conclusion

from evaluating our preliminary task and full opening sequence it is clear that me and my production team have learnt a lot during the production of our opening sequence, we all enjoyed it very much and i am looking forward to being part of many productions to come. I have enjoyed planning, shooting, editing and displaying our opening sequence and thank the other members in my production team for all helping each other along the way.

Evaluation question 7: Looking back at your preliminary task (the continuity editing task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

Preliminary Task:




Full opening sequence:




from the progression from preliminary task to fully edited opening sequence I and my team learnt many things, here are some of the things I myself learnt along the way.

Preparation is important. we had to think about how the props would look on camera, how our characters makeup would look on camera, how our location would look on camera etc... this meant that before we began filming for our opening sequence we had to look at our preliminary task and see where we went wrong. we did not think preparation for shooting was important in doing the preliminary task, this was due to much less of a scenario and mood needing to be created, however with our full opening sequence due to the extreme mise-en-scene used like makeup and props we needed to spend much more time creating them and designing them than we did in the preliminary task, thus we did all of the posted planning and inputting.

I learnt that utilising a sound track on the displayed video created an immersible effect compared to a clip without a soundtrack(preliminary task). By  including a soundtrack on our final opening sequence we created a larger effect of the specific genre, we created an atmosphere, which by looking at the preliminary task and seeing how bland and boring it looks compared to our opening sequence shows how important a good, appropriate and well throughout soundtrack is necessary for creating the perfect atmosphere on the video, providing its the right soundtrack of course.

Furthermore, I learnt that having Voice within a clip isn't 100% necessary, providing a good soundtrack is used which is explained in the above paragraph. in our preliminary task we had plenty of voice from our characters but no soundtrack, and in our opening sequence we had the complete opposite, which i feel works much better as a better and more appropriate atmosphere is present and is more effective within our genre of sequence than plain voice would be.

Within our preliminary task we had to use match on action to get some good experience with planning the clips out in an organised manner for professionalism and quality, however we only used simple shots that were easy to take to form the match on action sequences for continuity. On the other hand, within our edited full opening sequence we learnt that POV shots can be used for match on action continuity editing, not only can they be used, but they look remarkably realistic and give the sequence an authentic and realistic look. Our preliminary task showed us that match on action is IMPORTANT within a film sequence but it didn't show us which clips look appropriate and cool in regards to our given scenario and genre of horror, which took a bit of guess work but we feel was worth it in the final product.

Not every action shot needs emphasis placed upon it, which we experimented with in our preliminary task. An example of us putting emphasis on an action movement in our preliminary task is when the characters exchange memory sticks, in this close up shot here:

we did not feel the need to emphasis any action movements in our opening sequence as will still wanted to leave the audience with a small amount of ambiguity left within their brains, to keep them guessing and wanting to see more.

Transitions are important in creating the correct atmosphere and mood for the audience. Within our preliminary task the transitions were simple straight cuts from clip to clip, as no horror mood or atmosphere was needed and a more basic everyday life scenario was in place and so needed no emphasis on transitions, however when moving to our opening sequence we new that straight cuts weren't going to cut it in regards to creating the appropriate atmosphere and suspense that our genre required of it, so we used fade in and fade out transitions for some clips like the opening and end titles, and fade across transitions between the middle credits, actual moving clips and clips of props, to create suspense and the atmosphere of things drifting in and out of each other, which is symbolic of how the antagonist is acting/feeling in our clip, shes drifted out of sanity and our transitions needed to symbolize this. 

Evaluation question 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

In our group, i had the role of editing and the majority of the technical roles as i have a lot of experience with using video editing software, cameras, effects software etc... however i did still learn certain things within our production of the opening sequence task, which have built upon my already present knowledge of technology.

Editing software: Sony Vegas

I have been personally using Sony vegas to edit my own personal videos for the last 2 years, of which i have learnt the basics and some of the advanced features of the software to a point of which i could say i would happily become the groups editor to do the job. Even though i was already confident in my knowledge of vegas, i still managed to learn a few more features, these would include:

 - using the "take snapshot" button within vegas to take remarkably still images of the moving image from a video, to therefore create the effect of motion standing still, or to pro long a shot so the audience has time to look at it properly. This new understanding and knowledge of the feature within vegas i already knew, however i didn't know which settings were best for using it until i played around with it enough to get its best results, which are chosen on the preview settings as - "best" & "full", a screen shot of the still snapshot tool in action pasted below, which was used to ensure a credit was to be full read by the audience before progression onto the next clip occurred:

Effects software: Adobe After effects

I have never used After effects before, and so it was a real challenge for me to create a professional looking company logo introduction for our opening sequence, however after some help from a friend of mine with a vast knowledge of after effects i was able to use its basic functions of over laying layers, grouping layers together, creating a glass smashing effect on not 1 but 2 layers to smash both glass and our company  name, i also learnt how to apply a spotlight effect to get the desired lighting on the glass to give a misted glass effect so the audience aren't able to see our 6 fingered hand logo until it appears to come forward and smash the glass, an effect created by simply enlarging the image of the hand in 2 stages. this is my finished company introduction rendered/exported from after effects:

Not only did i use a friend of mine for learning the after effects tricks, i also watched some YouTube tutorial videos like the one below to really learn how to apply the desired effects in the best way possible.

Camera: Sony HDR - CX250 HANDYCAM

even though i was the editor in our group, i also did some filming with the cameras that our college own, the cameras we used were the Sony HDR - CX250 HANDYCAM's, which i used the following features of:

- taking still images: example shot i took for the location recee

- image stabilization: example i shot for the CCTV scene of our antagonist

video mode: used all the way through the clip: example is our finished product where any moving motion is displayed outside of the company logo animation.




Video Web Hoster: YouTube

Although i already upload videos to YouTube frequently i did not know how to share videos by embedding them, this feature i had to learn quickly in order to publish our desired videos to my blog, these would include my preliminary task, sequence drafts, our final product and my 4th evaluation question. here is where the embed option is on the YouTube video page:

and here is what the embedded video looks like once pasted into the HTML format code within the blogs new post creator:

and heres how an embedded video looks once fully posted to my blog:

as you can see before the production of our opening sequence i already had a good level of knowledge of the software and hardware i was going to use, but throughout our production i have still learnt certain features and methods of inputting, processing and outputs from each of the software programmes and hardware peripherals.

Evaluation questions 5: How did you attract/address your audience?

We accommodated for our target audience in many different ways, using different mise-en-scene, camera shots, sound and editing techniques to attract them and give them a glimpse of whats to come to interest them more in our product.

One thing we did to attract our target audience into watching our product was using appropriately aged characters in our opening sequence, for example our antagonist(Lauren) is 17 years of age, which falls within the age range of the target audience, meaning they may be more interested in watching the story of someone in a similar stage of life as them, this allows them to form a more personal link to the product and its antagonist, this is all established near the very start of the sequence with this medium close up shot of her:

Furthermore, another audience appropriate feature we included was the use of fast paced jump cuts in our editing, this style of editing is good for creating a fast paced, suspense building horror mood which is extremely appropriate for young people aged between 15 - 25 as fast paced action is more easily absorbed and understood by young people as they can process it faster, surveys and our audience research show that the older generations prefer clips that are more easily watched as concentration isn't as important.

here are the 2 stages of a jump cut in our opening sequence:

Another feature we used was a stereo typically conventional features of horror films that is extremely suitable to our age range of audience and that would be the shot of white pills dropping onto a desk, which symbolizes to our audience our antagonist has taken drugs. This is appropriate to our audience for attracting them as stereo typically throughout the media young people aged 15 - 25 are represented as being major drug abusers, so our sequence therefore follows these conventions making it attract our audience in full appropriateness for them, here below is a screen shot of the pills:

Furthermore, our audience research concluded that young people aged between 15 - 25 year old enjoyed horror films that are unique, films that have something different about them and so we aimed to have at least one part of our film/product that looked different to the rest, we did this by utilising a POV (point of view shot) within our sequence from the eyes of our antagonist. Not many horror movies feature a POV shot within their opening sequence, however the do feature them within the film later on, so our product is unique in that we have used a conventional features of horror films in a binary opposite timing position part of the film, as to be different and unique to the audience. Here is the screenshot of one of our POV shots: