Final Cut

Question 1

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

Reflecting our genre with specific Conventions. 

Key Conventions of Film openings: 
In terms of general conventions of film openings, we have overall reflected them rather than challange them. We created a list of these general conventions:

Ident:
A film opening will always show identification of the production company/companies involved in creating the media text - in our case 'GHK Productions'. Idents are used so that the audience can set their expectation for the film; if an audience was to see an Ident of a large, popular production company, a big budget block buster may be expected. 

Titles:

This conventions is designed to tell the audience the people involved in the making of the film. Doing this, is acts as an acknowledgement for these people. This convention helps to attract audiences, especially if a famous actor/director is involved. Our film opening involved the titles:

Director.

Filming. (We decided not to used the word Cinematography, as it was too long to fit out Titles format).

Editing.

Narrations:

This convention is designed to involve the audience straight away, in the film opening. It allows the audience to access background information, of what has happened prior, or is happening at the start of the film. It may also give an insight as to what type of characters are involved. In our film opening, apart from in the flashback with her parents, Molly is the only person that we see. This reflects the narration technique as it helps develop the idea that Molly has been deeply effected by her parents death. The voicemail that is involved is also a narration technique, that tells thew audience where Molly is now planning to go - to get Grandparents house. 

Rough Cut 3

After altering, and developing our film opening from our 2nd Rough Cut, we have made a 3rd Rough cut with the changes that we agreed on. Moving forwards we must improve, and add the following:

• Our production Ident to the start of the film opening.
• Change the titles so that both the Name, and the persons role are seen at the same time - this is much less confusing for an audience and is much more clear.
• Alter the sounds of audio within the film opening.
• Add into the end of the opening the shot of the Train coming into the station and stopping, improving the narrative for the audience. 

Rough Cut 2

After completing our second Rough Cut, we analysed what we needed to alter to improve our film opening and therefore come closer to achieving a Final Cut.
For our next Rough Cut we must:

• Add identical Sounds to all Flash back transitions.
• Take out first 2 voicemails, leaving the third. We have decided that the 3rd is only relevant, as it gives enough information of where 'Molly' is going. Deleting the other 2 allows an increase in narrative enigma, and allows us to focus the audience attention on the visuals rather than audio.
• Add the Soundtrack that we have made on 'Logic Pro'.
• Add in the Titles.
• Take out Flashbacks in Train Scene.
• Film and add shots of 'Molly' walking out of the Train Station, and down a country road, as well as a shot of a Train pulling into the station.

Production Update - Train

19th March 

On the 19th of March, we organised to meet and film the Train Scene from our film opening. Although the weather was not what we initially expected, or wanted, we agreed that in actual fact the rain played to our advantage in creating a pathetic fallacy of Molly's emotions. With this in mind, we were very happy with the shots we filmed inside the train, of Molly looking out the window, travelling away from her home town. However, due to the weather, and the awkward timing of Sunday train times, we were unable to film the vital shot of Molly walking from the station platform, onto the Train. This is however planned to be filmed very soon.

In the evening, we managed to film a couple more shots that we felt we needed to improve the Car Crash flashback at the start of our film opening. A specific one was filming car headlights traveling towards the camera, so that we could composite the shot onto the windscreen of a shot of Molly's Parents driving (replicating a car traveling directly towards them). 

Production Vlog 1 - So Far

Ident

Producing our Initial Idea

For our Ident, we would like to use either ink or paint to digitally, or literally reveal our production company name; GHK Productions.

To achieve this we used both the applications Illustrator and Premier. Firstly we designed our Production logo on Illustrator, choosing font and text size before lining up the text in a box-like fashion. Illustrator also allowed us to remove the background of the image, saving the picture file as a 'png'. This is important as a 'png' file allows pixels to be transparent, unlike a normal image file. We then searched and found an ideal clip of black ink, falling onto a white white background. After downloading this free clip, we used Premier to merge the two - so that when the black Ink fell into sight, it would reveal our white production company name. Finally we selected a suitable sound effect on Final Cut Pro, to put over our Ident.