independant research of dvd cover-katie

United 93

 

• Large iconic elemant of america, established location the statue of liberty is the largest figure in the frame making it the most dominant.  the colors used for the statute are quite dark which would normally meen that it is not as important as it is not of a bright color. although the statue a mixture of dark blue and shades of black, allows you to see certain areas just defying the figure, representing the darker side of America revealing possibilities in the film.
• The small figure of an airplane appears slightly distant in the background, it is positioned so it is tilted slightly as if it was unstable but also the direction of the plain is aimed towards the statue insisting some possibility of a plain crash in America. 
• location and sorrounding area is shown at the bottom of the screen as if it was a screen print. included is an icon building associated with America, the twin towers. Although surrounding this is smoke, suggesting danger and death. This is positioned at the bottom of the frame showing a long wide shot. The city buildings are slightly faded representing the disappearance.
• A montage of all these elements within the film that when put together will automatically produce expectation of what the film will be about.
• The rule of thirds have been used twice in this frame, using horizontal and vertical aspects. the statue of liberty is covering the fram about a third making this the most im portant factor. Also the plain positioned at the top right of the page, next the titles posistioned in the middle of the frame then the city background osioned at the bottom breaking the frame apart.
• The titles have been printed in a slightly off orange tone which is a complementary color to the opposing blue sky. it has also been typed in a bold structured front showing the seriousness of the text.
• The color of the background uses a sky blue which is a automatic expectation and stereotypically American bright blue sky. This gets slightly light when behind the titles which automatically brings the audiences attention the this area.

By Katie Fryer 

independant research -katie

Opening scene comparison -United 93

The film i have chosen to compare with our media product is "United 93" a film based around 9/11 bombing highly involving terrorism. Our films aim is to use stereotypical views along with generic conventions to gain the audiences attention and hope to create suspense right from the start of the film. the genre of our film is action thriller which we are hopping o further extend by including a faced pace chase.

United 93 unlike our film will continue with generic conventions throughout the film by using and portraying muslim men as terroists. although the way the the film has been layed out but not revealing anything,  autoatic expectaions which the audience concives  are raised due to the specific ethical and moral feeling based on the charcatoes used. however using this film as inspiration and guidance to help create and enhance our film  to change  aspects of automoatic sterotypical views made apon people from a certain background or population that has been wrongly viewed in the media. the slight change in convension and bracking away from britsh white people being of the dominant ideology and seen in a positive manner. our plan to change and reverse roles with create unexpected pleasure for the audience as they will be unprepeared for teh events that will occcur.

The use of a foreign language is used in united 93, the unusual voice over of an arabic spoken muslim gets the audience feeling confused,ciruous and automaticaly concieving their own own personal expectaions of what is being said (as subtitles are not being used.) This is because of the steriotypicall views made by the public and media. seeing how using this technique has impacted the audience and has built tension we are going to use a musim arabic voice over although because of our unsual twist in our film we will be using subtitles so we dont confuse the audience too much.

Location is establish soon in united 93 using jump cuts from a birds eye view of the local setting to the establishing shots of the muslim men in a motel room. The arabic voice over joins the shots together making the film flow as well as continuing with a fast paced continuous opening scene. for our own film to create a similar sense of tention and fast paced action we too want to use jump cuts to establish location and the journey taken by the chacters, this will be seperated with the titles so the film constanly flows. although because we are using two very different sterotypical charcters we will only be using the voice over over certain shots. instead we will be using a arabic soundtrack so nondiegetic sound will comstantly continue throughout out opening scene and also the  importance of the muslim culture and heritage remains a dominant factor throughout the film.

The use of camera shots and angles used is crucial in United 93 to percive the right representation of the male muslim characters. This is created by firstly using an unsteady/ jolted camera to create a sence of unrealiaability and unworthiness but generly to represent specific charcters as the antagonist. Shoots are also seen to be cut off using the rule of third covering part of the screen using a wal or door. not alloing you to see the whole frame portrays impressions of someone watching and something that shouldn't be seen by others. We are planning the use a hand held camera to follow the charcters on their journey. this will be done intentionally to create the effect of someone following another but also represntaing their faced paced journey.

Close ups are used regualarly in the opening scene to exaggerate the facial expression of the male muslims which show a sence of purpose, determination,panic and sacrafice, main aspects portrayed on a terroist whilst becoming a martyr.

United 93 uses off frame hypabolic diegetic sound of voices of commuters, plains and other sounds heard from an airpot to furthe establish location by using a sound bridge joining the muslims with the airpot further continuing genric conventions and representaions of a terroist.

The two films, one produced from working title, documenting past events in a fast paced terroist film, whilst the other a very low brudget british film following two characters highly steryotyped in differents way, with their journey to london also a terroist film with a twist. The two films have been made in completely different ways although the moral views and representations which the audience perceives at the beginning of both films start exactly the same. although united 93 follows conventions whilst our film will break conventions.

By Katie Fryer










 

Assistance in Editing evaluations

29/03/2011
 Lydia, who is experienced in the field of editing, helped us by editing our evaluations to  make it flow better and to make it easier to understand and more organised in terms of its presentation. We all stayed with her in this process to tell her what sections to edit, and to assist each other in the process.

By: Mohedene Masri

Evaluation Process

 29/03/2011

Our group started with the concluding processes of our project. We started doing the evaluations, as the deadline was around he corner. I was the first to finish the evaluation, and i asked my teacher to give me feedback and constructive criticism. I them implemented further clips to cover what i missed out in m original presentation, and then proceeded with assisting the rest of my group with their evaluations.

By: Mohedene Masri

Titles transitions

24/3/11

After we had finished with editing the majority of the clips, we then had to move onto ways to effectively place our titles such as director,starring,music and edited by. This was all done perfectly as we had in mind on the places we wanted them. However there was some difficulties in the main title "The C.H.A.S.E" as it kept on placing it over a scene the effect was amazing with the scene being placed behind in the letters of our title, However we had to add the scene on again to make sure it is fully seen after.

We placed the titles throughout the entire opening of the film, spread out separated to give a nice flow instead of just continuously film. The reason we placed some of the titles such as the "Edited By Lydia" appeared just before they entered the train as there was some filming problems so we thought if we placed it there it could speed up the paste of the film and also show it's representing time has passed from waiting for the train to getting on, This made it effective and gave us a suitable place to put it.

We used a variety of different transitions to separate the different titles. We used typewriter themed style of writing as this represents retelling a story which goes well with the voice over as we used transitions, we made it fast paste to keep up with the opening sequence. Also on the big titles of Directed by and so we decided to use a slide as it gives some effect to the way the writing moves along the screen.  The colours we used for the subtitles was bold and dark blue as they stand out from the black background which emphasizes what is being said.

By James

Advancements of our project

Thursday 24th March


Our film received a wide range of constructive criticism which allowed us to be innovative, which in effect allowed us to continuously make improvements to make our project look more professional. Firstly, when we were reaching the conclusion of the first draft of our project, our teacher Mr. Roberts reviewed the project and stated that the subtitles were too small, and were difficult to read. We improved upon this by increasing the size of our subtitles for it to be easily read by our potential audience.

Secondly, our teachers were generally impressed with our project. We received heavy constructive criticism, such as to keep our scenes matching on action, to keep the flow of music constant and continuous and to ensure that we are diversifying with our angles and shots to achieve maximum potential marks.

We have worked hard on this, and as a result of which, we have created a good project, which is tense, sets atmosphere, and has a good ethical story line to it.

By: Mohedene

soundtracks

Thursday 24th march 2011

In the final draft of the film we ended up using two different types of soundtracks to add to the effect and emotion the film itself was portraying.

The first soundtrack we decided to use was "Pure Arabic hip hop instrumental" located from YouTube. This opened the film with a sense of cultural heritage and background using a stereotypical type of music that is associated with that particular culture.  This continued throughout the beggining of our film to build suspence and tension although we used a second soundtrack when we wanted to change the emotion of the audience.

The second soundtrack we used was called "The war room" located from Freeweb
this is a download site where unlicensed music is free to download or share. The beat is different from the first as its quite up pace and fast. This was put into the film as "the chase begins" given a sence of ergency and curiosity.

Along with the soundtrack we were going to include the atmospheric sound of the train station to allow the audience to recieve a more intense and realistic atmosphere. Unfortunately because we currently have the voice over and the two soundtracks it broke the films flow and ruined the effect on the audience therefore we kept only the non diegetic sound.

By Katie

The Preview of our film The C.H.A.S.E

This we hope is our final edited finnish of the movie, we will change  what we need to change according to what poeople have said about it.

by Lydia

Arabic traslation

18/03/2011

I had to translate my voice over from Arabic to English in order for the potential audience to understand and for the narrative to become more apparent. Furthermore, to make the voice over more effective, whilst i was reading it out I made my voice deep, and spoke in short sections to make it clear to understand and the deep voice was to signify tiredness, stress and maturity.

By Mohedene

Independent Research - Mohedene Masri

Independent Opening scene comparison – Mohedene Masri

Inspiration for our opening sequence:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mi88P7KfaMA – To Kill a Mocking Bird Trailer.

I chose the very famous and respected movie "To Kill a Mocking Bird" to compare with the media project that myself and the rest of my group have partaken in. To kill a mocking bird contains very strong moral and ethical implications revolving around the stereotype of dark coloured individuals, which was a very big issue back in the 1960's, and our media project is about the common stereotype of foreign individuals in the 21^st century, regardless of their particular innocence.

 Everybody used to stereotype the Dark coloured individuals as bad people, who deserve no respect, and deserve to be treated differently to light skinned people in that era. This relates to our media project in a direct, but juxtaposed manor, our media project is about the general stereotype and judgement of foreign individuals in the 21^st century, how generally, these days they are stereotyped to be suspicious and dangerous characters. Furthermore the opening sequence was personally inspired by the trailer of to kill a mocking bird. The narrative in the trailer of To Kill A Mocking Bird was a voice over in conjunction with scenes from the movie. In relation, our opening sequence for our project was a voice over, from myself and the female actress with scenes from the rest of the clip also. This in effect, was what inspired me to inform my group of this particular form of laying out our project.

Furthermore, I found that the way the trailer was set for To Kill A Mocking Bird was a powerful and effective approach to the potential audience in order for them to understand the narrative better, and to allow the audience to start feeling the tension as they get a better understanding of the narrative. This is another reason as to why I persuaded my group to use this form of layout for our opening sequence, as our sequence had complex morals behind it, and so this approach would allow the potential audience to understand the narrative much easier and would allow the audience to pick up on the tension at a much faster pace, which therefore would allow the potential audience to really connect with the diegesis of the film, and allow them to really engage with the moral and ethical message delivered by our sequence.

Media institutions that produce the type of film that we are going to create:

Realistically, Major media institutions such as Universal studios would not notice a low budget British film made by students using basic digital apparatus, and so a realistic media institution that would produce the type of film that we are going to create would be an institution that focuses in the range of people power and potential for success using limited equipment, such as the "Daily Motion" institution. Daily motion have already produced very successful budget public made movies, such as Hunt for Golem, which has been a major success to the public, and has inspired many to pick up digital technology and potentially create original, non – mainstream masterpieces which are realistic and target large audiences. Furthermore, they are internet based, and very popular with the public.

Daily Motions objectives are to give creative, inspired, enthusiastic, conscientious and dedicated individuals the chance to make their own movie successful and known online, to potentially attract the attention of other major institutions and to allow the work of inspired fans or media enthusiasts in general to be known, and to give them the potential to create a successful masterpiece.  

Audience Research:

The potential audience for our opening sequence would be those individuals who spark interest in political injustice, 21^st century stereotype and general tension and excitement within a film.  The potential audience would range from foreign individuals with political interest, as well as local individuals with the same interests in the morals and ethics of stereotype.  People's attitudes and expectations was one thing that my group planned and discussed well in detail.

The potential audience would expect a basic narrative, with an equilibrium, disequilibrium, and then a new equilibrium, but we approached our sequence with a range of disequilibrium's, morals, ethics, and twists which has not potentially been done before, which would therefore overlap and exceed most audiences expectations, especially in respect to our opening sequences narrative, where the light coloured individual sparks the disequilibrium, and not the foreign individual.

Location:

With location research, we planned to film our opening sequence in a very recognisable, yet effective and tense atmosphere; we decided that we are going to film at Waterloo station, as there are crowds of people crossing in-between each other, and it is a very recognisable location, and would add serious tension and effect to the general storyline and main disequilibrium of our opening sequence. We also decided that after filming scenes in Waterloo station, we would move to the London eye, to continue the narrative. We chose this location as it is very recognisable, and is a very powerful landmark, which adds value to the location, which therefore has a much more powerful ending to our opening sequence.

Actor / Actress research:

This was a much less difficult task to organise. I personally have a lot of experience in the field of acting, taking drama as a GCSE and achieving A*'s in the practical performances. I was one of the main actors, alongside an actress that one of my group members contacted for assistance.

 Furthermore, the general mise en scene was rather easy to organise. My group voted that I should wear a suit to signify a professional image, and I personally had to act stressed, to signify that I am having a bad day. Stereotypically, the audience would see me as the suspicious one, but the storyline is that the actress is the one that causes the disequilibrium, which is the main twist in our opening sequence.

 The actress had to wear normal casual clothing, and had to act relaxed and normal, in order to allow the audience not to suspect anything early on in the development of the narrative, and for her to be stereotyped as an innocent woman on the way to London.

By Mohedene Masri

Audience research

Friday 25th March 2011

These are the outcome of some of the questionnaires that were handed out to people. The questions are based on the idea we had on mind and how we could improve, or change into what the audience *public* would prefer.















Looking at all the outcomes of the questionnaire made us realise there needed to be some changes within our planned out movie. We decided to make some changes upon how our pace is going to be and so we had shortended clips according to. Reading this and asking for teachers reviews and comments we knew we had to change certain things, such as to portray the story slightly differently.

By James 

Final script edited and used

 22/03/2011

For Myself: 
(In Arabic, but translated into English)
I am living in this country to work and to gain opportunity, i know i come from a foreign country, but still does that mean that everybody has to look at me in this way? I respect this countries laws, this countries orders, and obligations, and still i feel as if the people here disrespect me because of my background. I just want to live my life and allow people to see that not everyone is the same. 
By Mohedene

The final scripts edited and used

22/03/2011

For the female actress, this is the final script:
I've had enough of these people, who do they think they are. Immigrants, they think they own everything, they think they have it all, but really, they have nothing. These people need to go back to where they came from... they don’t belong here, and they never did! Everything about them,  I've had enough of them, and im sure deep inside we all have too. They need to back off to where they belong.

By Mohedene 

Audience Research Questionnaire

17/3/11

After handing out the questionnaire sheets to people for them to fill in. They have handed it back to me and now I just need to scan it in, giving us a rough idea on peoples expectations for films and opening sequences.

By James

Voice Over

17/3/11

We have now started on  placing the voice over into a suitable place as we want to give it the best effect possible. This could be quite difficult as we've got two different dialogues one from the male and one from the female. However we are confident that we will do it to a high standard.

By James

Sound

Thursday 17th March 2011

Using the software on imovie we are able to control the music of the voice over  and the music of the soundtrack. we need to reduce the sound of the soundtrack when the voice over comes on. we can control each frame to make a smooth adjustment so that the sound flows.

By Katie and Lydia

Titles

Thursday 17th March 2011

Today we are including our titles into our film. we are using the software on imovie to do this. we have to position the titles at specific points for the film to make sense.

by Katie and Lydia

Recording Voice overs

15/03/2011

The voice over that i recorded was not supported by the iMovie software, or the mac itself, and so, we are recording the voice over again, using more advanced technology that will allow our voices to be clearer, and easily understood in order for the audience to understand the narrative and for them to be put into the right potential tense atmospehre.

By: Mohedene

Advancements

15/03/2011

We converted the chosen music into MP3 format in order for it to be supported by the iMovie software so we can proceed to put it in with our main sequence.

By: Mohedene

Uploading Voice Over

Tuesday 15th march
we had some problem uploading the voice over as it wasn't in the same software because of this we are planning to re record the voice over straight onto the mac computer.

by group 

Final script for Female Actress

10/03/2011

Final Media Script for the female actor:

I've had enough of these people, who do they think they are. Immigrants, they think they own everything, they think they have it all. These people need to go back to where they came from... they don’t belong here, and they never did belong here. Everything about them, gets on my nerves (<- Emphasise this when reading it )- I've had enough of them, and im sure deep inside we all have too. They need to back off to where they belong.

Above is the final script for the Actress in our group. As soon as my voice over finishes, it will be followed by this one. This will create the right levels of tension throughout the narrative of our main task, and will help the potential audience understand the narrative of our main task in general.  

By: Mohedene

Draft of female script

Above is the draft version of the script for the actress for our movie. I have annotated the effects and the powerful connotations that the script signifies above. 

By: Katie and Mohedene

Problems with shooting in london

Tuesday 8th March 2011 

In London, at Waterloo station there were many individuals crossing from between eachother, obstructing our shots, and due to this, we had to take major precautions when shooting, as we tried to minimise the number of people unintentionally entering the shots and ruining the scenes.
by group

editing

Tuesday 8th march 2011

Today we are still editing the main film, it is taking slightly longer than expected as the software "I movie" keeps closing without saving therefore we have to redo some edits. we would change computers to see if this will stop but our film is saved specifically to this computer.

By group

Audience Research

 Saturday 5th March 2011

After careful thinking of suitable questions on what to put onto our audience research questionnaire, I have finally finished putting them all together. I now have to proceed with showing them to my group to make sure we are all happy to hand these out to people to fill in for their view and interest, this I will do first thing on Monday. I've also put the questions into a useful style which is presented easily for those who are filling it in.

By James

Progress so far

Friday 4th March 2011
Personally, i think that we have really advanced in the context of our media coursework. We have all of our footage, we are editing, have everything organised, and as a group we work conscientiously, with precision and accuracy to make the best possible impact to the potential audience and to potentially get the best grade we can for our coursework. We set each other tasks, and we work consistently and efficiently, making sure that our work is always at its best possible standards.

By: Mohedene

Audience research

Today in class, we all took seperate roles. Kate and James went through the Audience research that James typed up over the past few days, lydia was doing the editing, and i was doing the blogs, and giving general assistance to all roles in general.

By: Mohedene

Editing the main clip

Friday 4th March 2011

Today in class we continued to edit our main content. Last lesson, Lydia was absent, and so Kate had to take her role, today Lydia was in and so we had two editors with experience, both of them proceeded with editing the content, and made the media coursework move closer and closer to its success criteria. We edited all together as a group, and discussed a range of ideas and potential scenes to add, and discussed which ones were worth adding, and which ones are not worth adding due to people getting in the way or the shots were bad due to lighting, or the camerawoman not a steady camera grip, leading to shaky footage.

By: Mohedene Masri

Editing

Today me (Lydia) and James stayed after school to do some editing in our own time, and also we were discussing our research of location and audience. so we could get a clear understanding of our tasks in the group.




by Lydia and James

Audience Research

3/3/2011

As we've now looked through our footage and started to edit, I have a idea on who our Audience would roughly be. My view is that our audience would not consist of younger people such as children, I feel this because our opening sequence is getting into the story of the Chase which consists of stereotypical views upon middle aged Muslims.

This will help me at looking into similar openings and coming up with a questionnaire to hand out to certain people of different age groups to get a rough idea on their views.

By James

Absence

3/3/11

Unfortunately as I had an Art Trip to Tate Modern, I could not attend my media lesson on Tuesday. However this absence has not made a major impact as I have caught up to where we are now currently at. My group have made a start on the editing as I have also made a start on the Audience research.

By James

Editing

3/3/2011

Today in class, we started to edit our clips to make them as effective as possible, and to make the  clip flow consistently and for it to start making sense in respect of its narrative. We are not too experienced in the field of editing using this particular software, and so we started at a slow pace, and were continuously asking for assistance throughout the editing process. We are still currently editing our content, while James is doing audience research, and myself and Kate are continuously learning how to edit the content that we have.

By: Mohedene

Continued planning

 Tuesday 1st March 2011

As a group, we discussed the whole overall progress of our final content, and discussed if any extra filming needs to be done, and discussed if there were any shots that need to be re done, due to any technical difficulties, or generally due to people getting in the way of the shots at Waterloo station.

We looked through the whole content, and concluded that all shots are perfect, and can be edited to perfection. We have a wide range of angles, shots, significant mise en scene shots, and a wide range of distances from the actors myself and Jade (i.e. ELS, LS, CU, ECU and so on) to make the best impact as possible to the potential audience and to meet the general success criteria of our media coursework.

Next lesson, and for the rest of the week, we will be proceeding to edit the content, and begin to finalise it by adding in all of the best scenes, and removing the scenes that did not go to plan, and making our final content flow consistently, and to make it as interesting as possible from the very beginning to make our media coursework as effective as possible.

By: Mohedene

Uploading Voice Over

Tuesday 1st March 2011

Today, i bought my USB in from home, and proceeded by uploading my voice over that i did at home onto the computer we are working on, so i could show it to the group, and get their assistance on adding the chosen Arabic instrumental to the voice over.

We had a small problem with the file. It was WMA. format, and so it was not recognised by the software being used on this computer. Due to this, i will go home, use legal and royalty free software to convert it to a supported format type, and bring it in  again for it to be used and merged in with the final content.

By Mohedene

Letterboxing

Tuesday 1st March 2011

As soon as we finished uploading our final film content onto iMovie, the default settings of iMovie made our content go into "Letterboxing" mode. This set us back a little, as we finished importing our content 5 minutes before the lesson, and the letterboxing started taking up more time. We asked out teacher how long it will potentially take for the letterboxing to finish, and he estimated around 20 minutes. Myself and Lydia stayed after the lesson and waited for the letterboxing to finish, so we can continue to proceed with editing our content on the iMovie software.

By: Mohedene.