Maeve's A2 Media Blog

THE FILM  THE POSTER  THE MAGAZINE REVIEW

QUESTION ONE  In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?  I created an Emaze presentation answering this question and it is found below. QUESTION TWO  How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?  I created an Visme presentation answering this question and it is found below. Speak Visually. Create a presentation with Visme QUESTION THREE What have you learned from your audience feedback?   I created an Emaze presentation answering this question and it is found below.   QUESTION FOUR What have you learned from your audience feedback?   I created an Emaze presentation answering this question and it is found below. Speak Visually. Create a presentation with Visme

Today, Andrea and Eimir started editing the poster. I was not present during this however I asked Andrea to fill me in on everything they did while I was absent so I was on the same page as them when I was back in class.  Andrea told me that they had done some research on ransom letters and notes and liked the idea of the cut up letters so looked for some fonts that followed similarities to this idea. They used a website called  1001 fonts  which offered lots and lots of options for fonts. The girls had a look at some ideas and asked me for my opinion on which one and we all had a mutual agreement on one called "Got Heroin". We wanted our end title screen to be black however this font only came in black with a white background which meant we had to find a way to invert the colours. They had to use a website called Pine Tools    to help do this.  When we were happy with the way the text looked, we thought that we should probably change the text in th...

Today, we added a distribution company indent to our film at the very beginning followed by our production company which we continued on from last year. Instead of going for a typical Universal or Sony we thought it would be more realistic if we researched other companies that were more likely to distribute this style of film. There was one company called Shorts TV that seemed to do what we were looking for so we picked it.  We also added our production company from last year - EMA Productions. This adds a more professional finish to our film and ties it all together.

Today, Andrea and I went over the dinner scene and added the alarm sound effect. This is played during the dinner scene and sounds like it is coming from the kitchen to alert Bobby that the food is ready. The alarm interrupts Bobby mid sentence and signifies the beginning of the plot twist. We sat and looked through all the sounds that were available on Final Cut Pro and we finally settled on the sound effect called "Alarm Clock Bell" which sounds very similar to that of an kitchen timer which is what we were looking for.  The sound effect starts just as Bobby speaks to it interupts him half way through his sentence. Andrea faded out the effect so it doesn't sound sudden and abrupt and set the sound level to -20.0db.  Below is a screenshot from Final  Cut Pro showing what we did. 

Today we played over the film looking for any errors we hadn't noticed or fixed yet. We found some areas that needed fixed as they were too quite and the audio we had taken on the day of filming by using a Field Recorder. In some cases the microphone captured the sound better as the camera was far away from the actors or sometimes the camera sound was better as the microphone picked up the wind also.  This happened in some of the outdoor scenes like the one where Poppy says "Looking for love is like wading through a moat of ravenous piranhas...." The sound in this clip is very quiet and even though we tried turning it up on Final Cut Pro, it wasn't very successful so we resorted to the trusty field recorder. Andrea detached the audio from the clip and erased it. I had previously saved the field recordings onto the Mac and created a file called "Audio". I renamed all the files so that when we went to use them it would be quicker and easier to find them as...

Today, we finished the narration of our film. We asked our teacher if he would help us with the narration and so he spoke the narration. He had sat and watched the film with us from start to finish so knew the plot line well and had read the script as we were watching the film so knew how long he roughly had for all his lines.  We had to do this during class as we didn't have any free classes all together. We exported the film to a MacBook which meant we could go sit in the store room next door and have total peace and quiet without the noise of our class mates in the background. Andrea was off sick the day we did the narration so Eimir and I did it with our teacher. At the end of the film, the was a line that says "It seems as though the date has taken an unexpected turn for Poppy." I wasn't sure how much I liked this line as I felt it was very scripted and un-natural for the narration so I suggested we added "Oh No" to the start of it so it seemed like...

We created our end credits for the film today. In our film last year we had the credits running from the start of the film however we feel that this year our film is of a higher standard and that the credits at the beginning wouldn't follow suit.We decided to place them at the very end of the film alongside the shot of the poison bottle. The shot is very dark and eerie as a follow on from what happened at the end of the film so we chose to have the font in white and to make it stand out well from the shot and   used font Times New Roman. We had the credits rolling from the bottom of the screen to the top of the screen as we felt this was quite simple as a sharp contrast to the ending of the film where a lot happens in a short space of time.  The credits consist of the names of the actors/actresses that appeared and their order of significance in the film. We placed our own names and the roles we played in the creation of the film, including titles like production, directing ...

Today we inserted the music for our final scene. Last night, Eimir went looking for a track and found one that we all really liked and thought fitted really well. The track is off a website called Smart Sound and the track we are using is called 'Americana' .  The track has a very sad and overemotional feeling to it which makes it absolutely perfect for this scene. It wasn't what we had initially began to look for but we couldn't find something that fitted the jazzy yet creepy vibe we were trying to get so we changed to a more sad and down feel. We only had one issue with the track and it was that the track was saying 'Smart Sound' every 15/20 seconds. We had to use the blade tool in final cut to cut the track in 4 different areas and split the sound and then match it back together also making use of fading the tracks into one another. We tried not to make it obvious and I think we were successful in doing so. This did take a lot of time and it was a thor...

Today, we made our opening title screen for the film. We had already discussed some ideas that we all had individually for the title screen and so we all wanted to have some sort of input. We got all our ideas together and came to a pretty quick conclusion as we all had very similar ideas.  As we are following the similarities to the series "First Dates" we wanted to have a romantic, bright and colourful opening title screen that emphasised the initial vibe our film was promoting. We wanted it to be plain and simple as the ones used in First Dates and The Undateables are and they are also animated which we will strive to achieve also. First Dates Season 2 Opening Sequence from FORCE FOUR ENTERTAINMENT on Vimeo We discovered that on Final Cut Pro, it didn't have animated widgets that we were looking for to use in our title screen so we went looking online for some free downloadable versions. We came across a few different websites, however, one offered us ...

Today, we sat down together to begin music research for the opening titles and end credits. We wanted something that was upbeat, happy and light-hearted for our opening titles. We preferred to have music that was light piano sounds rather than deeper guitar sounds.  As our film starts as a romance comedy, we wanted to have some uplifting music that would tie in with existing TV series and films that have similar storylines which we had based our film off. We looked for clips of this sort of music but we had to look on Royalty Free websites as we are not able to use copyrighted music which did add difficulty and restricted the music we were able to use. A few websites we used are listed below...... https://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music/cinematic https://www.akmmusic.co.uk/ www.purple-planet.com/ https://www.royaltyfreemusic.co.uk/ https://www.akmmusic.co.uk/ https://www.hooksounds.com/ https://www.premiumbeat.com/royalty-free-music Most of ...

Today we gathered together and looked at the brightness and saturation of the shots in our film. To make the shots match, we had to keep editing shots and replaying for the shot before just to make sure they matched well which, in the end, would make the film better. This also allowed the film to a lot smoother and add a more professional look. As the film was stored on Andrea's Mac, she did most of the editing however we all sat as a group and discussed our opinions with one another and fixed the shots as best we could. Below are some shots we edited.  BEFORE This shot needed a lot of work as the lighting very dark. When we added it into sequence with the other clips this stood out majorly as it was so much darker compared to the other clips either side of it. To fix this and make it similar to the other clips, Andrea fixed it by playing about with the highlights and midtones to make it brighter as well as altering the saturation to make it more cool toned.  ...

As we filmed over the Easter break, it was a week before we were able to sit down and begin editing. We had already discovered that there were some faults in the footage we had taken on the first day of filming, however we were able to make use of some of the footage like the scene at the front door which meant we could save time on refilming day. We went through all the footage that we had filmed on the first day and saved it all and renamed them as the correct scene and shot so that it was easier for us to decipher where the footage belonged when we were editing it in Final Cut Pro. However, there was some footage we had taken that fitted better in other places which we only discovered when it came to actually seeing all the footage together.  Initially, we added all the videos in sequence by using the script and the shot list but didn't take much else into consideration in terms of editng brightness or audio etc. just for the time being. Once we had gathered all the footage ...

Today, we brainstormed all the potential ideas for our poster. We wanted to plan this early because not only would it save us time but on filming day we would potentially need to take photos so we needed to know what photos to take.  It meant that once we had finished filming we wouldn't have to ask the cast to take more time out of their busy schedules to come and help us.  Below is a brainstorm/mind map that we created as a group discussing all our ideas. 

Due to the errors previously described at the end of my Filming Day post, we decided to meet up again and refilm the dinner scene as well as the interview and the killing. As it was quite short notice for our actors we tried to limit the amount of time we took to refilm these scenes as we had taken up the whole day to do it the first time round.  This time it only took about 2 1/2 hours which was good because it meant we were able to get all the filming done again to a higher standard as well as replaying all the clips so that there was definitely no errors. We filmed from around 7pm to around 9.30pm to make sure we didn't take too much time out of the actors days again.  To save even more time like we had done on the first day of filming, we split ourselves up into different tasks to save time throughout the evening which would benefit ourselves and the actors. We took it in turns to film clips while others were setting up other areas getting ready for following s...

Today, We went to Andrea's daddy's office to film some shots for the Office and Secretary scenes. We had planned to shoot the scene of the Secretary making the phonecall to Bobby and then we also had to take some filler shots for the narration to play over in parts of the film. The filler shots we took were cars passing by and a pan shot of the flowers. We also took some shots of using photocopiers, people typing on computers and of files in the office that would set the scene in the office and tie it all together more professionally.  We successfully shot the scene and all the filler shots as well as some extra shots like Eimir washing dishes and took a few additional shots incase the ones we had planned didn't work as well as we had hoped.  During the filming of the phone call scene, We had created a document on Microsoft work that looked like the application form that Bobby and Poppy had sent to the dating agency. This is shown in the over the shoulder shot that was ...

On Monday 19th March, We filmed from around 3pm until 10.45pm. It allowed us to get everything filmed however it didn't go as smoothly as we had planned. We started to run out of time towards the end of the evening and resulted in things being a little rushed.  We didn't want to keep Beth and Cormac behind for much longer than necessary however when we watched the footage back we noticed that there are some things that needed refilmed. The accents of the actors changed as well as things like the script being in shots and some shots just didn't go to plan. However, in the park we got all our perfect shots as well as some extra shots that we are planning to use as fillers or keeping for end credits. Below are some of the photos we took on the day of filming.  PARK SCENES HOUSE SCENES  

We wanted to add our own twist to the creation of the film and to do this successfully, we thought it would be really fun and interesting to do this ourselves and also adds a more personal touch to our film as we haven't bought in the blood but have actually taken the time and effort to go and make it ourselves.  We did some research on Google to find the perfect recipe. As Eimir has tiles on her kitchen floor it was important that we didn't damage them in any way. We looked into using a recipe with Red Food Colouring however and covering the floor in ClingFilm but as Poppy gets dragged along the floor we thought that this would in fact lift/rip or show up badly on camera.   Most of the recipes contained Red Food Colouring , which would stain the floor in the kitchen so we had to find an alternative.  We found the perfect recipe (found below) that gave us a large amount of blood. Incase we needed to retake shots or anything, it was important that we had extra bl...

As our film has a romantic theme around it, we decided to add a little uniqueness to our film set by creating our own backdrop. The heart backdrop will take Centre Stage in the background of the interview scenes between Bobby and Poppy. Eimir's house has 2 plain walls, one of the walls is grey and the other is a beige/cream colour.  During the interview scenes, Poppy will be in Eimir's room (a more feminine room) with the beige walls and the heart in background. Bobby will be in Eimir's brother's room (a more masculine room) with the heart in the background also. This idea is based off the interview scenes in First Dates where the couples discuss their previous love life, what they are looking for and potentially anticipating for their future date. The mosaic design in the heart was an idea I had that added a bit of uniqueness to the image. It also loosely represented the theme of broken love or the idea of how the love/romance in our film is diffe...