the UK but flop in the US. This was the case for Bridget Jones' Baby because that made $60M in the UK but only made $24M in the US. Why might this be? Well Bridget Jones does not have a wide American appeal and has a lot of jokes or references that only people from the UK will understand. This was a crucial reason as to this was a flop in the US.
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DISTRIBUTION: Micro Budget

It may seem difficult to get distribution as a micro-budget movie, however many micro-budget have gotten distribution from fairly big companies. Not the Big Six but some of the bigger Indie companies.
There are many was to get your movie distributed, however the smaller the budget, the lesser chance of getting distributed due to a higher risk. This is why its so difficult for micro-budget films to get distribution.
One of the ways to get distribution as a micro-budget movie producer is constantly send emails describing the idea, the budget and other aspects of the film but the most important part is to explain why your movie is not a risk for the distribution. You can also apply for Indie film festivals to get recognition and a few screenings at those. Many micro-budget indie movies have become fairly well-known this way.

Rough cut 3

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For this Rough cut we added some establishing shots and completely reworked the concept of our idea, instead of a bedroom scene where the 2 guys play FIFA, now one of the guys just had sex with the scream queen. We decided to include this aspect because its a convention to have sex in a slasher film and then get killed because of it. Then for the Car park scene we had different cast  so it would be 2 couples of teens and one single "Final Girl". The final girl is also a convention as she is the only one in the movie who doesn't get killed. She is sexually inactive as we can see because she is the only without a boyfriend, and nerdy because she is carrying books and is made fun of by the others. We also had a side plot where the scream queen is cheating on her boyfriend which is what separates her from the rest of the group, therefore getting her killed. We also added a chase scene.

TESS clip Deconstruction

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Sample scene: Bedroom

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DEADLINES

comprehensive Conventions (including APPLYING evidence throughout draft/planning posts) research; 15.03.17


Industry (including technology, distribution, budgets, box office, production strategy); 15.03.2018

Audience (including feedback + response to this); 29.03.2018

Planning for all shoots (including full storyboard, screenplay, shoot behind-the-scenes/'rushes', production schedule/updates, H+safety check, permissions); 24.03.2018

final blog check (tagging, links lists, flaws like small text, lack of illustration, lack of sub-headings); SL 31.03.2018

SS 30.03.2018

full rough cut with titles + sound/music; 17.03.2018

final cut; 24.03.2018

Q1; 12.03.2018 (Film date: 09.03.2018)

Q2; 25.03.2018 (Film date: 23.03.2018)

Q3; 22.03.17 (Film date: 18.03.2018)

Q4; 18.03.2018 (Film date: 16.03.2018)

Sample Scene: Car Park 2

Here is a sample scene of our reshoot of our car park scene. We needed to do a reshoot because we felt the past scene simply wasn't good enough.
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EVAL reflecting on creative process

Questions:
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Q1a: how you used or challenged CONVENTIONS
Q1b: REPRESENTATIONS of social groups/issues
Q2a: how you engaged with AUDIENCES
Q2b: how might it achieve DISTRIBUTION
Q3: DEVELOPMENT of production skills throughout the entire process
Q4: how you integrated TECHNOLOGIES (software, hardware, online) in the project

Creative Process:

Q1. Street interview/Q+A in car (Gordon Ramsey-esque comedy skit)

• Walking around in town and asking people questions about Conventions.
• Driving around and picking actors up and ask us questions about conventions
• While filming have a mean director/producer/editor

Q2. Presidential campaign/Q+A on stage (Nigahiga video)

• Big audience + Journalist asking a lot of questions of how we engaged with the Audience
• Photographers ( Flashing lights )
• Bodyguards behind the president in suit 

Q3. Who Wants to Be A Millionaire

• Game Show
• 1 question 4 answers ( Skills developed throughout the process)
• including our own adverts

Q4. Apple Advert

• advertising FCPX
• showing the audience the possibilities
• Including features

Influences: 

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Podcast 8

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We are talking about the issues we had with the past rough cuts and why and what we are making to fix the issues. Also what we did and what we are going to do. In addition, the deadlines for our film opening. There are also some behind the scene of us getting the establishing shots.

What we expect to be in our Final Cut

What is in our cut:

• Lair scene
• Bedroom scene

What is not in our cut:

• Establishing shots 23.2
• Radio announcing escaped prisoner (script)25.2 
• Ellipsis 23.2 
• Reshoot of carpark scene 25.2
• False scare in carpark scene 25.2
• Titles 24.2

PODCAST: Summary

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Here we have an interview by Hannah Ni, in which we summarise what we have done so far for our film opening.

Rough Cut 2

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For our second rough cut we re-filmed everything because we felt like it wasn't good enough and we got feedback from our audience.  We also added a lair scene.

Improvements made:
Bedroom scene:

• Improved dialogue (still could be improved)
• More shot variety
• Added effect to stalking shot + shorter takes
• Filmed TV footage
• Added Jump-scare (although not that scary)

Carpark scene:

• Glimpse of killer
• Crosscutting to lair scene

PODCAST 7

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Here we show a little bit of our second rough cut. We talk about why we are reshooting everything also what we are going to do in the following week.