Evaluation

1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Opening sequences establish genre, characterisation, setting and narrative, as well as visual style and ideology. Our opening sequence does this as we have used media effects to establish characterisation, genre and visual style. Also the actors we used and the voice over have made the audience know what side they were on.
We used black and white to establish visual style; this suited the genre we had chosen, but not all the films in this genre are done in black and white. That was not the only reason as it would clearly distinguish the ideology of good vs. evil. “To kill a Mockingbird” like our opening sequence could have been black and white, they used it to symbolise segregation between the people. This is similar to why we used it in our film, but we used because it shows good and bad.

Costume established characterisation and therefore ideology, as the young American man (the goody) was in neat, smart, tight clothes, didn’t smoke but chewed on a cocktail stick (young/vulnerable) and was also clean shaven. The other men were in baggie clothes and were also not clean shaven. The ideology of someone being clean shaven is that they are not criminal and have more money but we switched this round as our character has had a brush with a criminal gang and doesn’t have enough money and resorts to gambling, although he is still ideologically a good guy. In “Superbad” the character Fogell is dressed to be the geek who doesn’t get any girls; just from his clothing you can tell that he is an outcast from the cool kids. In our film we try to achieve this but make the characters look young, old or vulnerable etc.
Props were used in our opening sequence to establish setting and also genre; we used Italian pictures with Italian writing on them. But then we used American dollars, this would make the audience think they would be Italian immigrants that moved into America during the early 1900’s. The 1950’ time was common for criminal gangs and a lot of these gangs were stereotypically in immigrant communities and the famous ones such as Al Capone were specifically part of the Italian Mafia, this is what we wanted to establish. In the film “Saving Private Ryan” you know it is a war film straight away just from the props used eg. Guns, helmets and army gear, and because it is older guns you know/assume it is WWII. We did this in our film but in ours we tried to establish it was an Italian gangster film.

2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?
In our opening sequence there was five characters, we chose the actors specifically for the parts. Alex Baines was the young clean cut American; he is younger than the other actors and is skinnier, which makes him look more vulnerable. The other three men round the table were very menacing characters as they all had baggy clothes and were a lot older. We picked these actors precisely as they look perfect for the part e.g. scruffier hairstyles than Alex, larger build and all of them smoke so they could smoke in the film which suits the characters. Finally the man who comes in the suit with a knife, this was played by me. I am small and quite skinny which seems odd for this menacing part but this was effective as it makes the fact I’ve got a knife make me less vulnerable than Alex even though I am smaller than him.

The age of Alex is in the bracket of our target audience (18-35) this means the audience relate to this character. However the other men are older than the target audience making them seem more threatening, this was intentional as we decided on actors. After some research we found that the most worrying thing for our market was money problems, this meant that the person involved would link to the young character even more. This is why we knew we had to make him in this age boundary.

Our opening sequence also represents a social group that is a growing problem of contemporary society of gangs and gang culture. This is a problem across the world not only in Britain but in foreign countries also. Often this is associated to lower class society and in lower class areas; we had to address the audience in our piece to reflect the people we were targeting.

3) . What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
Our film is a low budget British film; this means that publishing it would be hard but help from institutions such as Film4 would make it easier. Film4 and BBC are well known for producing low budget relatively unknown film makers so they would be perfect for our opening sequence. Making money would be the priority of the BBC or Film4 airing our film, but they would only be able to do it after the water shed as there is gambling, drinking and smoking involved in our piece. This would make our film either a 15 or an 18 depending on the content of the rest of the film. A lot of films get shown on these channels and ours would have a good chance as it is different to the norm. Especially on Film4 as that is proud of showing new up and coming films and producers. Also the showing of a film on such a popular channel would generate a lot of advertisement for the film by it being advertised and even by word of mouth; this would benefit the film as it creates more money and would put more money into the production team if there were to be a sequel.

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our media piece is targeted mainly at males as in our research we found out that our genre was watched by them a lot more. We did a questionnaire and found out that mails like either funny, action packed or horror whereas females prefer love/romcom or fiction fairytale films. This helped us think of characters for the films so the audience could relate to them.

It would be targeted mainly at younger men aged between 18 and 32 as the main character is in this age range and the problems he faces are common of those of the target age. Our piece would also appeal to the older category over 55 as the film is set in their time era they grew up in so they would like to see it being relived.

Our film is a testosterone pumped film so women would not be as big audience although some women do enjoy these films. There are no main female characters from the opening sequence so they would not relate to the characters as well as a male. They would be more likely to watch an old romance from this time period from our research.

Also people who enjoy gangster films such as Scarface, The Godfather or The Untouchables would enjoy our film.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

Our film was very successful at attracting our audience from the feedback we got as shown in the quotes from the development stage of my blog. We had good comments from youtube and facebook . We made some changes due to this feedback e.g. the voice over’s as people did not feel the voice over’s were very good and didn’t say the right things.

A lot of people said that they would watch on from the opening sequence to find out what happens, we were happy with this as it shows that we addressed our audience and what they enjoy watching. We did some questions and got some feedback from them to tell us how we attracted and addressed the audience. Here they are:

1. Could you see our opening sequence developing into a film?Approximately 80% of the viewers said they could and the other 20% did not say no but that they could after maybe touching up what we had as they believe wat they saw could be improved vastly.This type of answer gave our group a very large boost in knowing what we have produced is very good in the eyes of our viewers.

2. Could you identify the genre of our film and possibly the time era?Everyone who viewed our film identified it to be a gangster genre, and all of them would have been correct. Also only 50% of them were able to say the 1950's but everyone else was not far away with answers of 'during the war', '1960's' and '1930's'. Once again we were pleased with the answers we recieved as a vast majority of our viewers were correct and once again provided a large boost to our production group.

3. Did the voice overs make what was going on a little clearer to you?Again we recieved the answers we wanted to as most of them said the voice overs ceared things uo for them but surprisingly a few said without the voice overs they may have been able to determine what was happening but maybe not the nationality's of the people involved, they said the voice overs helped determine this.

6.7. Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Throughout the course I have learned different techniques for film making and editing. We learnt alot in New York film masterclass but I found the best way to learn was just to do it and play around with the equipment. I learned that a lot of time and effort has to go into making a a film even just an opening sequence.

The main thing that I learned was to do editing. Before I started the course I didn't have a clue how to do it but now i know how to upload our video, cut and crop the bits you need, do slow motion, add effects to the picture eg. Black and white etc. This was good for me as I have never been good with computers.

I also learned how to use the camera correctly and how to take good camera angles for the film, we now know how to zoom in and out, pan and take still shots with the tripod. The tripod was another thing we learned to use effectively.

Time, Patience and Hard work ae the most important things to do especially if you are in a group.

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

Throughout the media course I have progressed in not only flm making as I have already said in the question above but the concepts of media like ideology, genre etc. these will help me as I plan to do journalism at University.

We had to look at different DVD's for our planning stage and different genres and opening sequences, we looked at the ideology of the pieces and how they were filmed eg. amera angles, voice overs and soundtracks. We learnt about diagetic and non diagetic sounds also.

We had to plan different locations and luckily for us it was only one location we used but had to set up the room to make it look correct. Mking sure we had a good quality camera was important as it would look better and also a tripod so that the shots would be steady.

After it had been shot we did all the voice overs and added them to the piece on editing software. We also had to make it Black and White and piece together the whole opening sequence. These were all learned technologies whilst making the piece. We also learned how to upload videos on YouTube and get feedback from them.

Filming and Editing of Opening Sequence

Filming our Opening Sequence was relatively easy as it only took about 2 hours on one friday night. this meant that we didn't have to try and replecate the room and costume and lighting again to achieve continuity, we just did it all at once which made us achieve continuity. We managed to capture enough footage that we could just piece it together and turn it into a film. Another advantage of filming in one night is that we didn't have to try and find another date where all the actors and everyone from the group were free.

Throughout the opening sequence there we used lots of different camera angles such as over the shoulder, zoom-in and zoom-out, low angle and high angle shots, close ups, panning and birdseye. There were points were the group disagreed on the shots but we agreed that we would shoot both ideas then see which looked best when edited. Because we were using a soundtrack and voice over we knew that we could vocally direct the actors as we filmed because we wouldnt hear the voices in the final piece. Before we went to film, it was just a case of getting some cool shots to add into the piece to make it more entertaining.

The editing phase was alot harder than filming as we as a group were not as confident as this than at filming. Gregg was the best editor so we tried to get him to teach us a little bit but made him the 'head editor'. The editing As a group we spent alot of time in free's media lessons and even lunchtimes to make the piece perfect. We made it black and white and had to get the balance right for the different shots. I did alot of this because I worked out how to do it at an earlier stage. Gregg cut and pieced together most of the video and Alex and Tom told us what looked good and bad as they had a good eye for seeing mistakes and what looked good. Our whole group worked brilliantly together through the editing stage even though we were't the most confident at it.

We were having real trouble with finding a soundtarck to go on top of the film, in the end we decided on the theme tune to scarface. The song as an Italian speech in it so it fitted with the piece nicely, and it was also the same length as the opening sequence. After such a long and painful process of trying to find one we were thrilled that we found this and that it was so perfect. Fiddling around with the settings we found that you could make some parts louder and some quiter this was helpful as we had voice overs that were drowned out by the music so we made some bits louder and some quiter were appropriate. The voice overs were also a bit of a pain as we had to find someone with a good American accent, we tried alot of people because no-one in our group thought they could do the American accent. But in the end it was Alex (the person in our group who played the character) who had the best accent. The accent needed to be American as the character is American this establishes characterisation.

We posted our video on Fcebook, these are some of the comments we got back:

Danny White- "Thats pretty sweet"
Shaun Bladen- "Love it. The soundtracks awesome"
Jack Travers- "I'd go watch thatat the cinema"
Sam Jones (fellow media student)- "Love the camera angles and effects, looks very proffesional"

We were happy with these comments obviously and knew it was a hit with friends. abaut wanted to see what people who weren't our friends thought. So we published it on ayaouTube, these were the comments we got back:

"This really works, well done guys"
"Not sure on some of the editing, but overall very good. Well done"
"Love the actors!"

We were even more hapy with this feedback as people were telling the truth as they did not know us, this was good for us and boosted our confidence in the piece.

Planning Opening Sequence

Before we could begin the OUCH Productions opening sequence we had to plan it which meant planning props, setting, costume and location, but also naming the piece and brainstorm what the piece would actually be. This takes alot of hard work but we will do it thoroughly to make sure the filming and editing process is alot easier.

Location
We had to pick a location that would go well with the film and would be easy to change into how we wanted it to look. The basic outline of the room needed to have a table in the middle with no windows in the room and 1 door leading to an outside area. This would be hard to find so we new we had to adapt another location to this.


We chose somewhere where it was easy for the whole group to get too, this location was good as it was close for everyone. This meant we could film pretty much whenever we wanted.




The location we ended up choosing was my friend in the group's house, to be precise his dining room. This had a table in the middle with a door leading outside and a cabinet at the end of the room. This was the best we could find. It had a window but with black out blinds that would look good in black and white, it was also leading into his kitchen so we had to cover the kitchen up with a large sheet. When we had done this it looked very authentic. The cabinet at the back of the room we filled with spirits and Italian pictures, and also hung some pictures on the wall this made the whole room look very authentic.


The picture below is the finished product just before we started filming.


Setting
The setting of the piece is very important, because the whole look of the room makes the difference to the authenticity because if it looks bad this will effect the whole piece. This is what the setting consisted of:

Wooden Cabinet
Door straight to the outdoors (only door)
Low Light
Table, Poker Table on top of it
Converted Dining Room
Smokey Room
Poker Room
1950's Italian/American



Costume
The costume is just as important as setting and props to the genre, characterisation and setting because it will not look authentic if one of the characters is wearing a pair of tracksuit bottoms especially after you've been to the trouble of making the setting and props so authentic. They will have to look like they are corrupt but also Rich and ready for gambling. Below is the things we used for our costume:

Shirts
Ties
Suit Jackets
Cocktail Sticks
Jewellery
Watches
Cigars/Cigarettes


The pictures below show the costumes of the main characters in colour (they change appearance when in black and white)




Props

We had to make our opening sequence authentic so we used props that would be around during the time our film was set. Props help set genre, characterisation and setting, this is why we wanted it to be authentic. Props we will use:

Cigars
Money
Poker Table
Spirit Bottles and Glasses
keys
Poker Chips
Briefcase
Cards
Olives and Nuts
Knife
Holy/Italian Pictures
Ashtrays

All the props shown below are some of the props we will use, they all help establish genre, characterisation and setting.

Synopsis

Our opening sequence will consist of 3 older Italian men playing poker with a younger American for money and high value goods such as watches, jewellery and keys. The filming area will be made smokey by 2 of them smoking on cigars and cigarettes; we will also try to make the smoke be seen on the camera as we believe this will add great effect.

The beginning of our opening sequence will begin with one of the men smoking on a cigarette with a religious/Italian picture seen on the wall behind. This will then cut/fade into the 3 older men shuffling the cards ready for a game of poker when a younger man enters with a briefcase of which he opens and pulls out cash notes and cocktail sticks. The 4 men then carry out an intense game of poker of where OUCH Productions as a group can use a range of camera angles and techniques to show this to the audience. At the end of the opening sequence the younger man will be seen to have won and begin to collect his winnings but the largest of the 3 men will prevent him from doing so and another male figure will be seen at the door holding a knife; this is when the film, 'L'asso di Cuori' will begin!

We will try to make sure that when the male figure in the door is seen that the audience will see this from the younger mans perspective. We think this is one shot that can add extra effect to our opening sequence. Also we are going to have the whole of our opening sequence filmed in black and white to portray the time era of the 1950's and partially portray the genre as a few older gangster films are filmed in black and white. Within our opening sequence we will include no dialogue but include some voice over from the younger mans perspective and also a soundtrack that will fit our genre and time period.

Deciding on the film Name
We decided as a group to come up with an Italian/American gangster film, taking inspiration from the classics sch as The Godfather. For our Title name we thought it would suit the style of film to have a Italian name. We brainstormed names in English and translated them to find the one that sounded the best, we came up with "Lasso Di Cuori" which translates to Ace of Hearts. We decided on this name as in the opening sequence the young American character posses the Ace of Hearts in the poker game, this will hopefully keep the audience guessing the importance of this card.

Risk Assessment
There are many risks that need to be taken into account during the filming prosses of our media video. These can be anything that pose a danger towards actors or cameramen.

Glasses and bottles... there is a risk of someone getting cut from a broken glass or bottle, we will keep them away from the edge of the table to make sure they dont't fall off.

The knife... one of the props we are using is a knife, there are obviouse risks using a knife of cutting yourself or someone else accidentally. We will make sure that the knife is only out when we need to use it for the shot, making sure there are no accidents. When I am using the knife in the shot we will make sure I am not near alot of people and we do the shot fast and get it out of the way.

Cigars and cigarettes... the use of cigars can burn people or potentially cause a fire, this means that we will have to ensure that they are only lit when we are shooting and that we have plenty of ash trays and know where the fire extinguisher is and that its in a easily accessible place.

We have a first aid kit and we will know where it is so if there is an accident we can treat it fast and if need be call for help.

Opening sequences

As our task was to create an opening sequence we thought it would be good to look at some effective opening sequences, we looked at "Dirty Harry", "Se7en" and "The Usual Suspects". All of these films have effective opening sequences due to Mise-en-scene, Ideology, Sound, Characterisation, Music and Narrative. Also all the things we looked at during our preliminary task.

I believe an opening sequence aims to set the scene and introduce the characters. Whereas a good opening sequence also draws the audience in and sets an exciting plot for the rest of the film. In the Films "Dirty Harry", " Se7en" and " The Usual Suspects"the directors use many different dramatic techniques to create a very good opening sequence. We will take everything into account to help us create the best opening sequence we can.

Mise-en-scene... is every detail of each shot, for example if you stopped the camera on each frame then you would be able to tell what genre it was from props, set, actors, lighting, and costume. Basically it is a mixture between continuity and realism, that you know exactly whats going on in the frame. We will try to remember mise-en-scene in our opening sequence and pay attention to every detail.

Ideology... is the use of either a moral, political or social message portrayed to the viewers through the opening sequence. The ideology in Dirty Harry is that the Cops are the noble good guys and hat the Killer is obviously the bad guy. Good vs evil is the most basic ideology and that is shown in all of the opening sequences we looked at.

Sound... is split up into non-diagetic and diagetic sounds, Diagetic sounds are the natural sounds heard by the camera eg talking, whereas non diagetic sounds are the sounds edited in eg sirens or church bells. The sounds used in opening sequences help portray emotions and can be used effectively for suspense or humour. In Dirty Harry this is used when the camera scrolls down the list of dead officers with the sound of solemn church bells in the background.

Characterisation... is how the director wants you to see each character, this is tied in with ideology as a good guy would usually be clean in a suit with smart hair where as a bad guy would have messy hair in messy clothes. This is shown in Dirty Harry as Harry (good guy) is dressed smart and the killer (bad guy) is very messy. It also helps the audience make a bond with the characters.

Music... is used to create suspense and again help emotions become more strong. In Dirty Harry the music when you see the killer is very sinister, quiet and random off beat. Whereas Harry is shown with powerful regular beat music showing he is the good guy.

Narrative... Narrative is normally used in opening sequences from the heroes perspective but within our opening sequence we will be looking to use no narrative to keep the audience guessing, just a soundtrack and action.

Genre

Before choosing a certain genre to base our film around we looked at many different ones to see what we liked the best and what we thought we could do the best. These are some of the different genres we looked at;

Comedy... is a very vague genre as there is more than one type of comedy eg slapstick, black comedy, comedy horror, Rom-com and many more. Obviously with all of these different types of comedy the primary purpose is to make you laugh, with many different secondary purposes. My favourite comedy films and arguably my favourite films of all time are Anchorman: the legend of Ron Burgundy and Superbad, these are both quite adult humour and are very rude in some places, which is often the case in the comedy genre. Film isn't the only place were comedy is but you also get live comedy (stand up) and T.V comedy which is not usually as rude as film. Comedy began along time ago and was around during Roman times and probably before that in the form of plays.

Horror... is made to make the viewers feel feer, terror and obviously horror. They often have the story about death and have a definite "baddy". Alot of horrors contain supernaturall beings such as Demons and people who are possessed. The genre began in 1890-1900 with the early black and white films that were based on books such as "Frankenstein". Horror is now one of the fastest growing genres. A great example of a Horror/Thriller film is Paranormal Activity which is a low budget film made as a fake documentary about a haunting in a house, that is all shot on one hand held camera.



Action... films are very fast tempo and fast flowing with lots of action scenes, they are usually very high budget with all the explosions and special effects. They are often the highest grossing films such as "James Bond: Gold Finger" and "Mission impossible 4.0" which are films in a series of lots of other films, that's another trait of action films. It always contains a handsome male and beautiful female that he saves and they then fall in love.





Romance... is a very popular genre that is based on Love. Often Romance and Comedy are mixed together to make Rom-Com. They are highly emotional and based on true story's often and the main character is nearly always Leonardo DiCaprio for example "Romeo and Juliet" and "Titanic". Again this genre has been around for centuries.

Gangster... movies are about criminals often in a Criminal Group/Gang hence the name Gangster. The gangs are often based around the Italian Mafia and in particular notorious individuals such as Al Capone and Bugsy Siegel. They are often shot in Dark colours and are sometimes even Black and White. Some great gangster films are "Scarface", "The Godfather" and "The Untouchables".




Western... is a genre that is telling a story in the late 1900's in the wild west of America. The Western started off as westerns, and eventually developed into cop films such as "Dirty Harry". They often show the views of honour and sacrifice for the greater good and later showing the brutality of the American West. It is about the problems faced with social and technological changes during the expansion to the West which is showed in the early "Cowboys and Indians"films.




After looking at all these different genres and a couple more like Thriller and Fantasy we decided to make a film in the style a a 1950's Gangster film. We thought we would do it in Black and white to look authentic, the ideas we have are smokey poker room, silhouettes and a sinister sound track.

Preliminary Task

After completing our AS media studies exam in January we were told we had to make a preliminary video. We had to choose a group of four and start filming and blogging after doing research on filming and editing. Our task was to film some dialogue, match on aaction, 180 degree rule and a range of camera angles.

I chose a group that I knew I could work with well and that would work hard, my group is Tom Gillespie, Alex Baines and Gregg Sullivan. Together we are called Ouch Productions.

As a group we came up with the idea of Alex Baines (playing Douglas McKeowen) assaulting someone and being caught on CCTV. This clip is then followed by Alex walking down the corridor and into the police stations interview room. At this stage the 2 investigating police officers question Alex on the incident. Alex denies everything said saying 'you can nae prove this' and walks out.

Our story board... above clearly shows that during the making of our storyboard we concentrated on the types of camera angles we were going to use in our preliminary video.

Box 1 of the storyboard consists of the incident happening with the camera held up high looking down on the action like a security camera. The image in box 1 also shows that we had decided to edit the picture by adding the text 'security camera 01 18:00' to the bottom of the screen.

Box 2 whereas shows and tells us of the match on action going to be used when Alex is walking down the corridor.

Box 3 once again shows the camera being held high up in the corner like a security camera and also again containing the editing text of 'security camera 02 09:48'.

Box 4 and 5 of the storyboard indicates the use of the over the shoulder camera shot. Box 4 is from one side of the table and box 5 from the other side of the table. This is shown being used during the interview between the police officers and Douglas McKeowen.

Box 6 is a close up of Alex when he says 'cos i frickin hate pigs!'. This camera angle on the storyboard is going to be used to show the facial expressions of Alex's face during his interview with the police officers.

Box 7 is showing the first stage of the 2nd use of match on action in our preliminary. In box 7 you can see Alex exiting the interview room of where he says 'you'll be hearing from my lawyer, I don't have one yet, but i will do!'. During the dialogue the camera changes to outside of the door, using match on action for the 2nd time.

Box 8 is the final box of the storyboard and shows the final part of our preliminary video when Alex has exited the interview room and signals foul hand gestures towards the 'security camera'. This is then followed by the 'Ouch Productions' written across the bottom of the screen.

The 180 degree rule...is simply a basic guideline in film making that 2 characters in the same scene must always have the same left/right relationship to one another. If the camera crosses the imaginary axis connecting the 2 subjects the 180 degree rule is destroyed.An an example of the 180 degree rule being used in our preliminary filming task is when Alex (Douglas McKeowen) is being interviewed. The camera in this scene never crosses the centre line from one side of the room, making it the 180 degree rule.

Match on action...is when some action is picked up where the cut left it. For example in our piece when Alex is shouting at the police officers from the door, the camera cuts from inside the room to outside in the corridor. We made sure this cut carried on his dialogue in flow and that he was in exactly the same position as before.

Range of camera angles... we used a variety of camera angles for example over the shoulder view when Douglas (Alex) is being interrogated, this shot consists of the shoulder of a person in the foreground with the focus on the person or object over there shoulder.
Also we used a close up when alex sais "I fricking hate pigs" to add effect as we see his emotions more clearly, this shot is self explanatory as it is just a close shot of the object or person.
One of the shots we used is a high angle shot from the CCTV camera as this makes it more authentic because CCTV cameras are usually high up, again this shot is literally a shot looking down on something or someone from a high angle.
A low Angle shot is also used when Douglas is walking down the hallway and steps over the camera and walks towards the door, this is the same as a high angle just the opposite way round. These different camera shots we use are for authenticity, and to show when an actor is showing strong feelings or emotions.

Panning... is simply the horizontal movement of the video camera. It is often used in establishing shots as it means you can get alot of scenery in the shot. It can also be used as a point of view shot where a character looks from side to side and that is there view of what they see. We didn't use panning in our preliminary video but we will try to incorporate it in our final piece as it can be used very effectively.

Continuity... is where everything such as props, clothing and location are all exactly the same, this also ties in to authenticity. throughout our preliminary we ensured that we would do this as we were filming on different days. We will make sure that we take this into account during our opening sequence.

Tracking... is when the camera is mounted on a wheeled platform and moved along steadily, often following a character or object. There are different shots that are linked with tracking, side to side, forward and back and a curve. We didn't use this technique in our preliminary as it is very hard and takes alot of skill but we will look to use it in our final piece.

Below is our final preliminary video, after taking into account everything we have researched from camera angles to continuity.

Evaluation of preliminary

I believe our preliminary was successful as we used a range of camera angles and learned alot about film making and how hard it is. There is one part were I (Henry) am caught laughing on camera and we will make sure this doesn't happen in the film as it would make it look tacky and very unprofessional. The best part of our preliminary is the match on action used when Douglas (Alex) is walking out the door and shouts "but I will do", this looked really professional and I hope we can get the same effect in our opening sequence. The successful of this shot is the continuity of the clothes, body position, accent and timing of the cut.

Another good thing that we did is the close up of Douglas when he sais "I frickin' hate pigs!" this means the audience can clearly see his facial expressions and know that he is very annoyed. Even though he is annoyed the repetition makes it humorous and nearly everything Alex sais is funny, we weren't sure if the SScottish accent would be funny or authentic but after great feedback we decided to use it and are happy with the result. It helps us to establish characterisation of the character instantly also.

The 180 degree rule was used effectively throughout the video and was never broken, we need to make sure we take this into account during our final piece.

Overall our video was successful even though we have alot to learn and alot to improve on for our final piece, it was a learning curve that will help us for our final video and only shows a percentage of what OUCH Productions can do. From the feedback it was entertaining and there were good use of camera angles and techniques used, we hope we can improve on our final piece though.

New York

During our AS media studies course we were lucky enough to go on a trip to the Big Apple. On this trip we didn't just shop and sight see, we also had a 4 hour film masterclass with the New York Film Academy. On this course we learned about acting, editing and filming.

Editing... was a recap and extra what we had learned back in England, they taught us how to cut from one shot to the other smoothly. This helped us alot because it meant that we could make our match-on-action shots alot better. They also taught us how to add captions etc. which we used in our preliminary and added to it alot. This was very helpful to us.

Filming... was very helpful as it showed us the basics of making films, that we have to have close ups, long shots and tracking shots to make successful short film. There equipment was alot better than ours but the basics of film making are the same whether its low or high budget, this is what they taught us, so all the techniques we got taught can be used in our opening sequence.

Acting... just got us used to acting in front of the camera. It made us very aware that mistakes can make a whole sequence look tacky and cheap, we needed to cut this out because in our preliminary I laughed and this makes our piece look bad. Only 2 of our group are acting in the opening sequence so me and Alex listened very carefully. We will take into account and remember everything we learned in the acting part.

A bonus for OUCH Productions was that all of our group were lucky enough to go on the trip and so everything we learned we don't have to repeat to another member back at school. Also everyone remembered different things so as a group we had everything covered. Everything we did in New York was very helpful even just walking round and seeing all the adverts for T.V and Movie adverts. I would love to go to New York again and learn more about Film Making.