To the Moderator,

On the left hand side you'll find everything you need to get around here; a little bit about me, a list of useful links including my group blog and teachers blog, what my posts are labelled as and the archive.

Here you will find all the indepedent research I did beforehand and the research I did at the beginning of the project. There is also a post on the preliminary task we completed at the beginning of the year, and seven posts on my evaluation of the main task, which I completed once our opening sequence was finished. At the top of the page I have also added the videos for my preliminary and main task, alllowing you to view the videos easily.

All my posts have been ordered chronologically, so it may be easier for you to start from my very first post and read them backwards, scrolling upwards instead downwards.
Thank you for visiting my group's blog and my personal blog, I hope you will enjoy reading them!

Jeng Au
Candidate No: 2060

1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media proucts?

'Glitch' uses, and develops many stereotypical forms of real media products while challenging many of the same and other forms at the same time. I have split this answer into four sections in order to describe each clearly; genre, narrative structure, form and style.

Genre

The genre of our film 'Glitch' would be Sci-Fi Action with a strong element of computer hacking. We first decided that we wanted to create a film focusing on hacking and we have generally stuck with this throughout the past three months.

In order to follow the stereotype of a hacker we created the teenage male hacker protagonist who is a fan of computer games, fantasy novels, technology, similar to the main character seen in the 1997 film, 'Masterminds'. In order to show this we set up a room that we would expect him to live in, laying piles of books, magazines, dvds, positioning the odd quirky gadget such as a lava lamp or a rubik cube. To challenge the typical image of hackers we purposely chose a few actors who did not fit the teen male nerd image to play the hackers who he is communication with. For example, the hackers shown in our film are comprised of a just as many female as males, instantly opposing the common depiction of hackers in media products.

Part of the selling point of 'Glitch' is that it is recognisable, feeding off the success of previous hacking films such as the ones from the 'Matrix' triology to drive its own growth. Although our opening sequence does not have physical action which frequently appears in so many action films (apart from the clip of the main hacker being attacked) it does employ the basics of the genre; suspense, a clear divide betwen the "good" and the "bad", a strong, upbeat soundtrack and rapid camera movement.

Narrative Structure

Todorov: The plot of our film complies with Todorov's narrative structure of equilibrium that many media products use. Equilibrium; a standard day for the group, everyone is online and following the boss' orders. Disruption; the main hacker gets taken out causing panic within the team. Resolution; rookie hacker works together with his crush and friends in order to find the boss and everything reverts back to normal. In the opening sequence we are introduced to the equilibrium and the disruption, the rest of the film is working towards the resolution.

Vladimir Propp: Propp's character theory can be applied to several of our characters in the film, some of whom we do not see in the opening sequence.

• The hero, our rookie hacker. Despite the fact he is a nerdy teenager, we see much development of this character during the film. He becomes a young man capable of leading others in order to save the main hacker.
• The villain, the soldier who has attacked the main hacker.
• The victim is the lead hacker. He seems to dependable and authorative in the opening sequence, but by making him the victim, we have challenged the form of real media products who often place archetypical weak characters in the victim role .

Levi-Strauss: My selection of the most pronouced binary opposites to be found in 'Glitche's' opening sequence:

• noisy music vs. silence 
• silence vs. loud knocking
• male vs. female
• leader vs. subordinate
• confidence vs. uncertainty

Barthe: Our opening sequence incorporates many of Barthe's enigma codes which grabs the audience's attention, who will then continue watching the film as they would want to know the answer to the questions. Some of questions which the opening sequence places; what were they trying to hack into? Who was the masked man? What was his motive for attacking the main hacker? What will they do now? Who is at the door?

Jay Blumler & Elihu Katz: The audience would seek out media products for gratification purposes, such as enhancing knowledge, social interactions and simply for entertainment. 'Glitch' could easily fill these three categories, the hacking seen in our sequence could familiarise people with the concept of hacking, be a popular topic of conversation within our target audience and entertain. Aspects of the film could provide voeuristic pleasures for the people watching, such as the violence of the knockout, the shock of the knocking, the story's development.

Form

Typical function and features of an opening sequence:

• Introduces main characters.
• Captures the audience's attention, making them want to continue watching.
• States name of the film, production company, director, actors, etc. using titles.
• Establishes a genre.

Characters: The main character, known as "Noob" to his fellow hackers, is introduced, fulfilling one of the typical functions of an opening sequence. The audience also sees some of his online friends, all hackers, however, we do not see anyone seperate from the virtual world, therefore, not completely following the opening sequence function of introducing the main characters.


Attention: After our preview screening, our audience would exit asking us "Was the lead hacker alive?", "What happens next?", "Who was at the door?". This shows us that the sequence was able to catch their attention and they were eager to know what happens next.

Titles: We begin with the title of the film 'Glitch; on a plain black background. It is obvious that this is the name of the film as it is the first title and it uses a different animation from the other titles and is the only one that is not superimposed. Other titles such as 'Synapse Productions', 'Touchstone Pictures', 'A Raef Commissar Film', 'Nico Socratous' are spread throughout the opening sequence, superimposed onto appropiate shots.

Genre: Although our opening sequence does not have physical action which frequently appears in so many action films (apart from the clip of the main hacker being attacked) it does employ the basics of the genre; suspense, a clear divide betwen the "good" and the "bad", a strong, upbeat soundtrack and rapid camera movement. 

Style

Camera work: The scene that we researched in 'Masterminds' ,after we had planned much of our camera work, where the young hacker is pirating a new game, had good examples of camera angles and movement, such as tilted shots, focus pulls, pans, close ups which we noticed matched many of the shots in our own media product. Many of our shots were close ups so we often had to hand hold our camera in order to get the framing correct, although we couldn't use the tripod at multiple points because of the lack of space in the room. With shots that were mid shots, such as the shot of typing from behind from 0:27 and the shot at 0:59, we filmed while on the tripod. All the webcam shots are also from a tripod as we would expect a webcam to be stationary in reality. Comparing shots from 'Mastermind' and 'Glitch':

Soundtrack/ Dialogue: The soundtrack is uncopyrighted music. It is upbeat with a distinctive technologic style. The dialogue that plays alongside the music is spoken by the main hacker, it allows us to show the audience who is in charge and it gives them a general idea of what is going on, as the audience's understanding is very important in media products, if the audience understands then they are more likely to enjoy the film.

Graphics: One of the other clips we researched was from 'Matrix Reloaded' (2003), specifically the scene in which Trinity hacks into and destroys the backup station while contacting Link in the "real world". We took inspiration from the graphics that are on the computer that Trinity hacks. Link is sitting in front of many screens, some with the trademark matrix scrolling screen code with wires hanging everywhere. We researched 'Matrix Reloaded' in order to create and develop a similar effect and design, instead of choosing to challenge the style.

Titles: The titles that we used in the opening sequence were chosen because they harmonize with the sci-fi aspect of the film. Here are some of the titles are seen within the opening sequence:

Colours: A blue tinge was given to the sequence as we wanted to create a distinctive sci-fi technological atmosphere within the rookie hacker's bedroom.

Pace: Purposely rapidly paced as we wanted to create an action style sequence, despite it just being a "boy typing in his bedroom". It needed to be gripping, something that would make the audience see the protagonist as "a genius young hacker breaking into top security files" instead of just a "boy typing in his bedroom". By editing the clip so that the pace builds up and slows down such as real media products do, we were able to manipulate the way the audience perceive the sequence.

2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The representation of certain social groups are often manipulated by real media products, sometimes they follow the stereotype, sometimes they challenge it and at other times they develop the idea.  Our product incorporates characters that can follow, challenge and develop.

The social group we focus on in 'Glitch' is hackers. We wanted to represent hackers as more than just young white males who wear glasses, despite the fact that this is what our main character is. Here are the actors who played during the opening sequence of our film. They were given the task of representing the social group of hackers as a group, but in their own individual ways.

Our main character, known as "Noob" to his fellow hackers, played by Nico Socratous. We decided to represent our main hacker as a teenage white male, therefore leading us to choose Nico. He does not wear glasses so this was part of the costume. His hair is also styled so that is messier as we wanted to connote that stereotypical hackers are generally quite laidback and don't really care so much about their appearance.

Robbie Lardi plays the lead hacker who is attacked by a mysterious uniformed man. The reason we chose Robbie is because of his confident, authoritative voice, since he is the only character speaking throughout the opening sequence we needed someone who would be able to capture the attention of the audience while commanding the hackers. Robbie was able to fulfill the role of the lead hacker extremely well.

As you can see, with all the hackers together (not including the lead hacker) we have a equal distribution of males and females, this was decided in order to oppose the social representation that hackers and computer nerds are male.

Although all our actors are 16-18 year old, some look older than others and since we do not state their ages, they can easily pass for adults. Also we demonstrate that these hackers really know how to use this technology that they have. The lead hacker spews lines of strange words that a normal person would not understand, but these hackers are content with the information they are given, following his orders obediently. It is clear that the main hacker has chosen these people based on their abilities rather than gender, age or ethnicity.

We wanted to support the stereotype of hackers by having a protagonist who conformed to it while challenging it at the same time by showing a wide range of hackers, signifying that anyone could be a hacker, regardless of gender, age and ethnicity.

3) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

While producing our sequence we kept in mind what sort of production company we were and who would be distributing our films. Our production company was fictional but we chose a real distribution company who we thought would be likely to distribute our film and how they would do it.

Synapse Productions is a fictional company which we created to produce Glitch. Synapse produces sci-fi films with elements of action. Despite Synapse not producing films as large as blockbusters, their films are still larger than indie films, similar to the production company, Screen Gems, who have produced films such as Easy A, having only a budget of $8 million.

Glitch is to be distributed by Touchstone pictures which owned by Walt Disney, although the Touchstone label releases films that typically have more mature themes, as ours does. Touchstone pictures is an American distributer and has worked with films such as The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005, a British-American film produced by Douglas Adams), Gone in 60 Seconds (2000, produced by Bruckheimer) and Nightmare Before Christmas (1993, a Tim Burton movie). Our film follows Todorov's theory of equilibrium and is a "feel good" film, this is a typical choice of film for American distributers as these films are more successful on a whole. Although our film does follow many typical film conventions and stereotypes, it also breaks some, such as the the hacker character archetype.

Our film will have a worldwide release, with a global appeal since technology fans are to be found globally. An advertising campaign using mainly Web 2.0 would be ideal since our film will be most attractive to those familiar with technology themselves and advertising online would address these tech-fans directly. After the film has been exhibited in cinemas worldwide for a maximum of 2 months before being released on DVD and Blu-ray. At the same time, digital copies of Glitch should be made available for streaming or purchase through sites such as iTunes and Netflix, it would also be appropiate to make the film available for hire through LoveFilm and Blockbuster. Eventually Glitch will be exhibited on TV, premiered on Sky Movies.

4) Who would be the audience for your media product?

Choosing a target audience allowed us to make choices easier, since we would obviously choose whatever appealed to that audience. Although our film has a global appeal, it would be difficult to please everyone, so within the world, we chose a certain category of people who we thought our idea would be the most attractive to and continued working from that point.

Target audience

Age: 16-25

Gender: Both male and female

Nationality: English speaking countires

Lifestyles: People who enjoy and understand using technology such as students and young adults.

Genre preference: Sci-fi with elements of action

Film consumption habits: Prefers to watch in cinema with a group of people or will buy/rent the DVD to watch comfortaly at home.

Expertise: Technology, ranging from people just using the internet for Facebook and minigames, to the more experienced and skilled users.

There is a broad audience for this film as it has a worldwide appeal. The film will be targeted at technology-familiar young adults of both genders, seeing as males and females enjoy using technology equally in modern day. Advertising online using Web 2.0 would be considerably cheaper than advertising on billboards, magazines or TV and would reach the target audience far more effectively. Since the audience is familiar with technology. We would assume that the audience own a TV, a DVD player and possibly a Blu-ray player which would mean they are more likely to buy DVDs and Blu-rays films. I would expect the film to do well globally, especially parts of the world such as Europe and the USA as many teenages in these countries would be able to relate to rookie hacker's lifestyle. The fan base of the film should grow overtime as information about the film travels through word of mouth, mostly through the internet I would expect.

5) How did you attract/ address your audiences?

By keeping our target audience in mind we were able to mould our product to appeal to them. This way we will be able to sell our film effectively and produce as much profit as possible. Our film has a very broad appeal, one of the main reasons for this is its use of technology.

Soundtrack: The soundtrack is uncopyrighted music. It is upbeat with a distinctive technologic style which suits the typical modern teenager's music preference and would therefore be attractive to the typical modern teenager, who are a major part of our target audience.

Technology: By incorporating technology into the film, we have captured the general interest of teenagers who enjoy using and are familiar with technology.

Characters: Our protagonist is a young male adult, someone that our target audience can relate with since they also young male adults.

Editing: It begins with slow shots in order to allow the audience to register the theme of the clip. From there the shots begin getting faster, editing becomes faster paced but we begin to make it slower just before the officer attacks. Doing this gives impact to the attack as the audience would not be expecting this to happen while everything seemed to be going so well.

We held a screening of our film opening within our school and we asked the audience to fill in a short questionnaire afterwards, this allowed us to gather feedback on our film opening.

In order to attract students from our school to our screening, I produced a poster, bearing in mind that it would be stuck up around in a busy school where students are unlikely to stop and read signs on the walls. The title of the film is clearly stated in the centre of the poster, with a location, time and date underneath is clear bold font making it easy to read. The background has some simple green code fading into black, this is done so that it does not draw the eye away from the important information while making the technological theme obvious. I positioned the posters strategically, putting more posters in areas where older students passed by, such as outside the Sixth Form common room, and less where younger students passed by, like the Year 7 and 8 Form room corridors, since our film is not aimed at a younger audience. Younger students were still welcome to come, but we did not expect too many of them to turn up.

As a large percent of teenagers use social networking sites such as Facebook, we were able to use Web 2.0 to invite students from our school to come to our screening by creating an "event".

We asked the audience to fill in some questionnaires after they had finished watching. By doing this we were able to spot a few things about our audience:

• Everyone was able to name the title afterwards, meaning that it was clear enough.
• Almost all could recognise what our target audience was.
• Many people within the audience were able to identify three distinct genres from our film opening; sci-fi, action, thriller.
• There were more people than I expected that could establish that our rookie hacker was a subordinate and that our boss hacker was the leader; almost all of them.
• People wanted to know "Is the lead hacker alive?" and "What happens next?".
• Something that people said could be improved if the attack of the main hacker, they thought it could be emphasised more.
• The graphics impressed our audience with comments that they looked "realistic and really professional".
• The music was well liked as it suited the genre well, helping build tension.

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

Using technology is a very important part of producing a media product so we had to learn about this technology in order to use it to the best of our abilities. I have learnt much by completing this product; using a camera, setting up lighting, working with many softwares (Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After Effects, Live Type etc.)

Camera: We were all shown how to perform a focus pull (using a small toggle on the side of the camera close to the lens) on the camera although Raef was the best at carrying this out so he has filmed the focus pulls within the opening sequence. The focus pull technique was applied to the shot where the phone is vibrating, but our protagonist ignores it. About 3 focus pulls were originally planned, one other being another phone focus pull, but we cut them out because they did not seem appropiate. If I had a chance to reshoot parts of 'Glitch's opening sequence I would try to make the shots more steady as I noticed a few jolted slightly when it was supposed to be stationary.

Tripod: The tripod was often too large and bulky to be used in shots as the room we were shooting in did not have much space after fitting three lights into it, so we often did without it. Handholding the camera was also more convenient when filming close ups. However for some midshots such as the shot of typing from behind from 0:27 and the shot at 0:59, we used the tripod to add viarity to our shots.

Lighting: As a member of our group, Raef, had prior experience with lighting, he explained to us the different types of lighting equipment and their function. Here is a Raef video explaining the setup used in our opening sequence test shoot, during our actual shoot we have three lights instead of one in order to reduce the graininess of the shots, although this did take up more space in the room. This was shot on the day of our test shoot.

Sometimes the lights would be taken off the stands in order to get the lighting effect that we needed. During shoots I was given the task of holding one of the lights or a reflector when necessary, if I wasn't directing or organising the shot. Some of the lights were quite heavy and was quite difficult to hold for long periods of time so we had to be considerate to anyone supporting them. The equipment also became quite hot and we had to be careful not to hold it incorrectly. At one point one during our shoot of the bulbs exploded, meaning we had to stop and clean up the shards of glass, although the glass had become so hot that it melted into the carpet. It also meant that we had to carry on with two lights instead of two.

Live Type: This is a software on the Apple Mac that we used to create the titles that were shown during the opening sequence. Together we wrote a list of names and titles that would be within the sequence, then Raef worked on this while Anna was editing and while I was animating graphics.

Adobe Premiere Pro: We had learnt the basics of Adobe Premiere Pro through the preliminary task so this time round we learnt some advanced aspects of Adobe Premiere Pro, such as grading and adding bandpasses, although this was done while I was animating.

For grading I was taught how to use the Three-Way Colour Corrector and ProcAmp which could be used to adjust the brightness, colour saturation, contrast and shadow colour in different shots. Grading was especially useful for when a shot did not look like it belonged in the sequence because if the different colours, or brightness.

Adobe Photoshop: Within Photoshop I composed graphics that would replicate a windows screen using screenshots of a real screen and Photoshop shape tools. This was something that I had learnt to do before this project so I was able to apply my knowledge to this aspect of the film opening. I also used Photoshop to design a poster that promoted the preview screening of the film.

Adobe After Effects: I then animated the graphics which I made in Photoshop so that it appeared as though the rookie hacker was typing and moving screens about. I did this by using the "typewriter" effect which made the text scroll, as though typing. Keyframes were applied for position and opacity in order to create the animation of on screen graphics. These were mostly skills that I learnt along the way; I've used After Effects before so I was familiar with shortcuts and functions of tools, but I had to learn about the effects and movement lines. If I had the chance to recreate the graphics, I would check the resolution they needed to be as I wasted time resizing the graphics when they turned out far too pixelated to use. 

Animating the graphics for the opening sequence was fairly simple after I'd learnt all the necessary tools, but very time consuming, as with any form of animation. My main focus for the editing peroid was to get the graphics sorted so while I was taught how to operate other programs such as Adobe Premiere Pro and Live Type, I was unable to practice these skills. Thankfully I had all of the graphics finished in time for the deadline.

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

During the time between the completion of my prelimiary task and the completion of the full product I have learnt much about planning, production and post-production.

Brief for preliminary task

Continuity task involving film and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/ he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.

Brief for main task

The titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes.

Why did we do  the preliminary task beforehand, and what did it teach me?

The preliminary task provided my group members with recap of using cameras, editing programs, functioning tripods and microphones. For me, it was a project through which I could learn all these things since I was new to the subject and had no experience. It made me to realise how much you actually need to plan before pulling a camera out and filming, which shots to film first, who actually needs to be in the shot, how many takes we might need, what angle to shoot it from. As the brief of the task was to film and edit a continuity task, we had to make sure the sequence made sense from the audience's point of view.

Pre-production

Storyboards: For our preliminary task we did not reference the storyboard as much as we should have but by making this mistake during the preliminary task I understood that the storyboard is extremely important for planning for a continuity sequence as it provides you with the first insight of how the sequence could look like. For our prelimary task we drew storyboards on sheets of paper, but in the main task we drew them on post-it notes, then stuck them onto large pieces of paper. Having post-it notes instead of pieces of paper allowed us to make changes easily. We also colour coded our post-it notes, using different colours for different shot types. During the time between our prelimary task and our main task our drawing skills improved meaning the storyboard was more understanderble.

Storyboarding before and now

Location: For the preliminary task we simply decided to use the school classrooms since our story was set in a school, however for the main task we needed a bedroom, so it a matter of choosing a room. I took a few pictures of my room and we decided to choose it mainly because the landing outside was quite long and we could film into the room from outside. It didn't matter too much that the set was not how we wanted it because we planned to design and dress it on the day of the shoot.

Shot list: We wrote shot lists for both the preliminary and main task as we found that they were a great way of keeping track of what we had done. It also saved time by putting shots in the order to film them in, meaning we didn't have to dicide this within shots.

Permissions: Since the preliminary task was shot in a classroom, we simply had to check that the classroom for available for use at the time we needed it so it was simple enough to get permission to film in it. The main task was shot in a bedroom so I asked my family what they would be doing that day and if a media shoot would get in the way, everyone seemed fine with this.
  

Production

Shot logs: During our preliminary task we did not record our shots on shot logs but for our test and final shoot we started recording what we have shot already. This allowed us to stay organised and therefore save time from looking through the shot list. It also saved time when we were capturing because we could easily type in the time codes we recorded and Adobe Premiere Pro would automatically capture the footage between the two times for us without us having to watch through it.

Camera: I had learnt the basics through doing the preliminary task since I had not used these types of cameras before. There was little extra that I had to learn for the final shoot, apart from the focus adjustment, which was simple to carry out by toggling the button on the side of the camera by the lens.

Sound: Although we did learn about the shotgun mic and boom mic for use in the preliminary task, we did not need to them for most of the main task. Only for the lead hacker did we actually need sound as he was the only one speaking. However for shots with him typing we used a shotgun mic so that we could get some diegetic sound of typing, eating and drinking.

Lighting: Everything I have learnt about lighting was through the main task as we did not require lighting for the preliminary task.

Post-Production

Software: By carrying out the preliminary task our group has recapped on and learnt about how to use software such as Adobe Premiere Pro in preperation for the main task. For titles we used a program on the Apple Mac called Live Type which allowed us to create titles using animated fonts.

Ordering shots: We used basic editing, such as cutting and ordering clips, for our preliminary task as it only required this much to create a continuity sequence. In the main task we used a fade right at the beginning of the sequence to connect the two lava lamp shots.

Grading: This was something I had never used before the main task so I learnt the process of grading during the month before the deadline.

Teamwork

The teams that we were assigned to differed from the preliminary task to the main task. Overall my main task team has been enjoyable to work with and we have managed the work well between us, for example, during the shoot we first had Anna organising and recording shots, Raef working on lights and me filming, then when we would switch roles every so often.

We played to our strengths by choosing what we were good at and focusing on that; Raef with lights, Me with animation, Anna with organisation. The rest of the tasks were split between us depending on who had the time.