Evaluation Prezi

Here is a link to the Evaluation of my A2 Personal Production which has been done on Prezi.com

http://prezi.com/jd_9y9tw987z/

Audience response video

Here is a link to an audience response video we made for our evaluation.

http://ryancarmana2.blogspot.com/2010/05/audience-feedback.html

Final Production

This is our final production for A2 media

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVpt4-PiTQ8

Radio Trailers

Here is a link to the two radio trailers myself and Ryan Carman made together. Our plan is to distribute the trailers on local radio stations and hopefully on Internet ad's. 

http://ryancarmana2.blogspot.com/2010/05/radio-advert.html

Evaluation questions

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

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Facebook promotion

We decided as a group that our film needed some viral advertisement as viral advertising is free and easy to make. One method we have exercised for this is having created a facebook page that promotes our film that we can also invite people to view and become fans of the film. We hope that this way of promotion will attract more people and hopefully spread to even more over time. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Rock-Bottom/359508851643?created

Synoptic Review

This is a synoptic review of some of the aspects of our media project.

We decided as a group that we would publish our film on the internet video site "Youtube". The reasons we decided this include that by putting our film on the internet, our film would have as much a fair share of possible viewing as every other video on there because of how democratic the internet is in terms of having no single opinion on what should be uploaded and what should be viewed. This also means that our video will not need as much publicizing or advertisement if it were being shown at cinemas as cinemas need to think about the profit of showing film and web content does not. Without worrying about the money, websites are free to have any content uploaded giving it that extra bit of democratic freedom.

Uploading our film to the internet is also our preferred method of distribution because it is the most post-modern way to distribute our film. This is because of how democratic the internet is and how post-modern media is without elitism.

First Draft

The draft below is the first draft of our final film, problems with this first draft we found when people watched it was that lack of explanation as to why the character is playing this high stakes game and why the character did not drive even though he bets car keys in the game. We shall be adding footage to the first draft to hopefully fix these problems and hopefully this will lead to our final piece.

Our Draft for Final Project

Poster links

These are links to ryan carman's blog in which he has the finished film poster, screen shots of the poster being made and ryan's own comments on his work.
http://ryancarmana2.blogspot.com/2010/03/process-of-poster.html

http://ryancarmana2.blogspot.com/2010/03/poster-promotion-for-our-media-film.html

Here is the finished poster

Inspiring imagery

These are some images that represent some of the imagery that we are trying to create in our project. The above picture shows the basic imagery of a gambling card game and how the semiotics of it give off a cool yet energetic feel. The picture at the top represents the crime of our project and how things like certain stances show intimidation and facial expressions show danger, which are some of the more implicit visual we want to use rather then guns and hidden faces. The picture below is a representaion of the competion and tension between people in the game of poker and the intimidation one can feel facing a group of people in a situation such as this.

Radio trailer scripts

Myself and Ryan Carman have just finished recording the audio for our radio trailers and Ryan will begin editing the audio soon. We have decided that our radio trailer will be played on community radio as it will have more chance of reaching our target audience on a radio station that broadcasts to them. Radio scripts; This first script is for the first radio trailer which will be a deceptive trailer which parody's bank finance trailers that offer people a way out of debt.

"In debt?
Owe large amounts of money to dangerous people through illegal activities?
Why not consolidate all debt into one high stakes underground poker game and bet everything you own?
For more information, go to see Rock Bottom at Youtube.com"
This second script is for the actual trailer that will be broadcasted a few weeks after the first one has so that there is time for the first trailer to hook people in and get people interested . It will be this dialogue over the music we are using in our short film.

"When a man losses everything and his life is at stake, his only hope is to risk everything, on one hand. From the makers of "The Untrusted" comes a film about what it's like to hit.....ROCK BOTTOM. Coming to Youtube soon."

Radio Trailer Idea

After disscussing ideas with Ryan Carman as to what to do for our radio trailer as our film does not use dialouge, we have decided that we will create a deceptive radio trailer to get people interested in the film and also get people to look into the film out of curiousity that the deceptive trailer will create. For the deceptive trailer, we were thinking of doing a fake "bank finance" radio advertisement because one of the underline points of the film is money loss so a bank finance advert would relate to the film well.

Some examples of films using deceptive marketing include the Blair Witch Project, which made people think it was a real documentary, and The Fourth Kind, which claimed to be based on actual case studies and people which were later found to be untrue.
http://www.blairwitch.com/
http://www.thefourthkind.net/

Different Radio Types

BBC Radio 1: A national radio station

BBC Radio Norfolk: A local radio station

Future Radio: A community radio station

There are different types of radio which means choosing the right type for our film trailer so that it is heard by our target audience. One type of radio is community radio which are radio stations that broadcast for specific areas or people and are mostly not affiliated with commercial stations or advertising. The next type of radio is local radio which are radio stations that, in the u.k, broadcast to local countys. These stations are mostly commercially run and in Britain, the BBC have the largest chain of county radio staions. The other type of radio is national radio wich is always commercially run as the station needs commercial funding to broadcast nationally. National radio stations typically broadcast the most popular of things across the nation it operates in because it broadcasts to everyone and therefore gets the best response from broadcasting the most popular.

Radio Film Trailer

For the third product of our project, we have decided to make a radio trailer for our film. We decided this would be suitable as a different form of media compared to the two forms we have already done which are film and print. Radio film trailers are typically audio extracts taken from the film with a deep, husky voice narrating over it to create suspense. Because our film does not use dialouge, we will need to do something different to interest the radio listeners however we will probably keep the deep, husky voice so we can still create suspense.

Editing programme

Myself and ryan carman have decided that we will be using the film editing programme "Magix Movie edit Pro 12" instead of the default film editing programme on the Macs "Imovie". The reasons for this are that ryan carman, who is in charge of editing and technology, is more experienced with this programme and because the programme has a wider range of tools to use on the film.
Here is a link to ryan's posting about the editing software;
http://ryancarmana2.blogspot.com/2010/01/editing-software.html

Aspect Ratio

As Ryan Carman is in charge of the technical area of this project, I'm posting a link to a post on his blog in which he discusses the aspect ratio of our product.
http://ryancarmana2.blogspot.com/2010/01/aspect-ratio.html

The Opening scene of “Reservoir Dogs” analysis.

This is Ryan Cross, Ryan Carman and Joe Claxton deconstruction and analysis of the opening diner scene of the Quentin Tarantino film “Reservoir Dogs”. The reason we are looking into a Quentin Tarantino film is because he is a well known director in the crime genre who made a name for himself for his unique use of modern culture with film conventions and when considering his camera work, he uses significantly less cuts and edits because his shots last longer and are more in-depth. A perfect example of this is the first scene of his film Reservoir dogs in which he uses panning shots around the table of a diner where the main characters are sitting and talking.

The Panning shots are much longer then most films and this is unconventional for a crime film as they are fast paced and quick cut films, the reason they last longer as shots is to keep a slower pace to the film and to keep emphasis on the modern culture dialogue.
The panning shots go round the table last for two minutes, occasionally changing points around the table and most shots going round the same direction. After the panning shots, the camera goes to over shoulder shots. During the panning shots the camera rarely shows the person talking but rather shows other character’s reactions, this is different with the over shoulder shots which changes to explicitly showing the person who is talking only. This could be connected to the fact that the panning are shots are unconventional for a dialogue themed scene as is also the fact that the camera not showing who is talking, whereas the over-shoulder shots are more conventional and the camera showing the person talking is as well. This could be Tarantino’s way of comparing the conventional and unconventional methods.

Update

myself, ryan carman and joe claxton have just talked to the technician joe darlow about playing a role in our upcoming project as the man who opens the door for our main character "Jack", he also told us about how we can use the school for some of our filming and what times we can use it.

Differences

Having uploaded the screenplay, shot list and soon to upload the storyboards, it is apparent that there are differences between these three versions of the story, foe example the screenplay does not mention the character Jack looking in the mirror before he leaves. The reason for this is because of the new ideas during the making of these plans that are still not definitive meaning they are just rough guides to the final piece and we are still deciding what we shall put in a take out, considering the film has to be 5 minutes at most which will involve alot of deleted scenes.

Shot List

Shot List
· Over shoulder shot of jack looking into mirror
· Close up shots of Jack Opening door, leaving house ect
· Long shot of Jack walking down street followed by several other types of shot of walking
· Shots to show graffiti on walls, either over shoulder or P.O.V
· Mid-shot of building
· Mid-to-long-shots of Jack entering building
· Long shot of rough-looking man opening door
· Over-shoulder shot of rough looking man watching Jack enter the room.
· P.O.V/panning shot of other men at poker table.
· Close up of man’s hand playing with chips.
· Mid shot of jack sitting down
· Top view of table while dealing cards
· Close up over the shoulder looking at cards
· Top view close up of placing watch onto table
· Over the shoulder close up looking at cards
· “ “
· Close up of man pushing money into the middle
· Reaction shot close up of jacks face in reaction to “big money”
· Close up of each character places cards on the table
· Extreme close up of jacks eyes widening in shock
· Mid shot of man pulling out a knife
· Close up of knife being brought down to his hand
· Close up of jacks face in agony
· Long shot of jack being thrown out of the building
· Long shot of jack walking away and then collapses

Screenplay for "Rock Bottom"

A man (we’ll call him “Jack”) is walking down a dark, run-down road surrounded by graffiti, desolate buildings and rubbish. As he walks, we see that he is nervous and scared by what it is he is walking to. He remembers certain things that have happened to him as he walks, things including his wife leaving him, loosing his job and owing money to dangerous people. We see Jack nearing a building; he stops outside it and stares at the building, his fear taking over his body and anxiety riddled on his face. Eventually he takes the first step into the building and begins to enter.

The room he enters is pitch black, a door is opened by a rough looking man; Jack walks through to find three other men sitting at a poker table, all staring at him, all waiting for him to take a seat. Nervously he sits down; one of the men already at the table looks into his eyes and begins to deal the cards. Jack looks down at his wrist and pulls of an expensive watch, thinks of wife, and places it in front of him on the table.

As the cards are dealt and the flop, turn and river cards are showing, Jack sees’s he has a full house. Only one other man at the table is still in the game, sitting directly opposite him. Jack looks at his cards, smiles and shows what he has. As he goes for the pile of chips in the centre, the man opposite grabs his hand, Jack looks up to see the man has a four-of-a-kind winning hand. As all the men around the table stand up, the man opposite Jack pulls out a knife. Jacks face has turned from a smile to great fear as he watches the blade go down towards his hand, and pain runs through him faster than fear ever did.

Outside the men though Jack out onto the ground, he clutches his hand in pain and as tears run down his face he picks himself up and begins walking. A few steps later and Jack falls down again. He doesn’t get up.
Here is a link to the storyboards that Ryan Carman designed which should help explain to the screenplay
http://ryancarmana2.blogspot.com/2010/01/storyboards.html