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

The opening sequence develops and challenges the forms and conventions of action films. Although most of our opening sequence adheres to the conventions of the genre, we aimed to challenge some character representations and stereotypes.

The most useful real films which inspired us were: 

• The James Bond film series
• The Usual Suspects
• Se7en
• Taken
• Rounders
• 21
• Drive

An outline of our plot is: Blake, the protagonist who is an ex-policeman,  has had his partner, Rachel, kidnapped by a criminal gang. The film is about his struggle to find out where Rachel is and getting her back. In order to get to her, he enlists the help of an ex-colleague from when he used to work with the police. The opening shows him trying to get this colleague, Jennifer (Jen), to help him find out where Rachel.

Form

We aimed to make our sequence
similar to The Usual Suspects 

A typical feature of an opening sequence is opening credits, including a distribution company, production company(/ies), directors' and actors' names, names of others involved in the production and the title of the film. Usually, after this there is an introduction to the setting and characters. This order can be switched around. For this we took inspiration from the way the opening scene was done in "The Usual Suspects", as we really liked the way in which the titles were shown, overlayed on the background. However, since our opening sequence could only be around 2 minutes long, we did not have the luxury of being able to separate these two; we decided to have a short part of our sequence having the main credits involving no shots of the characters, the rest of them were overlayed onto the scene as Blake and Jen spoke to each other. The music in our sequence was used to build up suspense for the shooting at the end, so one of our group members composed his own music to fit this. Usually there isn't something so eventful during the opening sequence, but I will talk about this later on under Narrative Structure.

Genre

Characters - There was the typical male protagonist in our film, however his partner is not stereotypical, as she is a woman and also not the 'damsel in distress' type. Also, although at first we pictured Blake to be portrayed as a strong alpha male type of character, like James Bond, we later changed him so that the audience could sympathise with him; we showed him to be a good guy doing bad things because there was no other choice, similar to Bryan Mills from Taken, who was a father trying to rescue his daughter.

Events - The shooting is probably the most action related part of our sequence, it is an unexpected surprise which involves the deaths of two characters very early on in the story. Many Action films we looked at had scenes which involved shoot outs.

Shooting scenes from both Drive and The Usual Suspects

Themes - There was a very conventional story in our film, where a hero is trying to save a princess, Blake is trying to Rachel, his fiancée. 

A shot from Drive featuring low key lighting

Mise en scene - the lighting was very low key and we used the lighting to cast shadows over characters' faces. This was very much a neo noir element, and was somewhat similar to shots in 'Drive'.

Narrative Structure

Todarov's theory of equilibrium is shown in the diagram to the right. Many movies follow this structure, for example 'Se7en' starts off with a new detective joining an investigation, so he is just doing his job as he normally would. The disruption is the series of strange murders, this is solved by the detectives who find the killer and then kill him, creating a new equilibrium. Our film however does not follow this sequence of events. It starts off in the disruption of the equilibrium and it also shows a flashback of a time during equilibrium. The showing of a different time than what is going on was partly inspired by 'The Usual Suspects', where the opening scene is actually what happens at the end of the film.

Bathe's five codes also influenced our project. Hermeneutic code was used to build suspense throughout the first half of the sequence, in shots such as the tense looks from the thugs and the setting, which along with the darkness surrounding the table made it seem very mysterious. The Semic code of the poker game happening in this mysterious area also makes the setting seem potentially dangerous.

Propp's Character Theory also influenced our story as it affected all of the characters in the sequence, and some of the characters outside of it. Blake was the 'Hero' who had to save the 'Princess', Rachel, from the villains who had kidnapped her, but he is also a bit of an Anti-Hero, as he is willing to do bad things in order to get his fiancée back. Examples of 'Heroes' in other films would be James Bond from Casino Royale, or David Mills from Se7en. A 'Princess' from other film could be Kim Mills from Taken. Jen acted as the helper to Blake, saving him from the thugs and presumably helping him throughout the rest of the film; an example of a helper in another film is Shannon in Drive. The thugs were minor antagonists for just the opening sequence, providing an obstacle for the hero.

Style

Overall, the style was mostly neo-noir, as I think we went too far past 'thriller' and turned the opening sequence into a more crime-focused scene. The low key lighting which is a staple of Noir and Neo-Noir films was strongly present during the whole thing. I think it was similar to the look of 'Drive' and 'Only God Forgives' since those films also used a lot of low key lighting throughout. The minimalist design of the setting also contributed to this as well, adding more mystery to the location of where the characters were.

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

The main focus of representation in our opening sequence was Gender Representation. We designed our characters around how we wanted them to be represented to our audience.

Our main character, Blake, is portrayed in a way that both conforms and breaks away from stereotypes. There is a sense of bravado about him, especially when he starts talking somewhat threateningly to Jen saying "I will do everything in my power to find these people". He also seems quite unintimidated by the location he's in, despite the possible threat of the thugs. This fit in line more with the stereotype of the alpha-male being the protagonist of an action film, such as James Bond.

We also decided to include some other features to the character to make him more three-dimensional and also more sympathisable to the audience. He is shown to only be doing what he is doing in order to save his beloved fiancée. Furthermore he is visibly shaken by the killing of the two thugs and stands in shock as Jen walks away. Blake is also shown to be of a middle class background, as evidenced by the juxtaposition of his formal clothing in comparison to the thugs, making him seem quite out of place.

The costumes of our protagonist and
others greatly contrasted

On the other hand Jen is very much a challenge to the way women are usually portrayed in action films. She is neither a woman who is needed to be saved, or a love interest for the protagonist. In 'Drive' the two women who women who had main roles in the film were Irene and Blanche, one was protected protected by the main character, while other deceived him into a trap.

We decided that Jen should be portrayed as a strong, independent character and this is done through different ways. Firstly her costume is a lot more suited to the setting, her leather jacket makes her look tough and fit in with the thugs. Secondly she shoots the thugs without hesitation and does not seem to be that affected by having shot them, making her seem a lot more stronger than Blake in comparison. Lastly, during the exchange between Blake and Jen, she very much dominates the conversation; she is in a position of power, as she has the information that Blake needs, but doesn't give this info away for nothing - she wants to know why she should help him in the first place, perhaps connoting that she only looks out for herself, rather than relying on and helping others.

Evaluation Question 3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

The distributor of our film would be Universal Pictures. This is because they have a history of distributing a wide range of films from different countries, for example The Theory of Everything is a British film which was distributed in the UK by them.



In our research we found that Dark Castle Entertainment, an American production company which produces similar films to ours like RocknRolla, was a subsidiary of Silver Pictures which had a 5 year marketing and distribution deal with them. We decided to make our film in association with Silver Pictures, as this would attract fans of their films, while also providing us with help from them in the full movie.

Our production company, FRP Studios, is a fairly small company with no previously released films, so if Universal did decide to distribute our movie, we may not be given as high funding or marketing budgets as a bigger film, such as 'The Dark Knight Rises' (distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures); however the fact that we still get funding is great either way. This way we don't have to rely on other
sources of funding such as crowdfunding, the way the makers of the film 'The Knife That Killed Me' raised the money to premiere the film, although the distribution rights for the UK have been bought by Universal Pictures UK.

As our film is British, our movie will probably have a limited release in British Cinemas to see if it is successful or not. If it is successful the film will probably get a staggered global release, and different companies will buy the distribution rights for the film in their respective countries. We may also get offers for the distribution rights online from streaming services such as Netflix or LoveFilm. Finally, the movie will have DVDs and Blu-ray discs distributed worldwide some time after it has stopped screening in cinemas.

Evaluation Question 4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

Before we began the project we conducted some research into which genres were popular and with whom they were popular. We conducted a small survey in school asking people about their preferred movie genre. We found that the action genre was liked by the most people across all of the ages interviewed, with thriller also being popular. However, this research was quite small scale and was also limited to students aged 11-18. We did further research and found this chart from a journal of audience and reception studies. This chart backed up our research as it showed that both action and thriller were very popular among a lot of ages, compared to other genres, so we decided to stick with this combination.

The chart we found.

So we decided that our target audiences would be Fans of action films (Primary), 15-40 year old men and women (Secondary), British Audiences (Tertiary)



Because our core audience was so diverse, we appealed to their unifying feature, their love of action films. They would like similar movies such as Non-Stop, Sin City and the James Bond franchise. Because they are specialists in action movies, they will know the conventions of these films and will be more informed to judge on whether or not the film is a good action movie. We had to make sure our production was of a high quality so that we could appeal to them.

Evaluation Question 5: How did you attract/address your audience?

First of all, our target audiences are:

• Fans of action films (Primary)
• 15-40 year old men and women (Secondary)
• British Audiences (Tertiary)

One thing which helped us to attract my audience was the uses and gratification theory. This included four reasons as to why someone would watch or read something: Escapism,  Interaction, Personal Identity and Surveillance.

Escapism was probably the most prominent gratification in our final product; our film opening had a quiet surreal look to it and the setting was definitely out of the ordinary - it features an ex-cop trying to get back his kidnapped fiancée at a back-alley poker game. The film also alludes to some action later on in the film, with Jen and Blake breaking into a police station.

I think the action in our film, mainly the shooting, would have definitely appealed to all of our target audiences as through our research we found that action was the most popular genre by far, even though it was slightly skewed towards men than women. The shooting, although it was somewhat provoked, was meant to be a surprise to the audience; Jen just had to feel a sense of threat and she would shoot these two men, making her seem as an extreme sort of character - although this could have confused our audiences, which I will talk about later in this post.

I think the characters will be very relatable to some areas of the audience. Blake, is a middle aged, middle class man, and is supposed to appeal to the masses. Jen on the other hand breaks the conventions of female characters usually being damsels in distress, and is a strong female character who can look out for herself. Through her tough personality and actions she is supposed to be aspirational for the females in our target audience. Both of these characters are also crucial to the development of a strong narrative in our film, which I think will also be something that will draw people in, particularly the older end of our target audience.

We conducted a survey to gather information on audience feedback. First we asked what the respondents age and gender were. As expected, males watched the film more than females; this is because although action is a genre with a wide appeal, it is slightly skewed towards men. The ages we got responses from were in between 13 and 55, with the majority being 13-24. The age results did not reflect the previous data we had found while doing research, but this is probably due to the small scale of our research in comparison; as we were limited to the people we could ask, we were going to get more younger people, since we knew more younger people than older people.

 

previous data we                                Two pie charts, showing our newly gathered info

 had found

We also asked them what they liked about the film and got these responses:

The feedback was positive overall, with respondents praising many different aspects of the film. I think this is proof that we have managed to successfully appeal to our target audience; however if I were to do this project again, I think I would probably make the plot more clear, since as it starts in the middle of an event (Blake at a poker game) it may confuse the audience.

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

I learned things relating to both hardware and software during the course of the construction of the film opening.

Hardware

• I used the Canon Legria HF G30 camera during the filming of the project.  I had used this type of camera before during GCSE, so it was quite easy to use; however I still learnt new things which I could do with it, such as changing the focus while recording to do a focus pull, this was a very cool new thing which I was able to try out during the shoot.

• The Camera Jib was something which I had never used before, though I was somewhat familiar with the concept. Using this piece of equipment, we were able to get shots from very high angles. However, despite the usefulness of this piece of equipment it also took a long time to set up and because of this, we weren't able to use it in our back up shoot as we were so pressed for time.

• Lighting- we used both lights on stands and studio lights. These were both used to a good extent during our shoot; the spotlight from the studio lights provided the lighting for the table, while the other lights allowed us to light up actors individually as we saw fit. The lights on stand were probably one of the most useful pieces of technology we used since it allowed us to light our scene very well, which helped us connote the neo-noir genre.

Software

• The software I used the most was Adobe Premiere Pro, and I definitely learnt a lot about how to use it. I had used it during GCSE, so I was able to place shots and cut them with relative ease. The real learning I got in relation to this software was grading, which was done with ProcAmp. This allowed me to change the contrast, brightness and saturation of shots, and through experimentation I eventually became confident in using this to alter our sequence. A disadvantage of Premiere Pro was that we were only able to use it in school - although Eddie and I did have it at home, it would have been a hassle to have been constantly moving different versions of the edit and showing it to the other members all of the time. This limited the total time we could edit and also meant that we usually had a very tight editing schedule.

• The other piece of software I used was Adobe After Effects, which we used to add special effects into our shots. I had never used the program before, so everything was quite new for me, thankfully Eddie already had some experience with it and was able to help me use it. This software was quite flexible, as it allowed us to both add in visuals such as the flash of a gunshot and allowed us to manipulate the lighting as well. Furthermore I found that we could put the edited shots straight into Premier Pro, showing the synergy the two products had with each other.

Evaluation Question 7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you think you have learnt in the progression to a full product?

The Briefs

The brief for the prelim task was as follows:
"Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanged a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180 degree rule."

We followed these, with the our editing of the footage mostly focusing on keeping continuity between shots.

My finished version of the continuity task:


The brief for our film was:
"To produce a 2 minute opening for a fiction film. All video and audio material must be original, produced by the candidate(s), with the exception of music or audio effects from a copyright free source. It should be clear from your sequence who the target audience is. "

Obviously the  brief for our film was a lot more open, and we had a lot more choice when making it as we could freely decide what was included in our film. I think the more complex nature of our later project made us plan it in far more depth than our prelim task.

Pre-Production

For the prelim task, we barely planned it. We had a limited number of people who could act in it and we did it in lesson time, so we had a location and time for the shoot. However, when planning for the film brief, there was much more to be done.

First of all we had to take into account the genre, since we also had to have a target audience; this made us first do some research, finding which genre would be most popular. We also did research on the narrative of films in the similar genre of which we chose, as the narrative would have been far more important than in the prelim task.

When planning the production of the opening sequence, we also went much further. There was much thought put into things such as the actors and location. We also planned the shoot in more detail, making a shootboard, shootboard and an animatic beforehand.

Our shoot-board had a lot pf details on it

Production

There were many differences between the production of the prelim task and our main project. This mostly had to do with the complexity of the shoot. In the filming of the film, we had much more things to take into account; for example we had to set up lighting, we had to set up the scene and props and we also had to direct our actors a lot more. We also had to do a lot of organisation relating to the location, as it was in school and we would be working mostly after school had ended.

I think that we learnt a lot from the prelim task, which was then implemented into the production of the film. For example the focus on continuity made us a lot more wary of possible continuity errors. We also used the experience of having shot conversations from different angles to our advantage, this formed the basis of many of our shots which involved dialogue. The different shot types we used in the prelim also affected how we shot in our main task, e.g. in one shot of our prelim there was a lot of empty space to the side of one character, this made us use more compact framing in the film.

Continuity in our prelim

Continuity in our film

Post-Production

In the preliminary task we only had to place the shots in the shots into the sequence in the right order, cutting them so that they were the right length, while also making sure that there were no continuity errors. During the editing of the main project we did this and more; we had more software available at our disposal and we used Premier Pro in more depth.

In Premier, we made titles, added in transitions between some of the shots and also used ProcAmp to change the contrast, brightness and saturation of shots - this was very useful for us to produce a more neo-noir type of atmosphere, with low key lighting. Premier Pro was also used to add in and manipulate sound; for example, making the background music louder or quieter at certain points.

In Adobe After Effects we added in special effects to our shots, such as the guns' muzzle flare effects. We also used 'Masking' in after effects, a technique which let us change the lighting of certain areas of a shot, which proved to be very handy when we used shots from older shoots, which had different lighting.

Masking in After Effects

Construction 10: Looking back - Reflections on our final outcome

Highlights:

• I think that the team worked very well together; in planning, production and post production. 
• I really enjoyed learning new skills that I could use in the different stages of the project, it was especially fun learning about grading and how it gave the opening a very distinctive look.
• It was very cathartic having finally finished our opening sequence and it is something that I am very proud of.

Low Points:

• We did have quite a lot of difficulty in our shoots, as we only had certain days in which we could shoot, this became a much bigger problem for our backup shoot where we could only shoot at lunchtime.
• Overall the shoots took very long, we were lucky to have been able to film for so long in the after school sessions in the first place. The disadvantage of the length of the shoots was that, over time everyone understandably became tired and so our productivity was lower, thankfully we were able to get our work done.
• Finding out that we had one of our shots broke continuity; this was really disappointing, since it was kind of noticeable in the final product and we had no way of re shooting it.

I would like audiences to really appreciate the story and the characters of our film opening and that they would want to know what happens later on in the film. I think this is what would appeal to most people, however some may be confused by it. I would also like the audience to appreciate the aesthetic of the film; the lighting and grading, as I think this is one of the things that makes the film unique.

If I had more time, I would have fixed the continuity errors by re-shooting the shots as needed. I would also tweak the grading of some of the shots more, as some look slightly different to the others making them seem out of place.

Construction 9: My Technical Learning Curve (Production and Post-Production)

I learnt how to use a jib for
the first time.

During production, I learnt things mainly relating to the setup of the scene. This had to do mainly with managing the different lights, as I hadn't done this before. I learnt that we could fine tune the lighting to make it as light or dark as we needed for each shot. This allowed us to achieve the best lighting for each shot we used, even if we only fully grasped how to use this effectively by our last shoot. Another thing I learnt during the production of our sequence was how to set up and use a camera jib, although we decided to not do a jib shot in the later shoots as we were limited with time, I think it was very useful learning how to use a jib as this knowledge could come in handy in future. I mostly knew how to use the camera from my experience in media GCSE; although I did learn how to do a focus pull and I practiced the panning movement of the camera.

I think I learnt the most during the post-production phase. This learning had to do with using the editing software Adobe Premier Pro and Adobe After Effects. I did have some experience with Premier Pro from before, but I learnt that careful cutting was important to keeping continuity. I also learnt a lot to do with grading, and how the consistent grading left a similar look throughout the opening, making it look a lot better. I also learnt how to use Adobe After Effects and how to place special effects into a shot. Another technique I learnt to use in After Effects is masking, which let me change the lighting of shots; we used this for the flash of the gun and for shots where the lighting was off.

Learning how to use after effects was hard, but useful

Construction 8: My personal contributions to the Edit Sessions

When editing I did a wide range of things. Since Eddie wasn't at school for most of the second week of editing, Alistair and I had to do a lot more work than before.

My personal contributions to the edit sessions consisted of:

• Cutting the shots into the sequence- this involved carefully deciding when to start and end a shot, which at wasn't that hard since we had our animatic to work off of at the start. Minor changes were made and some shots that we hadn't originally planned were also added.
• I also worked with the titles - As other members had already chosen the titles and fonts, I took it upon myself to make sure that all of the titles were properly aligned with each other, this involved going through each shot which had titles and making sure they were the same distance away from the edge of the video.
• Sound was also something I worked on - I matched the gunshot sounds to the gunshot shots to the exact frame. I also worked with the sound levels of the music; at one point the music was too loud at points so that it drowned out the actor's voice, so I made the music quieter for that shot.
• The thing that took up most of my time was grading - Although we only really started doing this during the last week, it was very intensive. I had to first learn to use Procamp to grade the shots, but once I learned how to use this it became a fairly repetitive task. Most of the shots were graded using the same values, so that they had a similar look.

Overall, I think that editing was very much a learning process, and through experimentation as well as with help from the others in my group I was able to make our opening sequence look very nice. Of course, if we had more time, we could have perfected the grading more, but altogether I am very happy with what we achieved and the skills I learned while editing.

Construction 7: My personal contributions to the Shoot Sessions

During shoot sessions I took on a predominantly organisational role. I focused on designing the shoot board and then during the shoot I kept track of which shot we were shooting and also managed the clapper board.

 As a group, we made sure to keep all of the roles open, so while Alistair and Eddie may have focused on things such as lighting or filming, I would often help and contribute my opinion on how the lighting looked or the framing of a shot. I also helped in preparing the actors for their shots, handing them necessary props, or going through what they needed to do in the shot they were doing.

In our final shoot I decided that the props that were laid out on the table should be the same throughout the scene, for continuity. To make sure that this continuity wasn't broken, I made a note of where each prop or stack of chips was on the table, I also made note of who had how many chips so that the amount of chips people had would not change between shots.

I think I did a good job overall, although my first shoot board was incorrect, it was only the test shoot, so it didn't have that much of a negative impact and it also made me be more careful in the next version of the shoot board.

Construction 6: Reflections on Edit Week 2

Once again, we made a schedule for our group listing which days we were available and when. Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances Eddie was not able to help us during this week, as he was very ill and unable to come into school.

Again, we started editing late due to the studio only being available on certain days. The first thing we did was placing the new footage into the sequence, replacing the old footage. Once we had properly gone through and cut each shot as well as we could we moved onto grading. This would be our main focus this week around. We started off by finding the shot we thought would be most hard to grade, which in this case was a shot which showed all of the characters at the table. We adjusted the grading using Procamp until it looked good. We then changed the grading of all of the other shots, using the settings from this shot. Of course, we had to grade some shots differently if the lighting was different.

While editing, we found that the background atmospheric sound didn't sound right - this was because we had deleted the audio in the shots that didn't include sound effects. This meant that the atmos sound was present in some shots and not in others, so it sounded very strange. To fix this, we added fade transitions for the audio of each shot.

There were also some problems with some of the shots. Some of the shots we used were from older shoots, so we had to use masking on these shots to make them to keep the same aesthetic throughout the whole opening sequence. There was also a shot which we didn't manage to get - the newer version of the shot featured the actor in the wrong clothing and a different haircut; and we couldn't re-shoot this shot because the actor was away on a Geography trip.

The bad shot

Overall, I think the final week of editing went really well, we were able to grade everything so that it looked like we had first envisioned our opening.

Construction 5: The Back-up Shoot

For our backup shoot we knew that this was our last opportunity to get the shots that we were missing. Although this put us under pressure, it also motivated us to work well in this last shoot. Unfortunately we were not able to book the studio for an after school session, so we had to film during lunchtimes. This proved to be somewhat troublesome, since we had to set up and film in a very short time, plus we had to make sure our actors were there. Furthermore, there was some difficulty in getting the table we had used for our scene from the school dining hall, since it would probably be in use for most of the first half of lunchtime.

Despite the hurdles we had to face, we were able to set up fairly quickly, since we had gotten used to the setting up of the lights and scene. Also, because we had a list of the shots we needed to film, we were able to shoot very efficiently. This time around I took great care in the setting up of the scene; after I had distributed the poker chips, I made a note of who had which amount and in which way they were arranged on the table - this would have helped to prevent any continuity errors.

One of the shots we re did, fixing a continuity error.

The main issue we had with our main shoot was the lighting. We rectified this in our back up shoot, paying very
close attention to the lighting of each individual shot - this made us able to create shadows across the actors' faces as we had originally intended, similar to the opening sequence of 'Drive'. Overall I think we managed to hugely improve the footage and I think we are finally going to be able to make a
final version of our opening.

We aimed to create shadows on actors
similar to Drive

Construction 4: Reflections on Edit Week 1

We made a schedule so that we could keep track of who was editing when, we very intensively worked on editing and worked on the project whenever we could. Unfortunately, as we had to shoot on Wednesday (it was the only day available during the week), we could only start editing after we had gotten the footage, limiting the total time we had. The schedule we made is shown below, and it detailed when each person would be editing the sequence.

During the editing process, we mainly worked on replacing the shots from the test shoot's sequence with the new footage. We also worked on adding in sound and special effects. For the non-diegetic sound, Eddie had composed his own music for the first half of the opening sequence. For the second part, we kept the placeholder royalty-free music we used in the old sequence, since we thought it fit well. We also added in sound effects for the diegetic gunshots sounds, which we found on YouTube.
We also added in special effects for the guns' muzzle flares. This was done using Adobe After Effects, at first I had no idea how to use it, however with help from Eddie (who already had some experience using it) and from YouTube videos explaining how to use the software.


I think we were able to create a decent sequence using the new footage we obtained and the addition of special effects made it seem like much more like the finished product we were intending to make. However, we did realise that most of our shots would have to be reshot either dure to poor lighting or framing. We began preparing for a backup shoot, trying to learn from our mistakes from the main shoot.

Construction 3: Reflections on our Main Shoot Session

Our main actress was available
for this shoot

In our main shoot, we had to reshoot most of our shots, since we did not have our main actress in the test shoot. I think it went a lot better than our test shoot, as we knew which shots we had to improve upon and how. Also, this time we had all of our actors present which meant that we would be able to use all of the footage in our opening sequence. This time, we thoroughly checked our shoot board to ensure that there were no mistakes before going into the shoot.









One of the main the main issues we had in our test shoot was the lighting, so this time instead of using two different lights we lit each character individually. However, the way in which we carried this out was wrong, so most of our shots ended up looking poorly lit again.


We realised that we will have to have a backup shoot so that we could reshoot most of our sequence, as most of the shots were unusable due to poor lighting.

Construction 2: Our Post-Production Kit

This is our edit station, as it had two screens, it meant that we could edit on one screen and watch the sequence on the other, allowing us to work more efficiently when editing our project.

The main software we used was Adobe Premier Pro:

Adobe Premier Pro was very useful in letting us edit our sequence very meticulously, it also let us do other tasks such as create titles and add in and edit music and sound effects.

We also used Adobe After Effects which let us work on the special effects that we used in our sequence, such as the gunshots' muzzle flare and the blood of the characters who were shot. We were also able to use masking to change the lighting of some areas of shots where the lighting had not been as good as we had wanted.