What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing

this product?

How successful is your opening sequence?

The opening sequence was mediocre. There were some good elements to it but
there were not so great moments. The mise en scene needs to be improved
because certain elements to it werent as clear such as costumes of the
characters; the hoods costume needs to be more detailed and actually represent
a stalker like figure. In our opening sequence there was a noticeable jump cut
where Sina leaves the train station and there are a few continuity errors as well,
which has mainly got to do with the editing done.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge
appropriate generic codes and conventions?
Our opening sequence follows the theory of Todorovs. He believes that all
narratives have a structure where there is peace and harmony in the beginning,
disruption in the middle which leads to the problem being solved and everyone
happy again by the end. Our sequence follows that by having Sina and Tiana in
the beginning talking and just being happy in general. Then it leads to Sina going
to the train station to check her oyster and leaving and thats when we see the
hood following her; thats the disruption. As Sina is walking to where shes going
she has the hood following her which is the realisation, where she realises
someones following her since she is also receiving creepy text messages. The
opening sequence ends which Sina turning around to see the hood walking
towards her and that is also the disruption because the peace and harmony has
been disrupted. Since our opening sequence is a thriller we have thriller
elements in our sequence such as enigma codes. Enigma codes help us to
engage in the story, it makes us want to know the answer to all the mysterious
things happening. In the sequence you can also hear music which is quite tense,
it first starts of as normal music but as the sequence goes on the music changes
which conforms to the thriller genre. Also since our film is a neo-noir it also
conforms to the thriller genre because some thriller films are like that e.g. Sin
City. We have challenged the thriller genre by having a bright neon yellow colour
as the font of the title of out film. Usually thriller films have a red colour or a dark
dirty colour so you know its a thriller. But our opening sequence challenges that
idea and makes it a different colour. The characters are quite clich since they
conform; the antagonist has a hidden identity and goes out to seek revenge.
Their identity would be revealed at the end usually and during the film the
audience would try to identify the person.

How close to your original vision is it?

Our opening sequence has slight altercations to what we wanted in the first
place. Our ideal opening sequence was having four girls including Becky as the
protagonist having a friendly conversation outside school and then Becky leaving
to go on the train to go home. As she goes to the train station she is followed by
The Hood, which we dont know the identity of but it is someone who Becky
had previously bullied. Becky gets to the train station the same time as The
Hood, goes through the barriers and each go to a different platform. They both
get to their platforms and The Hood starts to send creepy text messages such as
I can see you, Look in front of you. The opening sequence ends up with a
train going past the platform The Hood is on and him disappearing as Becky
looks up and the other platform. The things that were changed in the ideal
opening sequence were characters, location and script. Ideally there were 5
characters in total in the opening sequence but now we only have 3. In the
improved one Becky is seen talking to one friend and The Hood is still there.
Location has changed to, it went from being outside school and being on the
platforms and the train station but we had to change the location due to not
getting permission to film in the train station, so instead we filmed Sina coming
outside of the train station which was allowed and we changed the location of
outside school to near Haggerston train station, going through the houses as if
she was going home. The script had to be adjusted due to the lack of characters I
the opening sequence, there is barely any dialogue now but there is
communication via text messages.
What are your next steps? How are you going to improve it? Who, what, when,
where, how?
Improvements we are going to make for filming is not to re film everything but
certain scenes such as Sina coming out of the train station, since there is a jump
cut there and it cant be edited to make it run smoothly with the rest of the
sequence. Camera angles also need to be improved. At the handheld part the
camera was a bit shaky and it was noticeable so thats another scene need to be
reshot. When we do filming it will be a time where we are all free which will be
during a free period in school or outside of school hours. In our feedback from
the class there were comments to add Foley into our opening sequence to make
it more effective, so we will try to include some Foley while we edit. The filming
doesnt need much improvements but it could be better, its our editing that
needs to be more focused on. In our feedback one of our comments were to fix
the titles because they kept going off screen. We did try to fix that, it wasnt a
problem when we watched the sequence of Final cut but on Youtube there was,
so we will have to look more into that. Also we got comments like the yellow
doesnt compliment the colour black or it didnt go together, but the whole point
of the two colours is that it was unusual but there were In contrast of each other.
So that is something that will remain the same. Another comment was there are
blurry shots which will be fixed in the re shooting of certain scenes. During the
editing of our rough cut it was a little bit rushed and since our group hasnt done
media and it was our second time editing since our Preliminary task, it would be
a good idea to carefully go through each section to edit and add what we need to
add e.g. Foley or music or credits.