Week 4

WEEK 4 - (PRODUCTION: WRITING & SHOOTING)

Using my skills from GCSE's and other work related
experience, I was able to also use a tripod to steady filming; however this year I became more confident with the movement of the tripod and experimented during filming with panning and titling shots. It also helped to steady the shot so the mise-en-scene was framed perfectly within the screen and kept the filming line straight. We noticed a significant difference in the footage when not using a tripod- with this piece of equipment, the film looks well cut and shot.

Also, small gadgets like my current phone helped me a lot when it came to contacting my group in order to arrange a meeting time and place. Apps such as Blackberry messenger which was used on my BlackBerry Curve saved a lot of money with group communication and made it easier to get together in terms of filming. My Blackberry had also helped me to note down any reminders or important notes that couldn't have been forgotten. But most importantly, as well as being compatible and it saved information of pictures and videos that would give us ideas during filming that would remind me not to forget. Video's were viewed from the internet via Blackberry on http://www.youtube.com/. 

My 2GB Sandisk Cruzer Slice Memory Stick also helped me save memory and transfer files from one place to another. This was important as documents that were needed for filming e.g. Filming Script, Storyboards, Example of trailer videos could be taken from one computer and printed / viewed in another so this helped a great deal when transferring files as it was compatible.

In what ways will your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

During writing and shooting, we took film trailers such as Anuvahood that I had previously analysed and used their forms and conventions. We liked the way they took panning shots constantly and slow zoom-ins. This gave the audience the effect that they were apart of the trailer and were moving along with the characters, if not zooming close to characters to really get the sense of belonging in the movie. We liked their techniques and like the effect it had on the audience so we decided to repeat this into our own but with a twist. We wanted it to be about two complete different worlds turned upside down so in order to make this metaphor show, we panned, tilted and added all types of different shots to make our trailer sharp and edgy.


What have you learned from your audience feedback?



I surveyed 50 people who all fitted into the audience I was targetting. I asked these 50 people one question, "Do you think the clips shown in a comedy spoof trailer will be fast-paced/ slow paced. Here are the results:

96% of people thought that comedy-spoof trailers should be fast-paced. So we took this advice and considered it when filming. This was useful as the expectations of the target audience had to be considered as they were the people we are advertising our product to.


On the other hand, these 4% of people had a different perspective. I was eager to hear what they had to say and why they had decided that a comedy-spoof type genred trailer would be slow-paced. Here is the response I got back,


"Yeah, It is quite fast-paced I guess. But I was thinking about the beginning you see... Because, usually right, you have a slow-pace at the beginning, then towards the end is when everything starts taking speed and then comes the cliff hanger at the very end..."


This was an interesting perspective from one of the people I had surveyed (who were in the range of my target audience). I kept this noted on my BlackBerry for an extra technique that could be taken into consideration when shooting.