Q. In what ways does your media product use develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
-Forms and conventions have been followed by using many filming techniques found in the present day movies.
-One of the major aspect is that it is really fast paced, i.e. there are number of shot involved and makes it difficult for audience to think of what has happened and come to a conclusion already. This convention is being followed in various action and adventure movies so that the audience is not able to take their eyes off screen for a moment.
-The music changes with the scenes to suit the situation. It starts with an eerie sort of music to start creating stress in the audience. The music then turns into a slow suspense soundtrack while the dialogues are being spoken. When things start happening fast, the music transitions into action mixed with rock to really give a hype that leads to climax. At the climax, The beats in music get louder and pace gets faster until there is the explosion sound.
-At the point of explosion, I have used another technique that is found in big budget movies these days for example "Bourne Ultimatum" and "Vantage Point". The technique is, they show the same explosion from several different shots and the sound of explosion is repeated for example in Bourne Ultimatum, there is a part where Jason Bourne flies away from a bomb planted by Assassin. The sound of explosion is repeated at least thrice and there are even more shots for the explosion. In my video, I will repeat the explosion sound twice shot from 4 angles. This allows me to avoid focusing on too much graphics to make it perfect since the shots will pass by in barely half a second.
- There is also one convention I followed from video games, especially "first person shooting games", and I also remember noticing it in one "Bollywood" movie as well. It has been seen that when a person comes under influence of blast radius, he experiences a shrill noise ringing in his ear, like a dog's whistle. Also, the vision of the person becomes blurry. I will use both of these conventions in my video.
Q) How does your media product represent particular social groups?
- My media product represents the following social groups:
1) Muslims, Pakistanis, as the crowd.
2) Teenagers, Male characters, Poor class or lower classes of society.
3) Young adult, Muslim, (Member of Intelligence Agency).
-The representation of the Muslims is confusing here, which is also confusing in the real world. "Who is on what side?" is an issue raised by portraying the above mentioned social groups. The antagonist and protagonist are both shown to be Muslims. It is for audience to decide how to conceive the concept. (again its not the whole movie therefore can not be shown in detail).
Q) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
- My movie is supposed to look like a big budget movie since it includes different shooting locations, several actors mixed with shots of crowd, rich mise-en-scene and use of graphics.
-A possible distributor can be Relativity Media, distributing in Cinemas and releasing on DVDs to attract general audience
Q) Who would be the audience for your media product?
- Global audience, especially those whose countries are fighting in the 'War against terrorism'.
- The audience for my product would be ranging from teenagers 16 and above to Middle aged people.
- Since the movie includes violence and the content is for mature people in terms of understanding the concept, therefore it is not suitable for below 16 year old teens.
- The movie also does not target elderly people, i.e. above 50, since the scene move in fast paced and the editing has been done in such a way that creates chaos. Old people generally like calmness in the movie.
Q) How did you attract the audience?
- There is a good correlation of events in the movie with events in real life. In fact, the opening title is sort of recreation
- The audience is generally keen in knowing how their government and institutions work. There are many opinions varying person to person about role of security agencies in Pakistan at keeping the peace but the general opinion is that they try to protect but it would still cost them several lives. So it becomes sort of authentic when I show the security trying hard to protect citizens in the mosque but fails at the end.
- Mosque is closely associated to Muslims, therefore it creates a bond between target audience and creates hatred within them for antagonist(terrorists).
Q) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
- Resources I had:
1) Equipment- Handheld camera and Emergency Light
2) Softwares used - Sony Vegas
- Adobe Premiere Pro
- Adobe After Effects
- Fruity Loops Studio
3) Resources (soundtrack and sound effects) - Mr. Danish
4) Youtube - For help in movie making techniques and tutorials for the softwares.
- Filming without tripod stand did not bring much influence on my movie since I practised holding the camera steady and cleared out most of the mistakes through editing.
- Through editing, I learnt how to make shots more complex and have stabilized zoom-ins and zoom-outs as well as steady pans.
- Sound effects helped me create an impact in the movie.
- Special effects or graphics give a realistic and impressive look to the movie.
- Youtube has been side by side my teachers and I learned a number of things to enrich my video.
Q) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you fell you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
- My first preliminary task was just about script, experimenting with camera and learning shots like close up, mid range and the 180 degree rule.
- Since I scripted and directed another preliminary task for a friend who left the school afterwards, I had experience of shooting two videos. There, I experimented with had high angle shots, low angle shots tracking and pan. I also increased the number of shots for better editing.
- I did not stop at the two preliminary videos. I made a random ad just for fun and then made a random fight scene. For me, the fight scene was like skipping few levels from amateur film making towards professional one because I used some techniques of shooting a fight scene that are used professionally. Since a fight scene is even more complicated to make, it turned out to give me a better understanding of how to make video or movie less boring and more happening. I was also presented with a marvellous opportunity of covering concert of our school which has given the confidence to proceed to real professional level.
- The final project turned out to be better than any video I've made until now.
