ALL - Fifth Podcast - First Evaluation Question

Here is our fifth podcast in which we discuss the first evaluation question of our coursework. "In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?"

You can find links to our previous podcasts here.

ALL - Sixth Vodcast - Changes

In this vodcast we discuss the recent changes to our opening 2 mins of our feature length slasher film "Wrenched" and the audience feedback we recieved to make these changes. We also talk about the feedback we got on our second Rough Cut and our re-shoot which will be happening next week

RS - Deconstruction of Star Trek (Practice Evaluation Question)

Star Trek (J.J.Abrams, 2009)
Budget: $140m
US Box Office: $260m
UK Box Office £20m

• The company idents play before anything. The companies that play are Paramount Pictures Spyglass Entertainment and Bad Robot.
• Non-Diagetic sound played throughout the company idents on screen, the sound then stops when they finish and it transitions to the opening sequence.
• There is an initial establishing shot of space and then a space ship moving past the camera, anchoring the genre.
• Theres no mention of "A film by" or "Directed by" etc, there is also no date/time/year shown on the screen.
• We here people talking over a radio, we assume it is from the people abord the space ship
•  There is sequence of people abord the space ship, discussing another ship approaching them through a black hole.
• There is a long sequence of the ships battling
• The whole opening sequence ends at 11 minutes which is when the main title for the film comes up

RS - New Working Title + New Narrative

Firstly we have changed our working title to "Wrenched" the reason for this is because a wrench is used as the weapon in our film. The name has not been used before (we cannot see any with the same name on IMDB) and it fits in better to our narrative than our previous workting title.


After recieving feedback on our rough cut and sample footages we came to the decision to alter the narrative/synopsis of the film to make it a bit more understandable, the mise en scene work better and maybe tweak a few problems we had.

I have also got persmission to use Jem Whitehead's band The Feedback music, this music will be played on the radio/cd player that the man in the garage will be listening to.

The ideas we have come up with for the new narrative are:

· Fade into a shot of a rural location, possibly on a high hill (To anchor the location)
· Fade into a long shot of a house, with a garage to the side of it. Rock music playing quietly in the background, signifying it is coming from the garage and someone is in there.
· POV shot tracking up to the house, music getting slightly louder
· The POV shot gets close up to the house; you then hear a car engine “failing” noise coming from the garage. The camera pans around to look at the garage door.
· Close up of a wrench being slammed onto a work surface
· Man working on the car shouting “god dammit” signifying he is frustrated with the car not working. The music is now full volume linking to the man’s emotions.
· CU and LA of someone’s feet walking around in the garage (the shot will be under the car)
· CU of a dirty oily hand opening the car bonnet
· The man picks up a half empty, dirty mug of coffee, he spits the coffee out because it is too cold, and slams it onto the work surface.
· Possibly a couple of shots with the man in the boiler suits hands over the bonnet, or his head under the bonnet at work.
· We will experiment with a few more shots for coverage and then decide on what else to add the day after.
· The music then cuts (the girl has turned off the music)
· The man hits his head against the bonnet of the car, because he is surprised to hear the music stop, so he looks up from the engine, but hits his head in the process.
· The man says something such as “Bloody hell, you made me jump there lass” We want the man to have a Yorkshire accent, because the stereotypical Yorkshire man is a dirty, smelly farmer.
· There will be a shot reverse sequence; however we will conceal the identity of the man for narrative enigma signifying he is the killer.
· The Girl replies with “Sorry for making you jump like that, are you okay? I just wanted to know if you wanted another cup of tea. My step-dad called and he wanted to say he will be another 15 or so mins”
· The man replies with “Ahhh smashing lass, yeah that would be grand. Do you mind if I nip to the loo to wash my hands?” This then cuts to a CU of the man’s dirty/oily hands.
· She replies with “Yeah, that’s fine, its right at the top of the stairs, I’ll just be in the kitchen”
· We see someone pick up the wrench when they exit the room, however we don’t see who has taken it for narrative enigma.
· It fades into a high angle shot of the girl filling the kettle with water and then her putting it onto the stand, then an ECU of the kettle light turning on.
· CU of the man’s hands being washed and steam from the tap (links to the kettle boiling)
· Cut shot back to the kitchen, and the girl is laying out a mug and dropping the spoon into the mug with coffee on it, foreshadowing something.
· Cut back to the man in the bathroom which is empty, we hear a quiet sound of a draw opening in the background
· Cut shot to into the hallway, a POV shot of someone opening the door slowly and we see the man’s arms.
· Cut shot again to inside the room and a drawer opening, we see the item in the drawers, women’s underwear.
· CU of clean hands rummaging through the drawer.
· Cut back to the girl in the kitchen, camera close to the kettle so we can see that it has nearly boiled. The girl is in the background putting the coffee away.
· Cut back to the bedroom, a hand picks up a pair of knickers, the shot stays with the knickers out of shot (as if being brought up to the man’s face) we hear a loud sniffing noise.
· Cut back into the hall with the door being slowly and carefully closed
· The man goes back into the bathroom to wash his hands, he reaches for a towel, and we see a masked figure in the mirror stood behind him.
· CU of hand holding the wrench, and it being flung towards the head.
· ECU of the kettles light going out and the kettle finishing.
· We hear a loud crash on the floor.
· The shot stays in the kitchen and we hear someone running down the stairs
· And finally a loud scream

ALL - Rough Cut Feedback

In this video, we showed our rough cut to the class. We then asked for feedback on the whole rough cut, and they gave us ideas of how to improve it. The camera seems to have cut random bits of the footage resulting in little bits being cut out, therefore, not running smoothly throughout. The footage is also filmed without a tripod, so can be very shakey at times, it is probably best to just listen to the audio whilst doing something else, or you might feel a bit sea sick!

After recieving the feedback we have taken the film opening apart and thought of new ways to convey our narrative a bit better. Here is a link to a post, in which we listed the changes we will make. It was posted the day that we recieved this feedback.

ALL - Still Shots from Sample Footage

The mask

 

The Boiler suit

 

ALL - Fifth Vodcast - Feedback on our Rough Cut

Here is a link to our company blog. www.rasamproductions.blogspot.com

In this vodcast we discussed the feedback we recieved for our rough cut and changes according to the feedback.