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

Question 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms of real media products?

Question 1 - Script

I think our film opening of ‘Karma’ has followed the conventions of a thriller film opening, as well as the conventional order of the title sequence. There is a strict order in which names and jobs appear in the opening credits because it shows the order of importance for who is involved in the film.  The companies involved are shown first of all as they give us the money towards making the film, most significant actors in the film come after this because if they are the most famous it will influence more people to watch the film as they have a high status and are known to be in good films. Then the casting crew, costume designers, music and editing crew, production designer, director of photography, executive producer, the writer(s) and finally the Director. This shows that the main people involved in the making of the film are shown last so their names are the most memorable and they get the most credit for their hard work. An opening that has inspired my thrillers credits is 'se7en', I like the way this sequence has been edited to have black screens with the main titles on and black sections with titles on for the majority of the credits, so they show on top of the film opening. I also like the font used. We did not use this effect on our own title sequence, however we did have a black screen for when the film title was showing. The conventions of a film opening and especially for the genre of a thriller are that there tends to be lots of fast flashing images with cross cut editing, to suggest dramatic events. The background music is usually very dramatic and intense, in the thriller ‘Enemy of the state’ there is non-diegetic music which sound like computer generated noises and sirens, so this hooks the audience to set up questions about what the genre of the film is and what might happen in it. The first scene is of the landscape, to set the scene. I think we achieved this in ‘Karma’ also as we included a wide shot of a playground for the flashback scene. Another optional convention for a thriller is to change the lighting to something possibly darker, more supernatural or to look like CCTV cameras through the use of editing. We also incorporated this on final cut pro with a lighting change video filter, we made the footage a bright white and also made it more black and white but not fully, so there is still some colour. This is to make it look like a flashback. Introducing the main character is an important convention for narrative openings, I would say that our film opening for ‘Karma’ is a mix of a narrative/ stylized opening. Because we introduce the main characters, set the scene and vaguely present their situation. Also like a stylized opening, I feel we have achieved sophisticated editing with lots of transitions and effects.  In a way it is possible that our film opening could be seen as a discrete opening because the majority of it is in flashbacks and therefore separate to the rest of the film, however it is still relevant to the main film. voice over is important because it tells us a bit about the plot, when adding foley sound of voice to our opening, we did not make the plot too clear but I feel with the selection of words we recorded, it gives the audience an idea of the themes of our film, the genre and a bit of back story of the main character. To highlight who the main character is, I learnt from the film ‘Billion Dollar Brain’ that to make it clear to the audience who the main character is, the use of camera for slow panning and zooming in with the focus on Palmer highlights that he is the main character, so this is a useful technique that we took into account when filming ‘Karma’. In this film, a dissolve transition is used to blend the opening prologue scene into the opening credits, we used a lot of dissolve transitions in our opening to make our scene more smooth flowing as we had a wide variety of shots that didn’t always match together so it would have looked like jump cuts without the use of transition effects. When I researched Psychological Thrillers I noticed that they conventionally tend to start off by introducing the main characters in an everyday life situation, as did we similarly by introducing the character in bed, dreaming. They don't go straight into telling us what is wrong with the character, or to give anything away about what might happen later on in the film. I think this creates tension to make it more creepy and dramatic when the audience sees later in the film the thought processes behind these characters. They conventionally introduce part of the genre/ theme of the film in the first few minutes, and also by creating an almost surreal scene of the main character this emphasises the genre because the audience is unsure whether this is reality or her dream. I feel we included these conventions in our film opening successfully. 

Karma

07. Andreia Loureiro Cardoso, Esme Worrell, Abida Uddin, Alisha Kaur from 283goswell on Vimeo.

Question 7 Script

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

When research planning in post production for my prelim film, we did not do very much research into what shots to include, lighting, props or locations. I understood that we should include match cutting and I knew about the 180 degree rule so we did use this a couple of times, I also used match cutting to the other side of the door when the character leaves the room. My group and I did do quite a lot of preparation on the storyboard but in production we didn’t stick to it as much as we should have like we did in ‘karma’, this made us more organised and we knew what we were doing because we followed the storyboard. We organised in the prelim that the ‘psycho’ character would wear white costume, and the ‘officer’ character would have handcuffs to represent their status and profession. Whereas in ‘Karma’ we got the character ‘Ivory’ to wear makeup and more suitable costume such as pyjamas and school uniform. We hadn’t thought about lighting in the prelim, other than to set the filter on the camera but this was not strong enough in most cases when filming.

In production the filming took longer than expected because we had not been very organised in pre-production, we hadn’t organised our time management, when we were filming or how long it would take and the location of filming also. In ‘Karma’ we knew exactly the location we were filming in of the park and my group member Andreia’s bedroom. The mise on scene was very unprofessional and there was camera equipment in the background of some scenes. Also with the camera skills, I realise that my camera skills in the prelim were very shaky and there were some zooms that didn’t work in the film that should have been cut out in post production, my camera skills in ‘Karma’ were much more professional. Also the acting was much worse in the prelim than in ‘Karma’ that we should have cut out in post-production as the actors were smiling in some serious scenes.

In post-production I did not do very much editing as I was only just getting used to working with ‘Final cut pro’. I only included one video filter, of a blur effect on one scene and I also added in a title sequence, however if I had known as much about 'Final cut pro' as I do now I could have made the final prelim much better and more professional looking. In ‘Karma’ I heavily used editing with video filters and transitions in every scene. One of our shots should have been rotated in the prelim but it made the footage warped and too wide. I added sound to the prelim too but it was from Youtube and we created our own soundtrack for ‘Karma’ so it was not copyright. We left in the diegetic sound which was really unclear in the prelim also whereas we muted it in ‘Karma’. We should have used foley sounds. However I think the sound we used from Youtube was very good in setting the tone of the film and it worked really well with our footage to create suspense and tension.

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

Question 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms of real media products?

Starts with a cutaway shot

First title – Film title

Bird’s eye view shot

Setting the scene

2^nd title - First actors name

Fast editing of setting, still has first actor’s name on screen

 All of these shots appear within the first 10 seconds of the film opening. There is very fast editing and we used this in a similar way with our own flashback scene.












Edited lighting


The pace is similar to ours as it speeds up towards the end of the opening scene, as does ‘Karma’s opening where the flashback scene speeds up with editing in the second flashback scene.

Introducing main character – narrative film opening

Setting the scene/ first title

Second title/ slow motion editing

Close up shot to introduce one of the main characters

Bright lighting edited to look more like a flashback

• We have eerie music to build tension à made on sound track pro for children’s voices and recorded on real instruments for the main background music.
• At 3:08 a fast flashing images.
• Set the scene a first image on screen is setting the bedroom scene, second opening image on screen sets the scene of the playground in flashback scenes.
• Lighting à bright, black and white lighting on flashback scenes, dark lighting for bedroom scenes.
• Narrative openings a introduces the main character on screen straight away.
• Transitions and effects.
• Voice over à foley sounds saying words to do with the theme of the film

1. Fade in fade out dissolve
2. Cross dissolve
3. Dip to colour dissolve
4. Dip to colour dissolve
5. Dip to colour dissolve
6. Non additive dissolve
7. Non additive dissolve
8. Fade in fade out dissolve
9. Fade in fade out dissolve
10. Cross dissolve
11. Cross dissolve
12. Cross dissolve
13.   Some cross fades on background music