Assingment 4 - Planning the Pre-Production Planning for a Digital Media Product

Media Trailer Evaluation - Colours In The Mist Trailer

Colours In The Mist Trailer:

1:

We decided to create a noir themed movie based on detectives in the 1960's. We decided to mix our movie with the popular movies, James Bond, Sin City and Sherlock, our idea to add all these movie genres together was something I had never seen before. By using the ideas from a range of different movies, we were able to create something more imaginative. For example: introducing elements of James Bond, it made our characters more quirky and original. Doing this it made the moving image more original. We decided to play our trailer in black and white, even though most movies have now developed from this type of camera work, we thought it would help our movie stand out. We decided to build our main story plot around Sherlock, but have characters more like the ones in James Bond. By doing this it made my trailer stand out and look a bit more creative than all the others out at the moment, under the genre of noir/detective. 

Our trailer was a success because we managed to meet the demands of our genre, I am very satisfied with my trailer and we effectively create our trailer to have the correct camera work and mise en scene. 

2:

When we set out with our trailer we wanted it to be very action packed (lots of running scenes) I feel as though we achieved this, but we didn't have the same type of action shots we were originally looking for, it had more physical conflict than chase scenes. Our almost accidental stumble upon this type of action was genius! It was truly exhilarating; some of the action shots we didn't display on the story board turned out to be our best shots. The story board we came up with as group was very well layed out, when filming we decided to add some extra shots, just so we kept to the correct time period. I wasn't expecting some random last minute shots to turn out so good. 

We managed to maintain the original structure in our trailer, which was good because I believe we managed to keep our noir theme in the trailer, also keeping it clear for the viewers of this trailer. The song I chose in our trailer was a bit of a different song to what you would usually hear in a crime drama, so by choosing this I believe strongly that my trailer stood out, because of my unique song choice. 

3:

Our story boarding period was when we started to see the outline of the trailer, as a group we conducted our story board together, but I would be lying if I said I didn't put forward some key ideas. When we came up with the idea it was a clear image in my mind, I created a power point pitching the moving image, once I had done research and fitted all the piece of the puzzle together, The product felt clear to me and I we were ready to move onto filming.

We all had our fair share of acting, but I decided that I should be in charge of the camera work, I decided to supply lots camera movements and frame work when we were filming, me being able to conduct these camera shots was very helpful for our trailer because I wanted to have quite dramatic shots; putting the viewer on edge as to what might actually happen.

Then I obviously made then trailer individually.

4:

Pre-Production, In pre production we began by gathering information based on our genre, the strengths I found by doing this is that I was able to take a couple of ideas from one moving image and I could display it on our product as a rough idea, we managed to develop our product and create our own ideas on top of the ideas we had already conducted. By doing lots of research I was able to analyse exactly what our product was. I created a power point which fur-filled our product to a great extent; by doing this I could finally bring the product together and for the first time get a clear idea, making the power point was very useful because I could base a lot of research on why my product would be particularly successful, I based a lot of my research on block buster hits, James Bond, Sin City and Sherlock. If I hadn't done this then I don't think that our product would have come close to what it is now.

Production, production was when I found that our product took a turn, from a cliche crime drama into a very action packed moving image, we had incorporated some James Bond and Sherlock into our product but when the trailer was created it was when I found that another side of our product really show, this made our moving image a lot more original, controversial and un-predictable.

Post-Production, creating our trailer was the final stage of production we did. In production we filmed the moving images and brought them all together, to show how we want to portray our trailer for the first time, all members of my group went off and made their trailers individually, so this was a task I was doing completely on my own. The strengths I found of doing the trailer on my own, was that I was able to show the product in my eyes for the first time. Post Production also gave me a new insight on our Product; I found this very useful because I was able to feel confident with something I did without any group work. We edited our trailers on Adobe Premiere Pro, at home I am not familiar with many Adobe software's so it was a tough, but rewarding challenge to edit with this program.

5:

Pre-Production, in pre-production I think that my group could have done more work individually, to develop more ideas for our product. I also believe our capability to locate a more successful filming area could have been worked on, to create a better atmosphere for our moving image. 

Production, production was a rather interesting time for our product, we had a image in our minds, but in production we could have put our moving images together in a more organized manner; for example in filming we were unable to keep track of our storyboard and we added extra content, that wasn't in the original plan. 

Post-Production, in post production I applied all footage we recorded together to create a trailer, the software we were using for this was a new software to me, which I struggled to understand to begin with. If my skills had been more developed under the adobe programs; I believe I would have been eligible to create a more advanced trailer. 

Ribena Advert 

The opening in this advert is setting the scene for the viewer, the camera movement is a steady and still movement across the landscape setting the scene as a very peaceful setting, the advert then goes onto include animals, animals is a very good way to open the scene, because many people find animals cute and are intrigued; expecting the animals to do normal things is very boring, so Ribena have made them go crazy, this raises questions as to why are the animals behaving in this way and what has made them want to do the things they're doing, its quite hard to explain what the animals are doing, but that actually gets the audience more drawn into this advert; Owls carrying blackcurrants in a umbrella and Robin's hoping on Blackcurrants is very random, but then you can associate that with Ribena, knowing that this is a Ribena advert is good because at some point in the advert you will find out so just automatically making that like is very good for the company. The way how they have this scene set out is outside so what Ribena are trying to tell you is that Ribena is a drink that you can take on a picnic, it starts of with a young couple laying down having a picnic, so I guess what they are trying to tell their audience that not only is this a drink you can have after doing exercise or when you're thirsty, you can also take it out and about with you to places. So by having this out side setting it suggests that. The camera movement in this advert is moving slowly moving along and setting the scene very peacefully, but the the mayhem during in this landscape shot kind of takes away the meaning of having a slow moving landscape scene to a very crazy landscape scene, something you wouldn't expect from a shot like this; although its very controversial to have an advert laid out like this, it also get nailed into your mind, making you remember Ribena and want to buy their product next time you are in need of drink; so by making such a confusing advert, you get many bonuses, a catchy song and when people want to know where that song came from you can tell them about this Ribena advert, making it very useful to lay out their advert in this way.

Ribena is a soft drink aimed for children so they would need a fun/crazy advert aimed at children, so they don't associate Ribena with a boring advert, when they see Ribena they are exhilarated over their product not bored. so the product is well demonstrated seeing as it is for kids and they do want it to be fun. The advert is also very memorable allowing people to talk about this advert in a genereal discussion, which it is very hard to do, seeing as most people despise adverts and just fast forward straight through them.

The constant tone through out the advert is catchy but annoying, it drills a tune into the audiences head so that they can't forget it, the slogan included in the advert is very bad and makes no sense whats so ever, I really think that Ribena have ruined their advert with the slogan they have included in their advert. I can't even remember what the slogan is, no memorable or persuasive at ALL! Its hard to have a good slogan at the end of a advert that is so memorable and good, so its very hard to follow up with a slogan that actually relates to the advert and is more catchy than the advert. The repetition in this advert is like marmite, yes its a good idea to drill something into your head, but some people may like the tune and some may not, but it sticks their, even though you will have it in your head. It manages to stick and keep that advertisement in your head.
In the advert they use animals, the animals they use are rabbits, hedgehogs and Robins, these animals are cute and safe, you can warm to these animals. By ribena using these animals it makes them show that their company is friendly and safe, not a crazy drink, but a soft and calming drink for children.

This advert, being a very child friendly advert would not appear late at night, due to the fact that children don't stay up very late to watch TV, so no adverts based on children would being airing at this time, so the advert would probably be played from early in the morning to about 7pm, just when children are heading off to bed and not watch TV or going on any electrical devices. Also the channel the advert would be played on would be a kids TV show channel or a channel that has child friendly content.

The advert is a very up beat advert, with lots of crazy things going on in the background; seeing this gives me a buzz and it must give the audience the same feeling, everything thing is flashing in front of your eyes and its just utter chaos, but for some reason its exhilarating and makes you remember it, when you watch the advert for the first time, you have no idea what is happening, but it sticks their and makes you want to see it again to know what actually happend. Thats the one of the smart things I like about this advert, they have managed to make something so annoying quite memorable for the viewers of this advert. By adding such a buzz you can really relate to the advert when in a good mood.

Adverts that are different and stand out in unique ways are very hard to actually create and stick into peoples minds, Ribena have done a very good job of creating an advert like this, but they can't follow it up. The slogan in the advert is average and not something I would expect to follow up am advert like this. Ribena haven't tried to persuaded the audience to buy their product, but they have done a good job of you managing to remember their product, its not a advert full of facts, its a simple but effective advert and is very well created.

Unit 3AB 

Ribena Advert https: //www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTOP6TOJwOI

The target audience for Ribena I believe is around the age of 6-21, beacause this is a soft drink it would be more suited to people at a younger age, so what they have done with the advert is made it reflect their target audience, they have made it fun, funky and a bit annoying, annoying is also catchy so they have done a good job on making that the way it is. In the advert they use a slogan "You can't get anymore Ribenary" this slogan doesn't reflect the advert and has a bad finale for the advert, after such an intriguing advert, it is brought down by a bad slogan. In the advert they have bundle up a lot of random things, unrelated to a fruit drink I struggled to find a connection, the meaning I found behind this is a couple are out on a picnic and they open up a drink, that drink happens to be Ribena, this provokes a reaction from the animals making them go crazy for this drink (Ribena), doing so I find myself playing back images of a rabbit in sunglasses and a hedgehog flying, which adds a sense of fun and for a kids drink its something you associate with a child (fun), adding this buzz really gets people going and they sing the adverts song when in a happy mood, doing this it would get people asking where that song is from and then it spreads until many people know about it and its just because you have managed to drill a sing into peoples mind.

The more technical side of this advert is really impressive, they lower the music at the end so you can hear the slogan. The music/sound effects, is very well put together and each thing in the advert has a synced queue for, adding a very drawn in effect, because if you want to make an annoying catchy advert, you would need it to be in some way. I really do like the and colour scheme in this advert, the text is very funky and fitting to the advert and the colours are very retro and bold and also in the text the shading of purple really does fit in with the product. Ribena have been very original in the shot they have used, a landscape shot going across peacefully wouldn't be seen as a landscape shot with lots of crazy animals doing unimaginable things.

BBC Three 60 Second News: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2MMQKKqMhY

This news program is held at different times through out the day so I believe they are trying to appeal to an audience that would be of all ages, I certainly don't think children enjoy watching the news so they have done a good job of making it more mature for older viewers to watch it. The news is covering lots of topics (Sports, Education, Law, etc...) this keeps the viewing rate up, so people find it more enjoyable to watch. This includes just one reporter covering something as quickly as possible, to fit the broadcasting time and wanting to get the latest news can drag on so I believe having the viewing time so short that you can quickly find out is going on, is better than having a long detailed news report that not many people will want to listen to, because they have made it so short and snappy. The way how the report is set out is very good, because they include the title of the report and then a very quick summary so they can move on to the next thing nice and swiftly. The program has covered news that would concern the world but is aimed just at UK and Ireland, so they include Scottish teams, English actors not anyone abroad (such as Spain or America). The report is talking straight at the camera creating a one sided conversation between just you and her/him. They change from an image of the reporter to an image of the news report and the reporter keeps on talking as the moving image plays on, this is good because you don't have to use imagery and for even the simplest things, you can clearly imagine them, with a simple clip about Celtic vs Rangers. There is not extreme events that take place in this news report but when they are discussing a topic the report will include why they want to do this (when they were discussing that all children should learn their times table by the age of 11) you don't just straight away think that's cruel, because they supply it with a reason, but with other things like a football match, the end result is going to be something you can disagree with because theirs nothing you can disagree with.

Matrix Scene (Dodge this): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggFKLxAQBbc

In this it is very controversial because the man in the suit aiming the gun at Neo  is said to be invisible so the girl (Trinity) being able to catch him this off guard is very unheard of, making that thrill factor rise up very quickly. The movie is rated at a 12a but I believe when it first came out it was rated as a 15 because of all the gun violence and language used, as technology advances movies do get down graded because they aren't as scary as movies similar to them that are more recent, the target audience for this entire movie would probably be middle aged males that enjoy violence and lots of gun action. Some common sense in this scene is a bit shaky, when Neo is stood there dodging the bullets, why isn't he shot in the legs then? so typical things like that are done not to change the story line to significantly. The characters used in this movie are typical characters you would expect to play these roles in any action movie, Keanu Reeves is the main guy, can look like a geeky coder but also a guy that gets in to trouble and fights bad guys, then the girl in the movie is super skilled and thinks she's better than the guy and everyone else, but under everything the guy is the dark horse. The meaning to this movie is questioning humanity and what if we are just living in a massive dream that no one can figure out, because our world has been taken over so we are trying to hide from the truth, for example, in our entire life what if we are lead to believe that the colour red, isn't actually red, it is green.
The Matrix (when filmed) was filmed in the Modern era and every thing was normal, but then in the so called reality, it was set in a different world, but you can't really specify the date, everything looks futuristic, so it may be set further in to future. In this scene you can see how the relationship is very bad with the Agents compared to Neo because they are all trying to take him out, Neo's friend (Trinity) has a very awkward relationship with Neo, they have lots of chemistry, but they aen't anything further than friends, but behinds that it does look like they cover each others backs and have a strong friendship with each other.

GCSE Drama Devised Performance

Rationale

The image of melting clocks, is a very thoughtful piece of how precious time is, as we humans live our days on and on, our time is beginning to melt away and become nothing but a small spec that once lived. It is a very deep thing to look into and has a very large aspect of surrealism based in the photo, these circumstances could be related to something in the real world very easily, in our performance, the play is hurried along because the thought of losing the professor is heart breaking, but the professors brother just wants it over and done with, leading to a worse scenario. The dramatic irony is represented very well, seeing as the professor can't handle the experiment and kills himself and the test on the subjects (students) also isn't very successful. The Professor can't handle time and therefore his time is melted away (rather forcefully) 

In our play we have incorporated time, surrealism and memory, this all ended up coming under the genre of surrealism. To start off with we believed that time would have been a good form of surrealism to use, we set out hinting certain oints of the play and different outcomes of the play to relate to time, although we could have based our play more around time, the time aspect was still quite strong in our performance, maybe just a little to much left in the background. after the first 2 weeks we slowly found ourselves basing ideas off of phobias, phobias is such a strong topic that our idea of time wasn't as strong as we hoped anymore and we focused more on memory. In our play the back story isn’t very strong, we have decided a professor is recalling his best students. He is on the edge of dyeing and he needs his students help; for something unmentioned, whilst the students are at the professors house they start having nightmares based on traumatic experiences they had when they were younger and they then could relate the nightmares/phobias to the professor because he was the one that was the expert in this area. Our performance pace stops and starts a lot, by doing this we include lots of jump scares to distract the audience and add that element of fear and paranoia, doing this it makes it crueler for the viewers. The props we will be including are going to be very abstract and simple, we have taken this idea from The Curios Incident of the Dog in the Night Time play we went to see, and I think that this added lots of surrealism to the play, so by doing this  it creates a better theme allowing us to make our play more surreal, also our lighting was adjusted to fit our themes. another idea we took from The Curios Incident of the Dog in the Night Time was when they were showing large parts of the play time lapsed, By adding strobe lighting it made the audience think that they were watching hours/days/weeks go by with the quick flicker of a light. 

Following the genre of surrealism we are adding dream scenes, based upon phobias , we are not only trying to scare our audience, but make things happen that they won’t expect to happen in the scene, we are also having a very simple approach to our set, making it simple but also quite scary and surreal in all of our dream scenes.
We have chosen to have Artuad as our practitioner because his use of surrealism is very different to over plays and allows our performance to have a certain edge to it that others don’t, I particularly liked his use of the audience, allowing them to feel included but also scared at the same time.
The scene I ran was the Clown Dream Scene, I came up with the idea of people overcoming their phobias, but the phobias were scary. Clowns are very scary and are easy to play with, I was able to turn a simple birthday party into a scary deserted house with clowns invading it. 

Development

We began developing are characters by coming with names to fit their personalities, doing this you can really get in to the other characters shoes, making it easier to act as them.

In our surreal play we have decided the characters are going to be normal everyday people that wouldn’t expect to have something like this happening to them. By doing this is makes it very surprising to see such ordinary people suffer such strange circumstances. 

My character (Clide) is the rebellious type that is always unsure about what the professors says and it seems like he is in a different world compared to the other students ,that seem to be in awe of what present the professor would like to give them. My characters dream is based on clowns, making a dream about clowns can sound quite straight forward but it is very technical and physical, as the clowns are moving figures that are trying to scare Clide and then in the dream it is meant to test if Clide could stay alive, sadly to the professors despair Clide is killed by the clowns, doing this is quite hard as to make a dying scene it needs to be flowing and realistic. Clide was originally a normal guy, but to show outstanding difference between all of the students, we decided to change him into a know it all boffin, I spoke with a slightly posh voice and my script was adjusted to fit my characteristics. The clowns movement was a big thing to be adjusted and the idea of making them move around like puppets, so that people could understand the fear and abnormality of CLide's phobia.  

All characters are being exposed of their phobias/fear, we have decided to have a drowning phobia and an abusive father as one of the phobias, the background for the abusive parent is obvious, but for the drowning phobia/fear hasn’t got a background and it doesn’t really need one either, because it’s clear the actors scared of drowning. Whereas for me I have decided to add a bit of background to my scene, it is set at my 7^th birthday so the audience will have a clear understanding that when I was younger I had a traumatic experience with clowns.

In my Clown Dream Scene it includes physical violence which is hard to act out to I have to have dramatic jerks making it as obvious as possible that I have been pushed, even though the audience knows I have not impacted in any pain, so by doing this it is making it more believable for our viewers.

For multiple scenes we have to put on scary and creepy voices, which is which are hard to force out and scare the audience at the same time, so adding that surrealism is actually harder than it looks compared to movies and plays that you watch. The way we have decided to overcome this is by going up to the audience members and trying to make them feel included, but in a way that scares them. To keep our scenes flowing we decided it would be a good idea to remove the creepy voice in Charlie’s Drowning Scene (we aren’t removing all creepy voices that include the audience), having these in the background left gaps and they weren’t effective enough for us to say that it made a change to the scene. We decided to change our body movement in the scene so it could look a lot more surreal and it wasn’t awkwardly and constantly interrupting the scene, giving the audience more to look at.

In most of our scenes we are scared or curious, which includes many pauses so we have to make sure that it doesn’t sound like we have forgotten our lines, if we nails this and have it on point then our performance should run very smoothly.

When we watched the curios incident of the dog in the night time and we decided to take the idea of a time lapse and added that into our performance, we began by just walking around and doing everyday activities very quickly, this didn’t look effective enough, so we decided to add flashing lights, this worked well with our performance because it made it look like a series of photos put together and it was being observed by the audience, it also looked very surreal, due to the fact we were in an enclosed room.

In rehearsals we did lots of peer observing, so we would watch a scene we aren’t in and say our thoughts as an audience viewer, this helped to make it look more flowing and clear for the audience.

For the beginning scene we decided to add a green light, this idea was good because it allowed the audience to feel fearful in such strong lighting, on top of that our neutral expressions really did make the scene more twisted with a robot like stance. When we added the strobe lighting to all our speeded up scenes, it moved the audience from thinking, why are you moving so quickly? To this is clearly a time lapse. Not having to put that question mark at the end of our audiences mind.

In our research we worked of an original story line and then rehearsed that. We decided to adapt some of our practitioners (Artuad) techniques into our performance, when we included Artuad’s techniques it helped boost the surrealism in our performance.

As a group we developed our piece gradually every week, ready for the performance, we had all the correct resources needed for our performance, we just all needed to develop our characters. This was a big challenge because we had worked on our characters already, we just needed to make them look stronger and actually stand out. We didn’t want our characters to drift off and become less realistic. To start off with I approached my character very casually and he was just a normal guy, but when we were pin pointing the differences between each character it was clear mine didn’t have a lot going for him, so I added a mild boffin voices to him and that seemed to make a massive difference. An effective rehearsal technique I decided to share with our group was still imagery, we could display to the audience what was happening in the scene and how a character out wits another and also use it to spot light a person when a large conversation is taking place.

I created my main scene of the play, making the clown phobia scene meant I had to create lots drafts to fit around everyone’s characters. This was something I then developed into the final scene, in the clown scene, I decided to direct it so that we were using Artuads techniques, my approach to directing this scene was particularly helpful, because it aloud my scene to stand out and be very memorable for the audience, in a very un-comforting way. For example I decided the clowns must move in a puppet like stance; by me developing the characters in this way it allowed us to show a large difference between the characters portrayed in other scenes.

Performance

My performance role was the character Clide, I think I managed to portray Clide’s character very well, I tried to adapt my script to my character as much as I could. A couple of weeks before the performance I thought I could adapted my character more, so I worked on my voice, I came up with a slight posh accent to add to my character, by doing this I effectively sounded like a boffin/know it all. This was very positive for our performance because it managed to show a big divide between all other students. We wanted to show a divide between each character so it didn’t seem like we were boring students that just came out an office.

In our performance I think if we had prepared our lighting more, it would have affected our performance. If we had decent understanding on our lighting script, making it look, more sharp and professional; I think if we did manage to do this our scenes would look smoother and it would have affected our performance a lot more for the audience. We could have also simplified our stage, because in between transition it did take longer than expected to set up for the next scene and having excess props wasn’t good. Even though having to change the props on stage suddenly wasn’t our strong point, I believe our capability of running a flowing scene was very strong and it added more realism to it (on top of the surrealism) for example, at the start of the performance, we were simply knocking on the door, but I decided we should apply it more than just knocking at a door, we decided Charlie would knock first, Ben would trail behind and say “hold the door” then we would leave a small gap (not a massive gap) for me to arrive. We decided just to add small touches like that would be good to keep the realism and keep our audience amused.

My individual performance was as strong as I could show, but my interaction with the group could have been a little bit stronger, I wanted my character to look a little bit awkward around the group and I believe I managed to show a difference between my character and the others; I did this by having awkward interactions with others, But I don’t feel all my interaction where smooth enough. As a group we could have worked on our interaction skills with one another a lot more, as I feel that was one of our weak point in our performance. The transitions between each scene was very smooth in our acting but we could have made it smoother. The group worked well, helping to develop other characters and scenes so we could keep our theme of surrealism going.

Our theme was surrealism and we showed this in the memory genre. The professor had a cure for traumatic memories in our childhood that had led to having a fear of our chosen memory which we described as a phobia. These phobias are mainly exploited in our dreams, in these dreams we usually end up dyeing, but what the professor wanted to show was us managing to live. Incorporating dreams and phobias helped our performance relate to our chosen practitioner (Artuad). We also added Artuad’s famous technique of including the audience in his scenes, we didn’t represent this in every scene, but we were able to use it when necessary.   

We set our stage out as basically as we could to allow the surreal factor to remain there, we separated our stage with a shadow screen, so we could show the professor and the students/subjects segregated from each other. We could have made our stage simpler by not including as many boxes and excess props.