TUESDAY 17TH SEPTEMBER Over my first couple of lessons I have learnt about the 7 main key concepts of media, in the form of IRACING. This stands for Institution, Representation, Audience, Construction, Ideology, Narrative and Genre. I have also started helping to create our website with my group and have added my own blog to record my time with the group. In addition, I learnt how to add buttons, a navigation system, YouTube videos and images to make the website look more professional. In order for our horror film to be successful, we need to use a variety of different angles to convey meaning in our film.
TUESDAY 25TH SEPTEMBER Over the past few lessons, me and my group have created a short little sequence called "The Exchange" where two men fight over who gets the girl, an exchange in relationships if you will. I believe the sequence didn't go out well as planned and we can learn from these mistakes. Some of the don'ts of horror include not swearing, no unnecessary background noises and so forth. My group also constructed a GoAnimate video informing these do's and don'ts of horror, and it can be found on the respective "Do and don'ts of horror" webpage on our website. Finally, I learned about the 360 degree camera angle rule and put this to work on our preliminary task which was to film two people taking part in a conversation. We needed to film behind the person who isn't talking's shoulder to make the discussion more apparent or else it looked like the two aren't even talking to each other.
WEDNESDAY 15TH OCTOBER Over the past few theory lessons I have learned a lot in terms of the basic concepts of film work. First of all, I have learnt about camera angles and the diagram on the left depicts the types of angles you may have. Some of these angles can show a hidden meaning as in a low angle shot could show a person looking up at another which could show that the latter is more high class and dominant and therefore the former is shown as weak and helpless. This swiftly leads me into the next part of theory, which is gender stereotyping. Stereotyping is when something, whether it be gender, age or religion is portrayed in quite a risque manner. For example, a teenager stereotype would be all moody and always get into trouble by breaking society's laws, in which we all know that not all teenagers are like that. In terms of gender stereotyping, the male is usually always seen as the dominant gender and in media are usually seen as powerful and show no fear. On the polar opposite, females are seen as helpless and weak, inferior to the alpha male. Keeping this in mind, our opening sequence will attempt to break this trend and offer something unique. Last of all, I have learnt about representation. Media representations are the ways the media portrays particular groups, communities, experiences, ideas or topic from particular ideological or value perspective. There are four types of this: Age, Gender, Ethnicity and Social Class. We'll need to take this into account to make sure, like with stereotyping, we do not fall down this road and offend people who may be sensitive to any one of these groups. WEDNESDAY 19TH NOVEMBER We are now at a point where we have started actual filming for our final opening sequence. We have had a few ideas tossed around here and there but our final idea is that we have a killer who is afraid of asking a woman out for a date so he works in the shadows to eliminate the beautiful women. Our working title here is Gynophobia, which is a fear of women. I have brought up the idea that we should base our opening sequence on the movie se7en as I believe the opening sequence of that relates to our killer working in the shadows and circling pictures of women in books whereas shots of several drawings are used in se7en. I have also started to compose my own original soundtrack for our opening sequence using a software called soundation. This is because otherwise our opening sequence may infringe copyright but in the cosmic scheme of things I believe this will make our OTS more unique.
FRIDAY 12TH DECEMBER As of this blog post, we have completed half of the filming for our OTS and edited the same amount in Final Cut Pro, which is our desired editing software. I took the lead in editing and I have collected all of our clips together and added old film and greyscale effects over them to give them the dark and mysterious look that will make it more effective to the audience. I was also able to get one audience interview complete but we need more in order to finish that side project.
MONDAY 12TH JANUARY With a new addition to my group as well as the one we acquired in November, we have been able to make more progress than before. First of all, more of our filming is complete and we are down to the last couple of shots. We've had the idea to collect women's magazine and do the same to those as with the books but the types we had in mind were a bit too much for a horror film. I also had the idea to use a headless doll to cut open and pretend to stab which the group agreed and went with. In terms of editing, I have edited more of the new clips together and with some help, implemented some title credits with some rather interesting effects. I have also finalised my soundtrack and I believe it fits the atmosphere efficiently and adds the tension that has already arisen in the OTS.