Focus Group Email

Now that Hayden has been able to confirm the details of the focus group I have sent this email out to our participants.

Audience Survey Analysis

I have analysed the results of our audience survey

Production Log: 27/11/15

Today Hayden made a mind map of costume and prop ideas and we discussed how we are going to organise a focus group. I wrote an email draft which is ready to be sent out to our participants once the arrangements are confirmed and Hayden emailed Jenny to organise a room for one lunchtime to conduct the focus group. We also looked over what other research tasks we would like to complete and assigned them to members of our team.

Costume and prop ideas

Hayden has made a mind map of our ideas for props and costumes in our production.

Production Log: 24/11/15

Today I continued with the survey analysis for part of the lesson. We also decided to look at a possible filming location. We surveyed the location and the problems that it could present to us while filming and we tried to come up with solutions to these problems as well as deciding how we could make the location look as we wanted it to with lighting and props. This led us on to beginning to plan out the beginning of our production in a little more detail than we had previously gone in to. I am feeling fairly confident about the deadline at this point because effectively splitting the research work has allowed us to complete it in good time and now that the research phase is beginning to draw to a close we will soon start to draw up our final plans (including storyboards, scripts, etc...) and then we will (hopefully) start recording the first takes of our production before the Christmas break.

Production Log: 23/11/15

Today I completed the form research and uploaded it and then I closed the audience survey and started to analyse the results. We also discussed possible filming locations but we are concerned over the logistics of filming in many of the locations suggested by members of the group.

Form Research

I have completed some research on the moving image format

Audience theories

Hayden has completed some research on audience theories

Filming Research

Hubert has completed some technical research on filming skills.

Production Log: 17/11/15

Today I continued work on my form research. Everyone in our group is currently working on separate tasks.

Production Log: 16/11/15

Today, I started my form research and our teacher gave us a guide on doing genre research, which Hayden has started to work on now.

Editing Research

I have completed some research on different types of editing. Below is what I have learnt

Analysis: Mad Max: Fury Road (By Hubert Osinski)

Mad Max: Fury Road (Textual Analysis)

The opening of the film is a plain black screen with the main protagonist, Max is narrating some of his past, telling the audience who he was and what the world has come to with cuts between his voice and the news. We some footage of a strong wind breaking trees edited in with a fade effect whilst the radio says “We have become half-life” (non-diegetic), this connotes that the destruction was from a natural cause which was most likely influenced by humans. We realise that it’s the protagonist speaking because he says “My name is Max” during the narration. The audience can only hear Max’s dialogue with the purpose of the audience creating their own picture of what the world looks like. Beginning a film with a black screen builds suspension and makes the audience more curious and eager as for what they’re going to be presented with. Diegetic sound is used to create the effect of loneliness and emptiness. This is shown through the whistling of the wind which connotes the lack of human activity else we would hear very human sounds like chatter, footsteps, and cars.

Production Log: 11/11/15

Today I finished the technical research and showed the rest of the team v2 of the ident. We also sent out some emails asking for feedback on the new ident.

Ident v2

I have made another version of the Ident based on feedback from my team. It shares many similarities to v1 but we have made the text smaller and placed it all below the box because we think that it is much tidier. We also removed the glow from around the text because it is flatter and cleaner which is in keeping with current design trends where designers are favouring flat design over "Skeuomorphic Design" (as shown in the picture below)

(Click for larger)

I would welcome any feedback on v2 and which design you prefer!

(Click here to see my post about v1)

Credit for the music:
"The Curtain Rises" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Production Log: 10/11/15

Today I continued with my technical research in the lesson after adding some more explanation to my ident blog post in response to teacher feedback. I also made some improvements to my textual analysis of the Saw II opening in my own time.

Production Log: 9/11/15

Today I started by checking the responses to the audience survey and showing the responses so far to my team. Then I started some technical research into editing. My team members are also doing technical research into other technical elements of our production

Audience Survey Update

Last Friday (06/11/15) I sent out the main audience survey after the feedback on our pilot survey that I posted earlier in the week had been applied to it.

I am currently in a study period, so I decided to check on the responses so far and I am happy to report that we have had 11 responses over the weekend and I am hoping that now people are back in school, more responses will come in soon.

Pilot Survey Evaluation

Initial ideas

Throughout the production process so far we have been keeping a document where we list our ideas as they come to us. Below you can see some of our groups ideas so far.

Dystopia Conventions

We have decided that our protagonist will follow stereotypes, for example he will be an anti-hero, having been forced or not having a choice about his position. Also, he will be more bothered about his survival, than the survival of the human race. Therefore, our protagonist would be identify with the selfishness element of the first conventional group while also meeting the conventions of characters in the second group

Nevertheless, we have also decided to subvert the convention of sci-fi elements as we do not have the budget to build the futuristic looking sets and special effects needed to connote a sci-fi setting to the audience.

Green Box Productions ident

This is my idea for the ident for our production company. I made the box animation in blender and the spotlight was created using a bump map effect in Sony Vegas.

We choose to use the colour green because it is gender neutral so nobody feels excluded from our productions. Green also has positive connotations with words such as 'go' and 'good' which are words we would like to be associated with our productions. The typography is a large sans serif font which makes it easy to read, this establishes a clear brand identity. The box motion makes it appear to grow, which connotes that we are growing and successful as a production company.

I would welcome any feedback!

Credit for the music:
"The Curtain Rises" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Thriller conventions research

We have decided that we will try to use fast paced editing and close-up shots of the protagonist to show his expressions and to connote his feelings. This would also follow the typical conventions because the audience will consider how they would react if the events shown in the film occurred in real life and this would be thrilling for them, creating audience pleasure


However, we have chosen to subvert the convention of black and white shots because we want to use yellow and green colours to connote the unhygienic nature of the opening setting.

Copyrighted music

Hubert has been listening to different music recently to try to think of something to use as the "radio music" in the production. He wants to use Like a Prayer by Madonna. This song is obviously subject to copyright restrictions so he tried to contact someone to get permission. We are not realistically expecting to be granted these rights but we decided that it was worth a try!