Goodbye

Dear Moderator,

Thank you for watching me evolve throughout my project. I feel that I really engaged with and enjoyed the course, as well as having learnt many things along the way.Thank you for watching my videos and prezis. Overall thank you.

Final Video, Quicksand

Here you go, the final video...

Evaluation - Question 5

How successful is your product?

Evaluation - Question 4

How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware and online – in this project?

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fWe used blogger primarily as this was the site where we uploaded all of our work, we treated blogger as a personal diary relating to media studies. Blogger allowed us to upload posts frequently and edit or change them as we continued. Blogger also allows the viewer to see the dates and times we uploaded our tasks. Uploading frequently whether it was a large written post or a snapshot of our group chat was key.

Google Docs was primarily used for audience feedback and research - for example, our online survey was sent out from Google Forms. The link was sent as a mass e-mail to the entire secondary sector of our school in one easy click, (screen capture) which was made possible thanks to Microsoft Outlook Office, a variation of Hotmail that caters to work or professional environments. Google Docs was used to present a summary of the answers to the multiple choice questions asked in our survey. This is an easily accessible and visually stimulating method of gathering data as it allows you view results in percentages and pie charts. In this instance, some of the things we found out was preferable for our target audience included the genre of the score, favoured colour palettes, the gender of the main characters, among other things. This heavily influenced our decisions on many aspects of the film opening. Blogger, as previously mentioned, was used to keep track of our progress and present our findings in a structured, easy-to-navigate manner.

We used a mixture of Adobe Premiere and IMovie to edit our movies. Adobe Premiere was a more complicated editing software which was helpful as it allowed us to cut and remove or add certain effects and transitions that IMovie wasn’t capable of. At one point we did attempt to use Final Cut to integrate into the editing stage of our film opening in the hopes of finding added or beneficial features that Adobe Premiere and iMovie did not have, however this was not the case. We found that Final Cut was an interesting albeit slightly unusual software to edit movies; for example the saving feature was missing. We found out later that the saving feature is missing simply because the software had a built-in autosave function which was immensely relieving and convenient. I personally forget to save my projects a lot and as a result I have lost some drafts while logging out of my computer. Final Cut combats this common issue  in one easy step. On the other hand though, iMovie and Adobe Premier were ultimately the most useful and lacked the complexity Final Cut unfortunately has, therefore we used it for a majority of the time.

Websites and filmmaking blogs such as The Film Book were also extremely beneficial in aiding us to produce a smooth, efficient film opening. (x) For example, The Film Book suggested some tips on how to manually handle a GoPro so as to reduce shakiness and stabilise the setting in a point-of-view shot. This is directly applicable in our comparison of the first draft and the final draft, respectively. On the first day of shooting, we attempted to shoot a POV scene of one of the characters driving on a quadbike but due to the bumpy desert location and the noisy quadbike the result was unimpressive. The footage was shaky in a clearly amateur fashion rather than purposefully, the frames were overexposed, the lighting too saturated, as well as a handful of sound issues.Through some articles from The Film Book this was able to be addressed. Another influential blog was No Film School, a popular website for independent filmmakers that provided its readers with fresh and innovative methods to film on a budget. No Film School’s article on the rule of thirds was especially helpful for me personally in understanding composition techniques. Premium Beat gave us a practical outlook on filmmaking in general but was particularly notable in its wide range of royalty free music tracks.

Evaluation - Question 3

How did your production skills develop throughout this project? Throughout this project my group

We used a Canon D600 and a Canon 70D to film our movie, comparing the footage from the DSLR Camera to the GoPro Hero4 it is unparalleled. The quality of the footage is very different as the DSLR had the better image quality but the GoPro had an almost fish eye approach as the footage is circled.

For the behind-the-scenes footage and production stills, a Canon 700D was used so as to avoid overloading the memory of the filming DSLRs. We had separate memory cards for BTS and actual filming footage; a 64 GB memory card was used for the filming, and an 8GB SD card was used for BTS footage and production photographs. YouTube tutorials were immensely helpful in understanding the mechanisms of the GoPro Hero 4 as we were all unfamiliar with using it prior to some online research.

After we filmed our footage which took 4-5 days as we underestimated the filming length. Adobe Premiere was very good as it allowed my group to edit quickly and tint our overall film to make the desert look better and the sky look a vibrant blue. Nikita then downloaded free SFX effects such as muzzle flash and explosion effects. After adding in the SFX effects we focused on our soundtrack. Our soundtrack was a remake of the Mad Max: Fury Road soundtrack.

We also used google docs and blogger to upload our progress and planning for our first and final draft of our movie.

We used a variety of different editing software’s to edit and add the effects into our movie. I used Adobe Premier to put the sequence together but I used Photoshop to design our group’s logo and title designs.

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Evaluation - Question 2

How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?

Evaluation - Question 1

1.       How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?

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   Conventions are vital components of a film and the choices we make in following or challenging them determine whether we make or break our product. Conventions are the sometimes unwritten rules which make a certain genre distinct and recognisable to audiences. One simple or slight variation in any tropes or conventions could drastically alter the mood conveyed to the audience or send the wrong message, which may turn out in your favour as in the case of an unscripted Joker scene from The Dark Knight which subverts general film conventions of sticking to the script. Zoolander had an unscripted scene regarding the lack of intelligence of male models which challenges gender stereotypes such as the ‘dumb female model’. However sometimes making the wrong choice regarding film conventions can also be disastrous. Conventions establish the genre to the viewer; it is a form of communicating your product without explicitly stating the genre of your film opening. This means that if audience members have trouble identifying the film opening’s genre or the message conveyed is generally too vague, not a lot of conventions are addressed. This can be a problem as nothing captures the audience’s attention or connects them to the product. Therefore we are aware of the importance of conventions in ‘showing and not telling’. Our product challenges some conventions and ascribes to some based on how certain tropes convey meanings. In terms of editing, the film opening uses film conventions extensively; the post-apocalyptic action genre is identified through the use of quick, abrupt cuts preceded by a significantly longer take for the ‘establishing’ shot. This is shown in poop. Our film challenges conventions such as the mixture of ethnicities in our cast and the different genders. One of our main actors was a girl which challenges sexism as she was holding a Katana and was doing things just as violent as the boys.

Colouring was also somewhat conventional as post-apocalyptic action movies often use high-key lighting along with a vibrant saturated colour palette to convey a sense of dynamic energy, although it can be argued that the vivacious colouring challenges post-apocalyptic conventions as it is also common for movies in the genre to use low-key, cool-toned colours to establish a grim, somber mood and indicate a sense of foreboding danger.

Other components of mise-en-scene have been considered in detail, especially props. Since our film opening has no dialogue and few close-up shots, NVC is lacking. The focus of our film opening was not to establish a character-viewer relationship but rather stimulate the audience member visually, which was accomplished predominantly through the mise-en-scene. In order to compensate for the lack of NVC, we placed a heavy emphasis on props as a way to switch the focus to visual imagery. Props such as heavy vehicles are distinguishably used in our film opening. The focus on visual components through the heavy use of props is rather conventional for an action movie. However post-apocalyptic movies often tend to have a deeper insight into the main character(s) by developing a complex backstory to allow the audience to sympathise with them; our film opening averts this convention. The focus of our film opening was not to establish a character-viewer relationship but rather stimulate the audience member visually, which was accomplished predominantly through the mise-en-scene. In order to compensate for the lack of NVC, we placed a heavy emphasis on props as a way to switch the focus to visual imagery.

Sound is particularly conventional due to copyright issues and lack of original music. We had to resort to royalty-free music which is usually generic and lackluster, however after thoroughly exploring several websites we used some soundtrack clips that are more unique and interesting in our respective opinions. Taking into account that a film’s soundtrack can be used to convey mood and drive action, we opted for a fast-paced score to build up suspense and stimulate the listener in compliance with action movie soundtrack conventions. Since our film opening is, epic music

In terms of narrative,

Finally, camera work makes up a vital component of film conventions. A variety of shots were used in our film opening, including establishing shots, close-ups, medium-close-ups, long shots, low-angle shots, high-angle shots, point-of-view shots, over-the-shoulder shots, with a range of movements such as hand-held/pan shots. In this sense we follow the conventions of more contemporary post-apocalyptic action movies, Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) being our primary source of inspiration. The hand-held element is particularly modern, often found within the found-footage subgenre of horror. This is also noted in some action movies. The shaky, unstable quality denotes to the viewer an erratic atmosphere, usually to symbolise a certain character’s dread or fear.

The focus of our film opening was not to establish a character-viewer relationship but rather stimulate the audience member visually, which was accomplished predominantly through the mise-en-scene. In order to compensate for the lack of NVC, we placed a heavy emphasis on props as a way to switch the focus to visual imagery.

Evaluation Quicksand Draft

First Draft, Quicksand

Behind The Scenes of Filming

Plot Summary

Plot Summary

Quicksand is a post apocalyptic film that is set in the future that portrays and empty wasteland such as the Desert. There is meant to be no life other than the bandits. Due to the fact that there are no other sources of life, movement the madness is emphasized, every character is forced to survive by killing the opposite team. due to the fact that our project is only an intro to a film, it does not revolve around the plot too much. Two groups of bandits/scavengers are shown in the intro, one group is driving a large convoy with two guards on Quad bikes securing the mysterious package inside the convoy. The second group of bandits/scavengers are scouting and spying on the convoy, One of the Bandits from the scouting group pulls out a sniper and takes the first shot which starts the action the shot hits the other teams scout in the head killing him instantly. The two gangs portray very differently as the first convoy gang are very loud and do not seem to care about anything yet the other gang are quite and stealthy as the watch silently from the top of the dune. When the two groups clash there is a lot of violence almost immediately after the first shot is fired. The rest of the violence is just blood and gory and the characters are picked off one by one.

FILMING DAY 2 BEHIND THE SCENES

FILMING DAY 2 CAST

DAY 1 FILMING BEHIND THE SCENES

FILMING DAY 1 CAST