Continuity Sequence

Evaluation 8- What did I learn

Part 8- Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Overall I think that our title sequence has had its ups and downs but came out very successful and I am proud of our end product as is what we hoped for. Things that were successful about or preliminary task was the whole production as when we filmed everything seemed to go right and we didn't need to film that many times for the whole sequence. Apart from the odd un-focused image, wrong angle or props failing to work whilst filming everything ran smoothly and it didn't take us long at all to get what we needed. When using Go-Pro we feel this was the most successful filming time for us, even though we had never used it before we experimented on a few shots and the shot that we gained from it was probably our most favourite out of the whole sequence. When things weren't planned and we just gave them a go we found they came out the best. We successfully followed our storyboards and when going to film knew what we was doing and what needed to be done. When gaining feedback we always had good comments on our music choice and I feel it was a successful choice too as it goes very well with the narrative and the action in the sequence. Even though me and Frankie were both clueless about editing some aspects went well but could of gone better.

On the other hand I feel we could of made something a little more original but considering action thriller is a popular choice we made it very much our own. I think we could of done a little more research and planning before we made the title sequence.

Evalution 7- Technologies

Part 7- What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Throughout the pre-production/production/post-production we knew that we was going to use a DSLR for all of our filming. This decision was made because for example our first shot was of the news report and needed to be focused so using a DSLR on a tripod was appropriate.
We decided to use the Go-Pro camera for one particular shot which was the kidnapping shot where Dan puts a pillow case over the 'politicians' head, as we had never used go-pro we thought we would give it a try and it turned  out to be successful as by using the go-pro on the actors head it gave more of an effect and made it seem as if it was from his point of view. By using a tripod in shots it was easier to capture for example when the three anarchists were running I made the tripod low and placed it in a certain place so it only captured the bottom of their feet whist running past. In the process I learnt a lot about using a DSLR camera as I'd never really used one for filming before. Using blogger was something new to me as well. Something that was less successful for me was editing as Frankie took on that role whilst I done the majority of the cinematography.

Evaluation 5- Social Class

Part 5- How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In our title sequence we represent social groups in multiple ways, you are instantly able to tell our social group when the shot of Dan our actor is dragging his bat along the gate wearing his gas mask and black hooded jumper. The social group we were aiming for is young violent anarchists and by the shots, editing, sound, mise-en-scene, typography, iconography and expressionism used I think we portrayed this well. We represented our social group through costume by choosing to have Dan dressed in a black hoody, black long coat, black vans and black jeans or anyone in the scenes in similar clothing either wearing the gas mask or medicine mask to portray them as typical anarchists, by all the clothing being dark this can also connote danger or mystery. By Dan holding a bat and slowly dragging it across some gates it could connote that he is going to do something with the weapon and agrees to the stereotypical violent young person wearing a hoody that carries around a weapon with them in a dangerous manner as gas masks and baseball bats are not something you normally associate with 'good'. Our setting for a lot of our shots was the graffiti tunnel of Leak Street underneath Waterloo east station which is a very odd location where people with all different social groups do different things. Being an underpass it is something that you would associate with darkness, intense and rough and graffiti normally has negative connotations which again would link back to a young teenage social class who have nothing better to do than cause trouble and hang in dark areas. Our soundtrack ‘head on collision’ is a fast pace, aggressive piece which would appeal to a younger social group as it is energetic and jumpy which matches the action to go with it. The typography used in our title sequence can also link to our social group as it is a plain colour nothing too bright and it blurs in with our static effect. The editing throughout matches the action which goes along with the music which can link to our events especially in the case of our main character being an anarchist. Most of our scenes in our title sequence are quite light which doesn’t exactly connote to our social group but could show that the action they cause are in the day time which again links the ideology of young reckless people however there are dark scenes for example the hostage which makes it very effective and more daunting. The way we used props to portray our social group was the baseball bat which is see as a weapon, a spray paint can which symbolises vandalism and again youngsters and the gas masks and hospital masks used which covers up the identity of the young anarchists and also never shows their emotion.

Evaluation 3- Distributor

Part 3- What kind of media institiution might distribute your media product and why?

Evalution Part 2- Audience

Part 2- Who would be the audience for your product?

Evaluation Part 1-Brief

Part 1- Brief
Creating a title sequence for a film with the genre of our choice was the brief we was working towards. My group consisted of me and Frankie and we knew we had to try and deliver the codes and conventions of the genre of choice throughout the sequence and use our skills to research, present, shoot and edit all of our title sequence in order that gain our end goal. After ideas for what genre we could use were discussed we finally settled at the idea of an action thriller, which has a political violent twist. We researched into different similar title sequences and designers to get a further understanding of what to include in our sequence and learn how we could be inspired by these sequences and use aspects of them in our own. We looked at the title sequences of V for vendetta, Dawn of the dead and the purge; anarchy which are similar to our idea.

Our title sequence is called ‘Anarchy’ and is about the government cutting the NHS in which a revolution is the only solution. It is based in London. In the title sequence we see many different events that happen through out the riot using some real footage from the London riots. The sub genres we went for are thriller and action; even though the costumes and events can be seen as thriller there are a lot of action shots tying the two together.

News Backdrop Change

For our title sequence we filmed Mr. Grimsley reporting our news report which we use on different occasions in the sequence. (This blogged under Production Log 2) We used a green screen for this shot in which we would choose a backdrop that was appropriate. Back drop number 1 was a blue spinning earth which from our rough cut feedback wasn't very popular with our teachers and students as they thought it didn't look very realistic for a news studio and made it look a little tacky. 

First Backdrop used:

Me and Frankie discussed the feedback given and decided that a real news studio backdrop would look more professional and settled with the red BBC news backdrop.

Final Backdrop used:

Final Anarchy Title Sequence

This is our final title sequence for our AS media creating a title sequence task with all feedback and last adjustments included. Anarchy.

London riots

In our title sequence we used two short clips from the real London Riots because we feel that the footage linked to our sequence and would make it more effective. When we was gaining feedback we was asked by someone if a shot that we had filmed our self was taken from somewhere else.

To make it clear here are the two parts that we used from the real London riots:

Costume and Props used

As part of our title sequence we had dan wearing a gas mask in different shots. We also had any other actors in the shots in doctors masks. In every shot to represent his social class Dan was dressed in black jeans, a black hoody, a black coat and the vans above. If anyone else was in the shot they would be wearing a hoody too and something similar. In the news report mr Grimsley had a suit on which is what a news reporter stereotypically wears.

Feedback from Rough Cut

These are our feedback sheets from our rough cut that we presented to the class today. The feedback given is for us to add our final adjustments to our title sequence in order to make our deadline on Thursday 12 March when we have to present the final title sequence. People commented on the effects that we used and thought they were too heavy causing some of scenes harder to see making them less effective. Comments also made were that we hadn't finished the news report green screen shots where we needed to add in a news background and suggestions were given on what to add. We also hadn't completely finished the typography which we knew needed to be done. Lastly as we had added effects on some of the shots we had feedback that it looked odd that some were effected and some were not so considering adding effects to all shots would be a good idea.

Title Sequence Rough Cut

This is our rough cut for the title sequence in which we will present to the class to get feedback for our final sequence.

Credits

For our credits we will use the static effect that is portrayed throughout our title sequence and have them come in and out of shots in our white chosen font 'Phantom' that we downloaded from Dafont.com.
The order in which the credits are follows; 

Leading Actors:
Max Irons
Idris Elba
Thandie Newton

Costume Design:
Dan Mahadu

Special Effects:
Jade Northen

Music:
Ryan McCann

Editor:
Frankie Christou

Director:
Guy Ritchie

Film Title:
Anarchy

Production Log

This is our production log which has all the information about each time we filmed.

Production Diary 4

Today (Monday 2 March) Dan came to our school after hours to film our final shots we needed to finish off. Frankie acted as the politician being held hostage as we couldn't find a suitable student after hours. This turned out to be our most productive filming time so far. We captured a lot of shots. We used a spare dark drama room and as our setting and really played around with the angles and lighting in the room which gave off the hostage scenery we wanted to perfection. By playing around with the shots we managed to add in a bit at the end where Dan is tapping the camera during the end of the scene wearing his gas mask , this turnt out great when it was put together with the rest of the footage and edited as it allows the audience to interact with the sequence. To the right is a short clip from what we done today;

Production Diary 3

Filming
Today (Saturday 28th February) Me, Frankie, our actor Dan and another actor Steven we used went back to Leak Street London to get more shots that we needed for out title sequence. We took a list of things that we needed to get on with in order to get most of our footage from this location. The weather was appropriate for the day by there being clear skies and no rain or weather that distracted us from filming. We used a DSLR and go pro to capture our footage. The go pro camera was used for a shot where we kidnapped a politician by putting a bag over his head, by using go pro it made it more effective.















We used the DSLR for other shots like our actors running towards and away from the camera wearing a gas mask and hospital masks.

 We managed to capture a clip of Dan dragging a baseball bat along the gate wearing his gas mask which is what we wanted and also a clip of him dragging to bat up a slope on the underpass where we would track him with the camera handheld last time. We successfully got what we needed at Leak Street for today and as it is covered as it is an underpass the weather didn't effect any of our filming.  We also captured the spray paint shot that we didn't manage to get before, it wasn't as good as we had hoped but we still included it. Here are some pictures from the day:

We later went back to the houses of parliament and captured the bus shot that we didn't manage to get in focus last time. 

Production Diary 2

Filming
Today (Monday 23rd February) we filmed our news report using Mr Grimsley as the news reporter. We used the green screen so we could edit it later and make it look like a news studio so it is more realistic. We planned to do two new reports inside and one outside where he would be on a London 'street' reporting the riots but as it was raining that day and we didn't have the right props we decided to film three 'studio' reports. We shot a storming of the new studio which we thought ended up being better as it is a better way to end the violence and anarchy.

Here is one the shots that we filmed today;

Production Diary 1

Filming
Today (Saturday 7th Feb) Me, Frankie and our actor Dan went to London to start filming our title sequence. The aim of this journey was to make sure the location we had thought of was what we expected and to try and capture some of our opening  shots we had drawn out for our storyboards. We travelled to Leak Street underpass under Waterloo East station. We managed to capture a clip of Dan dragging a baseball bat along the gate wearing his gas mask which is what we wanted and also a clip of him dragging to bat up a slope on the underpass where we would track him with the camera handheld. We successfully got what we needed at Leak Street for today and as it is covered as it is an underpass the weather didn't effect any of our filming. Unfortunately due to not being able to make the stencil yesterday we couldn't film a spray paint shot that we hoped too but will do it the next time we go to film. Being at Leak Street it gave us potential ideas in which we could use certain  areas for our violent footage. Here are some pictures from the day:

 

We also went to the houses of parliament in order to gain some shots of the publics feet, big ben, the houses of parliament itself and a bus driving past. The weather was what we hoped for this shot but we couldn't seem to capture what we wanted at this location as it was too busy. This is a photo we took that wasn't what we hoped but is a rough idea of what we may have wanted to get.

Song choice

Me and Frankie both agreed on the found on onhttps://audionetwork.lgfl.org.uk after hours of research. We feel it has a distorted kind of feel to it so it matches our theme carried out throughout the title sequence.

It is called head on collison;
https://audionetwork.lgfl.org.uk/show-production-results.aspx?stype=4&keywords=head+on+collision+

Animatic

This is the Anamatic Title Sequence made from our story boards with the soundtrack attached

Story boards of idea

These are our storyboards for our title sequence. We will follow this in order to capture each of then   shots in this order.

Prop we ordered

In our title sequence we want our main character to be wearing this gas mask so we ordered it to use which relates well to our storyline and fits our genre.

Typography

We chose seven different fonts that we may use for our title in our title sequence from dafont.com. We then sent it around the class for people to vote on and finally decided on...

 it came second in the vote but we feel it could relate to the CCTV footage we are going to use in our title sequence the other one that most people voted for looked more like a sci-fi font.

http://www.dafont.com/phantom-zone.font?text=anarchy

Final Pitch Video

This is us pitching our final idea for our title sequence with all the feedback corrected.

Final Pitch

This is our final pitch with all the feedback added.

Apply Todorovs theory to our synopsis

Equilibrium- The government in Britain is corrupt and tension is building. The NHS is being cut off and people have to start paying or their own help and innocent people are being thrown into prison and being prosecuted for peaceful protests.

Disequilibrium-  A violent group emerge and take charge in order to form a revolution to over throw the current government. A massive fight against the police occurs and lives are lost.

New Equilibrium- The anarchists storm the houses of parliaments and manage the over throw the current government. Democracy is restored into Britain.

Feedback from pitch

Here are the feedback sheets that Mr Grimsley and the class watching our pitch filled out in order for us to gain opinions on our idea.
We can see from what has been written that we
-made our target audience too low as people older than 25 may still enjoy this type of film.
-We need to apply Todorov's theory (Equilibrium, Disequilibrium and new Equilibrium) to our narrative to make it more clear to understand what happens at different stages in the film as our synopsis was very short.
-Consider the budget of our film maybe the budget is too low?
-Research further into a production company for our film
-Clarify our genre
-Work out if our film is exclusivley British.
-confirm a title.

First Pitch video

This is a video of me and Frankie pitching our title sequence idea to the class in which we will gain feedback.

First Pitch of Title Sequence Befor Feedback

This is mine and Frankies first pitch for our title sequence idea which includes everything that will be included in our title sequence. We was given feedback and will re-draft our pitch on the comments we were given back.

Planning

When given the task of creating a title sequence me and Frankie instantly mind mapped what we thought we would add into our title sequence including the location and props.

Narrative Plan

This is our narrative plan for our title sequence. We had three names and finally decided on anarchy and used Todorvovs theory to explain our Narrative. We have also mentioned our character profiles and other key features that are going to be included.

Danny Yount

This is a PowerPoint on Danny Yount a title sequence designer, we looked into to him to get ideas of what to add into our title sequences.

Introduction to course

Introduction

For AS media we have been set a task to create our own title sequence either alone or in a group. We have to come up with everything we would include in our film and create a pitch in order to start filming. The pitch should include a synopsis, target audience, release date, age certificate, actors, budget  etc.

The OCR specification says;

The purpose of this unit is firstly to assess candidates’ ability to plan and construct media products using appropriate technical and creative skills (AO3); secondly to assess candidates’ application of knowledge and understanding in evaluating their own work, showing how meanings and responses are created (AO2); and finally to assess candidates’ ability to undertake, apply and present appropriate research (AO4). The unit requires candidates to engage with contemporary media technologies, giving them the opportunity for development of skills in these technologies.

This is a coursework unit, internally assessed and externally moderated. Candidates produce a media artefact in response to briefs set by OCR plus some appropriate evidence of research and planning. The task provides progression from a pre-production, preliminary exercise to a more fully realised piece in the same medium. This offers the opportunity for skills development to be assessed, as well as a final finished piece.

Title Sequences

S etting- when and where it is set.

T hemes- mood and what the film is about.

I conography- props or visual elements.

N arrative- what the story is about.

C haracters- key characters shown.

S tyle- cinematography, sound, font, editing.

History of Title Sequences

A title sequence is the method by which cinematic films or television programs present their title, key production and cast members, or both, utilising conceptual visuals and sound.

Why do you have a Title Sequence?

To give you an insight on the film and keep you watching. First impressions are everything so having an effective title sequence will keep the audience watching. 

Codes and conventions of a title sequence

-Credits

-the films title (different typography)

-introduction to character or type

-indication of setting

-indication of historical period

-information regarding mood & tone

-introduction to signature soundtrack

-information about genre

-questions to the viewer that they find intriguing (sets up enigma)

-patterns of editing that will be echoed in the remainder of the film

-mise en scene and cinematography