Final cut - Berserk

This is the final cut of my groups media project. It has taken us 2 months of hard work to finally reach this point, so enjoy.

Final Project

I understand that my project has finally been completed. This is good news and will be posted to my blog as soon as it has been exported to Youtube by another member of the group.

Opening Sequence

All that I now need to do is to export my projects final cut onto my blog from youtube and complete the last few evaluation questions and then my coursework is complete.

Production Logo

This is the production logo which has been created by my group for our project.

Evaluation Question - 7

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
-Planning and Research - Looking back on my preliminary task, I would say that I have learnt a lot from my full project. The difference between the two individual tasks is significant. For instance, for my preliminary task, my group and I thought about what to do, carried out what we intended to do, edited and uploaded the video to our blogs all in the same day. However, for our actual project, we has to do weeks of planning and audience research in order to prepare for out project to be completed. Storyboards, scripts and video questionnaires also had to be completed so that we knew exactly what we where going to do and how we were going to do it. We had to conduct research on other films that are similar to ours so we could make some comparisons between our plans and how other films of that genre are made. For instance, something that took some time for my group for our opening sequence was the script. When we completed our preliminary task, we didn't need a script, we only had about 5 lines of dialouge and even though there was no speech in my opening sequence, we still needed a script for it.
-Location - For our preliminary task we was able to just use a free room which we found in the college. However, for our actual project, it was a whole different story. First of all, we had planned on trying to persuade a hotel to allow us to use a room with a good view of London. This would have been the ideal location for us, but unfortunately we wasn't able to persuade any hotel to let us use any of their rooms. Therefore, we had to try and find somewhere else for us to use. Fortunately, we was able to find a good location for us to use and the final result is just as good as we had envisioned with using a hotel room.
-Time/Effort - Another thing that I have learnt from comparing both my preliminary task and my actual completed project is how time consuming the whole process is. Me and my group were able to film and edit my preliminary task within the same afternoon, as well as come up with the idea for it, not that is was complicated by any means. However, it has taken weeks for my group and I to actually film and edit our opening sequence. Based on our preliminary task, I presumed that our project wouldn't take long for us to complete, but that was wrong on a huge scale. A lot of time and effort was needed in order for our project to be a success and I didn't expect it to be at such a high level, but it was and it is now completed. For instance, our preliminary task was all completed within one day, one lesson even, but for our actual project, we started planning in late January; 2 months ago! Considering our project was finally completely only recently, 2 months for a 2 minute video is an awful lot of time. Considering our preliminary task is only about 1/7th of our final project, it took us about 50/60 days less time.
-Precaution- Also, I have learnt not to rush things in the process of film making. In our preliminary task, we just got it out the way as soon as we could, which benefitted us in the instance that we was able to concentrate on other aspects of our course, but not so much in the region of quality of our first task. Had we planned a little bit more and took our time with it, we would have been able to undermine any errors which may had occured in our preliminary task. However, taking our time with our actual project allowed us to intercept the mistakes before they were able to get into our project. Therefore, being able to take your time on a project like this is a lot more beneficial than just rushing everything to get it out of the way.
-Directing Actors- For our preliminary task, we didn't exactly have a director, we just done it as we wished. We was able to do whatever we wanted as long as it was fitting to the task at hand. For our actual project, this was very different in comparison. For our project, we needed our cast (in our case just one actor) to do exactly as we wanted and needed in order to complete our task as we had envisioned it. This was crucial for us to get it right as we didn't want to have to repeat the whole process. Directoring the actor to do as we needed him to do wasn't how I had pictured it previously. Telling someone to do the correct action, at the correct time more than once to get it from different angles for editing reasons - match on action - isn't the easiest task for anyone to do. However, we got it correct and that is what we needed.

Evaluation Question - 6

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

This programme is Adobe Premiere Pro. It is rather complicated and has been used to edit both our preliminary task and our final opening sequence. This is where sound effects have been added, clips have been cut and removed and a lot of effort has been invested. Without this programme, we wouldn't be able to have produced either of our tasks. Although I haven't really been heavily involved in the editing of our opening sequence, I did help out with our preliminary task, so I know my way around this programme a little bit, but not as much as my fellow group members.

 This is the camera that has been used for the filming of both of our preliminary and main tasks. It is a very handy little camera and gets a very good picture, which actually helped us with the lighting for our opening sequence. It is very easy to attatch and detatch to and from the tripod ( image below) and it has a good battery life. It is also easy to remove the memory card in order to transfer recorded footage on to a computer for us to edit and mess around with.

This is the tripod that has also been used for both our preliminary task and our opening sequence. Although its legs extend to allow you to change the height and angle of the camera, it is very stable, reliable and nessecary piece of equipment when filming. 

The main part of this whole proces has been Blogger. Blogger has been the platform in which I have been able to develop and distribute my work over the internet. Without this website, I wouldn't have been able to complete this course.

Another extremely fundamental part of this process has been YouTube. YouTube has been a vital part of my work, as without it I wouldn't have been able to upload videos to my blog.

Evaluation Question - 5

How did you attract/address your audience?

Evaluation Question - 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The intended target audience for our media project would have to be around 16-30. It is a very broad age range, but it has good reasoning. Teenagers have become the most like customers for cinemas in recent years and with deals on to lure teenagers into the cinema even more than they already go. Teens are also the most likely members of the public to go to the cinema to watch a gory, bloody film. Therefore, that is why they are part of our target audience. However, the reason that our target audience goes up to about 30 is for the intellectual side of our thriller. Adults are more likely to watch an intellectual piece of media, such as a psycho-thriller as it will enable them to think about what is going to happen as the film progresses and unfolds. This is what will attract the older section of our target audience to come and watch our film.

Our audience would mostly fall into the same catergories:

1) C2DE - As our target audience is partly teens, they will more often then not fall intop the unemployment catergory, and even if they are employed, it would only be a part time job so they will still be in this catergory. The older section of our target audience would mostly also fall into this catergory of society.

2) Twitter Users - The younger half of our target audience will almost certainly fall into this catergory as pretty much everyone has twitter. Twitter is a means of socialising and keeping up to date with pretty much everything.

3) Empire Magazine readers - This part will more than likely relate to the older section of our target audience, but not ruling out the younger side. If the older half of our target audience enjoy their films, they might like to keep up to date with movies and watch any new films that become available. The younger half of our audience could also take part in reading Empire Magazine as they might also enjoy their films just as much as their older counterparts.

4) Youtube - Our viewers may also enjoy the same kind of music which they will have access to via youtube. The music they may like could include artists such as indie bands and rock bands.

Evaluation Question - 3

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? Entertainment Film Distributors Ltd are one of the media institutions that would distribute my project had it been a full film. I have been looking into media distributions that distribute films of the same genre as my groups project,and Entertainment Film Distributors that are more commonly known for distributing films of the pyscho-thriller genre. For instance, Gone, a recent film released in 2012, is a film of the same genre of my media project which had been distributed by Entertainment Film Distributors in the UK. This is the official poster for the film Gone, which has been distributed in the UK by Entertainment Film Distributors. Here is the official trailer for it: Another film that has been distributed in the UK by Entertainment Film Distributors is Seven (otherwise advertised as Se7en), released in 1995. As this film is one of the few my group and I looked at in order to make some comparisons and distinguish some differences. As we looked at this film for some inspiration, I also thought that it would be a good idea to look at the films distributors. This would give me some sort of idea what type of film distributors would be interested in distributing our project, had it been an actual film. This is the official poster for Seven, which has also been distributed by Entertainment Film Distributors. The official trailer for Seven is here: Entertainment Film Distributors would be interested in distributing my film because they are used to distributing the film genre that is closely related to my media project. This would mean that they would be comfortable with how it would work distributing this genre of film, rather then for instance a comedy, or an adventure film. They would also be better at distributing this type of genre, in comparison to a media institution which are used to distributing comedies, or adventure films. Also, as Entertainment Film Distributors are based in the UK, they will have developed strong links with UK cinemas as they were on their way to success. This will also be very helpful had we have chosen to go with Entertainment Film Distributors if we had created a whole film, following up from our opening sequence. Also, being able to use a well known and established media distribution institution such as Entertainment Film Distributors, they would be able to get the very best out of what we have.

Evaluation Question - 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

This is a still taken from my media project. This is an image of our only character in our media project, the main character, our serial killer. On the outside, our character is a representation of a high class business man. Business men are dressed in an appropriate attire for their occupation, usually an office job of some sort, just as our character is. High class business men are also usually associated with briefcases, something that our character also has. However, on the inside, as our opening sequence suggests, our character isn't the innocent business man he is portrayed as. He is infact the serial killer for my media project, and although businessmen are not assossiated with serial killers in any way, their level of dishonesty is the reason for it. Businessmen are not the most trustworthy people in society. Some do stick to their word and keep their promises, but most businessmen will lie to you just to get whatever it is that they want. Therefore, this is a representation of businessmen who should not be trusted and our character is a perfect example. It is a very common conception in thrillers to have a serial killer who doesn't stand out, they blend into society. This is exactly what our character is doing here. As a business man, in the real world our character wouldn't draw any attention to himself. He is blending into society, just a normal person. However, as a serial killer, this is exactly the sort of profile you will wish to have built yourself. This is why in my media project, our serial killer is in fact a business man, as he will be overlooked by society for being 'normal'. Therefore, my character is used to represent businessmen as not the most trustworthy people in society. The body language of our character is suggesting to the audience that he is a laid back person, but is obviously serious about his profession. This can be seen in the image as our character has the appropriate attire on, as well as the briefcase in his hand, showing the audience that he takes his work seriously. This gives off to the audience that businessmen are all hard workers and are very serious about the career path that they have chosen.

Evaluation Question - 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? One way my media project conforms to psycho-thriller conventions is the title itself. The title is used to intice the audience to actually continue watching the project. As the title is just one word, like most thrillers (Se7en, Psycho etc..), it doesn't give the whole storyline away. It gives off just enough so that the viewer will want to keep watching on. The font of our projects title is also very conventional. This is one of many fonts that myself, Paul and Amna (the rest of my group for this project) have picked out. What seems to be scratches through the word itself could show an indication that the killer is not whole themself. This particular font would suit our media project the best in my opinion. The word itself looks to be dripping with blood, and this fits perfectly with our opening sequence as we have some blood in our project. I believe that the soundtrack that we are using for our project is very stereotypical to thrillers - eerie, jumpy, suspenseful. This can be used to our advantage as serial killers are usually very unpredictable, allowing us to use the correct soundtrack to both intice and unnerve the viewers at the same time. I have went on a royalty free music website and I have listened to a few of the soundtracks and put a few options forward to the rest of my group. Another convention of our film genre that my project conforms to is the way the character is introduced. In most, if not all, the main character in a psycho-thriller, the killer in our case, is introduced rather mysteriously. Our only character in the opening sequence, our main character, is first entered as a blurred person. This adds the mystery of our character as it can be assumed that he is trying to hide something by not revealing his identity. Our main character is the only character in our opening sequence, which suggests that they would be the main focus for the whole film. In our opening sequence, our character is firstly introduced as just a normal character. This gives the audience the impression that he is just a normal guy in the story, but they couldn't be more wrong. Once the audience begin to feel comfortable around our main character, we are able to throw them off balance by introducing the real main character, our killer. This allows us to unnerve our audience, but is still enough to make them want to watch on.

Evaluation Questions

1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?
3) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
4) Who would be the audience for your media product?
5) How did you attract/address your audience?
6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Credits - Font

This font will work really well with the genre of our media project. As we have a psychological thriller, the red colour of the font could be a representation our killers victims and the style of the font could suggest to the audience that our killer isn't the neatest.

Updated Script - Amna

Script- Beserk By Amna Hamid

SHOT 1) EXT. ESTABLISHING SHOT. DAY. This is a panning, established shot from right to left, of London, Hackney setting location of film.

SHOT 2) INT. FLAT. DAY. Serial killer dressed formally looking 'normal', except his full identity not shown (his face), he is also carrying a briefcase looking like a business man. 

SHOT 3) INT. FLAT. DAY Serial killer walks to his chair and table, then a still shot of the serial killer just sitting at the table. Also switches on the radio putting on 'classical' soothing music. He draws calmly to music coming from the radio- looking like his hobbie and shows signs on 'OCD'. 

SHOT 4) INT. FLAT. DAY. Serial killer this time in is in his 'psychotic' state where blood drips from his pencil and there is blood on the paper now, not his drawing. An eerie sound is played to create hightened tension and create an umcomfortable atmosphere. 

SHOT 5) INT. FLAT. DAY. Normal colour shot of serial killer in 'normal' state where he is again continuing drawing calmly to his 'soothing' music. 

SHOT 6) INT. FLAT. DAY. Serial killer showing his 'dark' psychotic side continuing drawing in his scrapbook with blood. He suddenly slams his hand down on to the pool of blood and holds it there. 

SHOT 7) INT. FLAT. DAY. Serial killer slowly raises his hand to his face and smears blood slowly across the side of his face. The sound will be like the serial killer is scraping/peeling his skin maybe like chalk on a board, something that sounds very eerie. Then his bloody hand print left on the side of his face this time he is smirking psychotically. 

SHOT 8) INT. FLAT. DAY. The side of his face is now clean, showing his 'normal' side, he is schizophrenic. The sound is non-digetic and is back to a soothing soundtrack. Serial killer continuing drawing clamly to his music. Serial killer suddenly rips up a photo of a 'happy' girl.

SHOT 9) INT. FLAT. DAY. Serial killer now ripping out the other photo of the blindfolded girl. Sound is sharp and non-digetic. He sticks the photo onto the wall, then smears a bloody handprint over it. Then he turns to side so we can see his smirk. The photo of the blindfolded girl behind him, then he grins evily.

SHOT 10) INT. FLAT. DAY. Serial killer returns to table to switch off classical music so the sharp tense non digetic soundtrack is now only playing. He is in his 'normal' state. Serial killer grabs briefcase lying near his feet at the side of the table. Serial killer places his scrapbook with his 'nice' drawing that he started at the beginning of the sequence, in his briefcase.

SHOT 11) INT. FLAT. SUNSET. Serial killer walks with his briefcase to the window overlooking view of London and stands there. He is still in his blazer. He looks from one side to the other slightly, looking over the London skyline view. He raises his bloody hand to the window and places only his fingertips on the window creating a ball shape as if he is grabbing hold of something he wants. Serial killer turns around in 'normal' looking state however he slighly has bloody hands, he smirks still holding his briefcase.

SHOT 12) INT. FLAT. SUNSET. Serial killer turns towards the door and camera is positioned behind so he is carrying his briefcase in one hand (still wearing blazer) however his other hand is dripping with blood. This shows his two sides merge together into one person. He looks normal on the outside but is deadly on the inside. Non-digetic soundtrack is played in the background and is as ear-screeching and loud as ever because he is shown exiting towards the door ready to kill.

Misunderstanding

In my previous post 'Opening Credits: Draft', the post itself is very unclear. I have placed each sentence in quotation marks on a different line, which for some reason, is not showing up correctly on my blog. The credits are in the correct order however, so they can be understood if read carefully. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Title Font Ideas

The following are potential ideas we have for our title sequence 'Berserk'. They all closely reflect the genre we are attempting to portray (Psychological Thriller), they all have an edgy texture/font which could also portray the tension and intensity of the film via the titles. As well as this, it also has some sort of reflection of the main character's personality in the sense that he too is 'edgy' and unpredictable.

Opening Credits: Draft

As our script doesn't include any dialogue, our title sequence will be as follows. I've named it as a draft as the exact timings aren't included as yet but will be once we get to the editing phase of our opening sequence. The script for our opening sequence credits will be:
'PJA Productions Presents'
'A Film By Amna Hamid, Paul Tarrentino & Jordan Hill'
'Jack Quilan'
'Directed By Amna Hamid'
'Casting By Amna Hamid'
 'Costumes and Props By Jordan Hill & Amna Hamid'
'Editing By Paul Tarrentino'
 'Produced By Jordan Hill'
'Cinematography By Amna Hamid'
'Script Written By Paul Tarrentino'
'Audio Director - Amna Hamid'
'Screenplay - Paul Tarrentino'
 'One man, faced with nothing but adversity..'
 'Can only take so much before going..'
'BERSERK'
I have updated and changed the opening credits that Paul originally did because it did not include our real surnames which it needs to, also it had a copyrighted title.

Filming

We have completed the filming for our opening sequence. It was completed last night as we wasn't able to do it on Saturday