Evaluation Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Unfortunately due to an issue with Slide-share I was unable to post my PowerPoint presentation and therefore had to transfer the information into a Prezi! Hope you don't mind too much lol, enjoy! :)

Uploading problem

Unfortunately SlideShare wont upload my powerpoint for question 1 atm!! Bear with me, im doing the best I can, however I think im going to have to use a different format, grrrr

Sneak preview of our logo and Nocturnal titling

The one of many, exciting times are here!! We have decided on 1. Our company name and 2. A company logo. So our name is.. Salt Sisters Production, we thought this was catchy due to the alliteration used. A logo is a critical aspect in marketing, which is extremely important for the industry we are in. Logos anchor a company's brand and becomes the single most visible manifestation of the company. Hence why one is so important. One of the members in my group, her last name is salt, which is where the idea originally came from, and the use of the salt and pepper bottles, (which if i remember correctly Charlie came up with) is an extremely clever way to associate our name with our logo, enhancing our brand image.

And here is our main title of our THRILLER!!! The idea stemmed from 'Insidious' titling, and this is where we had to do lots of researching using YouTube to perfect our title, and here is finally is..

Ideas for marketing and distribution

My role in our thriller opening

I have been SOOOO busy working on this thriller opening!!!! Who knew it would be such a huge task??? well not me anyway!!
At first I thought my role would be mainly doing the camera work.. which it was, everyone had little parts in the film as we all needed to be there to set the scene, but some people obviously had larger roles in the acting side of things, which wasn't me at first so i along with the rest of my group could focus on getting all the shots we needed, as well as ensuring our continuity was accurate! So for a while my main role was camera work and being part of the technical side whilst filming, however... Mr Welch then prompted the idea of adding more footage to enhance the story line and add suspense, and this is where my main acting part came in lol. I had to play the serial killer and portray the idea of preparing for the killings, now you couldn't see my face as we wanted to include the mystery aspect into the film in order to get the audience engaged with our production, and this was probably good as i have very little practice acting so i would have probably been seen and heard laughing, whilst walking down the street with a knife (that would've really ruined the mood we were trying to set)!! Its a good job we're good at editing so that couldn't be heard lol !

When it came to the editing side of things it started off going well, and everyone played a part in the editing of the thriller, which is where we used Adobe Premiere Pro CC, however when things started going majorly wrong, (there were software issues, nothing we could prevent) we had to split the group up to make better use of our time, me and Charlie worked on the titling and Sav and Eloise worked on finding the sound, this actually worked well as it gave everyone in the group a chance to get more hands on with the production instead of us all gathering round one computer. We then switched it up to give everyone a chance to do all aspects, me and Sav then worked on changing the sound levels to fit perfectly with the scenes (which was a lot bigger task than we set out for due to ANOTHER software malfunction, and Eloise and Charlie created out company logo which is Salt Sisters, for anyone that's unaware)
Due to all the errors we had, and i am NOT being dramatic everything that could have gone wrong did!! We didn't get the chance to make good use of Adobe After Affects, which we had great plans for, many other groups were able to fully progress their films using this software, and it would have defiantly benefited ours with the ideas we had, even just little ones to do with the titles, as it shows a greater understanding and knowledge of 1. using the different technologies and 2. meeting the audiences demands/wants for a thriller genre. There is no point dwelling on the past though, there is nothing we as a group, Mr Welch or even the IT help desk in school, could have done to stop, prevent or even correct the errors which happened!
Overall I would say everyone in my group played a big part in the making of the film in different ways, and even though the editing side didn't go as well as we anticipated (due to the errors) its been a real learning process, which has bettered us for our progression to A2!

Tutorial: Adjusting volume levels

So we've been looking to do some volume changes to our thriller so the sound we add in sounds better with the scene it is being used with, and this is where we needed to do some research. If I remember correctly we didn't have to do anything like this is my preliminary task, so it was completely new to me.. which is where YouTube comes in handy!
I like this guy as he also (in this tutorial) had a slight technical difficulty, not quite as bad as the ones we have encountered but at least it shows it doesn't just happen to us lol, and ejoy :)

Locational Sneak Preview

Me and my group needed what seemed to be a secluded location, in order to meet the demands of the thriller conventions, therefore we chose the entrance of a woods, a few minutes walk from Charlie's house, this was an ideal location for all the group as we were able to get to it by foot! The shots which were taken in this environment were proposed as the journey to the log cabin, which is in the starting seconds of the film opening. The setting helped create a rural, solitary feel for the viewers, helping to build up the tension and suspense which we are hoping to achieve.

Another location sneak peak is inside the log cabin (located on Charlie's garden). This is the location of the girls perfectly normal mini break.. so they thought. The cabin is seen to be cosy, and pleasant which causes a major contrast with what actually occurs just outside the door, which is my opinion adds suspense, and creates the realism that you never know what's around the corner.. literally!! 

(The shot shows the group of friends in the cabin, except me and Sav as we were setting up and recording the shot)