Evaluation question 7

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

Below is what I learned from the preliminary:


I have learnt a number of things in the progression of my preliminary to my main task, meaning my skills have become increasingly more slick and articulate:

1) The most important thing I learnt was about organisation:
-Asigning various roles in our group:

- Creating timetables to adhere to was important as we were working under such tight time schedules:

-Creating risk assessments for the location change so that there would be no injuries or damage:

-Booking the actors and locations in advance and getting clearance from the land owners:

2) I also learnt how to follow and contrast with the codes and conventions of independent period dramas:
I learnt how to adhere to particular codes and conventions, following them loosely, however I also learnt how to create a unique product of my own which juxtaposed with particular codes and conventions at time.

3) As well as this, I learned invaluable lessons on film technology, having to research a number of things to do with sound and editing. e.t.c:
-I learnt how to use final cut Pro with reguards to editing, sound and adding titles





-When creating foley, we used a sure sm57 microphone along with the recording software 'Cubase'

-We used a canon 70d in 'film mode' along with a tripod to create professional and stable shots

-We used garageband along with a midi keyboard and lots of 'reverb' in order to create a soundtrack

4) My style as a filmmaker developed greatly:
Looking back at my preliminary project, "The Library", it became very clear that the camera work lacked any form of visual flare and distinct style. Therefore, when it came to the main task, we had a shot list on its own apart from the storyboard. This ensured that during the short window in which we had to film, we were not wasting time and we were working efficiently.
As well as this there were no continuity errors in the main task however we learnt from our preliminary task where there were at least five continuity errors.
I felt more confident also with key elements like sound and editing, meaning that I could make a confident, concise and slick approach to create something authentic and professional in contrast with our preliminary.

Below is a soundcloud I created for my answer:
Here is our preliminary task "The Library":

Here is our preliminary evaluation:

Evaluation question 6

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

Below is a prezi with my answer:

Evaluation question 5

How did you attract/ address your audience?

Below is a youtube vlog I created:


Normally, attracting and addressing the audience occurs through the marketing of the product by the distributor. However, when referring to the various elements of our film, it became clear that we needed to have something that would set us apart from the rest. As the director, I knew from the beginning that i didn't just want to conform entirely to codes and conventions and that I wanted

to think outside the box in order to encompass the audience, as any filmmaker would.

One way in which we did this was through allowing our film to fall inbetween two different genres, becoming an independent period drama. As well as this, we had done extensive research into the particular social groups that we were trying to target. by doing this, we were able to gage an idea of how we needed to modulate our film. We knew that we were targeting young Irish females and so really played up on this.

The characters/ actors are a huge part in the attraction and addressing of the audience. To begin with, the audience are attracted to the 'right fit' of actor. Both our protagonist and antagonist convey this very clearly through their acting. They also address their audience through their acting holding them captive in moments of intense emotional depth.

Costume played a huge part in attracting the female audience as generally, they focus on the fashion in period dramas. Whilst we wanted the most minimalistic costume available so as we could merely focus on the drama rather than the PD, we still wanted our costume to be accurate. Everything that our protagonist wore was natural with earthy tones, apart from her striking red skirt which added to her character and also to the visual components as she ran through the woods.

As well as this, location was a very important factor as where we filmed needed to be accurate, stand outish and I also wanted it to have an atmosphere about it that would draw the audience in and address them as though they were almost there.

Another huge aspect in addressing the audience was through our sound design. As sound designer, I wanted everything to sound as natural as possible so that the audience could feel like they were actually there, therefore, I added fade ins to each individual track so as their entry wasn't stark and  also added atmosphere tracks (diegetic sound) in order to create layers upon layers of natural sound. One way in which we created a natural sound was through our use of foley. As well as this, the soundtrack plays a huge part in addressing the audience and therefore, we tried to emulate the sinister tones through the minor keys and the growing intensity through the use of the kick drum.

Evaluation question 4

Who would be the ideal audience for your media product?

Below is a prezi that I created:

Evaluation question 3

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

Below is an 'emaze' I made in connection with the distributors and production companies surrounding our film:


Here are the Opening indents to our selected distributors as found on youtube:

Evaluation question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Below is a prezi:


Below is a Youtube Vlog I made explaining the prezi:



Here is the information that was used in the prezi along with some photos:

1) Firstly, our film will be representing the small town Irish culture and race, obviously due to the fact that the film is set in Islandmagee, which is now known as Northern Ireland. The film will relate very much so to 'The Scarlett Letter' which represents small town hysteria in Salem. We want to convey how the Irish lived in the early 1700s, as in their basic way of life, their treatment towards each other and others and their superstitions. I want to convey the minimalistic and simple life style through the mise en scene, therefore having typical Irish costume as shown below, only natural lighting or candles as electricity hadn't been invented yet and authentic props too. The location will also be very important for representation, as obviously we couldn't film a period drama in the middle of Belfast's high street. We are looking for something rural to film in with lots of Irish greenery and possibly ruins.

2)  We are definitely representing young prejudiced females in our film by showing society's view of women and of those tried for witch craft. Much like katniss Everdeen in 'The Hunger Games', our film shows strong female protagonists, who are very much so oppressed and trapped in their own home, being treated like outsiders. This makes the film very applicable to young women, who will relate very easily and who will almost subconsciously consider themselves in the role of the protagonist. Our main method of representation is creating a relatable catalyst with the audience. The contrasting antagonist o play a part in representing our protagonist, by contrasting with her so much.

Below are some statements made about the women from people who have researched the trial:

3) We are also trying to represent the patriarchal and male dominated society of the 1700s. The way in which we represented this is through our protagonist, Andrew Murray. Andrew is a slightly edgy looking boy and his actions in the film are harsh and abrupt. He was rapping cloth around a stick and lighting it on fire, representing that he was about to burn Emer, the witch. These actions alone coupled with the actor portraying the antagonist create an immediate sense of the control that men had over women in the 1700s, hence emphasising the patriarchal society.

4) As we created an independent period drama, we represented the period through the various components making up the film, such as mise en scene. We represented a certain group of people in history. We also want to represent the unjust times through the plot, in that women were unfairly accused of witchcraft and trialled. We wanted to show this unjust quality in that society by provoking sympathy and pathos from the audience, through character connection and emotion. We considered all the micro and macro traits in order to create an authentic film with an edge, which followed and at times, challenged the codes and conventions of the genre and therefore, the audience.

5) We were also representing the lower class in Ireland in the 1700s. We did this through Emer's costume, hair and makeup. She wore a very basic costume in dull colours and her hair and makeup
were extremely minimal therefore. The higher class were never trialled with witch craft as they were too high above the general lower class society.

Evaluation question 1

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

Below is an maze that I created:
(note: please play the audio clips attached to each slide)

Possible main movie titles

When it came to deciding the main movie titles, I wanted something original and non-cliche. Many period dramas use the protagonist's name as the main title,  however I didn't want to completely follow the codes and conventions. I looked at some titles for inspiration which can be seen below:

Eventually, I put together a list of english titles together but none of them felt right:

The Hunt

The Witch Hunt

The Irish Witch

The Islandmagee Witches

The Islandmagee Witch Trials

Therefore, I decided to go with something more in-keeping with the Irish theme by using gaelic to present our titles, much like the polish titling in Joan Mother of Angels. Below are a few of the possible main titles:

an Hunt

An Hunt Cailleach An Cailleach na hÉireann Na Witches Islandmagee Na Trialacha Cailleach Islandmagee

Eventually, we decided to go with the following which is a variation of "The Witch Hunt" in Irish:

Redraft: Recce

Changes in Location:

After the first round of filming failed because of location issues, we had to find a new one. The issue with the previous (Bangor Abbey) was that it was so far out of reach for us, that by the time we got there it would be dark and/or the camera batteries would've died. However, we still wanted somewhere similar to this and therefore we chose the Lagan Meadow. This provided huge areas of forestry for us and was only five minutes away from my home, meaning it was very easily accessible.
Below are pictures of the new location:

Creating the Props:

The letter: The letter was originally just an A4 piece of paper which I stained with a tea bag, crumbled up and burnt at the edges to give it an old and worn effect. I then sealed the end by burning a red candle, pouring it on and sealing it with a ring. The letter gave details of the conviction, however one issue that we encountered was that when the sun hit the letter, the camera didn't pick up the letters.
The letter is vital in the opening sequence and creates enigma, as the protagonist is clearly upset at it but we don't know why.

The Burning stick:
For this, we simply got a wooden stick from off a tree and then rapped it in a cloth material. We then had to douse the material in lighter fluid as the vodka didn't work. We used safety matches to light it and had the camera at ready because we knew that we only had limited time to shoot this scene. We ended up having two takes by the time we had finished. The first failed due to continuity errors, there was graffiti in the background of one of the shots, which obviously would not correlate with the codes and conventions of the period drama.

Sound

Sound design and mixing:

After all of the sounds were recorded, they were imported onto final cut pro and had to be placed in sync with each piece of film. This meant that there were a lot of tracks and I had to take it one at a time. I started out with the atmospheric sounds, fadein them in after the final ident. Then I did the foley on top of this. Various sounds were added such as the crow at the beginning and the burning of the stick. These came from an SFX Library (Incompetech) built within the editing software.

style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> One of the hardest parts of the sound design was creating a juxtaposition in environments. The forest sounded different to the shots with the antagonist, obviously as he was burning a stick for one but more importantly because the shots were taken beside a river. Therefore, we had to wild track this river.
Faders had to be added in to make the sounds more natural in parallel with the video. The process for this is below:
 1) Select track name:

Take down the volume of the original track to 0 Decibels.

 2) Select Modify > Add keyframe

3) Fix the keyframes:

Wild Track:

As we were filming outside on an SLR camera, with no access to mic and booms, a lot of the original footage was unusable as when the wind hit the mic, the sound distorted. Therefore, a lot of the sound had to come from wild tracks that were taken after the original film. The definition for this is below:

We wild tracked Emer's crying and also the atmospheric forest sounds. This was done to make everything sound more natural and the tracks could be synced up alongside the film.

Foley:

Emer's footsteps as she ran through the forest didn't pick up well on the camera's internal mic and therefore, had to be recreated in a recording studio. We set up a plastic bag with hard leaves and paper and then used a sure SM57 dynamic mic plugged into cubase. We mixed and mastered the track and then imported it to Final Cut Pro, our editing software.
The definition of foley is below and here is a picture of how we produced the sound and the link to the track also:

Soundtrack:

The soundtrack showed that our main protagonist's life may possibly be coming to an end. Our soundtrack was recorded on Garageband with a midi keyboard which, as a result, caused the soundtrack to sound very professional. Our group did the best we could to make it sound original and make the music fit the opening sequence. The kick drum helped to emphasise the urgency and state of panic as well as the violence that could potentially occur. It helped to make the clips with the fire seem truly terrifying and the audience would therefore feel fear for our main protagonist and her safety.
A brief musical analysis:

We started off recording lower strings, playing within the scale of D minor our track is in 4/4 and we basically played semibreve notes through out.
We then started recording the higher strings playing mostly D Db and C. These chromaticism's help to build tension in our track so we started the higher strings around 15 seconds after the lower strings started in order to build the texture of our soundtrack.
The tracks sounded slightly bare so I dropped the midi keyboard by an octave and added a drone from the start to the end of the track, I added a D drone in order to bulk out the track a bit more and to  create the atmosphere that we wanted the film to have.
Finally I decided to add a kick drum every 4 beats in order to build the tension of the witch hunt and I really like the stereotypical 'kill the witch' type soundtrack so I really liked the drums.
A similar sound track to this is Jane Eyre (2011) so we worked off of inspiration from this soundtrack.
Below are screenshots of the recording process and the links to our final product on soundcloud:

Titling

In order to get an accurate feel for what titles would look authentic alongside our film, we had to look at the codes and conventions of titling for period dramas. One thing we found that all period dramas had in common was that often, the titles are in white font against a black background. This is slick and formal. As well as looking at the various styles associated with titling, we also decided to look at the running order for all of the titles. Before adding our own titles in the editing stage, we made a rough plan of what order they should be in and where exactly they should be in connection with the shot.
This can be seen below:

1. Idents: Film 4, Irish Film Board, UK Film council, Bronze age films
2. A film4 production
3. In association with Irish Film Board, Uk Film Council, Bronze age films
4. Starring Emer O’Kane
5. guest starring Andrew Murray
6. Directed by Ellie Wildman
7. Produced by Caoimhe Beare
8. Cinematography by Eimear McCann and Charlie Beare
9. Sound design by Ellie Wildman
10. Original Score by Eimear McCann
11. Editing by Ellie Wildman
12. Production design by Dan Miskimmon
13. Main movie titles

Here are all of our titles:

Whilst we followed the typical codes and conventions for titling period dramas by having our titles positioned around the film in white font. However, we wanted to have our own edge on the film, therefore we added the 'feature' effect on editor so that each letter would fade in. I felt like this would give it an eerie effect which was in parallel with the tone I was trying to create. As well as this, I transitioned the main movie titles into negative, to create something new and atmospheric.

Below are the title sequences of my five films that I analysed for inspiration:

1) Mother Joan of Angels:

The text was in white and the titling came at the start of the movie. The language was in Polish as that is where the movie was made. We followed this to a degree with our main movie title, which is in Irish, adding to the description of our film. The text came over the film, however the movie is in black and white and so the movie still stood out.

2) The New World:

The start of this movie is purely film as though an introduction of some sort and then there is a small animatic section where the soundtrack also starts, this is where the titles are shown, beginning with the main movie titles. The font is standard and in white.

3) The Young Victoria:

The opening to this film has a short introductory section and then the titles are shown in medium, white font.

4) Jane Eyre:

Unlike the other films the font in Jane Eyre is gold like fading embers. It fades in and out lightly much like the soundtracking, creating an overall tone and mood for the film.

5) The Duchess:

The titles for this film wipe in from the right of the screen and the font is medium white ground on a black background. However, the main movie title is in white and shows alongside the film.