Finished And Complete

Stephen Widger 3180

Media Blog of The Following Coursework G321 Finished and Complete!

Analysis of Codes & Conventions

Choosing the genre for the film was quite challenging. Following the codes and conventions of that certain genre and actually pulling off the right genre outcome was the challenging part. Having been asked to undertake some research into the the codes and conventions within a variety of genres, there was then the request to narrow down the genre types to one or two.
After specifying two types of genre and assigning the generic codes and conventions to them, it was then time to make the decision of the chosen genre. A certain type of research was approached to aid the assigning of the generic codes and conventions, picking out three different films along the lines of the chosen genre or chosen hybrid genre. In the case of the chosen genres for my film was a hybrid genre; Action/Adventure.

The three films that i had chosen to evaluate against my chosen genres were: The Matrix: Reloaded (an Action/Sci-fi), The Condemed (pure Action) and last but not least Star Wars: Attack Of The Clones (Sci-fi). The main reason of doig these evaluations are to pick out the signifiers of the genre.

THE MATRIX: RELOADED
The Genre of The Matrix: Reloaded is an Action/Sci-fi, it is mainly based around the action side of the genre due to all the intense and countless fighting scenes. The Sci-fi elements during the opening 3 minutes of the film are shown as detailed green (alien like) colours this usually represents the SCI-FI genre. Other codes of the Sci-fi genre are advanced alien like technology, the symbols or codes that are shown in the opening come together to form a clock, this shows that something important is going to happen at this time. Security Gaurds signify the authority and protection of which is about to be breached. The noise of the motorcycles engine is a phalic symbol of power and attention, which in tie leads to the the breaching of the authority with an immense explosion. The explosion is portrayed as a symbol of power taken away from the authority, this links into the Action side of the genre. Still on the action side of the evaluating, Trinity is chased out of a window 29 storys above the ground. She is chased by an Agent who is trying to kill her, as the Agent fires his 9mm Barretta (this is a phalic symbol of extreme power). The bullets that are fired continusly out of the Agents gun are shownin slow motion, this gives off that action and heartbeat effect. Now the camera shot is a very excelent shot. It is a precise tracking motion shot, it follows the bullet and pans around it until it penetrates Trinity's chest.

THE CONDEMED
The Condemed is a pure Action genre based film. Concentrating on the complete amounts of violence in the film. The openning three minutes of the film starts of by showing establishing shots of a jungle. This signifys that the action takes place in the wild. Another establishing signifier is of the barbed wire that lingers atop the walls of an establishment, these are also controlled by men with Ak-47 machine guns. These are phalic symbols of containment and overcoming power to who ever is being contained. Prison cells show that the setting of the contained men is a prison of shore. Heartbeat music signify Action and tension in a film and the muscle bound men show power, strength, fear in weaker men and intimidation.

STAR WARS: ATTACK OF THE CLONES
Star Wars: Attack Of The Clones is a Sci-Fi, yet again in the openng credits the same green alien like colour is used to represent the Sci-Fi image. Another classic Sci-Fi code is the scaling text that srolls away from the screen just like Star Wars has done. The setting shown in the openning is of space, one of the best Sci-Fi generic codes and conventions. The music behind the space scrolling text signifies that the film is about a battle that becomes victorious. With the music becoming sinister and a low panning shot towards a planets surface, with federation starships entering its atsmosphere this shows and represents importance. The surface of the planet is ulluminated by light, on side red and another white. This shows that the planet is pure but filled with danger at the same time. The senitor that departs from the ship is surrounded by personal body guards signifying alot of authority and protection around this one important person. The explosion seconds after that shot shows the climax of the Action genre take place, the explosion alone takes away the authority, the power and all protection with one blast.

Having evaluated these three films it had came to my attetion that Sci-Fi and Action are a great combination but very difficult to create and achieve. From that point my final Hybrid Genre I had chosen was an Action/Adventure.

Organisation

The organisation part of The Following G321 consists of evaluating about these keys bullet points.

• Actors
• Locations
• Costumes
• Props
  

Once the research of the genre's had been completed and of course the textual analysis research, the next step along the G321 coursework was to choose appropriate or even perfect actors, locations, costumes and props. Every little detail had to be almost perfect, even though focusing on every little detail did set the filming back a bit, the end project came out better than I thought it would.

The project involved more than just me taking care of everything, the project was not complete without the help of my very good friend Jamie. We had worked together on the entire project, distributing the work evenly to whom ever would seem more suitable to accomplishing those certain tasks.
The storyboard that was completed before the planning and research into all the actors, locations etc, had many ideas thrown around between me and my project partner. Ideas were spinning their way out of our minds, the more we came up with the more detailed they became. Ideas started of as some really crazy ideas, ones we knew would be funny as to film and watch as the end project. Other ideas where that tad bit over the top just out of the ordinary and no way possible to be produced. There was no conflicting of ideas between me and Jamie but finally there where a few ideas that we both thought where more than possible to produce. The best idea we had come up with was of course the finalized project.
Here is the storyboard as a finalized plan.

The Actors

Choosing dedicated and appropriate actors for our G321 project was a bit of a nightmare. The choosing of the two main characters was a lot easier than choosing the third.

Matt Fox was the main character of the project, his background was an anonymous computer hacker, infiltrating government software. I, Steve Widger played this character, well me and Jamie wanted to be included in this project simply because we had the best imagination of how it was supposed to flow. The qualities in which we wanted or in fact needed for Matt fox was almost perfect to the qualities I had in real life.

The Assassin was the next main character to appear quite frequently in the project next to Matt Fox's appearences. The qualities needed for this character were that the person playing the part had to be mysterious, harmless looking and unexpecting. There were was that almost most definate persoon to fill that place and I thought that was Jamie, although one other friend, who at the time was in the same course as us, thought he should play the Assassin character. However myself and Jamie had agreed not to allow him to play the part simply because we preffered Jamie to play that specific part, also the not named friend was simply not reliable for times that we had set for filming. This decision was made with realistic discusion about the importance and needs of the film.

Now the last character but not least was Matt Fox's girlfriend. Emma. This character was the most difficult to choose, simply because we wanted a girl with caring qualities and the most important quality was that we needed the chosen person to be at our disposal. We needed that girl who we could trust to be there on time for the filming and not let the project down. So many girls to play the character were available and believe it or not we cycled through so many of them. Choosing a girl who wasn't a girlfriend of mine or Jamie's was quite difficult to start off with, we asked them so many questions and even scheduled the shooting times around some of them. In the end we had considered taking on my girlfriend at the time. She had agreed with everything and said she would be available to our disposal, this was all agreed within the planning. Until an unfortunate event of a break up between me and her over the Christmas break. We were left at the start of January 2009 with everything ready for filming but no girl to play Emma. Our next move was to ask to very close mates of mine and see if they could help out a friend in need, they did agree and it would be up to me and Jamie to chose which one.
Coinsadentally I had a new girlfriend just as we started filming the necessary shots without Emma involved. Believe it or not we decided to in the end use my girlfriend to help out, whom in great circumstances was called Emma. =D. Everything went perfectly after all this confusing but hard work to ensure our project survived!

The Locations

All types of locations are very useful for any film project, ecspecailly when you have so much potential around you and your area. Although choosing the right location or even several locations to film an amazing presentable project is challengeing. Now being that my film project was based around an Action and Adventure genre, isolated and sucluded locations were perfect for the matching of the narrative.
There was a variety of different locations that I could have used in the project, but I used two very specific locations. Jamies household which was used as the establishing shot was the home of our main character Matt Fox. Matt Fox's bedroom was actually filmed in my household. We had used two different households to create the presence of using the same house. In Jamie's house we had used the stairway and front door areas.

The other location was a isolated forest with a river running through it, this was an easy location seeing as it was ryt out side jays front door. It was such the perfect place to film, no interuptions would ever come our way. The location was just the place to kill someone literally.

Costumes
The costumes that we had to choose for our character where quite simple. We approached our characters with a style thats suits them, for example; The Assassin, he is an evil character so it would be suitable for this characters costume or outfit to be of some sort of dark and authoritive outline. Matt Fox and Emma's characters were almost as similar, in the way of their outfits were quite simple to pick out. Seeing as we approached the project with a modern sense, it would make alot more sense if we just used average day clothing for these two characters.

Props
There were not many props used in the production, mainly because everything we needed was right before our eyes. The two main props we used in major scenes have to be the BB Gun, which was provided by Jamie, and the second would be the webcam. This prop was featured in my own room and became quite useful towards the project.

Audience Research

There were certain measures taken into the Audience research, firstly a questionnaire/survey was created around the Action/Adventure genre, to research into the audiences likes and dislikes of that certain genre. Secondly the results of this research were put into graphs as shown. From these results i am able to see that, an action audience takes liking in many different ways or variety's of action film styles.

Action can not just be based on one variety, well it can but having numerous styles of action films goes well with the audience. It gives them a different range and choice of entertainment.
Here are the results of my questionnaire..

Continuity Exercise

Our Continuity exercise was a short 3 minute film which involves using 3 main filming techniques. They are a; Match on Action shot, the 180 degree rule and finally the shot reverse shot technique. The Continuity exercise was our first proper filming expierene for the coursework, G321. We had previous expierence with the different techniques aswell with what I would like to call a preiminary footage exercise. From the first filming exercise, you could see that improvements on the filming side and editting side were made. Over time the editting became very less complicated to use and understand, which in time prepared us for our final filming project.

Our first filming experience was just an excercise set in one of our lessons, which we had three whole hours to plan, film and then finally edit. This was just a bookmark if you will to show how much filming and editting expierience we had already to ourknowledge and how much we needed to improve on. The title of me and my partners first exercise was called the chase. A very epic and comedy filled genre. Here is that first project. The Chase!

Now the Continuity exercie was the second filming project set for us even though we had already started planning our storyboards and genre for our final filming project. Like I mentioned before in the previous paragraphs, the continuity exercise was an exercise which developed our filming and editting techniques in the subject. Being taught how to ue these three new techniques did help for future filming productions. The techniques were; Match on Action, 180 degree rule and Shot reverse Shot. In the briefing of the continuity exercise we were told we had to use these techniques within the filming and use a door.

Final Project. The Following Movie

This is the Final completed version of The Following for our G321 media coursework.

Evaluation on The Following G321

The evaluation is made up of 7 questions which of some I have made some video footage to answer them.

For question 1, I have made a video response with my co-partner Jamie to answer the question.

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

Representation and Social Groups

2.How does your media product represent particular social groups?

On creation of our final project, The Following. We had to also decide on ways of representing the characters which would be in the film, also having to stereotypically out them into social groups. Deciding on the characters social representation was challenging but exceed able. We decided to stick with the codes and conventions of a action film, rather than having to twist and bend them, which in time could have made the project a lot harder than it should have been.

Choosing the social representation of all three characters was quite simple when following the codes and conventions of a typical action film.

For example, Jamie's character was an assassin. A character who's authority and weaponry is his power. To represent his authority we clothed him in a suit, which does speak for its self. For the representation of his weaponry we used a standard issue barreta pistol replica. This shows the power that surrounds the assassins figure and character. A gun is one of the main props within a film that shows the representation or phallic symbol of power.

Matt Fox, who's character I played wasn't the hardest character to stereotype or represent. Imagining what an average day person cold be dressed like is easy. So we represented Matt Fox's character as an average day person, wearing very casual clothes. His nature though as a computer hacker was represented in the way of his body language and he acted around others.

As you can see in the best picture we have of Matt Fox's figure, very casual clothes and relaxed look.

An opposites look for his body language as this character is very unpredictable.

Matt Fox's Girlfriend Emma, was played by Georgia Windsor a friend and fellow media student as well. Georgia's role in the final project was to play a very concerned girlfriend, who didn't approve of her boyfriends computer hacking and was scared of loosing him.

We didn't have a lot of choice on clothing representation with Georgia because it was in the same day that we wanted her to play the part and that we were filming.

A representation of Georgia's character we would have to say she was the concerned sort of type, with the contrast of light hair colour and darker clothes. This all ties in with " Madonna or whore" representation by theorist Laura Mulvey. Showing that Georgia is a Madonna character, mainly focusing on her hair colour which signifies purity and innocence.

Laura Mulvey's theory would really be he only theory we could use to explain the representation and social groupsof our characters.

Media Institution for Distribution.

3.What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

I believe many different kinds of media institutions would distribute the final project of our G321 coursework. Many retail firms such as; Supermarkets, DVD rental stores and smaller retailers would sell most films especially newer releases. Within a retailers business they are always looking for ways to make money off many items that customers can purchase, selling the finished product of The Following G321 coursework is just another reason for them to sell products.
Media involved business like the music industry and film industry are also looking far and wide for new productions. Major producing company's like Warner Bros' which is a major label of the film producing industry, are searching for those new products to increase the popularity and money marketing on the public.
The retailers and both the Music and Filming Industry's work in favor of each other, helping eachother survive in the business world. Mainly however they both look to buy and sell new products such as produced films to make an impact on the public community, to keep the entertainment flowing and to also keep the audience looking out for those new releases and a wider insight on a different variety of film entertainment.

Audience of your Media product.

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

There could be many different audiences for a certain genre production, like many people choose to like a variety of genre's but there are those fair few who like one genre. The Following being a Hybrid Genre, is a mix of Action and Adventure and the typical audience member would be anyone who is entertained by any action film or even an adventurous film. Typical action related audiences always look for the simple but effective scenes in action films, such as; the explosions, the fighting, the weaponary and some times the girls.

Audience Attraction.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

With action and adventure basedgenre films, you have to be careful not to drag on with no action. The aim is not to bore the audience or they just start to think that the movie is rubbish. So either having a balance between non action scenes and nothing but action scenes. This allows the audience to interact with the characters and catch on with the plot of the film then. I had kept it in my mind that I don't want to bore the audience at all, I want them to watch it over and over again, so we kept the balance between the action and non action scenes.
The use of interesting characters as well always draws the audience in, you don't want to use obvious characters. You know the sort of characters who in a movie give away the plot of the entire film cause they are so obvious. How I, well me and Jamie attracted the audience was by creating characters who were simple but effective and mysterious.
The stage settings as well in the opening was an unexpected one, i mean the audience would be drawn in to the fact that the settings were so close together. The expecting part of the setting is that you have a peaceful estate and a isolated wilderness next to it. Having a unsuspecting forest which is isolated throws the audience into a state of confusion or even a state of intreagment, leaving them wanting to know and find out more.
Drawing the audience in with a lot of action is always a good element to use so I decided to place as much action in the first opening 3 minutes as I could possible.

Technology knowledge.

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

Throughout the entire course I have learnt many new helpful techniques and now have a great understanding knowledge of how to use Imovie HD. First of all I have to mention that the Apple Mac computers weren't my most favourite choice of hardware to use but it has been fun.
The most frustrating thing about the Macs was all the times they kept freezing and crashing, it is actually enough to make you want to convert to PC. But no, without the Mac software none of the project making would have ever been completed.I have learnt so much about the Mac's software from teachers and friends, it is actually unbelievable how much you can learn about so quickly.
Using time in the Mac suite supplied at school, i have managed to achieve skills in editing a film to my best potential efficiently. Also being able to produce other film products like my continuity project aside my final project. Although at the end of these projects when they are ready to be converted, it does take a long time and time wasn't always on my side.I would have to say my main weakness about Imovie and the Mac's in general is saving produced work and patients with the system that the Mac's run on. A lot of time had gone into the these projects and I believe that a slight majority of that time went towards waiting for the Mac's to work as fast as I did.
My skills achieved are:

• Use of Imovie
• Converting and creating movies
• Understanding knowledge of Apple Mac's
• Mixing clips with music
• Clip and soundtrack volumes
• Use of a variety of effects and transactions

I am pleased to say that having the knowledge and understanding of these Mac's will definitely help future projects, to become efficient and to the best of my potential. Overall the experince has been worthwhile and very helpful.

Looking back on the past.

7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

I have answered this question in a video format.