A keynote speech of all the main technologies we have used and progressed with as a group. It reminds me a bit of the Apple iPhone launch events ... hmmm (Part of AS Evaluation)
Over this past year I have used many different types of technologies. All are in a list below:
Hardware:
Smartphone
DSLR
Camera
Wide lenses
Tripods
Monopods
Dollys
Gimbal
Gorilla-pods
Stabilisation
Macbook
PC
Microphone
Action Camera
Keyboard for music
Software/ Websites:
Final Cut Pro X
Titles
Transitions
Keyframing
Colour correction
Greenscreen
Animations
Special FX
Cutting
Freeze framing
Voiceovers
Adobe Premiere (when no access to mac)
Basic tools
Adding voiceovers
Audacity
Blogger
Soundcloud
Slideshare
Office 365 Pack
YouTube
Uploading
Embedding
Playlists
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A small vodcast going over the basic websites and how to briefly use them, as a means of planning for my blog!
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Here is the Adobe Premiere Pro tutorial where I talk about how to use the effects and tools in more depth
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Here is a tutorial about how we used Final Cut Pro X, Our main editing program
Here is some audience feedback from teenagers aged 14-15 on the titles we have used in our rough cut. Most of them have mixed opinions but each are backed up with reasons that we will consider. We have chosen to use the font HAUNT and for general titles and WHO ASKS SATAN as the main titles. Having taken all audience feedback, both written and oral, into account, these were the two obvious choices and it was also the personal preference for the majority of our group. A rough cut will be uploaded soon with all the titles present.
Q1a: how you used or challenged CONVENTIONS Q1b:REPRESENTATIONS of social groups/issues Q2a: how you engaged with AUDIENCES Q2b: how might it achieve DISTRIBUTION Q3: DEVELOPMENT of production skills throughout the entire process Q4: how you integrated TECHNOLOGIES (software, hardware, online) in the project
Creative Approaches for the questions:
Q1: CONVENTIONS AND REPRESENTATIONS
Game show/ Quiz show
Who wants to be a millionaire
Can be for all questions but would need a duration of 5 - 10 mins
Would contain ad breaks which would answer Q4
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Q2: AUDIENCES AND DISTRIBUTION
Job Interview
Over Skype for a position at a distribution company.
Can be used for all of question 1 and 2
Can include funny situations from other interviews (e.g. children walking in)
Covers Q1 and Q2
Chat show
Ellen show type
Will have some different activities e.g. "funny texts" or apps on the phone"
Can be a lot of social media interaction, good for audience and distribution
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Q3: DEVELOPMENT
YouTube vlogger
behind the scenes
some information on problems and how we've dealt.
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... Carpooling interview
Picked up by a friend who will drive around and ask us questions while there will sometimes be music and singing
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Q4: TECHNOLOGIES
Drama skit
Make actors become tools in Final Cut and do a skit on someone editing using the actors to do their tools.
Advert
Mockery ads
Simple ad for software we used
detailed ad for how "amazing" the screenshot tool is
Typically to be able to make a successful movie you will need a distributor amongst many, many other factors. You would want a specialist distributor for your specific genre. For example you wouldn't chose a RomCom specialist as your distributor for a Horror movie as the marketing for those two are completely different. You would also most likely go for a distributor who actually fits within the budget of your movie. For example, you would never in a million years be able to get distribution by Buena Vista if you have a low budget horror movie without any stars.
With that being said, how do you even get a distributor in the first place?
Getting noticed:
There's many different ways to do this, you can take the digital approach and try to cut a deal with Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, iTunes or even YouTube. Most of these streaming services are not too hard to get on however it is a bit more complicated with Netflix, though not impossible.
Netflix:
To be able to even make it onto Netflix you have to makes their
database list. Without your movie in this list it is extremely hard to
get your movie onto Netflix. Once you make it onto the database
list you have to convince them that it is worth uploading your movie to Netflix. To do this you need to get a lot of requests on the
"Queue demand." To be able to do this you must have marketed your film well and created interest towards it. This will also increase the chance of the amount of money Netflix will pay you to stream your movie.
Hulu:
This is a good service at it's a free service which earns its revenue through ads. This means that in order to be payed for your movie it just has to be good enough for viewers to be able to watch through an ad to continue watching the movie. After that you will earn a % of the revenue earned from Hulu. They will however pay you to stream your movie. Don't worry! There is a company who helps you get your movie distributed on any of these sites which I will be mentioning later
iTunes:
Usually you need a distributor to get your movie onto iTunes, however if you don't have one, you can use the same company which I will mention at the end of the post for this. Once your movie is on iTunes, you need to advertise it as you would on any streaming site.
YouTube:
Simply upload your movie to YouTube and hope for the best. You need to make sure it follows the guidelines set to not get your movie demonetized. Your only income will be the ad revenue on your movie from YouTube. You can however strike a deal with them to give you a fixed amount of money for the amount of views you gain on the movie, however you have to... market it well, like on all the other sites.
Amazon Prime:
By using the Amazon Video Direct service. After your movie has been accepted onto the service you can make a deal to earn revenue base on views, hours streamed, on ads or even the monthly subscriptions.
For a fee of 150 USD per year this aggregator service can gain you easier access to all the above streaming websites/ movie services. The content remains 100% yours and you don't have to credit the company. Assuming your movie gets picked up by Distribber they will also help cover ingestion, encoding, review and much more. It is an overall good service and will help you a lot to get onto your desired website.
Marketing:
Before even considering the above things you have to make sure your movie is marketable. Is it a movie people will want to watch? Does it appeal to the target audience? Do you get mostly preferred reading? Is it well constructed? Does it fit the genre specifications? The list goes on and on and unless you tick nearly every single box it is going to be hard to market your movie, which is what distributors are looking for. Forget trying to hire stars as your budget is too low to be able to afford that. This among with many other factors is why it is so hard to actually market your movie. However, film festivals are a great start.
Festivalas/ Screenings in popular places:
These are almost vital if you want a good distributor and will most definitely help you find the one fit to you. A simple screening in London can get you offers from distributors already. Large film festivals like TIFF or Sundance is also possible to get into, even if you are a low budget indie producer, and it has happened before. You just need the movie and network to get in.
Picking the distributor:
You have now completed the painful journey of getting noticed and you are now receiving offers from distributors, you have to be aware of a few things. Firstly, they can mess you over big time, so be careful you pick a distributor who specializes in distributing films of your genre. Take Tyrannosaur (Paddy Considine, 2011) who got an LGBT distributor for their movie as an example. It's box- office earnings is about half of that of the budget which is a major flop. This British drama was never the success it could've been because the distributor (Strand Releasing) didn't want to take risks with marketing the movie and therefore it didn't earn what it could potentially have made. Another way distributors can take advantage of you is writing a contract based on their needs, earning them the most money and giving them the publicity for the movie. Get a lawyer or solicitor to look on the contract to try and get the best deal! It is a must, even for low budget movies as you can really mess up in this department.
For this exercise we had only 1 hour to storyboard, plan and film a 10 shot short clip which included a shot-reverse-shot, used the 180 degree rule, had continuity editing and had a match-on-action shot. We had to create narrative enigma and anchor what is happening in the sequence. We completed the whole exercise using two cameras. These shots were handheld: guy coming in through door, establishing shot, shot of feet and over the shoulder towards door, whereas the rest of the shots were done using a tripod.
My definitions of...
Continuity editing: A sequence of clips edited in a smooth consistent way, without any jumps in time or space.
180 degree rule: Setting up the cameras so that 180 degrees of the area is being filmed, I would draw an imaginary line and set up cameras behind it making sure that the lenses don't cross that line
Shot reverse shot: Also known as shot/countershot is a film technique used to show characters in a conversation (or something of the sorts) with another character, however apart from a two-shot only one character is shown at a time giving it the feel of shot - countershot -shot -countershot.
Match-on-action: Its when a shotcuts to another shot within the previousshot. For example with the door, at first half the door was filmed, then the next shot cut to the door handle being opened, which was in the previous shot of the door.
What we learnt:
We need to plan shoots with call sheets, story-boards and a very clear idea about what is happening. This would save us so much time and trouble when filming. We also need to take repeat shots if they aren't up to standard, and even then, take more just to be sure. We need to familiarise ourselves with more technology like a gimble and dolly to get a way easier variety of shots included. We need to practice our manual focus as this was a difficult task during the filming of the prelim. We didn't have any costumes or props other than the clothes we wore to school that day. We improvised with the hoods to fit the character better, this needs working on in the future as we begin to realise the importance of mise-en-scene. One of our scenes had to be refilmed at another date as after fighting with the editing program for a good time we decided it would be easier just to refilm the one scene we were missing. This taught us we needed to make sure that everything is backed up.
Software/ Websites:
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