My name's Alexander Nicolaides I am part of Group 2 consisting of Matthew Davies (8511) and Jerom Thambipillai (8692). I have completed Brief 1: Film. To see my portfolio evidence please click on the labels on the right named 'AS Research and Planning', 'AS Construction' and 'AS Evaluation'.
I really enjoyed the
workshop and participated in many roles. Why did I enjoy the
workshop day?
The set and equipment
was a lot more professional than anything I’ve been involved with before and so
it was a new experience.
Dom and Amy ran the shoot very smoothly because of their good planning. Ed on the camera and Eddy on sound made the experience a lot more professional and gave us an opportunity to ask about what they're doing.
It was educational to
work with and talk to professionals. Not only could you observe them in action
but also ask them about working within the media which is something I am
interested in.
It was fun for us to
act our roles and do things we’ve never done fore.
We got to know our
peers more and became better friends.
Here is a time-lapse that was made of the
shoot day showing the organisation put in
What roles did I take
on?
On the shoot day I
utilised my time as effectively as possible to get the maximum learning out of
the experience. Some of the things I did are shown below:
My roles in the music video
One of the things I enjoyed
most was getting into character. It gave me confidence in front of the camera
and has made me want to participate in my own music video that we will do next
year.
I really enjoyed
workshop day and thought it was a great experience.
The audition video gave
me beginning experience into music videos. Not only did it test camera
confidence but also helped me to understand the importance of energy in the
shoot.
I learnt how to
lip-sync and how to edit the shots on top of the music track so that the
lip-sync was in time.
What I learnt:
You need to sing confidently (even if you can't sing) and know the lyrics off by heart for the lip-sync to look genuine.
Costumes are needed to help actors feel ‘in roll’
and allow them to really let go.
Energy is needed to make the shoot look genuine and
get the audience to enjoy it.
We needed many takes to ensure we had enough choices
when it came down to editing. This includes different camera set ups.
Task Two: Learn and practice your performance:
We had to
learn various dance routines. With the help of Jasmine and Tasha I learnt my
hip-hop, end dance scene, and band dance moves.
Warming up is extremely important to prevent
injuries whilst performing.
The standard routine we all had to learn
Me practicing the worm in costume
Practicing the one step before camera rolls.
Shake it off routine by Tasha used in the end scene
We learnt how enthusiasm comes from facial
expressions and body language and how to express this.
We had to learn lots of
different dancing styles as Taylor used many different genres of dance within
the music video. Our dances were ballet, hip hop, contemporary, and just
general shaking off. Natasha was our dancing choreographer and teacher. She
guided us through rehearsals and taught us the moves she created. She taught us
to emphasise our movements to as body language is key in promoting our ‘emotions’
Cleary to the audience. This was achieved by the energy needed in the shots.
Jasmine helped us build confidence and team work skills by playing various
games which focused on energy and group co-operation. This proved extremely
useful as in the shoot we needed to work together for things to run smoothly. A
key thing that I learnt from Jasmine was that; when lip syncing, you must
actually sing powerfully to strain the tendons in your neck so it looks
realistic.
Task Three: Help to plan and organise your costume:
We needed to replicate
the costumes on Taylor’s music video. To do this we had to first decide on
costumes we would wear on each scene. Olivia, our costume designer, created
costumes and altered clothing to make it closer to the original music video.
She sewed badges onto the cheer-leading shots and also feathers onto ballet
costumes etc. We were asked to bring in clothing similar to that in the music
video even if we weren’t in that specific role. This meant borrowing and
lending clothing to work collectively in achieving a believable costume remake.
In my Hip hop dance scene I wore a black bomber and red oversized shirt which was
borrowed from a team mate, my own black jeans and black trainers. For the cheer
leading shots I wore a blue t shirt, and white shorts with white socks and
shoes which I supplied. For my Band scene I supplied an all-black outfit and
finally for my end scene dance routine I supplied a blue t shirt with light
blue jeans. Below are images of each outfit.
Me in Makeup
It is extremely difficult to recreate the exact
costumes. As a team we all brought in clothing which was similar and created
costumes from these. As you can see, despite not having the exact outfits, our
costumes are very convincing.
My cheer-leading costume
My hip-hop Costume
My cheerleading costume
My end scene costume
My bang costume
I’ve learnt it is
necessary to be organised with costumes and that they could essentially be made
together of everyday clothing if tweaked slightly. I’ve also learnt that team
work is key as we would not have been able to have costumes if everyone didn’t work
together and supply costumes for fellow team members.
Task Five: Editing
We needed to edit the
footage to create the actual music video. For this task I was in a group with
Alex H. Being strong editors we both found it quite easy but obviously faced
new challenges. At first it took a while to accurately match up the sound to
the lip-sync but after a while we managed to understand the sound waves and it
became much easier. Emma helped us to create effects such as zooms and grading
tools such as levels that Alex and I have never used before. I have definitely become
a more confident editor especially on the grading process where I learnt that
colours needed to be balanced out to give the best possible looking shot.
In the edit I learnt that to get the lip-sync
perfectly lined; you need to zoom into see the wavelengths on the sound waves as shown below.
Grading each shot is time consuming as they all
alter, not only this but we couldn’t grade to the original music video as our
lighting was different. Instead we graded each shot to make them look the best
they could possibly look.
I learnt how to add video effects such as zoom ins
and outs for the cheerleading shots to imitate the original.
My groups edit of the shake it off remake is shown below. My editing skills have improved since the start of this project. You can see from the edit that our lip-sync is in time and the shots are well graded. We have created the remake the best we could have done given our equipment but still managed to produce something which is convincing.
The shot is before and after grading with Levels on the end scene shots, as you can see it has made the darker colours very vibrant but left everything else the same
Before and After Grading
The
colour wheel and ProcAmp
The ‘Levels’ effect
Things
that went well:
Costumes
that are accurate and similar to the original music video.
Grading
makes shots look professional.
The
effects used such as zooms makes our remake more convincing.
Things
that could be improved:
Some of
the shots are not identical to the original music video such as the hip hop
dance moves. Saying this however we did the best we could given our actors.
We didn’t
have enough cheerleaders and so I would re-film some of these shots and use the
whole cast so it looks more like the music video.
Our brief
for next terms music video is: To create an artist/ Band from scratch and
create a package of promotional material to launch them onto the music scene.
The
promotional material consists of:
Original music video
Album Cover
A website
Having done
the prelim it’s made me think about a lot of things I would have not done
before. Some of these include using a studio, being in the project and coming
up with our own styling and costumes.
I’ve
learnt that good planning is essential when it comes to pre-production. I
will need:
A well planned idea of what is in the music video. i.e. characters,
costumes, genre, background.
Audition videos to see who is best for each role.
Costume and makeup list for each character
Shoot schedule including shot numbers and timings for the main shoot day.
Creating and rehearsing choreography
Having a complete schedule for the shoot days
including strict shoot timings is crucial for the main shoot. It will also be
helpful to have proper crew for the shoot who would all do individual jobs to
keep responsibilities such as an assistant director like Amy and runners like
Shay.
Professional lighting set up
Our Crew consisting of Ed, Olivia, Dom, Mckenzie, Amy, Chris, Jasmine, Tash, Josh, Shay, Amber, Miss B, Ms Dymioti
Overall, I found the workshop extremely
educational and fun. I will use the knowledge I’ve gained in my music video in September.
I’d like to thank all the staff and teachers for putting this workshop together
for us.
Our film is a
cyber-security action thriller called ‘Algorithm 404’. It is about a young adult
who tries to take down a conspiracy organisation. He does this by hacking files
the organisation doesn't want to be leaked and saving it onto a USB to deliver
to someone who has the power to publicise what the organisation has been doing.
The organisation is aware of what David (the hacker) tries to do and thus follows
him, holds him at gunpoint and then knocks him to the ground. The story then
goes back to 24 hours earlier of how David starts his journey in bringing the
organisation down.
The most useful real films and TV series that
inspired us were:
Alex Rider
The James Bond
film series
Mr Robot
The Matrix
Hackers
Live Free or Die
Hard
Form
Opening credits
are a typical feature of an opening sequence. These include the title of the
film, Distribution Company, production company, directors’ and actors’ names
and names of others and extras involved in creating the film. This is conventionally done after the setting
and characters have all been given a slight introduction.
Typical features
of an opening sequence are:
Institution and
companies
Introducing the
main characters
Sense of genre
Builds enigma
Our opening
credits were overlaid onto a ‘fade to black’. We thought this was affective as
it created suspense and broke up action to change the pace when necessary. The
film ‘se7en’s opening sequence inspired this fade to black and we thought it
worked well in our opening sequence
Se7en inspired our titles.
Genre
The prezi below
shows some of the conventions of Cyber-Security action thriller and how we have
connoted the genre.
Cyber-security
is a recent genre as technologically has only recently become this advanced.
This made it slightly more challenging as there wasn't much we could get
inspiration from and so our ideas were original.
We did conform the the Conventions of Action films by having male protagonists however challenged the conventions of Cyber-Security as David wasn't a 'nerdy' character; instead he seemed fit, trained and able to compete physically as well as on his computer.
To connote the cyber-security
genre, we used titles similar from “the matrix” and Mr Robot. Seen below are
examples of Titles. They have a black background and a very high tech font to
connote the genre of Cyber-security. We decided not to have the titles over the
shots as it makes it harder to see them, but also as it breaks up the action
and helps to change pace similarly to our inspiration ‘Se7en’.
Algorithm 404 titles
Mr Robot Title
Mr Robot Title.
To further connote the action-thriller genre the pace of our opening sequence built up, there was a feeling of suspense, there was a 'chase' seen followed by a 'capture' scene involving guns. Narrative Structure
Style
“A film must
connote it’s genre, through the way it looks and feels.”
Grading:
We wanted to grade our shots to make them all look even, the same colour
and give a more ‘realistic feel’
The hardest scene to Grade- Under the bridge.
Some of the shots in our opening- We colour graded the shots under the bridge as the lighting would always change and make the shots look non-continuous. When we colour graded we evened them out and gave a more 'action' feel to the scene.
Conclusion
To conclude, we followed most code and conventions
from the cyber-security action thriller genre and of an opening sequence.
Allowing us to produce a film opening looking professional and similar of that
to real media.
We decided to make the film focus on representations
of age and gender. Our main protagonist is a male, young adult.
We wanted David to come across as intelligent, challenging the negative stereotypes of young adults.
We showed this as he is a very intelligent person by
knowing how to hack into a corrupt organisation for the “greater good”.
Saying this, we still connoted his age through his inexperience
as at the end of the opening sequence he fell into a trap.
Capture Scene
In our opening sequence we didn't include any female actresses, this was only the case as the scene in the opening would come again later on the film after the '24 hours' has been replayed and would explain where the main female actresses were. For this reason we did not need to think about challenging or confining to stereotypes woman have. Had we included our main female protagonist in this opening sequence she would have challenged negative stereotypes of being the 'damsel in distress' and instead make quick, on spot decisions to help take down the organisation. This would appeal to our secondary TA of women as they are being represented positively and could be aspirational.
Our
group decided our film was to be invested in by Film 4 and distributed by Studio
Canal. Our reasoning for deciding to have two separate institutions are shown in
the power-points below.
How will
it be distributed?
Cinema:
Algorithm 404 will be shown at
small independent cinemas as well as on large chains like Vue and Cineword. It
will have a limited release in British Cinemas and dependant whether our film
is successful it will have a staggered global release.
Examples of a cinema chain and an independent cinema.
TV:
Our film will be available through
online streaming on sites like Netflix and online rental services such as
LoveFilm. Our primary TA (15-24 year olds)
are most using these sites and so this is a great way to target them as
Algorithm 404 is an independent film.
The film will be
distributed worldwide on DVDs and Blu-ray disks a year or so after release.
This will be sold in large shops like Tesco to encourage a wider audience.
Our group
consisted of three males and so our opening was made by males for males. This
was easy for us because our friends are males and so our research consisted of predominately
males. We are also in the TA of our film and thus know how to get it right for
this audience.
At the start of the
project our group researched into popular genres and corresponding age groups.
We found that 15-24 year olds have the highest rate of cinema goers and so
decided to centre our project on this age range. Since we ourselves are within this age range,
we conducted a survey amongst our friends to see their preferred genre so we
could correlate that with our ideas.
We found a graph on the BFI yearbook (as shown above).
After having found that
the majority of people preferred action and thrillers over romance and comedies
we decided our target audience would be (Cyber-security) action thriller
[primary], 15-24 year olds (mainly males) [secondary], and British Audiences
[Tertiary].
Fans of the Cyber-security
action thriller genre (primary)
15-24 year old males
(secondary)
British audiences (Tertiary)
I decided
to the use uses and gratifications theory to help me analyse the way I address
this audience. Here’s a
slide to show how did this.
I feel that the use of
high tech props, settings and scenes such as laptops, phones, CCTV, the Seward
Studio, a hacking scene would have definitely appealed to our TA of fans of the
Cyber-security genre.
The action in our film i.e.
the capture and chase scenes and the use of guns targeted fans of Action and
Thriller. The capture scene at the end followed by a “24 hours earlier” was meant
to be a surprise to the audience after a long built-up chase scene.
Audience reactions:
We received the
following feedback to our test shoot:
“The music’s too repetitive”
“The music doesn't suit
the scenes”
“The surveillance shots
work really well”
“What’s going on?”
Taking our feedback
into consideration we added more shots to our story boards, altering things to
make our opening sequence more understandable, tense, interesting and exciting.
Shots included: More CCTV, running shots from more perspectives, hacking shots
were more continuous and included elements of hacking and the train shots were
altered to change the pace. Not only this but our editing style changed and we
decided to do more breaks on action where we cut back and forth between the
hacker and the organisation to add pace, suspense and make it overall more
enjoyable. Our titles were also more interesting, connoting the hacking genre
and we included fade to black and white for titles to change the pace and make
the sequence flow as we desired.
After these alterations, we asked the public if they would watch the rest of the film and after asking 20 people we came up with the following results:
92% of people asked said they would continue to watch the film, where as the other 8% said it didn't really appeal to them as they found it boring. The people who answered 'no' fell outside the primary and secondary Target Audiences. This could be a reason why the opening didn't appeal to them.
The following are quotes of people who viewed the final edit of the opening sequence:
"It's really dramatic"
"The running shots have
really good continuity"
"I like the way the
shots are smooth"
"The cut from the CCTV
into real life works really well"
"The '24 hours earlier' creates suspense"
"I like the police report at the end"
"It works really well"
"The music put me on edge"
"It went so fast"
"What happens next?"
Conclusion
To conclude I feel that our opening appeals to our desired TA. It is clear from our feedback that it is liked, and could be potentially successful as a film. Although
the opening sequence is very male centric, there would have been appeal to
woman in the rest of the film as well as men. The opening contained a short
piece of action to start the film but throughout the film there will be plenty
of variety.
Whilst making the film
opening, I have learned things relating to both hardware and software.
Hardware I used in the
project:
Canon Legaria HF G30
A libec TH65-DV Tripod
A Canon DM-100 shotgun
microphone
Sennnheiser HD 201
Headphones
I have used the Canon Legaria HF G30 camera before
during my GCSE Media Studies and so I was familiar with it. Saying this
however, I managed to learn how to focus pull, but changing the focus of a
shot. We used this in the second shot of the sequence where the camera tilts up
onto the hackers keyboard and it focuses from the USB to the keys.
Something I
learnt from the editing was how to add visual fx onto titles to make them suit
the genre. In live type our group made our titles look very cyber security
themed.
Looking back at the
preliminary task I feel that I now know a lot more.
The brief for our
preliminary task was:
"Continuity task
involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and
sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then
exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on
action, shot/Reverse shot and the 180 degree rule."
The brief to our production task was:
"To
produce a 2-minute opening sequence for a fiction film. All video and audio
material must be original, produced by candidate(s), with the exception of
music and audio effects from a copyright-free source. It should be clear from
your sequence who the audience is."
The differences I found between the two briefs:
Production task had a time-limit.
Production task had a focus on audience.
Production task was more open to creativity.
Preliminary task was controlled and specific
Preliminary task had a focus on Camera rules.
Planning:
A lot more planning went into our Production task than it did to our Preliminary task. For our real opening we needed to plan:
Location
Representing characters
Mise-en-scene
Camera angles and framing
Sound FX
Music
In comparison to our real Opening; the preliminary task was barely planned. We were limited to our group to act and the task was done in lesson time. We were given a location and time for the shoot. This contrasts our Production task as there was a lot more that needed to be done.
Since it states the task should have a clear audience, we needed to take genre highly into consideration as this was a way we were going to target are TA. This made our group have to do research into different genres and Target audiences.
We needed to decide on actors, locations, plan the shoot in detail, make a shootboard, storyboard and animatic.
Production:
I feel that doing the preliminary task was fundamental when it came to our Film opening as we learnt a variety of techniques and rules which needed to be followed.
Match on Action
Continuity in a scene where character movement is continuous and doesn't jump between shots.
Examples of Match on action in our Prelim (top) and our Film opening (bottom)
As you can see from the Gifs above, the action in continuous without any 'jumps' or 'glitches'. For example when the door opens it cuts to Flo's reaction, after this the progression of time is so that Ella is already half way into the room.
180° rule
This form of continuity is where the camera must not move more than 180 around your actor. This is don't so not to confuse the audience with setting.
An example where we used this rule in our film opening
Over the shoulder shots:
These shots help the audience understand the point of view of the actor
Master shots:
Running a shoot:
During the shoot I got a great experience of using the clapper board, camera and directing. Since I am someone who likes to take a 'leading' role in projects, being a directer by guiding actors, and maintaining everyone helped me to further knowledge myself on how to be more 'people friendly' but still achieving the main goal. Post Production:
I already knew how to use Adobe Premier Pro from Gcse and from the Prelim task. As the project progressed, my knowledge was further developed and I become much more familiar with the software and being able to use more tools with ease such as add effects, and grade shots. Evaluation process
For our Prelim we self evaluated and picked out issues. This wasn't the case for our film sequence as we would show people the progress during production and after production. We received a lot of feedback that helped us to improve our sequence and then asked for feedback from our TA where we reflected whether or not we achieved our goal. Working as a team:
This skill is important throughout life and not just in the Media industry. During the prelim I learnt that communication amongst group members was vital to highlight any important issues. We carried this on when we started our groupwork; we created a Whatsapp Groupchat to share research, ideas, and to raise problems as well as having 2 hour meetings every week.
Conclusion
During these two projects, I developed my understanding of technology and film theories and am now able to apply that knowledge. If given more time we could have further been able to improve our opening. Saying this I enjoyed making the opening and found it was a great learning experience.
