My AS Media Journey

This is a post in which you will find a prezi that will explain how my journey has been throughout this year, what I have learned and how our group has developed. I hope you enjoy it.

Audience Feedback 5: Feedback on our Final Cut

This is some audience feedback, which we got from the Year 10 class again. It was very interesting to show it to them, since we had screened the rough cut 1 to them and then this time we screened them the final cut. They really enjoyed it and said that there isn't anything they would change on it. It was very nice to get this final feedback, since it assured us that we had done a good job.

Audience Feedback 4: On Rough Cut 4

This is some audience feedback that we got from our Year 13 Media group on what they thought of our rough cut 4. We had told them in advance that there wasn't any non-diegetic sound on yet so they focused more on commenting on the shot variation, editing and idea rather than the music.

We thought it was very useful to hear what they thought since they came with quite good input to what they liked and what they disliked. We discovered that there wasn't much that they didn't like and therefore we knew that this rough cut 4 would be one of the last rough cuts that we would probably be doing before finalising our final cut.

Rough Cut 4 - Without Music

This is the 4th rough cut without any non-diegetic music. In this rough cut, you will be able to see how I have changed the length of some of the shots and the use of some special effects to create a bit more tension to our film opening. Ofcourse it is a horror genre movie and so it is usually hard to create tension, without the use of non-diegetic music.
However, the audience that we got audience feedback from, a year 13 class from our school, told us that they thought it had quite a lot of tension, despite the fact that there was no music yet.
This was already a very good sign that we had a good setting and shot variety.



Although, we did not get a lot of negative criticisms from our primary audience on what we could change, I decided to convert and modify some things before adding music to it.

Firstly, I added a special effect called "Bad TV" in Final Cut Pro. This made it look more creepy within the basement scene by signifying that it was all recorded on tape.

There were also shots during that video recording, of Casey Crane tied up to a chair, connoting that the killer probably films all of his victims and films how he kills them. 

I thought that this entire special effect would work well with the genre. Later on in my evaluation question, you will be able to read on how I was inspired for this special effect from the film "Poltergeist", which I analysed back in the beginning of the year to look into the conventions of the stereotypical horror genre.



Furthermore, Bronwen re-edited the bathroom scene, such as for example the shot of her (Casey) closing the door again after taking the nail polish. This was done, since our audience feedback from our own class had told us that there was a lack of continuity. Bronwen also decided to use other shots, with a better shot quality. In it's entirety, Bronwen managed to transform the bathroom scene into a scene with more continuity and flow. There is a post on Bronwen's blog, where she describes what she changed and why she changed it.

We did not change the church scene, after Jonathan had edited it the first time. We thought the shots were good and we were especially given praise for our close-ups of the matches.

During the final scene, which I edited, I was given a lot of feedback on how the shots should be shorter, but the scene should be longer to build up even more tension. I managed this, by creating a better shot variety, such as using shots that were taken behind the church of Bronwen walking. Moreover, I made the shots shorter of when the woman is walking up behind her so that the false scare would come more accross to the audience.

What I also did to create more tension, was to cross cut between the shaky footage point-of-view shot to the shot of the killer. Shot, reverse shot. At each reverse shot, I zoomed in a little bit on the footage and was able to get a close-up of the killer everytime using Final Cut Pro. This was useful since it denoted that he was moving closer and closer to his target. I was inspired to do this, after having seen and analysed the film "Friday the 13th", where there was shaky footage of the killer's point-of-view when he walked up the stairs. I thought it created a lot of tension. You will be able to see how I created all of this later on in a post that I am going to do on the final cut pro X tools and effects I used.

The next post, called Rough Cut 5 will explain exactly how I worked with sound and why I have chosen to put on the non-diegetic soundtrack that I did. 

3rd Rough Cut of the Final Scene

After getting audience feedback on my 2nd Rough Cut, i re-edited the scene, by changing a lot of the sound, lighting and adding the small clip before where Bronwen is coming out of the church. It was my job in our group to edit this final scene, and make it have a lot of tension. This is in fact one of the most important scenes, since this is the ending where the mask is finally revealed and our final girl gets kidnapped. I changed the ambient sound by taking the ambient sound that wasn't too loud from one of the clips and putting it on the re-loop.
In terms of non-diegetic soundtrack, there isn't anyone on this cut yet, since I wanted to finish the editing of the scene before putting the soundtrack on there.
I am currently working together with one of my very good friends called, Max Genson, who is a really talented DJ. He has produced a lot of music himself and was able to help me for the soundtrack. Since, I am the one from our group who plays an instrument and sings outside of school, we decided that it would be a suitable task if I produced the soundtrack together with Max. He is also the one, who has produced the non-diegetic music that is in the first scene in the basement on rough cut 1.


Furthermore, I added the blue tint, when editing so that all the shots would look more dark and scary and that they would look the same way as the one in rough cut 2, where there is a natural blue lighting in the shot. This made there be a better continuity in the different shots and it also connoted the dark feeling and tension. 


I made some of the clips shorter as well, so that I would be able to add more tension to it as well once I get the non-diegetic soundtrack on, which I will be working on together with one of my friends, who is a working as a DJ. The 4th rough cut, will be up, once I have completed the music soundtrack.



Another thing I did was to zoom in on the shot of the killer and keep changing the shots so that it would cut from the point-of-view shot with the killer to the shot where the audience sees him entirely. I did this in order to create more tension and show the audience that he keeps coming closer and closer to kidnapping her.

According to my audience feedback, the zoom in did have the intentional effect. I was also advised to do a shot, reverse shot between the killer's point of view when he looks at Bronwen and when the audience sees him on screen. The shaky footage was done by us on purpose to denote that the killer is observing her. Also the shot, reverse shot allowed for there to be more tension created rather than it being one shot after the other. So I created a bit more shot variety.

2nd Rough Cut of the Final Scene

This is the 2nd rough cut of the final scene, where the killer kidnaps the final girl. This is the bit that I edited, where I am still going to put sound on and either detach the audio that is on there now to just work with sound effects and non-diegetic music for there to be created a lot of tension.

In the exam there will be 4 main technical aspects that we need to comment on. These are:

• Mise en scene
• Cinematography
• Sound
• Editing

In terms of mise-en-scene, the costume of the central protagonist such as her jacket and her tight jeans denote that her age is around 16-17. You can tell that the central protagonist is not the typical character of the usual scream queen. Had it been a scream queen, she would have had blonde hair, ripped jeans or even a skirt and maybe have a handbag or clutch with her. The choice of the central protagonist wearing a concervative high collar T-Shirt, also emphasise the fact that there was a counter-typing by using the final girl and killing her instead of the scream queen.

Also, the costume of the killer waering all black and having his hoodie up around the mask denotes the genre. The mask is very good, because it really emphasises on the horror genre. Throughout the entire film, the audience isn't able to see the mask until the last bit where the killer finally appears on screen. This creates tension, and I intend to work a lot more with non-diegetic music to be able to build up the tension. Furthermore, when looking at the 1st rough cut, which was edited by Jonathan, you can see how our final girl is getting a false scare, by a woman who only wants to return her bible.

In this clip, which I am going to edit as well, I will begin with the non-diegetic music in order for there to be continuity throughout in terms of sound.
Moreover, there is a different ambient sound in every single shot. because we hear Bronwen's shoes going over the street and then you hear a car as well in the background. Due to this, I will loop the sound from the first shot, so that there will be continuity in it and that the sound doesn't change in the different shots. 

The mise-en-scene is very good outside, and the darkness and the natural appearance of the blue tint helps to connote the genre. This location was chosen on purpose because of the very bright lighting that added this specific blue tint as a natural effect. Because it turned out this well, I will be editing the first rough cut, by adding a blue filter when our central protagonist comes out of the church as well.
Another way we could have portrayed our central protagonist as more vulnerable would be to have framed Bronwen on the left or right side in the frame.
There is also some foreshadowing because she is walking towards a less lit space, where it is very dark, which foreshadows that something is going to happen.
Two other angles, that could have been incorporated, would have been a low angle and a dutch angle to make Bronwen appear as more vulnerable.

This shot was done on purpose to foreshadow, how she is going to get kidnapped. In thsi shot, she is a dark silhouette, which connotes that she is practically already gone.

Rough Cut 1

This is the first rough cut of our new idea.