Evaluation!

How does your media product represent different social groups?

What did you learn about new technologies?

The rest of the evaluation: 

Evaluation planning.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

We will use Facebook to have a conversation which answers this question. Then we will screen-shot this and include it in our evaluation. This links to the question as it is using social media which is a key media platform for social interaction.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? 

We will make a drawing and writing time-lapse video explaining the answer. 

Who would be the audience for your media product? 

We would present using pointing stick and wipe-board, as if to an audience. We would film this and add cheering sound FX. 

How did you attract / address your audience? 

We would make posters with the answers on them and make a video of stapling them to things.(3 x canted close-up, and then 1 long close-up of it. )

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

We will use "Perezinception". This is a prezi about the technologies we learned about (AKA prezzies among other things.)

Looking back at your Preliminary Task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

We will make a video commentary of both video, inter-cut together to compare them. 

Another Update

We have decided not to continue with the Lego stop motion idea. Instead, we will return to live action filming but incorporate a child playing with Lego to foreshadow the films eventual outcome. We chose to abandon the stopmotion technique because the result was not of the quality we had hoped for and it was taking a long time to complete.

However, we liked the idea of incorporating an aspect of childlike media into our film opening as it can be juxtaposed greatly with the horror and zombie theme. From this we developed our idea of playing out the original story with Lego, to a child's game of Lego reflecting the 'reality' of the live action elements of our first draft.

We are trying to find a child to play the part, and we plan to film on Friday 2nd and edit on Sunday 4th.

Filming Stop-Motion

On Thursday 23rd February we began filming our stop motion opening using Lego. We filmed for around 3 hours after constructing a set out of Lego, which included building a Lego house to replace the pole in the original film and making zombie warning posters on the computer to add to the mise-en-scene (approximately 11mm by 8 mm). We also set up professional lighting softboxes and a green screen behind the set so we could include more mise-en-scene, relating to Western films.

After choosing the best Lego figures available of zombies and cowboys, we began to film using the original storyboard and taking around 600 frames in total for the session. We used a variety of shot angles and camera movement in combination with the stop motion technique, as we had done in our live action first draft.

This technique is not ideal, as it is very time consuming and we may not finish it by the deadline.

Lego breakthrough!

Our quest for Lego has reached its end! 
Although I did contact my sister to try to get Lego from the Lego shop, this wasn't necessary. I actually found that my brother was hoarding Lego in his cupboard and on his shelves, and probably in his house that he actually lives in too. 
We now have 2 cowboys, 2 skeletons, 2 zombies (although these are pirate zombies because they came from the Pirates of the Caribbean set, but we can switch the bodies) a variety of accessories, some suitable vegetation and some sandy coloured bases. 

We have arranged to shoot as much as possible at my house on Thursday 23rd Febuary, and we will continue this in the following week. 

Looking for Lego

After researching Lego we decided to try to find some suitable lego figures to use. We looked in Boswells as it has a nice lego department, but there was only starwars and other models that weren't helpful for our project.
We have decided to ask my sister (who lives within walking distance of an official lego shop) to look for some cowboy and/or zombie lego. If she can't find any for us we will construct our own using our own lego collections.

Research into Lego animations

Information from WikiHow.com:

Build and stage your set, this could be 100% Lego, a real world scene or a combination of the two. Be sure to look through the camera you'll be using, to get a sense of how your video will look. While you're doing this you can check for unwanted elements that need to be covered up or camouflaged, especially in the background.

Next get the Lego minifigure actors ready. As the stock minifig heads are very static you may want to have a few suitable heads ready to go if you'd like for your actors to be expressive. If you can't find heads that work you could always paint some yourself.

Position the starting scene of your movie and your camera keeping in mind that it is imperative that the camera be immobilized; otherwise your finished video will be jerky. Use a tripod or similar device to keep the camera still, then take the picture.

Now it is time to move the actors in your scene, but just a little bit. It is easiest to move the character about two paces on the platform or about half an inch on the floor. Continue this until you are done with your movie.

Use any stop motion application on your computer that can make variable fps time settings. preferably one that can set up to 15fps, It will give the best results.

Sequence your shots in a video editing program and ensure that each shot has an equal duration.

This is an example of a Lego man. His legs and arms can move vertically, but not out horizontally. (This shouldn't be an issue when they are zombies.) Their heads can swivel all the way round and they can bend backwards or forward at the hip joint; again not side to side. It will be easy for the Hero to hold a weapon, for example a light-saber, as the Lego hands are designed to do so. Also as demonstrated by the above Lego man's Darth Vader costume, accessories can be added to give them more of a character. 

Zombie Lego is available:

The last zombie is demonstrating the generic zombie walk which we will adopt in out film opening, and the first is demonstrating the ability to hold weapons or meat. 


Cowboys are also available, so we can use their accessories and/or bodies to give more context to the zombies, and also use them for the humans.


Here are some examples of what we could use for "The Hero":

And this could be used for the "Little Guy". He doesn't have such a manly face, in comparison to the "Hero" figures he looks slightly dazed and deluded. Also his clothes are more colourful and less dangerous looking.

Sandy coloured Lego platforms are also available, and cacti are as well, so we could use a cactus as the object that the "Little Guy" crashes into, and also include them in the mise-en-scene. 
I have a green-screen and good film lighting, so adding a backdrop would not be a problem, and the posters could be made of small paper easily.(I have experience of making small paper things for Lego men)

Correspondence about the situation

To Mr. Wroe:

Hi,

Because the hard-drive with all of our work on it broke we no longer have our original footage, first or second draft. We did download the 1st draft from Youtube, but it's gonna be really difficult to edit. So we're considering re-making the whole thing. We wondered if it would be ok for us to do it in stop-motion animation instead?

We probably wouldn't have enough time to re-film it in live-action because of mocks and difficulty getting people and what not, so we were thinking it may be alot easier to make a stop-motion using lego men. We have the resources for good mise-en-scene (we can actually use a desert now cause of chroma key and such) and we have good lighting and equipment so it wouldn't look shoddy. It would be much easier to re-make quicker, also we could easily cover all areas in the mark scheme. (Mise-en-scene, angles, shot distances, typography, etc.)

Would it be ok for us to do that instead? Are there any disadvantages? 

Thanks

Rosie and Clara 

From Mr. Wroe:

Dear Both,

Sorry to hear about the hard drive - blog about it! Copy your messages to the blogs to document what you're doing.

Have you tried a specialist computer place to retrieve the material? Computer Assistance on Oxford Road (very top of Cowley Road) are very good.

As regards the animation, fine in principle. Good that you're paying attention to the Mark Scheme. My advice to you would be to add research into lego animation on to your blogs - best to deal in rushes of 100 or so images at a time for example to avoid computers crashing. Also, I would be inclined to look at some examples from Art of the Title.com - particularly the work of Saul Bass, and pay a lot of attention to the typography and in animating that. Many films don't have actual footage for the titles, they use elaborate typography and transitions and title boards with the music over instead.

Good luck with it all and I hope that you can recover your original material after all.

Mr Wroe

Update on our predicament

As mentioned in the last post we lost everything. (We no longer have original footage, sound, 1st draft, 2nd draft, etc. Literally everything is gone.)
We downloaded the 1st draft from Youtube t try to re-edit that, but it is going to be very difficult given that it is in a non-editable format. (1 block of video rather than comprised of clips and sound files that we can move and change.)


We are considering re-making our opening in animation form. This would be much easier to re-build quickly and it would be easy to include mise-en-scene, camera movements, etc. 


It would be very difficult to get our cast together again partly due to exams and partly due to time pressure, we would have to re-shoot our opening very soon, and that wouldn't be practical for most people. With stop-motion animation the lego men will always be available for us. 


Anyway, we can apply the storyboard and script work to the new animation opening, so we would only have to re-make the actual piece.  

Final Editing

Unfortunately the external hard-drive we were keeping our film opening on broke. So we have the 2nd edit version, however it's already been "produced" meaning we saved it as a mov. file using Powerdirector8. This means it is no longer comprised of clips and files, but is one file itself. So that was insanely inconvenient. 


We've scheduled another editing session for Wednsday 15th February to try to work around the tech. failures, but if we can't we will arrange another filming session for another day during half-term. Then we can do another series of edits in quick succession, using a whole day at my house. (Saving the opening on a memory stick as well as the internal hard-drive of my computer. This way Clara can have a copy too.)

2nd Draft of my Film Opening

Stuff to change/edit from our first draft:

•Credits and typography

•Sound

•Shot improvements

•Editing

•Mise-en-scene

Though we had already created our title board, we didn’t have any other credits on shots in our opening. We used the same fonts and colours to add names into the first few shots.

We were advised to add more to the first few shots of the film. We have added more sound effects to the build up of sound ending in the lamp post crash.These include a heart beat, zombie, car alarm, footsteps and breathing sound effects which all help build the tension of the scene.

We were advised to add more to the first few shots of the film. We have added more sound effects to the build up of sound ending in the lamp post crash. These include a heart beat, zombie, car alarm, footsteps and breathing sound effects which all help build the tension of the scene.

To make the editing smoother as was suggested, we refilmed a shot of one of the zombies falling over and edited this in to our first draft. This made it much easier to follow and made The moment more impacting. 

To make the mise-en-scene more in keeping with the aesthetics of our two genres, we originally added zombie warning posters to the background. However, these were difficult to see in our first draft so we filmed more shots of them that made them clearer.

Preliminary Task Plans!

An idea we had for our preliminary task was a film about a sandwich.

. Walk in room

. Walk to fridge

. Look in fridge

. Take out jam

. Knife from draw

. Bread from bag

. PB from cupboard

. Plate from cupboard

. Unscrew lids

. Fly-on-wall of stuff on counter

. Panning across stuff (Western style?)

. Eyes panning/close-up?

. Knifes from pocket like guns

. Violent spreading

. Slam sandwich shut

. DUDE! INTENSE SANDWICH! moment

. Intense sandwich pick-up

. Shot - reverse - shot of sandwich

. End on bite.

Feedback on my Opening

I need to hold some of my shots more steady and include more camera movement. I could even improve my shot distances a bit, but that's not so much of an issue.
 My mise-en-scene is not exactly western, however as this film has a modern context as well, and we wanted to include some more modern mise-en-scene. Also we didn't have a desert at hand... The costume, sound and filming style is fairly western. 


Some aspects we did well were:
Shots we used, framing, editing and sequencing, soundtrack and typography. (However we have improved the titleboard for our company logo. 


We also intend to overlay more sound effects during the build-up to running into the lamp-post.
We will add close-ups of the posters and re-do the shot with the Little Guy lying on the floor, as it's way too messy. 

Some Extra Zombie Work:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkWXfrlGHgE&list=UU25CfXR_ZZukR6owrQSakcQ&index=2&feature=plcp


I made another video on zombies just for fun. :)