Teacher Interview

http://vimeo.com/40387034

Class Presentation

http://vimeo.com/40386053

What have you learnt from doing the project?

This was one of the most key parts of our project. When it was all finished me and Amir finally had time to reflect and when we were in planning for our interview and making our PowerPoint for the class presentation we had to ask ourselves 'what have we learnt?'

Firstly i have learnt that organisation is huge key feature for making not just a film project but for any media product. After our first attempt of making a film me and Amir realised how much easier and swiftly the filming process could have gone has we planned and organised everything but we didn't we just asked people we never really spoke to 'Can you film this?' or 'Can you play this part?' without any real thought as the majority of times we asked people to play in our film and they said yes we would find about 5 minutes before shooting that 'We can't make it' or 'I completely forgot' and as much as they didnt help us by telling us last minute we were mainly to blame as we should have constantly reminded them, asked if they still can do it and ensure that we contacted each all the time. Another problem was with ourselves but i will admit that the majority of the time it was my fault, i do allot of things when i get in from school such as playing for my football team which fully cancels out Tuesdays and half of a Saturday which at the time didn't seem bad because i had the rest of the day to film but i wouldn't be back till 3 and at the time of filming it was dark nights meaning it was dark at 4:30. But also at the time our football team was in the semi-final of a cup meaning i trained occasionally 3 times a week. Also one of my other subjects did not help, as chemistry tore a huge chunk of my time as our whole course is based entirely on coursework meaning that when we finished one we would start another straight away which would have to be done about 3 weeks later. However i eventually found time and was able to film with Amir who I'm thankful for his patience and understanding. But the biggest culprit of them all was the weather, as the time of filming we werent getting any good of it. Especially with 2/3's of our film being outside it really made it horrendous. We filmed some of our shots on different days and on one it was snowing and was forecast this the rest of the week, however next time it came to shooting the snow had melted and the sun was shining meaning that we had a huge continuity error which meant we had to re film the scene were it snowed. So we have learnt that organising is key and that when the next task occurs we will be in touch all the time, using the Internet for weather forecasts and sunset times and choosing our locations wisely as a location inside would bet better as weather and time wont effect the film.

Imagination, Ideas and initiative was another thing we learnt, these three I's were the key to our film as without them it wouldn't have been the way it was. Imagination and ideas interlocked with each other as without them the basis of our film would we bland and boring , we used this in our opening tracking sequence as i had the idea of showing hints of a zombie apocalypse without being blunt and abrupt so for example when Greg (a zombie) is behind a fence eating someone and blood on bollards and hand prints on windows creating one of those quizzical moments for the audience as they will ask 'Wait! What was that?' which keeps them alert and focused on the film. Amir also had the amazing idea of placing the credits on the wall to make it part of the scene rather then making it looked inserted.

The intuitive part was Amirs doing as at first we wanted to create a tracking shot of us walking down a road and we firstly used his sister to film us walking, however it was far to shaking and the camera and tripod were heavy to hold for a long period some Amir had the idea and initiative to place the camera on a tripod in the car to create a smooth and good tracking shot.





I have learnt some more about editing but i still have a lot to learn. Amir was kind enough to show me the basics such as inserts, depth of field, cutting, importing, compositions and changing textures, lighting and contrasts. Hopefully Amir will show me how to do more complex editing or more variety of basics to use in either our project or my own.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing your project?

What I’ve learned from this project about technologies is about the cameras, tripods and editing software’s and how to use them to make and edit our film. To actually make our project me and Amir started off with one of the schools cameras which were good and easy to use however we found some problems with them as battery life didn’t last too long and the light on the camera itself wasn’t strong enough to see some dark areas  of our film. During the time from our first draft of the sequence to our final draft, Amir had ordered a video camera online and was waiting for it to be delivered luckily it was on time for us to film our final draft. Amir’s camera was initially hard to use at the start as you had to set up all the settings which consisted of contrast, brightness, resolution, pixels and many others, so when I first so the screen I was completely confused and fazed by the amount of writing on the screen but after using it I now understand. The camera was vital to our sequence as it allowed us to create perfect shots and movements due to its graphics and adjustable settings.

When we began the editing process of the film, at first i found it difficult as i hadn't done much editing before. However Amir showed me the basics of editing however not with Premier Pro as we used After effects for our film because we believed it had more features of editing and of a wide variety but also because Amir was more familiar with this editing software. Amir did most of the editing as he enjoys it and is better with the programme however I was round his house to help with the editing, doing some myself but mainly aiding. To start the editing of our film we imported all the clips and shots we needed and placed them into order, from there the real task of editing began. An example of some hard editing was with the establishing shot of the street with garages however we decided to create a depth of field shot which had one part in focus and the other out and after a few seconds it was the opposite, do this we selected the layer and clicked on it to reveal its options and then turn on the depth of field, after this we change the level of blur to somewhere over 500% so that we can have a really creative blur effect. This is then followed by making the focus distance focus on the first part and then the last part. We then have to add a keyframe at the start of the timelime and then to make the last part in focus we changed the focus distance to a different number to the first part.

Another use of editing that we did was our title sequence which consisted of lots of text inserts which we used for our credits. We create a new composition and then click on the text tool, we then wrote the name of one of the credits and chose the font, we then take the pen tool and select the layer and draw around the text; and then click the selection tool. Then we go to our film clip which is the tracking scene with the wall and drag in the writing text and its done.

Who would be the audience for your media product and how did you attract them?

Before making and creating our film, me and Amir decided that the audience for our film would mainly be teenagers and with a focused age of 13-24. The reason for this is because with our cast being between the ages of 10-18 this would be that the audience could relate to characters and their situations because they are similar, for example Sam and Drake at the start of the film are very care free, happy, messing around and naïve which is what the majority of people of the focused age will be. Potenially the film could have an adult audience too as personally my mum loves horrors films just as much as I do especially when it comes to zombies and because films like ‘Shaun Of The Dead’ and ‘Resident Evil’ play older and more adult characters which the adult audience will like and relate perhaps to ‘Shaun Of The Dead’ characters when it shows Shaun’s life before the apocalypse. Still though another reason for targeting young adults is because people between this age are more likely to go to cinemas and see films but also because there is a worldwide horror fan base already established out there for this age such as Zombieland, Star Trek, Shaun Of The Dead, Dawn Of The Dead and 28 Days later.

But also a television series called The Walking Dead which has amazing reviews and ratings, for example the first season of ‘The Walking Dead’ had an average of 5.24 million viewers with its season finale receiving just 6 million views alone in the US. But it didn’t end there, they released Season 2 which set a new record of 7.3 million viewers just in the first episode and towards the middle of the series attained 8.1 million viewers. But its also now creating a Season 3 which will be released in November this year.

In our film we used mainly background noises however we used a range of music from other films such as ‘Sherlock Homes’ which is used at the end of the sequence and ‘Zombieland’ which is used after I (Sam) kills a zombie. The fact we wear clothes that everyday outfits also allows the audience to relate to the characters as it shows them that the characters are just two average people trying to survive, unlike ‘Resident Evil’ were you get this bad-ass character who can do flips and jump of buildings and survive as obviously the audience can’t do that meaning they can’t relate, however despite that ‘Resident Evil’ gets a good reception because it’s not based on reality and normality making it cool, gripping and actiony.
You can view this scene here to get an idea of it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIGByOusiCE

We think that overall our themes of our film will be kind of suited to who we have selected as our target audience. Themes of our film include typical horror and comedy conventions such as blood and gritty editing but also props such as weapons and clothing. I believe that the themes we used in our film incorporates the gore, the violence and action that will appeal to the audience and who will view the themes used in our film as appealing, exciting and tensional.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media project?

After looking at different institutions me and Amir decided that the best institution to distribute our film was Columbia Picture. Columbia Pictures are considered one of the big six within the world of film production and doing extremely well financially, the company has released high blockbuster films like 'Panic Room' 'Men In Black' 'Stuart Little' 'Spiderman' and many more. Even though Columbia Pictures don't necessarily focus strongly on horrors or horror comedies, the company does produce lots of high grossing films which have been timeless classics played over and over again without becoming boring. In 1982 Columbia Pictures was bought by Coca-Cola, the same year it launched TriStar Pictures as a joint venture with HBO and CBS, due to this still applying today if Columbia did distribute our film they would be advertised not just in the UK but in US as well, as by having a join venture with HBO and CBS our film would be advertised and viewed on these channels. Five years later, Coca-Cola spun off Columbia and was acquired by Sony in 1989, because of this this would mean that the film would be global as Sony is a huge company. But despite its high grossing films and huge finances, me and Amir mainly chose Columbia Pictures to be our distributor because of its two hugely successful films which are 'Ghostbusters' and 'Zombieland'.

Horror films distrubuted:

• 30 Days of night
• Zombieland
• Ghostbusters
• Anaconda
• Fright night
• The bride

Ghostbusters - Box Office

• On June 8 1984 Ghostbusters was released in 1339 theaters and grossed $13.6 million within its first opening weekend and earned $23 million in its first week.
•  Ghostbuster then went on to gross $229.2 million at the box office, making it the second highest-grossing film of 1984, which in its time, these figures put it within the top ten highest-grossing films of all-time.
• A re-release in 1985 gave the film a total gross of $238.6 million and making Ghostbusters the most successful comedy of the 1980s.

Zombieland - Box Office

• Zombieland was released in October 2009
• instantly received positive critical reviews as it was grossing more than $60.8 million in 17 days.
• The film debuted at No. 1 at the box office in North America, with ticket sales of $24,733,155 on the opening weekend, matching its production budget.
• As of October 29, 2009, the film grossed $75,590,286 domestically and $102,133,700 worldwide.
• Critics and fans of the film said that this is "the first [American] horror comedy in recent memory to find significant theatrical success".

The facts and figures on box office information was from Wikipedia  :)

How does your media product represent a particular social group?

Within our film we don't particularly concentrate on one specific social group such as Colour, Region and Age and so on. However in our film we concentrate on age,gender, size, stereotypes and even American vs English groups. Throughout our film we have the constant representation of gender, as stereotypically men are the stronger, better and smarter sex whilst women are weaker, dependent and less intelligent sex. But in our film we decide to go against the stereotypical representation to add comedy to film as because its not a stereotypical view, the audience laugh at the change, but we also decided to do this to see how the audience would react when the roles are changed and see whether this would benefit or ruin the film.

Gender

So as you can see, we have Drake (Amir) lying on the floor being attacked by a girl zombie. This is strange because if we stuck to stereotypes a 'big' 'muscular' man wouldn't be able to be tackled to the ground by a 'small' and 'weak' girl. Then if you look again you can see my character (Sam) in the background looking 'helpless' and 'weak' a she expects her 'strong' friend to take care of it himself. However this isn't the situation as Drake (Amir) calls out for help from Sam and she finds a weapon and kills the girl herself.

Stereotypes

So what you can see above is a screen shot of me and Amir (Sam and Drake). Firstly we have Sam who because of her blond hair she would be stereotypically viewed as stupid, blunt, girly and weak, whilst Amir on the other hand is from the middle east and would stereotypically be viewed as a terrorist and violent. However this is not the case as my character (Sam) is actually the smart and strong one whilst Amir (Drake) is the clumsy and helpless one.

Size

Another representation was size as typically a taller person would be stronger whilst a smaller person would be weaker, however we break this representation as in our film we have the smaller zombie being the strong one and the tall one being weak, as you can see from the shot the tall zombie could easily overpower the small one but this isn't the case this time.

Age

  All of the characters in our film are young characters either at the age of 16, 17 or 18, this means the representation of the film is important. The reason we chose to film young characters was to appeal to the audience as the majority of people who view zombie comedies are between the ages of 13 to 24. If the audience can relate to the characters it creates a connection between them which in turn makes the audience like them, myself personally related myself to Shaun out of 'Shaun Of The Dead' as i would probably not realise a zombie apocalypse was occurring unless i was attacked. But also at the start of the film we see Drake and Sam being typical teenagers, messing about, being clumsy and having fun (like above) as they still believe life is normal, however later on in the film we see Sam and Drake again in the toilets but instead of being clumsy and messing about we see them as mature and focused at whats happening showing the audience that people can change to respond to a situation.

Britain

USA

Lastly we have Britain Vs USA. What i mean by that is when you say zombie horror in America you get the above martial arts, acrobatic super killing women and when you say zombie horror in Britain you get two average joes who have no idea whats going on or how to solve. This shows the complete difference in the countries idea of zombie Apocalypse. If you look at the top left you see Shaun and Ed from 'Shaun Of The Dead' they both are common working class man with everyday jobs (unless your Ed) but life is normal, but when you look at the top right you see Alice from 'Resident Evil' she is wearing adventurous and protective clothing and is well equipped showing that apparently in America if a zombie Apocalypse occurs everything you need to survive will be just around the corner. So when it came to our film we adopted the British representation of horror because its makes the audience feel like they have something in common and can relate to each other but also because its more realistic then back flipping into the air and killing 50 zombies with a pistol in 10 seconds.