Our Screening

These are pictures we took of our screening of our final media product, FIXATION. We used only one room and layed our table and chairs for people to sit in.

We held the screening on Friday 26th March, we had 61 turn up from year 11, 12 and 13. It was the first time many people saw our final project and we got positive reactions from everyone who came. To advertise our screening we posted a group on facebook and invited everybody to join, we also used word of mouth around our school. Finally we decided that the addition of popcorn and sweets would attract them in.

The purpose off this was to get feedback from our target audience. we printed off questionaires 55 in total and asked everybody to fill them in with their opinions, questionaires is a good way to gather results as it is confidential they didn't have to put their names so people weren't afraid of saying how they felt.

Questionnaire

Age

Gender : Male Female

What is the film’s title?

What genre do you think the film is?

Is the film a British, or American made film?

British American

What type of Cinema would you expect it to be shown in? (tick one box)

• Multiplex (Cineworld, Vue, Odeon etc…)
• Independent Cinema (Phoenix theatre)

Who do you think this film is targeted at?

Male
Female

What age group do you think the film is aimed at?

Are the characters easily identified? Who are the main characters? What role do they play?

Describe what happens in the sequence

What do you think the film is about? (themes)

Do you think the opening sequence works? Does it introduce the film successfully, the characters, the genre, the narrative?

What, in your opinion, works well in the sequence?

What could be improved?

Would you want to watch the rest of the film based on what you have seen so far?
Can you rate the opening sequence out of 10.

This is a copy of the questionaire we handed out, as you can see we asked questions about how they thought the sequence was and we also asked for feedback on how we could improve.This feedback is always helpful as nothing is ever perfect and there is always room for improvement.
 


This is an example of a questionaire completed by a student during the feedback session.

• By looking through all our questionaires we soon realised that our opening sequence had gone down really well with rating ranging from 7 to 10 out 10.
•  Everyone understood key themes and could identify them easily.
•  The genre and characters came across well and we had lots of good feedback on that.
• We had repetitive improvements which was to make the kitchen scene shorter and see more of the shed scene. However the reason we did this was so we could convey the OCD really clearly
• People indentified that it was predominately a male film
• They picked up that it would be for young adults mainly
• Finally, the feedback we recieved was very positive with minor improvement, the titles and graphics were really liked so as a group we were very happy with the outcome

The only problem with this screening is that the people who watched it our a couple of years younger then our target audience. This is because we are still students and we don't have access to 50 plus 22 year olds so we decided that the feedback from 16 to 18yr olds is still better then nothing.

Signed Off

We have officially been signed off!! After so much hard work, commitment, re- shoots and over the past 4 months our life being spent in the media block our teacher has finally said that there is no more we can do and she loves it!

We are very pleased with the outcome of our opening sequence, we have alll really worked hard throughout the whole process and we have got on really well as a team

We cannot wait to show our families, friends and to see the reaction at our screening later this week!

X

Round up of Editing Week 4

This week spencer was left alone to edit from tuesday til friday, as you can imagine it was alot of pressure put upon him as the deadline was on friday and he was on his own to meet it.

However he managed to do a lot of work by himself, it was lucky that spencer was the one left behind as he is the most skilled editor out of all of us. However even though we were in swanage on a field trip for geography we all managed to contact spencer once a day and answer any question he had or give him any advice.

This week spencer sorted out our music, he didn't like the music choices we gave him so he decided to change it, we trusted him to do a good job, and we are all happy with the final outcome.

Also spencer added an echoing effect of the girl screaming, this makes the scene a lot scarier and brings a dillusional effect to the noise, this matches the picture extremely well as spencer also added a blurry effect, he crossed the shots so one plays on top of another, this is pretty easily done on adobe premier pro but it creates a very professional look. 

WE have now finished editing, i hope you now know exactly what went on.

Round up of Editing Week 3

This week we shave captured all the footage we had took from our back up shoot, we started to work a lot harder this week as we were behind other groups with our work as we had to do a back up shoot and we didn't want to have a big panic when it came closer to the deadline.

We continued to edit during lesson time but we also came in during our free periods aswel, not all of them but a decent proportion of them as we wanted to get as much editing done as we could.  As you can see above we commited ourselves to as many study periods as we could, but not all of them as we needed a balance in our life.

This week James, Ciara and India, did a lot more of the editing, this is because Spencer is going to be left alone next week for 3 days which he'll have to edit by himself, so we decided we wanted to make it as equal as possible.

We sat down in our editing suite together and had a group meeting on what exactly we wanted spencer to do next week, so even though we weren't there we were still contributing. We told him about the speed we wanted the shots to be in the shed scene and we talked about different techniques and effects we could use to add to the sequence, we didn't come up with any final ideas though so we told him to experiment over the next week.

Also when it came to music all three of us sat down and decided on 3 different tracks we would give to spencer so he could choose which one he liked best.

Main Shoot: Shot Log

This was the shot log that we recorded all our shots and takes on during the main shoot. We took turns writing and recording while others helped with filming and sound. I think we used our shot log really well compared to the practise shoot and it really helped us capture footage much quicker. I think we all learnt how important it was to use a shot log on shoot.

Round up of editing Week 2

This week we started the editing of the footage from our main shoot, we were a lot happier with the footage we came back with as we had changed all the things that we decided we needed to change and improve.

One big difference between this shooting and the last is that we kept up to date with the shot log, this made it a lot easier when it came to editing as we knew exactly where on the tape the shot we wanted was. This is a picture of all of us discussing the shot log and deciding which piece of footage we needed to capture next.

This week we were in the editing room for alot longer then the previous, we had all our lessons to edit, so the same as you saw in my last editing post plus we came in two lunchtimes for half an hour and two after school sessions for an hour. We could choose any two lunchtimes out of tuesday, wednesday and thursday and any two after school periods of of the same days. The whole group didn't have to do the same sessions as eachother and this worked to our advantage as we had group members in the editing suite pretty much all the time out of the six possibly sessions we could choose.

We made some big decisions when it came to editing this week, we decided that we would have the scene of the girl in the shed second as apposed to it being the opening scene, this meant that the audience could link the two scenes together and it meant that we could finish the sequenmce off with something scary that will interest the audience.

We didn't need to re-shoot for this however we could just move the footage around on the programme we were using, adobe premier pro.This programme is fantastic,  it has many effects and different cool things you are able to add when editing.

Also this week we had decided on the music we were using, the music was very eerie and spooky, it had a slow tempo, we got this music from 'freeplaymusic' this is a great website you can get music from, and its all uncopyrited, so we were able to use it in our sequence.

However we have had some problems this week not with the editing but with the lighting in our shed scene, we have tried to adjust the light using the darkener on the programme but this doesn't looked realistic, we are looking for more of a strip of light instead of the whole shed being lit up, so we are going to have to re-shoot this weekend.

The Script

We only really needed to plan the script for the radio recording we play over the house scene. This is because the girl in the shed and the man in the house never actually exchange any dialogue. This wont make shooting the sequence any easier as we have to tell the story in other ways.

This is a picture of our original script. This is the only planning we have done for the script we have focused more on the shooting schedule and storyboard.

All it shows is some of the dialogue needed for the news on the radio. It does not include any screams and noises made by the girl in the shed. To be fair we are planning on letting the actress in the shed make up the noises and screams she makes as this will make it look more realistic as apposed to false.

We are also thinking about having the man repeat 1,2,3,4 whenever he does an action for example opening a cupboard, as this will enthesise that he has OCD, however we are not entirely sure of this as we don't want it to get too repetitive and bore the audience.

We are yet to shoot our final media product but i know we should have planned our script then we have so far. hopefully it won't have any repucutions on the quality of the product.

Main Shoot: Schedual

Rough Cut of our Opening Sequence

Due to this only being a rough edit, there is no need for titles to be added.
However, the lack of title shots means that there a cuts that look really jumpy as they are supposed to be split by a title shot.
Our Thoughts

• We think that overall we made good progress however by doing our rough cut we have seen vital errors and mistakes and missing shots which we need to improve on in order to make our final sequence better
• We think both actors and actress worked well however some shots can still be improved
• We need to sort out missing shots and make sure they are included next time
• We need to look at finer details-eg OCD actor should have shirt tucked in at all times, shoes on at all times, same pen in each shot
• We like the music choice we have made at the start of the sequence
• We need to change the POV shot from the toaster to the fridge as its not a good shot
• Props need to checked through-pen, toast same colour, butter needs to be soft, 4 keys

Teacher Feedback

•  Like the shed door scene but need to think quite carefully about make up- need to look at fake blood- doesn't look realistic
• OCD- they would know when the news would be on therfore play the news as soon as radio turned on then music plays after when he goes to turn off the radio
• Calender shot-already have the 24th circled? do crosses?
• He needs to switch of the radio

Round up of Editing Week 1

This week we were in the editing room, capturing the footage we got from our practice shoot on the weekend. It was the first time we had done some editing since we edited for the preliminary task, This time we were with different people, and in a different group.

We were pretty confident that we would do well with the editing this week, as we all knew what to do due to the experience we gained from our preliminary task and other media projects where we needed to use editing.

We got straight to work capturing all the footage we took, and straight away we realised that we were missing some of the shots we intended to shoot. However it was just a practice shoot and that is the purpose of a practice shoot, to learn from your mistakes so you don't make them again for the real thing.

As we were editing for the practice shoot it wasn't as important so we just editing during lessons, this is my timetable for the week, we edited in the periods highlighted in red, this periods are 40minutes long, so 7 x 40, is 280 minutes, so we spent 4 hours and 40 minutes editing.

We sat down as a group on friday lunchtime to discuss the weeks events and to talk about anything we might need to improve or remeber for next time we shoot.

We came up with a list of problems we had to solve and things we have decided to change for the main shoot:

• We have to keep the storyboard with us at all times to ensure that we know exactly what we want in each shot
• We need to shoot in chronological order so we dont forget any shots, this will be ok as we  only shoot in two different locations
• We need to keep up to date with the shot log so when it comes to capturing we know exactly where the shot we want is on the tape
• We need to make sure that when shooting we do more then just one take, as in a number of cases on the practice shoot we moved on to the next shot instead of checking that the footage we had got was good enough
• We have to make sure that we keep using the clapperboard so we know what take we want to use

Group Meeting: Editing

• Lots of mistakes
• Continuity errors
• Some good shots
• Need more reaction shots
• Broken continuity techniques
• Background sound
• Burnt toast then the next shot doesn't have burnt toast
• lots of takes-need to cut that down in order to save time

Time:1 hour

Practice Shoot: Shot Log

This again kept all our shots in order and we knew exactly what shot to capture for the editing process. We all took turns recording down capture times and what shots we were using and what shots went wrong so we were not going to capture

Practice Shoot: Capture List

This is our practise shoot shot log. This helped us to know the time codes of each shot and take allowing the editing proces to be quick and easy.

Storyboard

Here are some photos of our storyboard:

We began storyboarding a week before our shoot. We initially did a timeline which we used to then add further detail and it made us think about where we would place titles etc. We used different colours for different types of shot eg-yellow was close ups. This allowed us to see if we were using variation of shots as this criteriria would make our opening sequence exciting and interesting.

We split up the jobs of the storyboarding to make it quicker

-India and James did the drawings

-I did the writing underneath identifying each shot

-Spencer sorted out the order generally helped with all jobs

The process of storyboarding was very long however without doing this I don't think we would have a set idea of the opening sequence. It made us actually walk through our sequence and try and overcome problems

Planning: Shooting Schedual

This is the shooting schedual we produced for the practise shoot. This allowed us to plan each shot and know what we needed to do on the day. We wrote down each shot that was needed and then planned that way in which the shot order would go. Therefore we can now follow this shooting schedule ensuring we get the right shots.

Things to remember

On the day we noted down some points to remember for the next shoot as this was a practise shoot so we were able to learn from it:

• Make Up Wipes
• Black out sheets
• Polaroids
• Cork Board
• Soft Butter
• Butter and Toast needs to be in fours
• No butter on knife before
• Loaf of bread
• Full fridge
• Tuck in shirt
• Pull up trousers

• Overall we soon realised on the shooting day that we needed more time to prepare costume and setting. The shed we were using was full therefore this took us time to clear out and empty. The costume choices were made that morning therfore it took us more time then expected.
• We have now planned that on the next shooting weekend we will all come the night before and prepare all costumes and settings. Therefore clean the kitchen compltely and get the shed prepared. This will allow us to start shooting as soon as we arrive and we will save time therfore we can spend that on making all shots accurate.

Final Idea: Location

Here are some stills from our new location (my house)

As you can see the kitchen is much tidier than the previous location, it is more minimalistic and more realistic for an OCD person to live in.

The shed is small and cosy, it will really make the audience feel closed in on, and costraphobic. It will not look like a nice place to be in at all.

The garden is quite long and there is an easy route from the shed to the house.

 

 

As you an see there is able to be a good shot of the door from the hallway as the man enters the house. you can even have a shot of the door from the stairs.

 

The Title

When we were planning our title we didn't want it to be completely abnormal but we didn't want it to be too obvious, as our villain had OCD and was obsessed with the number 4 we wanted to play around with that. These are the ideas we came up with:

• Fourthcoming
• Four in a row
• 4
• 1,2,3,4
• 4coming
• 4 you
• 4thcoming
• 4get
• 4gotten

We thought it was a little too obvious to go for the OCD option so we decided to play around with the fact that our villain was obsessed with his victims, heres what we came up with:

• Obsessed
• obsessive
• captured
• Fixation
• Fix4tion
• fixated
• your mine
• your mine 4ever

We decided that we wanted something that included both that our villain was obssesed with the girls he captured and also the that he had OCD, so we decided to go with FIX4TION.

Teacher Feedback

Teacher Feedback to First Proposal
Here is a lists of points our teacher made about or First idea, and how we could improve our idea:

• We were trying to tell two stories, we have a character with OCD, and the same character him kidnapps girls, it's too complicated with both stoies
• Our teacher loved the fact we had an OCD character as it is original
• She liked the kitchen scene, with the toaster popping, showing an average day
• She thought if we had an OCD kidnapper then his kidnappings would all have to be OCD, with everything perfect
• She didn't like our location as it was too homely and not the sort of house a person with OCD would live in
• She thought that our 2 minute opening sequence was trying to tell the whole story to the film
• Our teacher said that there was no sense to who's the opposite, what she meant was that there was no one challenging the kidnapper like a detective or a victim that wants to fight back.

After we got this feedback we had a group meeting and discussed how we would change our final idea. here is a list of things we have changed:

• We have changed the location to James house, it is tidier and looks more like a house someone with OCD would live in
• We have kept the kitchen scene
• We have the kept the OCD kidnapper
• Instead off starting with a shot of the kitchen we start with a shot of the kidnapped girl
• A lot less goes on in our scene now to stop us telling the whole story

Teacher Feedback to Second Proposal


After getting our feedback we all spoke about it and worked on a new narrative a new loaction and finalised the character. We then proposed again and we were passed allowing us to move on to planning for our shooting weekend. Here's some feeback our teacher gave us after the second proposal

• Loved new locations
• Questioning eyesight from the shed to the house-will it work?
• Perhaps use the exterior of one shed and the interior of the other so we get a good shot from thw window to the house
• Complete transformation-really likes it
• We can now start storyboarding and preparing shooting schedules

Proposal: First Idea

Here is the hand-out we gave out to the cless that went along with our presentation. It offers additional information we may not of covered in the presentation and it gives us the key point to genre, target audience, synopsis and character.

OUR OPINIONS

Ciara:Today we presented our proposal for our final idea. I think it went well perhaps we should have focused on how we were going to structure the proposal more. I talked about the synopsis of the opening sequence and about the target audience

James: I think our presentation went well, we covered all the main topics, including genre, characteristics (OCD), actors/location and the target audience. In my opinion we could of delivered the presentation better, what we were talking about was good but our presentation wasn't structured enough.

Spencer: Today we presented our initial proposal. I think the presentation went well, however we could have included more information on the character and location. Also i feel that we did not elaborate on the plot enough and explain the style of shooting we would use.

India: I thought the way we delivered the presentation was good as wel covered every aspect we needed to, also i think that our handout (see above) was good and it explained everything clealy.