End Movie.. The Heist

Evaluation

Video of the evaluation

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

This is our contact sheet for our opening sequence, we put them together by taking screenshots of our film and placing them in photoshop. The first frame is of the first shot in our movie, its to inform the viewer of the location used. We used a modern house because we knew in a real heist plan, we’d have to use a safe location where nobody could overhear what was going on.

Frame two is of the main title. We decided to include gunshots and sirens to it, so the viewer believes that later on in the film. We chose the film name ‘The Heist’ because it’s simple and gets the message across, people will know what kind of film they’re going to see just by reading the name.

Frame three features the costumes and some of the props used in our film. We decided to wear suits to look professional and we wanted to get a serious mood across to the viewer. The map in the background was used to show that we pay attention to detail and the characters are familiar with heist planning. It shows that they want to succeed with as little trouble as possible.

Frame four is one of our favourite shots used throughout the production of our film. It’s a close up shot of the phone receiving a call from a character not featured. Its effective because it informs the audience that the three seen are not the only people involved in the heist.  It was also a good shot for us to introduce continuity editing to.

Frame five is of the story and how the opening affects the rest of the movie. We decided to film the two actors sitting in silence, waiting for a phone call to show the importance of the third character who is about to be introduced. It also emphasises that something important is about to happen as the three of them are about to do something life changing,

Frame six is of the genre and it’s shown in a number of ways throughout our movie. One way its shown is by having the planning board in a lot of the shots towards the ending of the film, this suggests that our film is a heist film because by looking at the board it suggests that they’re planning a heist. Along with the board, the costumes also help set the genre because it’s a common convention in a heist movie that the characters carrying out the heist are wearing something smart.

Frame seven shoes how one of our characters is introduced, we used this screenshot because the other two characters are introduced at the same time. This is an effective entrance because it introduces the character who enters through the door after being sent in a fellow heist member. We also used it because the viewer gets to see the third character being introduced at the same time as the other character.

Frame eight shows off the special effects used in our films. We introduced text, which slides into shot to inform the viewer of the actor’s name. Along with the text, we used an effect, which darkens the edges of the screen. We used this because it helps add to the genre and also helps build tension.

Finally, frame nine is of the title, font and style. We looked through many templates in final cut pro and we re-used the same font\effect that we used to introduce the actors. To make the title more appealing, we added another effect which adds a blur of blue, yellow and red to the outside of the text; the effect we added also made the text move.

Question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Social Group 1 – Adults – In our film, we’re supposed to represent adults because our characters are ‘adults’ who are planning a job in which teenagers couldn’t perform. We know this because there have been reports of adults performing, but none of teenagers. And by the way we speak in the film, we don’t speak informally like a teenager would.

Social Group 2 – We have a Asian/Black guy in our film, this shows that the characters in our film doesn’t target specific ethnicities which shows that us as a society see every race as equal.

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

We believe that the type of media institution who would distribute our film would be an independent studio.  This is because our film doesn’t seem to be as of high standard of films in the same genre. This is because we were made to film in an old house and not a more suitable place. It would be distributed in Britain only because its more suitable for members of the uk because it’s located in Britain and features British stores and cast.

Question four:   Who would be the audience for your media product? 

To answer this question, we created a survey. From our results we found out that our target audience would be men below the age of 30, mainly ageing between 24-29. We also found out that people mainly go to see a heist movie for ‘action’ and ‘escapism’, so if we were to make a whole movie, it would need to include both those things. Finally, from our results, we found out that films such as Oceans 11, Reservoir Dogs and Inception were amongst fan favourites, so for our film to appeal to an audience, we would need to see what all those films contain/feature and see what we could implement into our movie.

Question 5: How did you attract/address the audience?

Costume – Suits to make us look professional

Props – Board with pictures of the location, exits and a gun – Shows the audience that we know what we’re doing.

Music – It’s intriguing and helps build some tension.

Our film had two leading characters, both of which had similar roles, except one greeted the new character and the other spoke about the heist.

Feedback –

“Good use of costume and props” –

“Compared to our other film, the angles in this one were a lot sharper and it consisted of more variety of angles” –

“Other location was better, but the new film has better angles and script” – Mrs H

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

We have learnt that to make a good movie, you need good equipment, such as cameras, tripod and a computer with good editing software which isn’t cheap; in this case we used final cut pro which we had some problems with, but they could’ve been avoided if we had used a mouse instead of touchpad.

We’ve also learnt that editing and putting everything together is time consuming, having to find suitable music is fairly difficult, but because we knew what we wanted it to sound like we found some fairly quickly.

Our cameraman learnt that manual focus is better to use because “auto focus was glitch-y for us and it wasn’t focusing on what we wanted it to”

Finally, we found out that to make a successful film, you need a lot of angles otherwise the movie doesn’t work when putting it together. We came across this problem and were advised to re-film and include as many angles as we could.

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

That the key to a successful movie is the quality rather than the quantity, when we first attempted to record our preliminary task we started to rush the clips so that we could record a larger variety of shots that were not necessarily needed. When it came to putting together the clips we realised that the vast majority of them didn’t match up which meant having any kind of match on action shots was impossible, we decided that it was a good idea to go out and take out time re-recording the shots that we would actually use rather than ones that wouldn’t fit in with the rest of them, the improvement between the two end pieces were drastically noticeable.

Preliminary Task Evaluation

                           Preliminary Task Evaluation

For our Preliminary task we were given the task of creating a video which included someone opening a door, sitting down, exchanging a few lines of dialogue and giving someone some "fish food", while still keeping match on action.

I personally feel that as a group we did this very well as we were able to include all of the above will still be able to make it look presentable. At the beginning, we did a pan shot of Hasnat walking up the stairs, as he was changing to the second set of stairs we did a match on action of him continuing from a different angle. Shortly after we did another on action shot of him opening the door, at first we saw him start opening the door from behind, but then switched to him carrying on opening the door from in front, I think this was done well as both actions were in sync and the cut in between was barely noticeable.

Another good section of our video was the trading of dialogue, we used over the shoulder angles to clearly show is speaking, also by using this method it helps make the audio clearer and louder. While doing this we were able to maintain to the 180 rule.

After some feedback we all agreed that in section where Daniel rotated head it would have been better to use match on action as it would have made it more appealing for the viewers.

(not finished)

Script v2

The Heist Planning Scene

Number one (Jason) – oh, ah, yes come in, it’s good to see you again, been a while.

*Jason Hester fades in on screen

Number one (Jason) – i know you’ve been complaining, but you weren’t ready. But now, maybe.. just maybe you are, ready to do real work. That’s of course if you’re interested. We’re putting our necks on the line hiring you.

Number three (Hasnat) – Yeah, i’m interested.

*Hasnat Abdul fades in on screen

Number one – What i got is a franchise, its nothing too complicated and theres no buy in. Now normally, there would be a buy in, you would put in the money up front, but since this is our first time working together, i’ll let you off.

*Daniel Morley fades in on screen

Number one – so, you ready?

* shows off the blue print/ board with the layout of the store, cameras etc.. (Should be on screen for at least 30 seconds with intense music playing…)

Number Two (Daniel)- The alarm system is easy, you should be able to get us a pretty decent window. How decent, it depends on the job you do.. The security exits are here, here and here. Now once it’s down, you signal to me and we’ll drop in a present; everybody goes to sleep and we get to work.

Number Three (Hasnat) – Will it be as easy as you’ve made it out to be?

Number Two (Daniel) Follow the plan and theres no reason why we shouldn’t have at least two minutes to clear the store and get out.

Number one (Jason) – Oh and just incase, i have this.. * loads gun, end of clip.

Shots and Angles that need to be added.

Missing Shots and Angles for Re-Filming

• Close ups of each individual person – “Former?” (Reservoir Dogs as an example) Don’t have to be talking, just to show the expression of faces. Extremely  Important for it to work well. 
• Film each scene with camera focused on one person…
• Over the Shoulder when having a conversation – MUST (Person speaking must be in shot)
• High angle of everybody sitting around the table.
• Opening of the bag shot (POV)/ getting weapons out (Smaller Guns, so we shouldn’t have the same problem as before)
• Panning Shot while walking around the table “We’re professionals, we’ve done shit harder than this before”
• Tilt Shot (When Jason stands up with the bag)

(Include map on table, with tripod on top, camera facing down)  

Improvements that can be made.

Although our movie turned out alright, it still seems basic and has a lot that could be improved, in my opinion the most noticeable improvement that needs to be done is increasing its ability to gain the attention of the viewers. One way in which this can be done is to add shots to what we have to create a clip that we personally would want to watch more of, because at the moment even us as the creators don't find the movie appealing.

Our movie failed?

During the preparation our movie looked promising, we had an idea completely different to that of everyone else and a very fitting setting (an empty snooker room above a pub). However, once we had finished what we believed to a be a productive day of recording we found out that it was actually the complete opposite, we didn't get as many shots as we first thought and the ones we did have were not that special. Unfortunately, this wasn't our only issue, with each shot we took we acted out the whole scene at from start to end, regardless of whether the angle would be needed throughout all of the video, all though this could have been useful in terms of using the clip further down the line, doing the exact same actions each time seemed to be a problem as the slightest change in movement and timing meant that clips wouldn't match up when editing making our selection of clips even smaller. After we had narrowed down the useable clips there wasn't much we could do about making it look attractive or appealing to the consumer, this along with the fact that a group member could potentially be leaving us has caused for a reconsideration about the idea itself and whether or not it would just be wiser to start fresh and do as much as we possibly can in the time we have left.