my evaluation

1.In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? The use of green screen through out- used in films such as Sin City and 300. It does not lend itself to many types of film but I think it works well in my film as I have also gone for a a stylized, over the top. Also my flythrough credits scene is different to conventional credits as most credits just appear on scene, flat on top of the of the image. My credits sequence pulls the viewer into a virtual tour of a 3D space as they fly through the type. My hero is also very unconventional as he is not the typical friendly do gooder. He is far grittier and does things his own way rather than the best way like such famous heroes as Wolverine (X-Men) or Raurshack (The Watchmen)

2.How does your media product represent particular social groups? My film intro does not as such represent particular social groups. I have however portrayed my hero as more of an anti hero than a hero. He is "badass" (as cliché as that sounds) and instead of coming across as the friendly neighbor hood hero often portrayed in comics and films he comes across as aggressive and mis-directed. The attacker is portrayed as a middle class person. They wear decent clothes and have a good appearance. I wanted to portray him almost as a normal person to imply that the city is so bad that everyone has been brought down into crime

3.What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? I used Marvel and Columbia as the institutions I would use to distribute my film this is because they are two institutions reknowed for working on action and super hero films, such as Iron-Man and Hulk and the Spider-Man trilogy which the the genre I have chosen to use for my film opening. Marvel is a comic book company and within the last couple of years has branched out into making films (based on the comics) as well.

4. Who would be the audience for your media product? My initial targeted age group was 18+ because i had plans of making quite a violent film however when i started making it i realized it is possible to do it without violence and put the rating. By having a lower rating it opens up a larger portion of the market able to see the film so a 12 or 15 would be better especially as a film based on a super hero is more likely to appeal to younger teen viewers. I realised this because at the time a similar situation occurred to a real film (X-Men Origins: Wolverine) where they decided to censor the film so that they could turn it from an 18 to a 12a to make the film accessible to the target audience. FOr this reason i decided to make the film a 15 instead of an 18 because I wanted toi keep an aspect of strong violence in the film.

5.How did you attract/address your audience?

From the beggining I knew that I wanted my film to be quite a high age rating because I wanted to do something comic book-esque but on a more sinister level. I looked at current films based on super heroes and they are rarely above a 12 rating though because they are often more child friendly. I was more interested in a film like Sin City or the watchmen though as they both originte from comics but they are a more grown up style of comic. To make my film more like them I wanted to include violence and if I were to continue the film drug references and storng language. This would make the film more appealing to and older generation because it makes them more realistic. In real life if someone gets shot in the leg they wont just clutch it looking in pain or fall to the floor screaming they would be more likley to be shouting profanities because it is what todays culture is like. This makes the film more relateable.

6.What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? I have learnt a lot about using the program adobe after effects. I had no experience with the program before i started my media project but over the year I have learned some quite advanced techniques that can be used in the program. I really enjoy working with After effects as it is a professional piece of equipment capable of producing high quality pieces of work if you are willing to put in the effort. The program is generally not to hard to use once you have the basics under your belt but it did take a while to get used to. Through out the year I have created a 3D set using basic 3D modeling techniques, created the effect of realistic gun blow back, effectively used key-lighting to place people acting on a green screen into a different background (in my case i was placing them into my 3D set.) and made a 3D fly through credits sequence. This taught me a lot about using camera layers and key framing to animate the camera movements.

7.Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? Since my preliminary I have learnt a lot about editing especially with special effects using adobe after effects. I have also learnt a lot about different camera shots and movement to create effect (although I did not have the chance to demonstrate this as I shot the whole film on green screen therefore there was no camera movements. ALso since the preliminaries I have learnt a lot about organization and continuity. To get everything how you want it you have to organize everything in such way so that you have all the clips you need in the order you want. Also editing is very timely so I had to divide my time well so that I could fit in all the editing and allow myself time to put everything together to make the finished film.( especially as the 3D set itself took roughly 15 hours to create and render.) I also learnt about how to cut the scenes to make them flow (giving them continuity). This is very important because if the shots don't link together and flow then the film will be discontinued and look bad! Transitions can help scenes which don't appear to link normally to link like in my final film after the credits scene finished originally it went straight to the first shot which look bad. To change this I had to add a pause with a fade in transition effect to make the scene flow better.

EVALUATION

EVALUATION CRITERIA
Candidates will evaluate their work electronically. This MUST contain an element of audience feedback and may be either integrated with the presentation of the research and planning material or may be presented separately. Where candidates have worked in a group, the evaluation may be presented individually or collectively but the teacher must allocate a mark according the contribution/level of understanding demonstrated by the individual candidate.

The questions that must be addressed in the evaluation are:
1.In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
2.How does your media product represent particular social groups?
3.What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
4.Who would be the audience for your media product?
5.How did you attract/address your audience?
6.What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
7.Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Level 4 16–20 marks
Excellent understanding of issues around audience, institution, technology, representation, forms and conventions in relation to production.
Excellent ability to refer to the choices made and outcomes.
Excellent understanding of their development from preliminary to full task.
Excellent ability to communicate.
Excellent skill in the use of digital technology or ICT in the evaluation

Costume research (wolverine)

Looking at super hero films and comic all super heros have a signature outfit/costume. However Wolverine, In the X-Men films, does not wear a costume most of the time in favour of wearing casual clothes. I really liked this look as it kind of kept him more human as what you were seeing was the human not the mask! Also his outfit really went with his "badass" attitude which I quite liked as he isn't so much a hero but almost an anti hero where he does good things but not nessicarily for the right reasons. For my super hero i think i am going to keep them in normal clothes as well because like wolverine my charecters super powers do not make him toooo un normal because except for the fact that he can extend claws from his hands he still retains all other normal human charecteristics (except regeneration which my charecter has also!!)

New Idea??

Whislt creating the set for my project i realised that crateingthe whole set that i originally was going to make was over ambitious because of the time it takes and the power of my laptop. What i have at the moment allready takes a while to render every time i make a small change so i've decided to leave it as it is. With this decision though i realised that i would no longer be able to go ahead with my original idea! So the Auditor has been scrapped! I then had to think what I could do with the set I had created so I though why not do my own take on a super hero film. My original idea was centred around a human (the auditor) with super powers using them in a bad way so why not make a super hero film. I started thinking and I soon came up with a storyline with charecters! My new idea is to show a teen boy who lives in an urban slum where the crime rate has rocketed so high not even the police can cope with it anymore. This boy is out late around the outskirts of the city one night when he is attacked by one of the cities many thugs. The boy is struck in the face and realises he has powers when the wound on his face heals almost instantly after it is inflicted. He then goes on to throw the attacker over a wall, down into the city and to his death. Fairly typical super hero story where there is a sudden realisation of the charecters powers who then turns these powers into a way of fighting evil.

3D set

I've just finished building my 3D set to be used in my film! Here it is...

There's a few refinements which need to be made still but nothing major! This is practically the finished thing!

Creating a Set

I knew what i wanted from the set but obviously I needed to create it. To do this I needed realistic textures from the area i was basing the set on. To do this I went out with my camera and took some HiRes photos of textures such as concrete, granite walls signs etc. I then put them all into photoshop and because the pictures were not all perfectly straight I had to straighten them out so they would be useable in aftereffects using the "distort" function.
Using textures such as the ones above and basic modeling techniques in Adobe After Effects I am currently in the process of creating a set fory film which i will post here on my blog when i have finished!

Re-Think

On Wednesday 15th April at aprox 5:45 filming started for my film intro for the Auditor. At approx 6:30 filming was ground to a halt after one annoying individual from the public called the cops on us as wearing a balaclava in public areas is technically not legal because of issues with intimidation and the fact that balaclavas are often used in crime! With this problem in mind i had t either change my idea or green screen the whole film. So I decided to green screen the film (much like Sin City or The Spirit).
Yesterday i started work on the 3D CGI set that I was going to have to use. I wanted to keep the same set (Pier Road Carpark) but obviously with creating the set I can tailor make it to exactly how I orignally envisioned in in my storyboards.

Gun Blow back demo

Recently i have been working on a demo for realistic gun blow back using adobe after effects. 

Basically what i did to achieve this is took my primary footage of the actor (Will Robinson) pretending to shoot a gun. I then imported this footage into after effects. I then duplicated the layer and using the pen tool drew a mask around the slider (top part of the gun) and dragged it backwards to give the effect the slider was flying back. I then added a motion blur to make the movement appear to have more of a motion because the animation only lasts 1 frame to give a realistic speed so i needed to make the animation look smother. 

Next i needed to create the exposure of the barrel and slide guide which would normally occur when the slide recoils. I did this by finding a "clean plate" which is a scene in the video where the background behind the gun is shown. I then duplicated the footage at this point and reduced it to 1 frame long (the same as the slide recoil) and moved it to the point that the slide flys back. Then using by changing the layer merge to difference and changing the opacity of the "clean plate" aligned where the barrel and slide guide would appear. Then using the pen tool again created a mask around the area I wanted to get rid of everything except for the barrel and guide. Then using a preset of nozzle flash (which i downloaded as part of the action movie essentials pack) added the nozzle flash from the barrel when the gun is shot. The to get the black and white effect I de-saturated the footage and played with the brightness and contrast until i got an effect i was happy with. 

Masks in Films

I recently came up with the idea of having my main character (The Auditor) being masked. I could not, however, think of an idea for a mask for him to wear. I turned to the Internet to research masks used in films and comics in the past. From comics mainly I got the small stereotypical band mask which just covers the strip of skin around your eyes. I considered this but then thought because I am already using a style similar to that used in The Spirit and The Spirit wears one of these masks it may look like i am just ripping off the character! The other types of mask were generally full face or 3/4 face covering but were all unique.

Next I looked at films. There are a few films that stood out because of masked characters such as Friday the 13th, for the hockey mask donning "Jason", V is for Vendetta, for the Mardi Gras styled Guy Fawkes mask that "V" wears and The Strangers, for the sack styled mask that the leader of "The Strangers". I did not want to use a hockey mask for sure because of the image people get of Jason when they see Hockey masks in films. I was very interested in the Mardi Gras styled masks and the sack mask however.
All though used at festivals, some had a really creepy sense about them because as well as hiding the wearers face they also , alot of the time, give the face a new shape or chandes facial fatures

I am definatley considering a beaked mardi-gras mask, similar to the picture on the right. (above)
I also liked the sack style mask. This is because it is very mysterious. Although I like it i'm not sure how suited it would be to my charecter or film because of what people associate with that type of mask. Normally when people think or see a sack mask they link it with executioners and killers (well different types of killer to the Auditor any way!!). I do still like the idea but I think if I were to use this idea I would compromise. So instead of using a sack mask I could use a balaclava (but preferably not black as these are too often associated with robbers).

At the moment it's a choice between sack styled mask/white balaclava and a mardi-gras styled beak mask.

Testing!

Over the last week i have started messing around in adobe after effects trying to get a feel for what im going to be doing and testing certain ideas and effects to see roughly what these scenes will look like in the finished product. Here is a demo of the silhouette styled effect i want to use in my film:

Bascially what i did here is shot my original footage in front of a green screen. I then took the footage and exported it as a movie file so that it would be compatible with After Effects. Then using an efect called Keying I took out the green screen, making it transparent. I then went on to put a white solid object behind this ayer turning the area behind the actors to a plain white surface. Because i wanted the people to be white and the background to be back i had to invert the selection. I then put another solid object in. this time black to make the black background. and using a mask i hid all of the unwanted objects outside of the green screen area.
I am also currently working on another test similar to rthis one (except done better!) and a gun blow back project, giving a toy gun blowback thus making it seem more realistic! These should be poster ater on this week!

Poster

I have decided, out of the 2, which poster i will use/develop on! I'm going to use the black and white poster (the second one i made) shown below. To make this poster was very simple. First I took a photo of my mate Will in the pose i wanted for the poster. I then impoted that picture into photoshop and using the magnetic lasso tool cut the figure out, getting rid of everything else. I then selected the figure and filled the selection with white. I then added a nw background layer and filled it in with black. I then added the title, which i played with for quite a while. Playing with different fonts and colours. I'm still not entirely sure if i'm happy with it but it's along the lines of what i want! I then added the rain in the background, which was very simple. I downloaded a rain drops brush which randomly puts multiple rain drops around the central point of where you click, which i think gives them a good spread making sure there's not too many in one place. Only thing left to do was to add the shimney breast in the bottom right. This was done in exactly the same was as the figure! And there you have it... A quick insight on how I designed my Poster! :D

Poster/Comic Book Cover designs

Recently i have been designing a poster/comic book cover for my film. The reason i say comic book cover is because the other day I had a brainwave and thought of a possible opening for my film. There is a comic book laid down on a table. The camera pans in towars the comic and re-angles to get a high angle, looking down upon the comic book. On the front is my poster. The comic book opens by itself and the pages start flicking fowards to the end of the comic and stops on a page neer the end. The camera then zooms into a still image of the opening scene of my film and the opening sequence begins.

I came up with two ideas for my poster. These are shown below.