Questionair Results

Here are our pies charts of the results of our questionnaires, The feedback we received was overall very positive, however we did get some questionnaires back that where not so positive, we also saw that a few people made up there own answers for the yes and no answers.

Questionairs

Here are our questionnaires that we will be handing out when our film and posters are show to the rest of the college, we will then collect them and put the results into pie charts.

Finished Poster

Finished Magazine Front Cover

Finished Trailer

Here is our finished trailer for our film Dystopia.

Evaluation

Evaluation

Question 1

Our media product builds on the idea of making a film dystopian and trying to create and world where society has broken down, we need to make sure that we made our scenes look and resemble our synopsis and what we have said the world will be in our trailer. So we decided to make a story around a world in which a disease has controlled and taken over and killed the majority of the population and which breaks society so everyone is just trying to survive. We also stated that the majority of the population has died so we could just film with people in the background so we had to film quickly and efficiently where as other big films will be able to shut places down to prevent anyone walking past. I feel we managed to do this extremely well and where very clinical when it came to filming the right shot in the little time we had. Also we had to think extremely carefully and had to plan intensely about our location as we could not just walk into the road and make cars dirty and throw bins over ect so when had to really plan where we wanted to film and how we will make that scene seem deserted and empty and I feel we planned efficiently and correctly as there was only one incident where a van drove past in the distance but that was easily edited out. Furthermore the idea of one man trying to survive and find his family and establish some sort of community and safety is conventional in this genre of film. We tried to develop the idea of a man trying to find his family because we feel like this is a classic story in dystopian films. However we knew that if we were going to chose this story line so we knew we would have to develop on the idea and make the idea our own and I think we have done this very well in terms of we have changed it slightly to be some sort of pursuit and every time he gets close they are not there and then throughout the film there are little side story’s in there as well and we feel that adding these up makes for a lot better story line that he looks for his family and finds them type of film. Also basing a lot of the main characteristics off hope of finding his family. We felt that by making him suspicious of a lot of things and also does not let his guard down easily and making the character be more inclined to play things safe so he finds his family rather than a character that talks to anyone and goes anywhere without thinking about it. And I feel that we did this well especially when he walks into his own home he is still got his gun ready even though he lived there, he still does not feel safe enough to let his guard down. However to challenge the genre we though about having the trailer based on one persons travels where as other trailers in our genre focus on the main character in a group or a team for example I am Legend the main character will smith has his dog, in Mad Max they are in groups and in 28 days later he finds a small group of people, Where as ours just features George (our main character) alone through the whole thing apart from the end where he is getting approached by the bandit. The reason for doing this is because we felt that we really needed to set the scene with our character as we relayed a lot on the life matrix to base our character on through the results. The life matrix really helped us develop are charterer so that he suits the genre but also is different and challenges. We feel he challenges the normal main character because for one he is younger where as a lot of characters are either fathers or older men trying to find there family where our character is a 18 year old boy trying to find his family, Also In a lot of dystopian films the main character I feel is quite fickle and will approach anything, where as based on the life matrix we tried to make our main character more capable and masculine and more too himself rather than out there and runs in to anything. The reason for doing this is we used the results from the life matrix survey and what we wanted out character to be and that’s what led us down the direction of George and then throughout the planning we developed our main character and I feel like this main and very good main character for our genre.

Question 2

Our main task was to make a trailer and our two ancillary tasks were to create a film poster and a magazine front cover for our film. So we had to research the codes and conventions of these types of products and also look at a lot of example to make sure we do it right.

I think that the combination of our trailer and our other two ancillary task work very well because we managed to keep the theme of our film throughout the tasks. The poster and the front cover and film we had to make sure that we used the same items of clothing our main character wore throughout the tasks the reason for this was because the continuity would not be very good and also the storyline of our film is that a diseases has broken down society and killed most of the population so our main character would not be changing clothes so we had to make sure his clothing is the same. Furthermore the style of editing didn’t change much for our trailer to our ancillary task which had a good effect and also made we stuck to the conventions of a dystopia film throughout all tasks.

Trailer

When editing the trailer which was my task I had to make sure that I thought about the other two ancillary tasks to make sure that we could keep that editing style and that the other members in my group could re create the editing style on a film poster and a magazine front cover. It was important that during the editing process I was communicating with the other members on my team to make sure they knew what I was doing in terms of editing so they knew what style to create for there task. As you can see form the picture I have made the scenes more grey to make it seem more unpopulated and also to make it look like a more apocalyptic scenery and as you can see from the other two products this style is continued.

Film Poster

With the film poster we all needed to communicate to make sure we could make sure we could keep the dystopian theme consistent throughout, so we had to take a lot of time in choosing the correct picture. We also researched a lot of film posters to get an examples of film posters so I looked at, The Book of Eli, Mad Max and 28 Days Later, I feel these are some very good examples to look at and in particular I think The Book of Eli poster is the style that suited what we were trying to create the best because this also has a grey and dark tones which fits the dystopian film but also has a beam of light that suggests hope or a solution to the problem in the film and this is something that we looked at re creating and I feel we managed to do this using a picture took from behind our main character look to the horizon and we feel this gives the same effect as the The Book of Eli but we also keep the grey and dark tones that we have in the film trailer and the magazine poster which give a dramatic effect.

Magazine Front Cover

Just like for the Film Poster we also looked at a number of examples to give us an idea of the codes and conventions of a magazine front cover. I looked at a Empire front cover which is for I Am Legend as I feel this is a very good example of a dystopian film magazine front cover. We used a picture of our main character as the main feature of the front cover but also tried to keep the same editing style as the other tasks. It was a bit harder to keep the same style of editing because there is a lot of text and other features that take away from the editing but we still tried the keep the tones grey to fit in the editing style of our other products.

Question 3

Throughout our tasks we where constantly making sure that we where getting feedback from either our target audience or other people that were willing to give there opinion, this was extremely helpful as it gave us a massive insight into what parts of our work we where doing very well on and what parts we needed to improve on. I believe that our most important feedback was the feedback we got for our preliminary task as this was extremely important in making our main task which was a trailer and the prelim shot was a way to show the style of filming and editing we where going for. Here is our feedback for our prelim shoot:

"The shot of the seagull gave an eerie feel. Also, I think the last shot was very effective because it makes him look larger and more powerful."
"I think the strongest shot was the one taken from ground level, I think it is the most effective because not only does it show him stepping over the camera, it's also quite unexpected, it also shows off the background so that we realize how bleak and deserted it is."
"I thought that the film clip was an introduction to a nature program because of the scenic shot of the animals. I didn't see the gas mask on the face, so therefore didn't understand what it was about." 
"The scenes were very effective and supported by the music, however, the person walking along very merrily and did not reflect a serious tone."
"The contrast between filming the animals juxtapose with the main character walking through the empty street. The poster shown on the fence gave clear context as to was going on. It loosely resembled the film '28 days later'." 

This feedback was extremely helpful as it gave us an understanding of what editing styles and types of shots to include in the main trailer and what to take out. Someone did comment on the fact they could not see the gas mask on the main characters face so did not understand what the prop was for. So for this we made sure we included shots that clearly shows that it is a gas mask he is wearing in our main trailer so that the voice over makes sense as this does mention that gas masks need to be wore at all times. This is an example of where the feedback we have received has helped us in improving our main task. So we learned the importance of audience feedback in improving our tasks and making sure we have got some feedback for each of our important tasks to help us in our other posts.

Life Matrix

Before we started filming we looked at the life matrix as we feel this was a very good way to find out what our target audience will be, this involved us putting a questionnaire together and we had to give these questionnaires to as many people we could so that we could a large number of results to make graphs to help us determine are target audience. With the results we made pie chart so that the data is easier to read. We learned that the majority of our target audience is tribed wired this means that they are more involved with social media, free spirited, young and single so we had to try and make sure our film appealed to this group one of the main ways we did this is by making our idea as creative and original and how we did this is we thought of a disease that has completely took over a country and how his has resulted in society breaking down and how there are few survivors and we then developed the story so that it would appeal to our target audience, also we learned that another large portion are rugged traditionalists this means that they are mainly male and hold on to the more traditional values, to make sure our film appealed to this audience we had to make sure we made our main character has some traditional values so we made our main character more capable and masculine.

Question 4

Throughout our three tasks we used a wide verity of media technology's and other programs to get the best results. One of the main media technologies I used was Imovie to edit the preliminary task and the main trailer, The reason this program was used over programs such as final cut was because I was already familiar with Imovie from previous task and I also feel that it is very easy to use and operate where as final cut would be a completely new program for me that I would have to learn from scratch although it could be potentially better however for me the time needed to learn how to use the program so I could use it effectively is not worth it. I also feel that throughout the editing process of the preliminary task and the actual trailer my editing skills on Imovie have improved. We also used a top of the range camera and tripod to record our trailer, the camera was easy to use as we have operated them before. My group also used Photoshop to editing the poster and magazine front cover, the reason we used Photoshop was because we felt that this was by far the best program to use for editing photos and creating the ancillary task, if you were to compare it with the likes of fireworks you would see that the features of Photoshop allowed us to edit our products a lot better and more detailed. I also used websites such as YouTube for research of examples of dystopian film trailer to get an idea of the conventions in a dystopian film, I also used YouTube to find un copyrighted music for our trailer because I feel that I was able to narrow my search down to get the best music for our trailer rather than using a website that may not have as much choice. However in the preliminary task I made my own music using a program called Logic, the reason for using this is because I also study music technology and have a good understanding of logic,

Magazine Front Cover Analysis

Masthead

The Title "Empire" Is very large at the top of the front cover and is in red so that it stands out and you can clearly read the title and that it does not blend in with the background too much, This is a very common color for magazine front covers because it does make the title stand out and if you were to make the title black it may blend in with that background and may not have the desired effect in terms of standing out on the shelf.

Copy

The other text around the poster is also quite bold so that it is easy to read and also that is creates dramatic effect so for example the "I am legend" is two colors and has smoke and fade around it to make it look dramatic. The other text also is dramatic to fit in with the theme of the front cover and to also have a brief over view of whats in side the magazine to try and persuade people to buy the magazine.

Puff

The puff on this front cover is quite minimal and is the same color as some of the other text but still stands out, the effect it has is it is trying to get across a message about what is in the magazine and due to the text being on a red rectangle it does stand out.

Skyline

The skyline for this front cover is very bold and because it is placed above the red title of the magazine it stands out, it also keeps the theme of being dramatic and is in the a similar design as the "I am legend" text on the poster.

Three Colour Rule

The three colours on this front cover are Red, White and Black. The text is in read allowing it to stand out from the other colours. Also these are colours normally associated with an apocalyptic film. The reason the three colour rule is used is because if you were to have multiple different colours the magazine could start looking confusing and unprofessional where as three colours with a colour that stands out looks a lot more professional and is a lot more effective.

Life Matrix

In our questionnaire we included a question that refereed to the life matrix. The reason behind this was to get a better understanding of what type of audience would be more likely to watch our film. The most popular option was tribe wired which implies they are more involved with social media, free spirited, young and single, to make sure our film appeals to this audience we need to be quite original and creative with our film. Another option that was chosen quite a lot was rugged traditionalists these are normally male and hold on to more traditional male values, to make sure our film appeals to them we will need to make our main character more masculine and capable.

Preliminary Task
For our preliminary task  we aimed at making our preliminary task more towards tribe wired (life matrix psychographics) as that was the most popular option when choosing what we were going to do with the preliminary shoot. We have made our main character younger so that the tribe wired audience, we also made sure that our idea was original and creative. Furthermore to make sure that out film appealed to rugged traditionalist we made our main character more masculine and capable. 

Todorov's Narrative Stages

Our trailer definitely has some examples where we have included Toderov's theory of narrative stages

Todorov's first stage is about equilibrium meaning a stage in which all is what it should be. our synopsis is mainly set after the disease has taken over the UK and when the population has massively decreased. But during our trailer we have used flashbacks to before the disease has taken over to show this stage of equilibrium.  The second stage of Todorov's theory is disruption so something that disturbs the equilibrium which in our films case is the disease. The third stage of Toderov's theory is
recognition and this is shown in our trailer with a flashback where you hear guns fire and fight between people on the street. The fourth stage is an attempt to repair and this is show through our main character attempt of finding his family and finding out the cure unexpectedly throw his sister. The final stage is back to equilibrium which in our film is where our main character is sage with the cure being giving over to the military.

Why we used disruption throughout
How this is conventional
How we showed

Editing Process

Currently my main role is editing the movie trailer. This involves me taking all the footage we have filmed and importing it to Imovie as I feel this is the best program to use as it is simple and easy to use. I am trying to add as much effects as I can to try and make it seem as dystopian as I can and by using cuts making the scenes look even more deserted. I have also used music to try and enhance the trailer and to make it more tense and dramatic. Also we had the idea of creating a sound bridge for the trailer where we have an emergency broadcast message playing over the majority of the trailer, so it starts as our main character is walking down the road and then there is a flashback to our main character listen to the radio which is playing the emergency broadcast message and it then continues on through the trailer. We felt this gave a good effect as it shows what has happened after the emergency broadcast message and during through the use of flashbacks.

Next Steps

Now that we have received feedback for out prelim task and our location planning and other post, we now know what improvements we need to make and what we need to do to make the final piece the best we can. We also now know what we did that was good. The next steps would be to start filming our final piece and to take the feedback on board to make that the best we can.

Our next steps will be to try and apply the feedback given from our target audience. we have pretty much filmed the majority of our trailer, we have now started the editing process and this is where we will need to try and implement the target audience feedback to try and make our setting portray a dystopian world.

We will now need to start making our magazine front cover and our poster which will require us to tale photos of our main character in front of a green screen which will require us to do a lot of editing and require us to take pictures of potential backgrounds.

Preliminary Task

This is our preliminary shoot where we shot a short clip to represent the genre out trailer will be, as a group we planned out what we wanted to shoot and what roles we took for the task, filming was spread between me and Nathan Pugh and Nathan Plummer was in charge of sorting out the props we would use. Below is the feedback we received from our focus group:

"The shot of the seagull gave an eerie feel. Also, I think the last shot was very effective because it makes him look larger and more powerful."
"I think the strongest shot was the one taken from ground level, I think it is the most effective because not only does it show him stepping over the camera, it's also quite unexpected, it also shows off the background so that we realize how bleak and deserted it is."
"I thought that the film clip was an introduction to a nature program because of the scenic shot of the animals. I didn't see the gas mask on the face, so therefor didn't understand what it was about." 
"The scenes were very effective and supported by the music, however, the person walking along very merrily and did not reflect a serious tone."
"The contrast between filming the animals juxtapose with the main character walking through the empty street. The poster shown on the fence gave clear context as to was going on. It loosely resembled the film '28 days later'." 

The feed back was very helpful in allowing us to understand what people thought of the style of our trailer. The feedback will be very helpful when filming and editing the trailer as when know what aspects we need to improve and what we need to keep the same. 

Storyboard

Here is our storyboard the drawing was mainly done by Nathan Plummer and I did one slide I also wrote 10 of the boxes and Nathan Pugh wrote the rest. Below is the feedback we received from our target audience:

"It was very good detailed drawing and thought out story line with flashbacks and what to show the audience. However it is supposed to be a trailer so maybe it shouldn't be as detailed in the trailer because your showing the audience a glimpse of film not the whole film""In my opinion, I think that the storyboard was well illustrated with the use of shot types. However, I would only say to now look at how long you want each shot to take to represent your intentions of that particular scene" 

"I believe that the storyboard is very focused on the story and each choice of shot they have chosen conveys a scared and worried feeling in which they want the audience to feel. In stark contrast I feel as though they may benefit from adding more information on the transitions from each frame to the next and how this will be fulfilled."

"The storyboard clearly demonstrates the editing and camera work which will be used within the film. I feel that if colour was to be incorporated into the pictures then this could convey what was exactly happening in each scene. Other than that the illustrations were very effective in showing what will be included in the trailer."

"From the storyboard the creator puts a very clear image in your head of how the film is going to turn out, making it really effective and clear. The shot types are also mentioned in each description of the scene and they are very relative to the type of scene being created and does well to create the desired tone and atmosphere. The way the shots are linked together also works well to create the tone, however they should be careful to make sure each shot works well with the shot before and after it, to make sure that the trailer makes sense for the audience.  Also, i would like to add that the drawings are incredible''

The Feedback we received for our storyboard was very helpful. It help point out the places that we need to improve and where we could make the storyboard better. In particular we could have used colour to try and illustrate exactly what will happen in the shot, for example if we are planning on using a using a pan we could have a different colored arrows showing the way the camera would pan. Overall I think our target audience liked our storyboard and liked how we showed each shot type. They commented on how out shots types and the way we explained the scenes really show the tone we are trying to create and how it meets our genre. 

Roles and responsibility

Within in our group we will try to split the work load up evenly so it is fair. We will have different roles within our group, so I will be mainly focusing on the editing side of the project, Nathan Pugh would be the main the camera man and Nathan Plummer will be the designer. Each member of out group has contributed evenly for example me and Nathan Pugh wrote the storyboard, Nathan plummer drew the pictures to go with the writing.

Our Codes and Convenstions

Camera

We will use a variety of camera shots such as establishing shots to show our scenery and the setting we are filming at, We will use lots of close ups to show the emotions that our main character is feeling and to show the audiences these feelings as well. Furthermore we will use point of view shots and over the shoulder shot to show what our main character is looking at. 

Mise en Scene

We will be using lots of different items to help represent our story and genre. For example a gas mask which we are buying off Amazon, we feel that this will help our story line and appearance of our main character. Also we will be wearing tatty clothing such as a leather jacket and tatty jeans because we feel this will help us paint the picture that our main character as gone through a lot.

Editing

With the editing we will be using fades and cross dissolves for out flashbacks and from shot to shot as he is walking around. We will mainly be using straight cuts though has we feel this will have the desired effect we are looking for. 

Lighting

For lighting we will being using natural lighting as we will be filming during the day. When he is in the house we will be using low key lighting because we feel this will make it easier to create and eerie setting.

Filming Schedule

Here is our filming schedule we did this as a group and Nathan Pugh wrote this. We needed to know when people are available so that we could book the camera out in advance. We feel that this will allow us to manage our time professionally to avoid any problems that may occur with any other commitments. 

Name and Font

We have chosen to use this font because we feel it represents our genre the best due to the font having the effect of being ruined but not completely. The name we chose as a group, we felt this name really suited out film and what happens in the film, Dystopia means -

1. "an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one."
2.      (www.Google.co.uk)

This definition is how we would explain the world in our film as the disease has ruined the country.


                                               dystopia

Here is another font option for our name and font which is called "Algerian" which we will is quite a minimal look and is simple but we feel it can come across quite powerfully. However we do not feel it is better then our other option as we don't feel the impact is greater than the 1st option.


"I think that the font in the title gives a stone age look which links to the plot"
"The name and font used link well with the film because the font looks degraded and decayed, showing that the film will be about the fatal collapse of society."

"The font is showing importance through the use of capitals, and the scuffed effect show that the film (the world) has been dragged through terrible times and is struggling to return to normal. However the use of colour could have been better, such as a subtle hint of to show the theme of death and danger within the film."

Here is our feedback for our chosen font, we got very good feedback from our target audience and we feel that we have made the right choice with our font and name. 

Location

Our main filming location will be around the school area and one of out group members house, the reason we are doing it here as its a very built up area which is a good setting because if we film at the right time a of day we can make it look deserted which will have a lot more of a dramatic impact on the audience. We will also film at a few other places for our flash backs. Riverside park is quite a good place to film as it is very local and again can look very deserted depending on the day. Another good filming location will be town because if we can make that deserted then we can have our main character walking through a normally busy place such as bargate or down the main row of shops completely alone which will I feel will look really good.

For these locations we may need to book the cameras out overnight as it will involve filming quite late or very early and at these times the college may not be open. The areas around the school are very safe and town is usually very safe aswell.

   

  

  

"Yes I think it is a good location for filming because it looks like a quiet area meaning they won't have the problem of people walking in the background of the shots, which is important due to the dystopian genre of their film. Also, the area is very close to college, meaning getting there is very easy and safe considering that you will have expensive camera equipment with you. However, it could be hard for you to create a suitable environment for your film, and you may need to do things like spill litter on the floor to make the area look more dystopian."

We have looked over the feedback given and have taken the positives on board and also took the negatives into consideration and we are looking into our setting to make sure we can make the setting suitable. 

Equipment

Equipment List

Camera - We will need to book the cameras as early as possible so that we secure a camera for the times we want to film.

Tripod - This will come with the camera when we book it.

Costume - We wont be having anything to difficult to get hold off, so we will be using pretty normal clothes but we will try to make them more worn and ripped. However we will be using a gas mask which we will need to buy off Amazon which is cheap and we will also buying a fake rifle off Amazon which again is very cheap.

Script

Below is the script for our trailer and will be narrated over the top of the trailer:

Its been 6 months, since it all happened. Since everything i knew, everything I loved, was taken from m. It started in Asia, and in a matter of weeks it hit nearly every country in the world, time was something we didn't have. Before we knew it half of the worlds population fell, person after person, it was relentless. It reached the UK when I was up North with a few friends, we laid low or a while, but I knew I couldn't just wait around for something that might make everything better, I had a family, I have a family, I need to know they're okay.