Please go to this link to see my evaluation on a published website:
http://www.wix.com/minxy3/my-evaluation-by-paris
2 May 2011
27 April 2011
Mental Disorders
Mental Disorders
Initially, myself and my group where very interested in creating a psychological opening, it seemed very interesting and we could exploit this genre to create something innovative, possibly using mind games and tools in media to trick the our particular audience.
We then began to research what types of films, narratives and subjects this audience most likely wanted to see so that we could start developing a narrative of our own and move onto production of our media text.
We further concluded films which represent mental disorders were popular with this audience with such films as “Seven”. Many of these films show the condition, the effect of the symptoms and either a disintegration or relief of the mental disorder itself.
Next, we researched particular mental disorders shown in this thriller genre:
o Multiple-personality disorder
o Schizophrenia
o Bipolar
o Anorexia Nervosa
o Dementia
o Alzheimer’s
o and more...
It would not be possible to accurately represent these conditions without analysing them in detail. The most favourable option emerged as Schizophrenia, due to its suspicion around the condition as it is not often shown in society and respected as a temperamental and taunting condition; which can make the most basic tasks in life extremely difficult.
Myself as producer suggested we should look at particular cases of people with the condition through both recovery and experience of the condition and possible death. The website featured below was particularly helpful in showing us how to represent the condition of schizophrenia.
YouTube was also very resourceful for gaining knowledge about the condition and understanding how society sees the condition.
To conclude our subject-genre research we gathered some important facts to know about schizophrenia in regards to our opening sequence:
o
- Hallucinations can be very random and very traumatizing for the person who experiences them.
- Not every person who has the condition experiences the same symtoms.
- Society now has a new perspective on the disorder and it has now begun to be accepted.
- We can experiment and explore with media effects to present the symtoms of hallucinations which will produce alot of enigma as it is not what is expected yet then this will still link in with the genre.
17 April 2011
16 April 2011
Question 2
In most thriller films female characters are always portrayed as nice looking and very attractive. We have decided to do the same by choosing an attractive and young looking girl. It’s common to use white girls in most thriller films, so we decided to be different by choosing a female character that isn’t white. We wanted something other than white. It’s very rare to see other ethnicities in such films and mostly white girls are used. I have used two pictures as shown above to identify differences and similarities. The first picture on the top left is a picture that was taken using print-screen-shot on the computer while I was playing the video. The video itself is in black and white. The picture next to it on the top right is a picture of a young model for a handbag magazine called “Warmth.”
The similarities of these two female characters is that they are both are teenagers and they are both good looking. They are both tall and slim looking. They are both carrying a handbag which is a symbol for female characters. Their body posture is very similar as well, this makes them look tall. They are both dressed casually meaning its every day clothing. We decided to make our main character dress like this as we wanted the target audience to relate to her. We wanted people from the age of 15 to 25 to be able to relate to her. She is supposed to represent a student. They both look like students as they are both dressed casually and are both carrying a handbag. They are both wearing blue but we are not able to see that on the video as it is in black and white.
There are also some differences too. As we can clearly see the female on the right seems a bit older (about 18-23 years old) whereas our main character o the left seems to be younger (15-18 years old.) Our character has dressed so that we know what the weather condition is like. The white girl is wearing high heels and it seems like she is in a warm environment. Our character is wearing boots with jeans. The white girl is wearing a short skirt. The female character from the magazine on the right looks like the typical female victim used in most thriller films. They don’t appear as victims only but also as protagonists.
Both girls are in totally different locations. Our girl is in a rural area based on what we can see from the screen shot whereas the other white girl is in a more urbanised area. Our character has black hair and it’s fairly short. The girl from the magazine has got brown hair which is a bit longer. They have both tied their hair up which is a similarity. The character in our film is not permanently going to be dressed in the costumes we see above on the picture. This may change as we see more of the film. Overall both characters are portrayed in a stereotypical way. We can expect young teenagers to dress like that and there is nothing extreme or unclear about their appearances.
15 April 2011
14 April 2011
13 April 2011
12 April 2011
11 April 2011
Learning from preliminary exercise to make 'Wraith'
I made a video to explain what (I think) I've learnt by making my thriller opening sequence. In this video, I talk about the experience obtained through the preliminary exercise and how much of those skills I've used for the main project. This video is a part of my evaluation coursework where I reflect on my and my group's performance (in camera work, sound fx, mise-en-scene, editing and using websites as well as softwares)
* insert 'subgenre' at the end of the sentence from 03:36 till 03:42, I happened to 'lose' or 'cut' some words while exporting/compressing the video. I've mentioned that in the annotation.
* insert 'subgenre' at the end of the sentence from 03:36 till 03:42, I happened to 'lose' or 'cut' some words while exporting/compressing the video. I've mentioned that in the annotation.
Question 1
<div class="prezi-player"><style type="text/css" media="screen">.prezi-player { width: 550px; } .prezi-player-links { text-align: center; }</style><object id="prezi_yxxaljjyu-ub" name="prezi_yxxaljjyu-ub" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" width="550" height="400"><param name="movie" value="http://prezi.com/bin/preziloader.swf%22/%3E%3Cparam name="allowfullscreen" value="true"/><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"/><param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff"/><param name="flashvars" value="prezi_id=yxxaljjyu-ub&lock_to_path=0&color=ffffff&autoplay=no&autohide_ctrls=0"/><embed id="preziEmbed_yxxaljjyu-ub" name="preziEmbed_yxxaljjyu-ub" src="http://prezi.com/bin/preziloader.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="550" height="400" bgcolor="#ffffff" flashvars="prezi_id=yxxaljjyu-ub&lock_to_path=0&color=ffffff&autoplay=no&autohide_ctrls=0"></embed></object><div class="prezi-player-links"><p><a title="In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of existing thriller film openings?" href="http://prezi.com/yxxaljjyu-ub/question-1/%22%3EQuestion 1</a> on <a href="http://prezi.com%22%3eprezi%3c/a%3E%3C/p%3E%3C/div%3E%3C/div>
Lighting and microphone workshop
Before we started filming for our project, we had a workshop on lights where we were shown 3*lighting is set up and what it is used for. The Three Point Lighting technique is a (professional and standard) method used in visual media such as video, film, still photography and computer-generated imagery. It uses three lights called key light, fill light and back light.
The big lights are called ‘Redhead’ and the small one is called ‘Lilliput’. The flaps covering the bulb are known as ‘barn doors’.
The key light is the main light as it is the strongest and has the most influence on the look of the scene. Fill light is the secondary light and it is kept on the opposite side of the key light. It is mostly used to fill the shadows created by the key light. These two are the direct lighting in the technique unlike back light that is placed behind the subject. Its purpose is to provide definition and subtle highlights around the subject’s outlines which helps separate the subject from the background and provide a three-dimensional look.
We set up the three lights on the tripods as shown in the paper which I (have to admit) was quite scared to touch as they were quite big and expensive. We tried different colour gels for the cameras (which are the thin sheets of polyester or polycarbonate), to get different effects that enhance the mood in photographs. Colour gels have the tendency to melt if kept in heat for a long time which might possibly result in fire so we had to be really careful while using them.
(My group had decided to film everything outdoors so the studio lights weren’t necessary for this project.)
We were also told about microphones and headphones, for example, mono mic (puffy mic) which has the windjammer to block out unwanted noise and the usage of ‘fish pole’ to record interviews and such without showing the microphone. We are to use the headphones while recording sound (interviews) so that we can change settings while filming: some things can be quite difficult to edit later in the post- production stage.
10 April 2011
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