Prelim Task!

Today I posted my prelim Media Studies task, shot in September 2012, online in order to receive feedback from my peers and teenage target audience. On beginning my AS year I, working in a small group, was given the brief to create a short film featuring a conversation. The main aim was to demonstrate the typical Hollywood style of continuity editing. It is important that I look back at how successful our efforts were in order to determine where my group went wrong. Also, I must identify what was executed well and, therefore, should be emulated in my final piece. 

My simple prelim short film featured one character opening a door and crossing a room before engaging in speech with a second character. Our chosen conversation was a job interview because we felt this could be portrayed effectively through a two shot.

The shooting of our short film was mostly successful. Following the brief throughout we included a two shot, over the shoulder shots and close ups as well as adding POV’s. By filming from a variety of angles we left ourselves with many options for editing. This also meant that we could cut from shot to shot frequently making the film more interesting for an audience. However, in postproduction, we had almost too many shots to chose from. Multiple angles had to be rejected for the final film.

Another problem we encountered while filming was finding enough space to shoot the two shot. The room we had chosen as a setting was very small. In order to achieve the correct framing we had to set-up the tripod extremely close to the opposite wall allowing less freedom.

 The editing of our job interview sequence was incredibly successful. We were sure to time the cutting of shots perfectly in order to achieve continuity with actions and speech. The fade to black transition was inserted at the beginning and end causing the film to flow. However, on looking back at some clips, we noticed how lighting and focus could have been improved. Sound also caused many problems. For example, many clips had to be muted due to outside noise and audio transitions were required for the sound to flow. 

Overall our short film production was quite successful. Although it is not the most creative film it did fulfil the brief and demonstrated continuity. However, the next time we direct a film for course work the sound and lighting could perhaps be improved by using a studio. The film would have also been a lot better if the actors had memorised their lines rather than holding scripts.

Tomorrow I will be sure to include any feedback or addvice I recieve in my blog post! Let's see if my target audience agree with my opinion... 

First blog post!

So... who on earth am I? Well, my name is Megan Hibbert (stage name Megan Olivier). I am sixteen years old and an aspiring director.

 So, you can imagine my excitement when given a brief for a two-minute feature film opening for my Media A-level coursework. It's great that an entire 50% of my grade for AS Level will come from doing what love more than anything in the world. Of course, I really want this to look professional. I have created horror movie trailers and music videos in the past (for example, my GCSE coursework) but this has to be much better. What I direct and edit needs to be at a much higher level. Every step of the way, throughout all of my careful planning and research, I will be blogging. Using pictures and videos every part of the process will be recorded. 

My initial thought when considering this brief was: horror. I just love creating films of the horror genre. Also the target audience (mainly between the typical cinema going ages of 16-24) is perfect. As I fit into this age bracket personally I find this extremely relatable making the task easier for me to address. I can also discuss my ideas with my peers knowing that they are likely to have a relatively good understanding of the genre. I plan to create a survey, perhaps film a focus group answering questions related to the genre and to watch existing horror movies.  I feel watching successful examples of professional media texts is much more beneficial to me than analysing student films in order to imitate a professional style and produce an opening as high quality as possible. I am looking forward to beginning work on this project. Wish me luck! 

 

 Oh! I should also mention that the background image for my new blog is actually an example of my photography. It was taken with one of my best actors and is titled 'Be careful what you are reaching for'.