AS Media Complete Opening Sequence - We Are Not Alone

Matt Healey
Jack Quinlan
James Robinson

AS Media Evaluation - Question 1 In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms of conventions of real media products?

1.     In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms of conventions of real media products?

Our media product uses conventions of real media products in numerous ways, for example



As you can see in this classic zombie television show the font titles they use in this opening sequence are Impact and this convention can be seen reflected in our media film.


 Also title reveals use the same generic effects in their titles.

The setting and location of this media product also develops conventions of real life media product. We shot the entirety of the film in a woodland background; the woodland background is constantly used in real media products such as The Walking Dead http://www.amctv.com/shows/the-walking-dead

And Dead Snow

Also we played on genre conventions, for example the way to kill a zombie is through an attack to the head, so for our movie the protagonist dispatched of the zombies within this way, also the idea that in a zombie apocalypse food is scarce we played upon. It can seen that the protagonist is now having to hunt for his food and scavenge what few resources he can find, the facet he also uses a bow and arrow and knife for the most part of the film also shows the conventions of noise attracting zombies attentions which is to be avoided at all costs. The shot types we used in this also play with continuity and conventions of zombie genres, for example the ‘he’s behind you’ shot was used where the monster his approaching the protagonist from behind and also shots in which the monsters point of views are shown. We used these variety of shots to follow the genre codes and conventions which will show that we use and challenge real media products.

Our media product also challenges media products as it is adapting to the new market of post apocalyptic dramas, by making our story purely character driven the audiences become more engrossed in the film.

Also our product develops the real media through its special effects. The effects allow us to add the realism to the film and make it compete with films of the zombie genre.

AS Media Evaluation - Question 6 What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

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

The first thing that I learnt from the process of constructing this media product is the methods it takes in order to create special effects in the production. For example in our production company name ‘Dark Orbs Productions’ we decided to have mystical looking orbs rotation with the camera angle creating a pan and zoom effect over the top of it. This required the use of After Effects; to begin with a set of masks and adjustment layers had to be added to the production, this was done by locating all necessary files from both the internet and programme’s built into After Effects. Using spherical effects and feathering the images used were able to fit the orbed shape that we wanted to acquire.  Next setting the motion of the orbs and position of the camera, the effect that the orbs were spinning and the orb in the background was coming into focus.

During the product a scene in which the protagonist was in focus of the screen and a zombie was slowly coming into focus in the background was needed. Adding a depth of field to the product gave it a realistic effect that can be seen in horror movies across the zombie genre. It was done by first adding a mask over the protagonist character and then adding a fast blur over the rest of the clip. The blur was put on a timer so that the depth of field would change, and as the clip went on the protagonist went more out of focus and the zombie came into focus.

Also with editing the film I learnt that to give the overall product a more realistic feel, colour correction needed to be applied in order to add extra gloss to the clip. This was done by going into the effects tool bar adding fast colour corrector to the clips. From this tool we were able to change the colours of all of the clips to a blue/grey colour to create the atmosphere that the production took place in a cold environment. The next effect that was used was the motion paths of certain clips, for example in the scene where the protagonist is walking and zombies can be seen in the background, a slow screen size increase was used to focus in on the zombies to add a more serious tension to the product.

Another effect that was included in the product was the use of title sequences with entrance paths. We added an eerie and scary entrance path for all of the titles included in the product in order to fit with genre conventions. These effects in technology are helpful to the product as I learnt that through the use of these effects it keeps the product interesting, if the titles had been static and unchanging the audience’s attentions would not have been grabbed as well.

Exporting the video was another thing I learnt about the technologies used to construct the product. Exporting is what gets the clip into film format so it can be uploaded onto social media sites such as YouTube so they can be viewed by the world. When exporting, certain criteria needed to be met before it can work; we tried multiply times to export on MPEG2 but the format refused to upload. So we decided that if used the ‘Match sequence settings’ option and then exported the product onto memory sticks that had higher memories. So the next time we decide to create and upload a product we will use ‘Match sequence settings’ and export it to memory sticks in the future.

After exporting the video onto memory sticks the next step was to upload it to YouTube and embed it onto Blogger. This was done through logging into the YouTube account and clicking the upload button, the clip then has to render and finally upload, the problem that we found with this is that the product needs to have a small capacity (Mb) so that the up loader doesn’t crash half way though. After the YouTube section was complete embedding the file onto Blogger was needed. Using the insert video option we can now embed the product directly from YouTube and onto our blogs so that it can be viewed and evaluated.

 The handheld camera was used to capture the entirety of the product. We learnt that they are highly sensitive when it comes to zooming and tracking. In the first few tries of tracking our protagonist in the product the camera would often shudder and the shot wouldn’t work out. This was due to the stand that the camera was on being lifted up leaving no control over the cameras movement with it being up high. So the way we got around this difficulty was to simply take the camera off of the stand and slowly step with the person being filmed to imitate the motion of the track. 

Media Evaluation - Question 3: What kind of media institution might distribute your product and why?

For our film, we debated on mainly, not deciding what studio it will distributed by, but rather if it was an independent film or a mainstream, ‘Hollywood’ film. About 10 years ago we probably would have gone with an independent studio, as the genre wasn’t that popular at the time. The zombie films being made then were mainly cheap, ‘B-Movie’ type films, but as time has progressed, so has the genre. ‘Dawn of The Dead’, ‘Shaun of The Dead’ and ‘I am Legend’ are just some of the examples of films which were picked up by the big name studios. Even then, in 2004 at the time of the ‘Dawn of the Dead’ remakes release, the genre still wasn’t that popular. Zombies just weren’t that scary to the audience anymore, so the genre needed a revamp, which came in the form of AMC’s television show, ‘The Walking Dead’. The ‘Walking Dead’ revolutionized the genre, it made zombies scary again, without even using a lot of zombies, but developing realistic, relatable characters and putting them in positions which seem scary. The show isn’t about killing zombies, but more about surviving in a world where some of the people are as much of a problem as the zombies are. We could have easily made the typical, zombie horror film, and made it more of an independent film, but decided that by making it more realistic and more survival based it would have a better chance of being picked up by ‘Warner Bros’, ‘Columbia Pictures’, etc. These studios might not be known for distributed just films of the zombie genre, but we feel that our film is more than that, and crosses across other genres such as, drama, post-apocalyptic and even has some Spaghetti Western, elements included within the film.

Even if the film was picked up by a big studio, we would still need to promote the film and as it is a new brand, a new franchise, marketing would be an important part of making the film a success. We were looking at various marketing campaigns and saw that the using YouTube for videos other than trailers was a huge success.  20^th Century Fox marketed ‘Rise of the Planet of The Apes’ by created a video of an ape, but did it with a fake account, to make it look like it was real. It created a lot of buzz, some of the audience even thought that it was real, a it meant that the film had a lot of interest from just a twenty second clip. We would like to emulate that sort of thing, creating fake profiles with clips of survivors during the outbreak. This sort of ‘hidden advertisement’ has proven to be popular in the past and it is something which would draw interest from the audience, making them want to see the film without even having to actually mention it, the most unconventional forms of advertisement are normally the most successful.  

Matt Healey
Jack Quinlan
James Robinson

Media Evaluation - Question 5:How did you attract/address your audience?

Matt Healey
Jack Quinlan
James Robinson

Media Evaluation - Question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Question 2:

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

For our film’s central character one of the main inspiration was Daryl Dixon from the Zombie TV show, The Walking Dead. 

One similarty we can see is the costumes which the two characters are wearing dark but ‘normal’ clothes which shows how they were both regular people before the zombie outbreak, not a soldier or somebody with experience for extreme situations. This isn’t reflected on their body language however, as we can see that they are not nervous or experinced, they have adjusted to the world in order to survive. As they both take place months after the intial outbreak and they have gotten over the part where they are unsure what is exactly going on. Both characters have similar backstories as they lost someone important to them, Daryl Merle from The Walking Dead loses his brother and ‘The Hood’ loses another close family member (which is shown in a flashback scene). One thing we took inspiration from was the weapon Daryl uses in The Walking Dead. Normally in a Zombie apocalypse, the traditonal weapon would be some sort of gun, but both of these characters use a bow and arrow, which shows how they are different to the normal survivor.  

One difference between the characters is their personlity and they way that they show this is through their use of dialogue. While Daryl from The Walking Dead regualry talks to the other survivors  and even makes some jokes at times, The Survivor from our film dosen’t speak once in the opening of the film. One reason for this is that the survivor from our film is more of a loner, and takes care of himself. His personality more matches a character like the ‘man with no name’ from the Good, the bad and the Ugly and other Western characters which have the mystery, ruthless characters. The role that our character and Daryl from  The Walking Dead in their respective films is also different, as Daryl serves as a side character and rarely has a main storyline in the TV show, our character is the main character which means that he has to have a ‘stronger’ back story.

Our film dosen’t really deal with social demographics but as the main character, but as he is Irish, he would probably more identifiable with the C2DE social group. During the film the audience learn that was a normal, working family man, who had to change because of the zombie outbreak. This means that many people would be able to identify with him because he was just like them at one point. This film also shows how social groups become irrelevant in times of distress, and as the story progresses we learn how everyone is affected the same. 

Matt Healey
Jack Quinlan
James Robinson

Production Logo

This is the logo of the production, which we will use for the title credits of our film. Made by Jack.

Matt Healey
Jack Quinlan-  http://jackquinlanmedia.blogspot.co.uk/
James Robinson - http://musefanjames.blogspot.com/

G321 Media Studies - People who helped us over the course of the project

Jack Quinlan - http://jackquinlanmedia.blogspot.co.uk/
Matt Healey - http://matthealeymedia.blogspot.co.uk/
James Robinson - http://musefanjames.blogspot.com/
Joe Grover - http://mediajoegrover.tumblr.com/
Amna Hamid - http://amnahamid96.blogspot.co.uk/
Jakiya Sultana - http://jakiya1.tumblr.com/

Behind The Scenes Stills

These are some of the shots from our behind the scenes video which will be edited at a later date:

Matt Healey
James Robinson
Jack Quinlan

Film Inspirations

These are some of the films/Televsion shows which was the main inspiration for our film:

28 Days Later by Danny Boyle

28 Days Later is a British horror film released in 2002 which tells the story of an incurable virus that sweeps through the population, and a small band of survivors who try to reach safety.

It was written by Alex Garland and directed by Danny Boyle - also famous for directing Train spotting (1996) and Slumdog Millionaire (2008).

The cast included relative unknowns Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris and Megan Burns in leading roles alongside well-known character actors Brendan Gleeson and Christopher Eccleston.

http://www.28dayslaterthemovie.co.uk/

Night Of The Living Dead by George Romero

When unexpected radiation raises the dead, a microcosm of Average America has to battle flesh-eating zombies in George A. Romero's (1968) landmark cheapie horror film. Siblings Johnny (Russ Streiner) and Barbara (Judith O'Dea) whine and pout their way through a graveside visit in a small Pennsylvania town, but it all takes a turn for the worse when a zombie kills Johnny. Barbara flees to an isolated farmhouse where a group of people are already holed up. Bickering and panic ensue as the group tries to figure out how best to escape, while hoards of undead converge on the house; news reports reveal that fire wards them off, while a local sheriff-led posse discovers that if you "kill the brain, you kill the ghoul." After a night of immolation and parricide, one survivor is left in the house....

The Road by John Hillcoat

A father (Viggo Mortensen) and son make their way across a post-apocalyptic United States in hopes of finding civilization amongst the nomadic cannibal tribes in 2929 Productions' adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's thrilling Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Road. John Hillcoat (The Proposition) directs from a screenplay provided by Joe Penhall. Charlize Theron co-stars in the Dimension Films release. (2009)

Final filming

Today we filmed the final parts of our film and we can now complete the editing. We had to film a 'flasback' scene which takes plce in a park, and we couldn't film that particular scene the day, we filmed the majority of the film.

Matt Healey

James Robinson - http://musefanjames.blogspot.co.uk/

Jack Quinlan -  http://jackquinlanmedia.blogspot.co.uk/

Directors

These are some directors that I have both ebjoyed and have served as inspiration for some parts of our film:

Edgar Wright - English born director, most known for his collabration films with Simon Pegg (Shaun of The Dead, Hot Fuzz, The Worlds End) as well as the 2011 cult classic, Scott Pilgrim. He is known for his over the top style which adds a comic book style to genres not normally done in that way (Hot Fuzz being a 'cop film', for example).

Quentin Tarantino - American director best known for him films, Pulp Fiction, Inglorious Basterds and Django Unchained. He is known for bringing the unconventional to the convential - the hesit film Resevoir Dogs never actually shows the heist, for example. One of his trademarks always present throughout all hisa films is the way he uses tension to 'play' with the audience. The scenes are usually long and drawn out. with very little dialogue, with not a lot of movement, before finally 'exploding' with a full scene of action.

Sergio Leone - An Italian director, regarded by many as the greatest Spaghetti western director of all time, director of classics such as The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few More Dollars. He was the first of kind to the extreme close ups in a western, a technique which is still being used today. As before I stated that Tarantino is known for scenes with long periods of silence, followed by bursts of action- but it was Leone who first made the technique famous.

Evaluation - Planning

As we are now around halfway through the editing stage for our film, we have to start the evaluation stage of the coursework. We have looked at the questions and have decided that we will use a mixture of both video and traditional written answers. As soon as the editing has been completed we will be able to complete the evaluation in full. 

Matt Healey

James Robinson - http://musefanjames.blogspot.co.uk/

Jack Quinlan - http://jackquinlanmedia.blogspot.co.uk/