Welcome

Welcome to my blog. I hope you enjoy following how our media production gradually developed through the production stage. In order to access our work easily you can click on the links at the top of my blog page and there you will find the work completed in chronological order (the oldest post will at the bottom and vice versa.)

About

I am Hayden Woodcock, currently study AS Media, and a member of the Green Box Production Team with William Guy and Hubert Osinski. During this blog, I will be posting regularly by updating this through recent activities, successes and negatives of our production, as well as importing the planning and research tasks that we had to complete in order to reach our final production. I will mostly be exploring the role of the director, however I will also be developing my knowledge as a Producer and I will complete tasks that will beneficially effect my organisational and leading skills.

Final production-'After Time'

This is the final version of our Film opening, since the draft version we have made a number of small tweaks following advice from different audiences.

Credits:
https://freesound.org/people/rhodesmas/sounds/321723/ (CC Attribution)
https://freesound.org/people/klankbeeld/sounds/178374/ (CC Attribution)
https://www.freesound.org/people/Robinhood76/sounds/94816/ (CC Attribution Non commercial)
https://www.freesound.org/people/FoolBoyMedia/sounds/321089/ (CC Attribution Non Commercial)

Question 7-Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? (Hubert)

Question 6- What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? (Will)

Question 5- How did you attract your audience? (Shared)

We all worked on this task collaboratively

Question 4- Who would be the audience for your media production? (Hayden)

Question 3- What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? (Will)

Question 2-How does your media product represent particular social groups (Hayden)

Question 1-In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (Hubert)

Examples of some of the conventions we’ve used can be seen in the film ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’. During the first minutes of the film there is a news report, within the dystopian genre this is used to make it clear to the audience what disaster occurred before the time in which the film is set. Also during the first minutes of the film Mad Max is seen alone on a desolate landscape which is another convention of Dystopia. We have also decided to challenge the famous convention of an anti-hero; an anti-hero is a protagonist who does not show conventional resemblance to typical conventional heroic characters. This couldn’t be seen through the typical aspects of an anti-hero as the film opening wasn’t long enough for us to explore the idealistic features of the character, his courage and his morality, though it can be seen through other conventions we have used. One of the conventions which supports the convention of an anti-hero is that he is an isolated character that is alone throughout the opening and is also being chased by scavengers, this connotes that the character is too fixed on his own objective and too stubborn to let anybody help him, which is all true. We have also effectively followed conventions of our sub-genre: Thriller. We have considered Thriller conventions carefully whilst editing our production, our use of quick changes in camera angles were a great way of showing disruption to the audience. The setting itself is also conventional of a Thriller as confined spaces make the character seem isolated trapped within this area (which is what we were aiming for and succeeded in our aims through our set of an abandoned toilet).

Production (Draft)

Establishing shot

In this establishing shot you can see: a rucksack, tin cans, newspapers and typical toilet facilities. The use of the rucksack connotes that he moves from location to location, representing the lawless society and the binary opposite of good vs evil. Secondly, the use of the tin cans connotes a food source but the fact that they are empty represents the lack of nutrients and the characters struggle to not face hunger (which follows a conventional theme within a Dystopia.) Thirdly, the newspapers connote an abandoned toilet because this subverts against a typical modern day toilet as you would expect to see most of the mirror. We were initially going to use blood but we did not have any in time. This would have been more effective in creating suspense and making the opening more gruesome.
This setting is connoted as grimy, which is positive because we want to connote a negative future. Also, it emphasises the lack of buildings because he wouldn't be sleeping in this location if there were better options. Furthermore, the colour of brown, white and green also helps to exaggerate the connotations of a disgusting location and I think they work well in producing a darker overall result, possibly resembling the Thriller genre more. I think that this shot was successful because it clearly established the setting, as the audience could get a real sense for the sub-genre. Additionally, we chose this high angle to create a sense that this was significant because it connoted that the setting was being watched. Also this angle was practically positive since it enabled more of the performance space to be seen by the audience, hopefully increasing their understanding.

Shots that we decided not to use...

Shooting Schedule

Audience feedback on production 1

I have completed this to show what our formal and informal target audience are appealed by and what they think could be improved or changed.

22nd January 2016

This week we continued our filming, we faced a problem because we have not got the bandages or the cardboard box yet, so we had to really think about the shot types, so that we could leave space for these props. Secondly, we were struggling  with the running scene because we were initially going to do a long shot of the protagonist being chased, but this didn't really work, so in the end we decided to do a tracking shot. At first, I struggled to film this because Hubert was running too quickly so the camera was shaking, so I had to rearrange the way I held it and we had to slow down in order to make it look effective. Nevertheless, on the film the fact that this shot is not the steadiest is effective in my opinion because it connotes that he is being chased and the hallucination. Finally, this week we have developed some of our ideas, for example, we have decided that we should cut out the eyeline match of Hubert looking at his watch  (which is off-screen) and then a close up of the watch, because I could not vision this shot as effective, and we all thought that it would negatively break up the tension. We face another challenge because we still have not found suitable sound that can juxtapose the shots and help to build up the tension.

Friday 15th January 2016

During this week our production has developed in the way that we have filmed many shots and uploaded them onto Final Cut, but they are yet to be edited because we have unsurprisingly not filmed in shot order. We faced a difficultly as we could only film certain shots at a time meaning that we had to be as precise as possible when putting the tin cans up on the second day of filming. As we do not have the bandages and the radio we had to be careful what we were getting in every shot because we obviously want to leave space for these props. In todays lesson we just caught up on where we were in the research and planning stages so that we can complete everything soon and we also scanned in the actor release form.

Model release form

BBFC Institutional regulations

Shooting Script