Robs Big Fat Multimedia Blog

Artefact 5 Research

2009-05-01T21:23:00.003+01:00

Leading on from my fourth artefact I’m looking to create my fifth artefact based around the use of special effects to see the effect they have on the audience and the genre of film. I will try to help recognise which effects are seen to be related with each genre. I will try to include a variety of different effects to ensure that the artefact is able to deliver a broad range of results but I will have to ensure that I take into consideration time constraints.

A recent film that I watched was Knowing (2009) starring Nicolas Cage, although I didn’t enjoy the overall film there was one effect that caught my eye and is shown above. When seen in the cinema this was an intense scene, I feel that this effect and some other effects would be classed as action effects, but overall I believe that the film was a sci-fi based drama.
I will look to use the website videocopilot.net which contains a wide range of after effects tutorials, some of which will be very relevant to my artefact and ones which I am familiar with. I can also use YouTube to find special effect tutorials but I will have to scour through them to find the best ones as they should be concise and easy to follow to ensure that the artefact turns out how I want.

Artefact 4 Evaluation

2009-04-29T10:07:00.000+01:00

In my fourth artefact I looked at whether colour and lighting could effect the audience’s perception of genre in film. The artefact contained four clips from different films; The Departed (2007), Perfect Stranger (2007), Meet The Parents (2000), and Collateral (2004). All four clips begin by showing the original film footage and then changes to the version with edited colour and lighting, the effects in each were achieved using a program called Magic Bullet.

In my questionnaire I included questions to discover what genres the audience associated with different colours. My findings were that the following colours related to the following genres;

Red – Horror
Blue – Drama/Thriller
Green – Sci-Fi/Action
Yellow – Comedy/Romance
Black & White – All Genre’s/Film Noir

My findings from the artefact revealed that colour plays some part in shaping the audiences perceptions of film genre. I discovered that in some cases the audience would place an entire film in a different genre based on colour or lighting. The majority of results revealed that although colour has a vital role in shaping film it cannot override the content of the film, and so the core genre will remain the same regardless of any colour or lighting adjustments. As well as this the artefact showed that because the colour and lighting has an effect on the way the audience view film, it would in essence place the film into a different sub-genre.

In conclusion colour and lighting can change the audience’s perception of a genre but cannot change the whole genre and whilst certain colours may be associated with certain genres this is due to the cultural meanings of those colours.

Artefact 4 Research

2009-04-18T13:29:00.001+01:00

My fourth artefact will be looking to discover how the audience perception of the genre of a film can be effected by the editing of lighting and colour on a scene.

Films that are worth mentioning and spring to mind imediatley are Sin City (2005) and 300 (2006) which were both Frank Miller comic books. Sin City uses a film noir style, but with elements of different colour used throughout such as the red in actor Clive Owens shoes and the blood which was made white in post production.

The reason that 300 was partly such an epic and diverse film was the fact that the visual effects done in post production were stunning and helped to give the film an unique stylised effect. Many effects that are the same or similar are reffered to by many people as 'the 300 effect'.On IMDB it says that "The unique look of the film was produced in post-production by using an effect nicknamed 'the crush'. As producer 'Jeffrey Silver' explains on the film's official website -- "you crush the black content of the image and enhance the color saturation to change the contrast ratio of the film." As well as this the "Post-production took almost a year. The film was edited on an Avid, with an HD cut also maintained in Final Cut Pro. The 3D was made using Maya, XSI and Lightwave. The 2D composites were made with Shake, Inferno, Fusion and Combustion. The filmmakers prefer Macintosh, but large portions of the movie were made under Linux. Asset management was handled by custom software written in the Panorama development environment, made by Provue. Color management was handled by Truelight software. The film was scanned on a Northlight scanner and was recorded on the Arrilaser."

As well as this, other films such as the Matrix (1999) use colour effects such as the green tint, know to some simply as 'neo'. This played a big part in all three of the films in the Matrix series and was attached to seens in which the character Neo is present. The colouring and lighting added to the film by making its own style, this was achieved in parts by taking out the colour blue from the exterior shot and thus convey the grimness of the world of the Matrix.

I will now look to manipulate footage to enable myself to find out what role colour and lighting play in shaping the apperance of genre.

Artefact 3 Evaluation

2009-03-27T12:22:00.000Z

This third artefact was loosely based around the Kuleshov effect and looked to reveal how editing could change the audiences emotions when piecing together seemingly unrelated footage in a montage sequence and try to create different meanings for different people.

The artefact contained four separate parts, each of these parts contained a five second clip at the beginning of an actor’s emotionless face, at the end of each part was a clip of the actors ‘reaction’. Placed in the between these two clips was an unrelated clip, but the artefact looked to find if it would still have an emotional reaction from the audience.

The research into this artefact followed the same structure as the previous two and again was done with an internet questionnaire. Overall the research showed that there was a difference in opinion between people thoughts, some people thought that the images did not go together and said they did not see a change in the actors emotions. On the other hand many people believed that the actor’s emotion changed throughout the four parts, with some of the emotions being cited as “hungry”, “tempted”, “aroused” and “happy”. The research proved that although footage may not be related, it can still be edited in such a way that the audience makes up perceptions in their own mind when in reality there is no link between what they are seeing.

In my next artefact I will try to focus on how colour and lighting can both effect the audience’s perception of genre, this will be done through testing out various colour and lighting combinations on a singular short piece of film footage. Hopefully this will enable to find out if it also has any impact on the audience’s perception of genre.

Client Project Program Change

2009-03-09T09:16:00.000Z

After putting together my beta version of my clients DVD I have come to the decision that I will change programs to Adobe Encore, this is down to the fact that I believe it is a better program for the project as it can be used in conjunction with Photoshop and After Effects, giving it a huge advantage. I have already found a good range of tutorials for the program and this will hopefully improve my knowledge and the client’s final product.

Client Project Programs

2009-02-28T22:15:00.000Z

Although I have done DVD authoring before I have limited experience and so I will begin to create my clients DVD with Sony DVD Architect, a program which was recommended to me by a friend and is highly rated as a top class authoring program. It comes with the ability to add various different types of media and to integrate with scripting. It also has a good range of tutorials available and good customer support.

Further Client Project Research

2009-02-24T22:13:00.001Z

I have found this video whilst researching, it show the photographer and allows people an insite into the way he works and why he got into photography, I feel this could be used as a small part on my clients DVD and will present him with the idea.

SPP Ideas

2009-02-21T14:19:00.000Z

My idea for the exhibition is for it to be about outside the box thinking and to be focused on new, fresh, raw ideas. I was thinking its should be based around this because employers are always looking to for people who have ideas that are not just based simply around others ideas but ones that show the creativity, flair and talent that we have. Essentially its a simple idea but I think it could work very effectively if done professionally.

Client Project Research

2009-02-17T22:04:00.004Z

I have researched into the types of promotional videos and slideshows that other photography companies have. I have come across a number of videos for companies which stick to the same format, this is where the company logo or name is show and then there is a simple slideshow which fades in and out of each picture. This type of ordinary video is the type that I will recommend that the client stays away from to be able to stand out from competitors.

This clip is from a company called Barossa Photo Co and is a nice example of the ordinary type of promotional photography video.

The two videos from above show that professional slideshows can be created and this type of effect would be easily achieved in After Effects and I will suggest to the client that I can put together a sample using his photographs to enable him to decide whether it would fit in with the company branding. I have also sent off for various promotional DVD from photography companies around the country to gain some perspective over whole DVD’s.

Artefact 2 Evaluation

2009-02-15T15:17:00.000Z

My second artefacts are two clips from the films Hot Fuzz (2007) and Gladiator (2000). The clip from Hot Fuzz was slowed down (to 90%) and is accompanied by music taken from Terminator 2 (1991), whilst the clip from Gladiator is sped up (to 200%) and is accompanied by the theme music from The Benny Hill Show (1969). The aim of these artefacts was to see the effect that changing the speed had upon the genre.

This artefact was researched into in the same way as the first artefact, this was with questionnaires both online and offline. I chose to research in this way as I found it was a good method from the previous artefact and enable me to get good answers. The research led to the conclusion that when giving a film an increase in speed the genre can change from whatever it may be, in this case an action drama, and turn it into a comedy. Similarly I found decreasing the speed also had an impact on genre, changing it from a comedy into an action drama film. This led me to the conclusion that just like the first artefact the recognition of the genre by the audience is shaped by factors such as how fast or slow a scene is, as well as this music plays a massive role in shaping genre because it has a huge impact on the audiences emotions and can produce a scene in the genre that the editor or director is looking to achieve.

My next artefact will focus on the way that positioning shots in a certain order can have an effect on genre and how certain shots can influence a genre by being place next to each other.

Artefact 1 Evaluation

2009-02-02T13:14:00.000Z

My first artefact is a recut trailer for the film Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) and was produced with Adobe Premiere. The aim of this artefact was to turn the films genre from a family comedy into a horror/thriller with the premise that Robin William’s character is a man who is infatuated with children.

The research into this artefact was done with questionnaires both on the internet and through hand outs. The research led to the conclusion that with the use of the editing process, the trailer had successfully managed to change theappearance and genre of the film, with all the people who completed the questionnaire putting the genre of the trailer as horror/thriller. Various conclusions can be drawn from this research, one of them being that the role of the editor holds a great amount of power because the editing process contains a vast amount of techniques that can allow the change in appearance of any given footage. The editing process happens at the end of the filming process and therefore the audience are presented with the end result of how the films footage has been processed, one editor’s version of a film can turn out a lot different from another editor’s version even though they have the same footage to work with.

This artefact will lead onto show how an editing technique, such as changing speed, can also affect the audiences perception of genre and can reveal which speed creates which genres. This artefact will enable me to begin to focus on how a technique of editing can shape footage, as opposed to the current artefact which was viewing the editing process as a whole and illustrated its power when positioning different parts of a film and combining it with sound to change its outlook.

Artefact 1 - Mrs Doubtfire Recut Trailer

2009-01-29T16:01:00.001Z

This is my artefact and is a recut of the film Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), this artefact aims to show how the genre of the film has been changed by the editing process and at the same time I will be able to identify the associations with different genres. I decided to make this artefact not only because it is focused around the editing process but also because it’s something I've wanted to have a go at for a long time. When making the trailer I found it was harder than I imagined because it’s so time consuming to go through a whole film and pick out individual pieces to use and then piece them together. As well as this finding the right music to go with the trailer is key because music and sound plays a massive part in having the right feel and presenting people with something that gives them the emotions you want to give them.

Toby Neal DVD

2009-01-12T13:45:00.000Z

Over Christmas I have been working on trying to sort out my clients DVD and have designed a preliminary version. I have been using Sony DVD architect to put it together, although had been finding difficulties in being able to prepare the disc which cost me quite a lot time. I produced the colour schemes on the DVD match up to the colours on the clients web site so that his branding remains constant throughout all of his media.

Four Brothers Video - Fight

2008-12-10T12:14:00.001Z

This is a video I made using premiere for the film Four Brothers, I think it fit together quite well because I eventually found a good track to go behind it, D12 & Eminem - Fight Music, which is an awesome song and has a good beat to it which I was able to sync the video to in most places. I've been meaning to do this for a while so it was finally good to start it and finish it this week, once I get into editing something its hard for me to stop until its finished because I find that the further you get into a project, what ever it is, once things start fitting together you get a feel for it and an idea of the direction in which the edit should go. Anyway any comments would be appreciated, thanks.

Rob

PRP Essay

2008-11-30T10:18:00.002Z

‘How do different editing techniques change the audience’s perception of genre in film?’

Chapter 1 Introduction and context

“the first consideration of an editing strategy, and indeed the motivation for individual edits, is emotion”
Hurbis-Cherrier (2007)

This research paper is an investigation in to how the audience’s awareness of genre in film can be affected by editing, and as such will cover how the editing process can create different perceptions of genre and establish filmic cues which bring audience awareness of the genre. The power of the editor and the editing process is vast and can evoke various emotions within the audience who will inevitably categorise the film into a genre category due to similarity that occurs within specific events of the production. The word genre comes from the French (and originally Latin) word for 'kind' or 'class' (Chandler, 1997, 1) and it is a term that allows us to categorise different pieces of work into similar areas because recognition works on similarity and therefore can be used to give audiences a prior knowledge of what that piece of work might contain.

The research into the area of editing will cover the history of editing and the investigations into it, technology and how it has changed editing and the power of editing and how it can affect the genre of a film. Looking into other works and investigations into editing is vital as well as the research outcomes of these. The main objective of this research paper is to answer the question ‘How do different editing techniques change the audience’s perception of genre in film?’ and the main argument is that editing can affect the audiences perception of a films genre due to the way that it can shape a film in the final stage of the process. This paper will attempt to develop the argument through use of argument, discussion and conclusion, including other people’s findings and thoughts to compare and contrast against.

The role of an editor is one of great importance because the editing process is the part of film production in which the movie comes together as a whole piece of narrative, it is a chance to review the footage that has been captured and manipulate it to create something. The decisions that are made in the editing stage of a film shapes how the look and feel of the film are going to be, decisions to include or exclude parts of a film can have a big effect on how it is perceived by the audience and how it is understood, this has become more visible since the creation of DVD’s, many of which include deleted scenes and alternative endings which can give a film a new twist. The way that the audience view the film is of high importance due to the fact that they are the ones who eventually must create the genre from links inside their minds. Editing as such is easy to explain but hard to define, the closest definition we can come to is to say that editing is the process of selecting, arranging, and assembling the essential visual and sound elements to tell a unique version of the story of the film (Hurbis-Cherrier, 2007).

Chapter 2 Research Method

The research method of this project is extremely important to the final outcome of the research and so must describe “the theory of how the inquiry should proceed” and should involve “analysis of the principles and procedures in a particular field of inquiry” (Schwandt 1997, in deMarrais & Lapan, 2004). This research project involves both primary and secondary sources in both stages. Primary sources of information are those that provide first-hand accounts of the events, practices, or conditions and are created by the witnesses or first recorders of the event at about the time they occurred. A few examples of primary sources include reports, creative works, videos, photographs, and articles, along with many others (library.uiuc.edu). Primary sources will allow the research project to become more influential as a piece of academic work as they have more validity since they are firsthand accounts involving direct partakers and therefore are considered more trustworthy and reliable than secondary sources. The most influential primary sources will be more recent ones as older sources can sometimes be less relevant and also be seen as less reliable due to the fact that the methods of documentation back in previous years were not as structured and solid as they are in present day, aside from this the fact that the older the source the less likely it is to be as relevant in today’s modern society with the progress that has been made, especially in the area of editing and technology that this research paper covers. Primary sources can serve a range of functions provide context and pedigree for the practice; locate the research in both a historical and contemporary context; provide points of methodological and practical comparison and discussion; indicate a gap, or elucidate significance of the research; demonstrate how practice informs theory. Secondary sources In contrast, a secondary source of information is one that was created later by someone who did not experience first-hand or participate in the events or conditions you’re researching. For the purposes of a historical research project, secondary sources are generally scholarly books and articles. Also included would be reference sources like encyclopaedias (library.uiuc.edu). Although regarding secondary sources in the field of visual art, there can be some limitations related to their use for analysis and discussion due to loosing the sensory experiences of the work (Barrett & Bolt, 2007). For secondary sources, often the best sources are those that have been published most recently. If you use a secondary source that was published decades ago, it is important to know what subsequent scholars have written on the topic and what criticism they have made about the earlier work or its approach to the topic (library.uiuc.edu).

My methodological framework will involve qualitative research. Qualitative research explores and tries to understand people's beliefs, experiences, attitudes, behaviour and interactions in a non statistical format (Welsh Assembly Government, N.D. [Online]). Qualitative research attempts to make sense of or interpret, phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them, it transforms the world into a series of representations (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005). Qualitative research is appropriate for this project because it can tell us more about the meanings behind editing as apposed to the statistics and figures around films, overall it will gain a better and broader perspective from which a discussion can take place. Sullivan (2005) argues those in the arts need to be knowledgeable about methods of inquiry used in the sciences so that similarities and differences can be clearly expressed and that the quest for knowledge consequently requires procedures to be put in place that serve as an agreed set of practices for a community of inquirers.

Chapter 3 Survey of literature & works

An editor works to enable a narrative to fit together, the primary reason for editing according to Hurbis-Cherrier (2007) is to tell a particular story in our unique way and in doing so to guide the audience to see what we want them to see. The audience must be able to understand what the editor wants them to understand, and at the moment when they want them to see and understand it. The end result that the editor is looking to achieve is to induce emotion in the audience as this is when the audience can most relate to what is happening in the narrative and hopefully make a connection with it.

The most famous example of research into the field of editing is one performed by Lev Kuleshov who is believed by many to be responsible for identifying montage as the essence of the cinema and characterising the cinematic process as a brick-by-brick assemblage of “shot-signs”, these are individual shots whose significance is determined by the montage order (Butler, 1991). This experiment was named the “Kuleshov experiment”, it involved previously unused footage of a Russian actor named Ivan Mozhukin, Kuleshov took a close up shot of Mozhukin with a neutral expression on his face and edited this together with footage of a bowl of steaming soup, a woman in a coffin, and a child playing with a toy bear (Levaco, 1974), each time showing the close up shot Mozhukins face first. The audience was impressed by the actor‘s capability to react to each different situation and had different interpretations to the actor‘s expression (Touzard, N.D.). The audience believed that Mozhukin had in each case performed in response to the previous shot and it was claimed that the audience admired Mozhukin’s portrayal of hunger, grief, and paternal joy, his subtle shifts of emotion depending on what he was looking at. Kuleshov proved that the order of shots in a sequence influenced the perception and meaning of any given action (Prince & Hensley, 1992) having previously stated that “content” of a film was irrelevant to the structuring of its “material”, so the shots assembly of the shots was more important than what they were about (Levaco, 1974).

Another man responsible for identifying the importance of the context and order for film editing was Gregory (1961) who claimed that when shots are combined they cannot always create a meaning but there are restricted conventions that can help create larger meaningful entities, this means the shots would have to be put in context to show the meaning that they had created as a whole. Gregory said meaning could be created when joining shots that were assertions and linked cues, where an assertion is the relationship between two elements. The meaning to evolve from this was that if two shots were in juxtaposition, therefore not related, then they could still be able to create meaning (Gregory, 1961, in Nack & Parkes, 1995).

Over time the art of editing has evolved as technology has evolved, filmmakers have invented new aspects of cinematic language. In this process, they reshaped the relationship between specific cinematic elements, the final movie, and the audience (Davenport et al, 1991). Although the principles of editing have not changed, and the juxtaposition of shots is still a primary source of meaning in films and television programs, the audience‘s perceptions have changed (Touzard, N.D.). This is evident in the reactions of the audiences; in the infancy of cinema audiences became frightened if a train was travelling towards them on the screen that it would injure them just as a real train would. This was described as the `train effect’ by Yuri Tsivian, a writer who studied at the Leningrad Institute of Theatre, Music and Cinema in 1984 (Macmillan, N.D. [online]) and has been the author of many books on the area of Russian cinema. Bottomore (1999) defines the ‘train effect’ as ananxious or panicky reaction to films of approaching vehicles. A director, Francis Doublier, born in France in 1878, declared that when showing films to audiences for the first time he had to “convince spectators that neither the horses nor the trains could come out from the screen and endanger the audience” (Doublier, 1945, in Bottomore, 1999, 178). In present day audiences still have emotive reactions to films but not in the same ways of the start of cinema.

In 1929 the debut of the first film with sound, “The Jazz Singer” (Goncalves, 2008), heralded the death of montage (Davenport et al, 1991) and meant that narratives could be progressed further without the use of text in between the film as dialogue became the standard to be used in films, this gave the industry a boost and ensured that films had a more flowing quality to them. As the technology used in film making enhanced, so too did the quality of films and the techniques used to make them, the relationship between the last frame of one shot and the first frame of the next shot generated new theories of continuity and ideas for sequence construction (Davenport et al, 1991), this meant that every part of a film crew had to be more creative and begin to understand how each shot worked side by side, especially in the editing stage of the process.

As advances in technology have increased throughout recent years, editing has become more accessible and apparent to people which has brought about a new generation of editors. Fifteen years ago editing was generally only available to people who worked in the film industry but since technology improved and dropped vastly in terms of cost the general public has been able to become editors themselves in their own homes. This type of ‘home’ editor has brought about phenomenons like recut and mash up trailers, recut trailers are created by taking a film and editing it in to a trailer which changes the genre of the film.

In a recent study of genre-typical events versus genre-typical filmic realisation on film viewers’ genre recognition, carried out by Valentijin Visch and Ed Tan (2008), they claimed that the viewers ability to recognise audiovisual genres is obvious, for example when audiences flick through TV channels within seconds they seem to know whether the program is for example a comedy or a non-fiction. Genre categorization may profoundly affect how the film involved is being processed by the viewer and they interpret what they see and hear in quite different ways depending on their categorization of the film’s genre. Visch and Tan (2008) suggest that the way audiences determine genres is through the use of relying on cues, which is defined by the dictionary as ‘stimulus’ or ‘sensory signal used to identify experiences, facilitate memory, or organize responses’, this therefore refers to generic cues in films which help the audience to identify the genre of the film by being previously familiar with that genre. The definition of cues within films is not exact but plot, setting, iconography and film style have all been suggested as what they may be (Altman, 1999; Bordwell and Thompson, 2004 in Visch & Tan, 2008). Audiences tend to put films into genres so that they can process the film more easily and get maximum satisfaction in the way of emotional experiences, this is the reasoning behind why audiences detect genre cues and refine genre categorisations all the time (Visch & Tan, 2008)

A previous study again by Visch and Tan (2007) revealed that as part of the editing process the velocity of a scene could affect the audience’s recognition of a genre. The study was based on three different speeds of film; same speed, increase of speed by one third and decrease of speed by one third, and carried out across four genres of film; comedy, action, drama and non-fiction. In this study it was proved that change in velocity caused the audiences perceptions to change in relation to the drama and comedy genres where the audience perceived a decrease in speed in any genre to mean that it fit into the drama genre and an increase in speed in any genre to mean that it fit into the comedy genre.

Chapter 4 Discussion

In the experiment performed by Kuleshov in the late 1910’s his discoveries were that the audience was affected by the power of two separate images in juxtaposition, i.e. Mozhukin’s face and a bowl of soup, and the editing together of these two images caused the audience to create associations with the actor and the object in their mind, this could be the portrayal of hunger when ‘looking’ at the bowl of soup, even though the shots were two entirely different objects that were completely separated from each other. The kuleshov experiment and effect supports Gregory’s (1961) theory, which stated that meaning could be created when combining two shots together through editing, and through assertions and cues meaning could be created even when the two shots are in juxtaposition. Overall both Kuleshov and Gregory (1961) proved that unlinked shots that have no relevance, can still affect audiences through being edited together, therefore if this is true it is also true that the audiences perception of genre can be affected through editing. This is true because the way in which a film is edited, whatever techniques may be used, the audience will be affected, if two different people take the same unedited footage and both edit it into a film then the outcomes will be very different and the genres may even be different. This is supported by Hurbis-Cherrier (2007) who recalls being a student in an editing class where they were all given the same batch of footage and had to edit it into their own different films, he states that “It was a surprise to the students that the same footage yielded seven different films; one was even a comedy, while another was edited as a mystery”. Hurbis-Cherrier (2007) claims that “The differences between all of those student films, made from the same raw materials, were the result of the conceptual plasticity and creative flexibility of the editing process”.

The phenomenon of recut and mash up trailers began to become significant in 2005 when a recut trailer for The Shining (1980) created by Robert Ryang for a competition, was released on the internet. The original film is about Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) who becomes the caretaker of the Overlook Hotel in the secluded mountains of Colorado. Jack, being a family man, takes his wife and son to the hotel to keep him company throughout the long and isolated nights. During their stay strange things occur when Jack's son Danny sees gruesome images powered by a force called "The Shining" and Jack is heavily affected by this. Along with writer's block and the demons of the hotel haunting him Jack has a complete mental breakdown and the situation takes a sinister turn for the worse (Niam Dodd). In the recut trailer, Ryang has taken clips of the Torrance family in scenes where they appear smiling and happy to give the appearance of a fun family atmosphere. Ryang compliments this with a voice over to help give further depth to the narrative which says “Meet Jack Torrance, he’s a writer looking for inspiration” combined with medium shots of Jack attempting to write his book and gain publication for it, this then switches to shots of the young boy Danny, at which stage he is introduced “Meet Danny, he’s a kid looking for a dad”, this creates connotations of the film being about the foundations of a family and the love between the two as Jack says “Im your new foster father”. Various shots of Jack, Danny and Wendy (the mum and wife), together is accompanied by the song Solsbury Hill (Peter Gabriel) which when put together gives connotations of a family who are happy and having fun whilst staying in the hotel and indicates to the audience that the film is of the romantic-comedy genre which is of great contrast to the original film which was located in the horror/thriller genre. This being one of the first recut trailers, started a trend that many more people followed and began to release their own recut and mash up trailers on the internet, and is a great vehicle of discovery to show the world how editing can be used, how it can change, how it can manipulate and how it can contain vast amounts of power.

In 2004 a film directed by Adam McKay (SNL (2000/1), Step Brothers (2008)), Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) was released, in the same year after the first film was released another follow up was released called Wake Up, Ron Burgundy: The Lost Movie (2004). The second film was edited together through taking unused footage, alternate takes, cleverly edited pre-existing scenes, and additional voice-over narration from TV journalist Bill Kurtis to establish the story, then follows a completely different plot arc that was cut from the main film (Spout, N.D. [Online]). Whilst unsurprisingly the film was not as well rated or as funny as the first film, it only served to show how effective editing can be especially considering that this was footage that was considered unusable or unsuitable for the film itself but then was able to be used to good effect by the clever work on part of the editing team. This brings us to DVD’s many of which include deleted scenes and alternative endings, which when watched by the audience can make them realise how a scene that has been deleted from the final cut could have a major effect on the direction of the film and in turn their perception of the film which could change their assessment of the genre itself. Some films, such as The Butterfly Effect (2003), can be released on DVD as two different takes on the film, the normal cut and directors cut, this is generally due to conflict between different parts of the film between the studio and the director, but shows the audience a new perspective.

In the one of the recent studies conducted by Visch and Tan (2007) they proved the velocity of a film, when changed in the editing process, could affect the genre of the film, this therefore supports part of the argument that the editing process can affect the audiences perceptions, although this is only a small part of the editing process it can still prove that this is part of the process that is able to affect the perceptions of genre. In the other study that was conducted Visch and Tan (2008) stated that audience’s process films into genres to increase their enjoyment and enable connectivity to the film that they are watch, this is why they constantly refine their genre categories so that they can feel the accurate emotions to fit in with what they are watching. These studies both support the idea that because audiences detect the genre of a film via cues, then if the editing process has created these cue through techniques (e.g. velocity) then we can theorise that the editing techniques have affected the filmic cues and therefore shaped the genre of the film.

Chapter 5 Conclusion

The research concluded in this paper indentifies that the editing process is one that can be used to shape and control the audience’s emotions and enable them to connect with a film and in doing so they can then become familiar with the genre of that film in their minds. The genre is not only affected by the editing process but also by the audience’s perceptions of what they consider that genre to be, and so it is all influenced as a circular development. Different editing techniques control the outcome of a film, phenomenon’s such as recut trailers have made this apparent by enabling audiences to see that footage can be taken and cut, twisted and manipulated to fit in with a certain genre, even if that was not the intended genre when it was filmed, this is also apparent in deleted scenes, alternate endings and directors cuts, each of which can give the audience a perspective which was not seen in the final cut. Editing is a very powerful tool, and as more and more people are beginning to access it, they too are discovering and acknowledging its power, it is a power that cannot only create a film but create the emotive and contextual surroundings, and allow a genre to be deciphered via the audience.

The continuation of this research in the next stage of this project will enable the argued theories in this paper to be founded on a solid standing and give depth and new knowledge in the area of editing. As Sullivan (2005) states “the experience of the artist is the core element in the creation of new knowledge and the potential for new understanding is further enhanced through research projects that may take varied forms such as exhibitions, performances and publications”, this is true both for researchers and projects alike and tells us that to fully understand a subject area it must be first researched and then conducted in experiments.

References

An Application of the Kuleshov Experiment: Testing Viewer Reactions to Editing, Giselle Touzard, N.D., University of Nevada, Las Vegas
An Introduction to Genre Theory, Daniel Chandler
Arts Practice As Research: Inquiry In The Visual Arts, Graeme Sullivan, London, Sage Publications Inc., 2005
AUTEUR: The Creation of Humourous Scenes Using Automated Video Editing, Frank Nack & Alan Parkes, 1995, Lancaster University
Cinematic Primitives for Multimedia, Glorianna Davenport, Thomas Aguierre Smith, Natalio Pincever, MIT Media Laboratory
Effect of Film Velocity on Genre Recognition , Valentijn Visch, Ed Tan, Faculty of Arts, Department of Cultural Studies, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Amsterdam School of Communications Research, Universiteit van, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Einstein, Picasso, Agatha and Chaplin by Regina Goncalves
Interview with Francis Doublier from 1945, reproduced in Bernard ChardeÁ re, LumieÁ res sur LumiÁere (Lyons, 1987) , p. 274.
Narrative versus style : Effect of genre-typical events versus genre-typical filmic relizations on film viewers’ genre recognition, Valentijin Visch, Ed Tan, 2008
Practice as research: Approaches to creative arts enquiry, Estelle Barrett & Barbara Bolt, London, I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd, 2007
The Media Students Book, Gill Branston, Ray Stafford, London, Routledge, 2nd ed, 1999
The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research By Norman K. Denzin, Yvonna S. Lincoln, 2005, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA and London
The Kuleshov Effect: Recreating the Classic Experiment, Stephen Prince and Wayne E. Hensley, Texas, 1992, University of Texas Press on behalf of the Society for Cinema & Media Studies
Spout http://www.spout.com/films/Wake_Up_Ron_Burgundy_The_Lost_Movie/256890/default.aspx
University of Illinois Library, 08/23/06, http://www.library.uiuc.edu/village/primarysource/mod1/pg1.htm
University of Illinois Library, 08/23/06, http://www.library.uiuc.edu/village/primarysource/mod1/pg2.htm
Voice & Vision – A Creative Approach to Narrative Film and DV Production, Mick Hurbis-Cherrier, Burlington, USA, Focal Press, 2007

Simulated Client Project - STD Advert

2008-11-29T21:31:00.001Z

Client Project

2008-11-29T18:04:00.000Z

My client is a person named Toby Neal who runs his own photography company in nottingham. He does a range of different photography; portrait, weddings, clients and more. I think this project will be good for me to do as it requires a more proffesssional approach and will help me to learn more about listening to clients needs and acheving a good final product. I am going to start looking and researching into what other photography companies with dvd's have and what sort of style i should go for.

Simulated Brief

2008-10-29T19:56:00.000Z

In our simulated client project we were given the brief to create a short public service announcement advert on one of the following four subjects:

Climate Change
Sexual Health
Sustainability
Healthy Living

I have chosen to focus my project on sexual health because I belive that it is one of the most important issues and gives me alot of scope to work with. I will start my research by looking at previous works on STD's and gathering some ideas.

Infliction Pilot

2008-04-17T15:04:00.000+01:00

This was the 40 second pilot that i made for my film.

Script

2008-03-01T16:54:00.000Z

INT. KITCHEN, ADAM'S FLAT. - NIGHT

Adam kneels over Shaun’s dead body; there is a knife in his chest. There is blood all over the floor and on Adams hands.

ADAM
NO! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!

Adam hangs his head.

INT. COUNCLING ROOM - DAY

Rachel and Adam are sitting down talking.

RACHEL
How did you feel when you found out
that Louise was cheating on you?

ADAM
I felt so devastated, it was as if
everything I thought she was and everything
she meant to me was a lie. It made me feel
sick having to face the thought that she would
be with someone else. I thought that she was
so special and what we had was something to be
cherished. It was an ultimate betrayal; she
broke all my perceptions of what she was like.
It was like my worst fears had come true and I
felt trapped in this overpowering grief that
all the memories we had and all that I gave
to her had meant nothing. I was lost, I just
didn't know what to do, where to go from there.

RACHEL
What memories do you have of the good times you
spent together?

*FLASHBACK*

EXT. PARK. - DAY

Adam and Louise are sitting on a park bench, they are both smiling. They have there arms around each other.

EXT. TRAIN STATION. - EVENING

Adam gets off a train, Louise is there to meet him and they hug and kiss.

INT. BEDROOM, ADAM'S FLAT. - EVENING

Adam and Louise are in bed together, they are laughing. Adam is filming the both of them.

*END OF FLASHBACK*

Screen goes black

ADAM (V.O.)
But I can't stop thinking about them together...

*FLASHBACK*

EXT. PARK. - DAY

Adam is walking through a park, he is then startled by something he has seen - Louise is walking through the park holding hands with another man (Ian). Adam observes them from a distance, they do not see him. They hug and kiss.

INT. HALLWAY, ADAM'S FLAT. - LATER

Keys turn and the door opens hurriedly, Adam rushes in and slams the door, he leans against it and slowly slides down it, he puts his head in his hands and begins to cry.

INT. KITCHEN, ADAM'S FLAT. - LATER

Adam is sitting down on the sofa and his best friend Shaun is sat next to him comforting him, Adam is staring blankly at the ground.

SHAUN
Mate, I’m really sorry for you, I thought
you two were good together, but you don't
need her, you really don't, what a bitch...

Shaun’s words seem ineffective and Adam sits with the same blank expression on his face.

*END OF FLASHBACK*

INT. COUNCILING ROOM. - DAY

RACHEL
So how have you been dealing with these problems?

ADAM
I can't seem to do anything to take the pain away,
I just can't stop thinking about it, can't stop
thinking about her, I've lost everything...

INT. BEDROOM, ADAM'S FLAT. - MORNING

Adam sits on the floor next to his window, an entire day passes.

INT. BEDROOM, ADAM'S FLAT. - EVENING

Adam is looking at pictures of himself and Louise on his computer and begins to cry.

INT. KITCHEN, ADAM'S FLAT. - LATER

Adam gets a bottle of vodka out of the fridge and necks a big amount.

INT. KITCHEN, ADAM'S FLAT. - LATER

Adam continues drinking heavily.

INT. BEDROOM, ADAM'S FLAT. - LATER

Adam draws the bedroom curtain and sits on the floor in the same position as earlier.

INT. HALLWAY, ADAM'S FLAT. - DAY

There is loud banging on the door.

SHAUN
Come on Adam let me in mate!

BANG BANG BANG

SHAUN
Open up mate, please! I just want
to know that you’re alright!

BANG BANG BANG

INT. BEDROOM, ADAM'S FLAT. - CONTINUOUS

Adam is sitting on his bedroom floor against the wall; he is awake and is listening to Shaun but isn’t doing anything.

EXT. OUTSIDE ADAM'S FLAT. - CONTINUOUS

BANG BANG BANG

SHAUN
Come on mate open the door...we need to
talk about this!

INT. BEDROOM, ADAM'S FLAT. - CONTINUOUS

Adam suddenly raises his head, his facial expression changes and he looks as though he has just realised something.

*FLASHBACK*

EXT. PARK. - DAY

Adam is walking through a park, he is then startled by something he has seen - Louise is walking through the park with another man (Ian). Adam observes them from a distance - suddenly the memory changes and Louise and Shaun are walking through the park together, they kiss.

*END OF FLASHBACK*

INT. BEDROOM, ADAM'S FLAT. - CONTINUOUS

Adam gets up from where he has been sitting and leaves the room.

INT. KITCHEN, ADAM'S FLAT. - CONTINUOUS

As Adam walks into the kitchen his face looks enraged, he picks up a knife from the kitchen draw and heads for the hall way.

INT. HALLWAY, ADAM'S FLAT. - CONTINUOUS

As Adam walks toward the door he hides the knife behind his back, he unlocks the door...

Treatment

2008-03-01T16:41:00.000Z

The opening scene begins in Adams kitchen, Adam in on his knees next to the body of Shaun, there is a knife in his chest and blood all over the floor as well as on Adams hands, Shaun is dead. Adam is distraught and obviously regretful of his actions which have taken place in the moments previously; he shouts out and hangs his head.

In a counselling room Rachel sits and talks to Adam about his feelings when he found out that Louise was cheating on him, subsequently Adam makes his feelings very clear, Rachel then goes on to ask Adam about the good times he spent together with Louise.
Adam and Louise are sitting on a park bench, they have there arms around each other and they both look happy together. At a train station Adam gets off a train and Louise runs up to him, they hug and kiss. Louise opens a present from Adam, she gets excited as soon as she opens the box and runs over to Adam and hugs him.

Adam tells Rachel how he can’t stop thinking about Louise cheating on him.

In a park Louise and Ian are walking together whilst holding hands, Adam is also walking through the park and sees the couple together although they don’t see him. Louise and Ian stop and kiss, Adam is distraught.

At Adams flat the door opens and Adam rushes in slamming the door behind him, he leans against the door and slides down until he is sitting on the floor; he puts his head in his hands and begins to cry. Adam is sitting on a sofa in his flat whilst Shaun comforts him about Louise cheating, although Shaun is trying to talk to Adam his words seem ineffective and Adam retains the same blank expression.

In Adams bedroom he sits on the floor next to the window, an entire day passes without Adam doing anything. Adam looks at pictures on his computer of himself and Louise, he begins to cry. Sitting on the floor Adam necks a big amount of vodka. He then preceeds to start drinking beers heavily. Adam draws the curtains of his room in a panicked state; he wants to seclude himself from life.

In the counselling room Rachel talks to Adam about how he has been dealing with being separated from Louise, he tells of how he can’t take away the pain and how he’s lost everything, he begins to break down.

There are knocks at the door of Adams flat and Shaun is shouting to be let in. Adam is sitting in his bedroom, he is awake and listening to what Shaun says but he doesn’t move. Shaun continues shouting and says that he and Adam need to talk about the situation, this time Adam raises his head and looks as though he has suddenly realised something.

In a park Louise and Ian are walking together whilst holding hands, Adam is also walking through the park and sees the couple together although they don’t see him. Suddenly it is no longer Louise and Ian but it is Louise and Shaun who are walking through the park holding hands, they stop and kiss.

In Adams bedroom he gets up from where he was sitting and goes into the kitchen, he has a look of anger and rage on his face; he goes to the draw and gets out a knife. Adam walks into the hallway; he hides the knife behind his back and opens the lock on the front door.

Character Bio's

2008-03-01T16:16:00.000Z

Adam Hardy
Adam is in his early twenties; he has short hair and is a medium build. Adam has come straight out of university into a job for a major banking company of which he has been working for a bit over a year. He lives in a flat with his girlfriend Louise who has been seeing for about four years and is deeply in love with.

Shaun Helmsley
Shaun, like Adam, is also in his early twenties; he has medium length brown hair and is quite a slim build. Shaun lives up the street from Adam and they’ve been best of friends ever since they met when Adam moved into to his flat. Shaun and Adam spend
lots of time together doing lad stuffs and as a result they are inseparable.

Louise Richards
Louise is also in her early twenties and has dark brown hair with a short petit figure; she is Adam’s girlfriend and has been in a relationship with him ever since they met at university. Although Louise loves Adam it is clear that Adam’s love and dedication to the relationship is greater and anyone who knows the couple can recognise this. Louise spends quite a lot of time at home as she only works a part time job whilst she searches for a break through in the world of fashion which she has dreamed of doing since completing a degree in fashion design at university.

Rachel Pearson
Rachel is in her mid twenties and is a medium build with brown hair. Rachel is a counsellor and has been so for the past three years, she decided to become a counsellor due to her enjoyment of helping people, especially those at bad points in there lives, overcome problems and make sure they can reach a better place in their lives.

Ian Peters
Ian, another who is in his early twenties has medium brown hair and a stocky build. Ian is the ‘other guy’, he enjoys going out on the lash with his mates a lot of the time and is considered a bit of a ‘player’ by most of them because of the amount of women he beds.

Cloverfield

2008-02-10T17:37:00.000Z

I just went to see cloverfield at the cinema, not impressed at all! After seeing the trailers for it and hearing about all the hype surrounding it I was really hoping for something special but it was a big let down. The use of the handheld camera all the way through the film did make it more realistic and it brings the audience closer to the action, but it also gets quite annoying because of the constant movement (they even have notices up saying that due to the nature of the hand-held style camerawork viewers may experience motion sickness) and the fact that I think recording everything would be the last thing on your mind if you were in that situation and that detracted from the realism that they were obviously aiming for. I read on an online article that the producing partner of JJ Abrams had said "It's an entirely original story and monster", but i disagree with this as the story follows the same pattern as alot of other films and its not like we havent seen this type of thing before, think Godzilla with a handheld camera. I think theres alot of mixed opinion surrounding this film but for me I have to say it was dissapointing, if you've seen it let me know what you think.

One Shot

2007-12-10T18:09:00.000Z

This was the attempt at the one shot piece of work, as a group I think we all decided that we had rushed this and not planned it through properly. Debs made some good points when talking about where we went wrong, she said we should have experiement with depth of field and taken into account the rule of thirds, as well as this the major point was about how we should have used a neutral density so that it wasnt so bright and this would have created a better feel for the shot. I think the task was still helpful even though the end result was not of a good quality because I believe we all learned something through the course of it.

Group Hannibal Edit

2007-12-10T17:40:00.000Z

In this group task we had to take footage from four cameras and edit them together in whatever way we wanted, it was helpful that we had a video with all four camera angles on as well so we could watch through all the footage which had been filmed at the same time. The editing went fairly quickly as we were able to line up all the footage on different tracks in premiere, along with the four shot footage.

Music Soundtrack

2007-12-09T19:01:00.000Z

The music i created involved two tracks, one was something i created using fruity loops and the other was a guitar track that i recorded from one of my mates (Leon T. Allen) but we decided not to use it because we felt that it didnt fit with the general overall feeling of the documentary, and so we used the music that i created and i believe that it works very well with the entire documentary.

Saving Sound

2007-11-30T09:38:00.000Z

After we had gone to the centre to record our footage we discovered that the audio was very bad due to us not using the correct microphones, this meant that our footage was unusable. I took the audio to see if it could be recovered and i found a good way to do this in a program i have called adobe audition, the program allowed me to take a piece of the audio where there was no talking (i.e. just the background sound) and analyse the frequence, after doing this you could select the whole track and take that frequencey of the background sound out, leaving the audio with just the talking.

Documentary Questions

2007-11-29T19:36:00.000Z

These are the questions we have decided to ask ash's uncle:

1)What is your name?
2)Where were you born?
3)How old are you?
4)How long have you lived in Nottingham?
5)How did you get into sports?
6)How did you get into coaching?
7)How long have you been coaching for?
8)How long have you been coaching at this club?
9)When and why was this club opened?
10)How do you think this benifits the community?
11)Is the club sponsored or does it recieve funding?
12)Does your family help you with the scheme?
13)What age group do teach?
14)What do you teach and achieve in the 2hr sessions?
15)Is there a summer scheme?
16)Is this your full time job?
17)What do you enjoy about working at the club?
18)How do you think the club can be improved?
19)Did you have a similar scheme when you were younger?
20)What other interest do you have?
21)Who or what inspires you?

The Editing Process

2007-11-29T14:38:00.000Z

I think this exercise showed how powerful editing can be and how much control the production and editing teams have over the final piece. In my piece I took the advert for Martini in which a man in a black suit arrives on a boat and goes and takes a drink to a woman, later on in the scene he is driving a car. Through editing i change the scene so that it seems as though the man is stealing bottles of Martini and then running away, jumping on a boat and then escaping in a car.

Documentary Research

2007-11-28T23:56:00.000Z

As part of my research i watched a four minute documentary that i discovered on youtube. I felt it was relevant to our project because it involves a community project and is about a house that has been turned from a dissused building into a commmunity center.

2007-11-28T23:37:00.000Z

Small Screens
Let's Play
Jo Berry

This series of experimental animated drawings developed from Jo's interest in creating digital drawings with movement. The computer as a drawing and design tool allows incredible clarity and precision in creating 'hybrids', new forms through amalgamation.

In different short animations we see experimental forms bending, flying and turning over the screen.

I believe this piece of digital art was trying to play with time and space, stopping reality in one place and showing a singular piece of time, almost like a more complex version of a photograph, and i thought it was a very interesting concept.

Tether Festival

Tether Festival presents animations and video shorts by artists and filmmakers from around the UK such as a hand-drawn battle of wits between Theresa Wrigley and Chie Hosaka.

'Air Condition' - Ezer Shniderman

Iconography

2007-10-24T14:43:00.000+01:00

For this exercise we were told to think of a character related to a certain genre and shoot a scene only using one shot and it should be no more than 30 seconds long.

I would class our chosen genre as drama, this is because it is focusing on human emotion and contains emotional themes.

In our group we split ourselves up into different roles;
Me - Art Productions -props, costumes, locations and makeup
Glyn - Director - scripting, frame forge and storyboarding
Ash - Sound - recording live and non-live sound
Sid - Camera - equpiment

As part of my role i scouted out different locations that could be used in the graveyard and took pictures as shown below;

As the scene is about death we want the colours in the scene to be grey and dull to give conotations of death and after checking the weather forecast ive found that it will be 'prodimiantly cloudy' which will be perfect for the scene, but we will have to prepare ourselves for rain.

The scene has been influenced by an episode of scrubs. In the episode Dr Cox's friend has died but he still believes he is alive until he realises he is at his funeral, if you havent seen it id definatley reccomend watching it cause its an awesome episode

Idents Project Evaluation

2007-06-01T21:21:00.000+01:00

Evaluation Report

In this essay I will evaluate my Identities project, for which I chose to do E4; I will evaluate my research, project management and the finished product.

I chose to do the E4 project because I felt that it was something I already knew about in detail through past experience which has been approximately four years.

Through my research I concluded that E4 was a freeview and digital tv channel and was a product of the Channel 4 company. The programs shown include a lot of American import programs such as Friends, E.R., The OC, Smallville, The Sopranos, Desperate Houswives and Scrubs, as well as some British programs like Hollyoaks, Big Brother and Wife Swap.

A music program created by E4, named ‘E4 Music’ has also been running since August 2005, everyday in a 6am to 2pm time slot everyday and is very ‘viewers choice’ orientated.

E4 also has ‘First Look’, an incentive to its viewers where a program is shown before it is aired on C4 (Channel 4), although this is only with Hollyoaks and Big Brother.

Another feature of the channel is the ‘Timeshift’ channel called ‘E4+1’, this channel shows what was on E4 one hour ago and therefore useful for people who miss programs or want to watch them later.

Further to my research on the background information of the channel, I decided to produce a questionnaire in which my main aims were to find out the target audience of E4 (i.e. age group and gender), find out what people knew about E4 and to find out why they liked it.

My questionnaire consisted of nine questions in total, as well as a starter question in order to decipherer whether or not to continue the questionnaire.

After I had used my questionnaire to interview people, I drew some research conclusions; these were that the target audience were 13-30 yr olds, both male and female. These people like the choice of programs, especially the vast array of American import programs.

More research led me to discover previous E4 promotional campaigns, although these campaigns were only used on E4 and were not used for advertising purposes (e.g. posters, billboards, etc). The trailers shown on E4 “often make use of dry humour and phrases which at first do not appear to make any sense”[1], some of the phrases used include; “In 1884 we invented music telly. We just didn’t bother telling anybody”[2] and “Second chance Sunday – not just a bunch of repeats – honest!”[3]

The material that I researched enabled me to make decisions on how I wanted to re-brand E4 and how I wanted to achieve this re-branding, although I firstly needed to discover and research re-branding in able to fully achieve this.

Looking at how brands are viewed and different thoughts behind a successful brand helped me discover that brands are unique and differentiated; they maintain personal connections in the sales process, whilst associating themselves with a clear set of values, as well as fulfilling a need or expectation for the target audience[4].

A quote that I found helped me realise success behind brands was “Brands are more that logos. Many elements combine in a brand to generate an emotional bond with a customer. Brands are about personality”[5].

Once I had researched I decided that I would produce six stings, three for E4, three for E4 Music (with three both split as one animation and two videos), with each being six to ten seconds long and the format would be MiniDV.

The programs I chose to use were Fruityloops for music and sound, Adobe Premiere to edit all the videos, and 3D Studio Max 8 for animation.

The website, I concluded would be separate to the C4 website and would be made user friendly and accessible, I would make this using Dreamweaver.

The poster campaign would follow the same theme as the website in terms of colouring and simplicity, with the aim being to create brand awareness and audience recollection, specifically by creating a slogan or tagline. I decided to use Adobe Photoshop to create them.

Once I had confirmed my intentions for re-branding, I looked at project management and created a schedule of works, one for the stings, the other for re-branding, this was because of different project deadlines.

The final project I produced was a website and three posters. The first of the posters was part of my ‘4 YOU’ concept in which the target audience was included, therefore denoting that E4 was exclusively for them. The poster kept with the original colouring theme for E4 (purple and white) as I considered that they were already associated with the brand.

On the poster, four slogans were used, once again denoting the link with E4, these four slogans were; ‘TV 4 YOU’, ‘MUSIC 4 YOU’, ‘MORE 4 YOU’ and ‘ALL 4 YOU’. In each the slogans the ‘4’ used is the E4 logo, the use of this logo 4 times in the poster was to initiate audience recognition of the E4 logo and in turn create audience recollection in the future for the E4 brand.

The composition of the image is the four slogans from left to right across the poster, each equal in size and inline with each other. The poster is done in landscape; this is so that the text could be created larger and therefore be more eye catching to the target audience. This was the same case for the colours, purple is quite an eye catching colour and has connotations of royalty, spirituality and mysteriousness[6]. The colour white on the other hand has connotations of purity, cleanliness and innocence[7]. These colours go together as white combines well with every colour. The overall composition of the poster allows it to continue the idea of simplicity which this poster conveys well.

The second poster that was produced was a different concept to the previous poster. The poster is in landscape, with a white background and is composed of a slogan as the title which is ‘WATCH E4’ (with E4 logo) and is in purple text. The title has a central image below it, which is the ‘Uncle Sam’ image, famous for its use in U.S. Army posters, along with the slogan ‘I want YOU for the U.S. army!’ which is very inclusive of the target audience and a very simple and direct phrase. This slogan was my inspiration for my slogan on the poster; ‘DO IT!’ this keeps to the idea of simplicity.

The composition of the ‘DO IT!’ slogan is based around the central image ‘Uncle Sam’ and is shown four times on each side in red text. I decided to use red text because of the use of red on the ‘Uncle Sam’ poster in the word ‘YOU’, this stands out as red has connotations of power (e.g. red carpet), danger, and emergency[8], meaning it will alert people and make them more aware. Red can also have negative connotations though, in terms of standing for anger and violence, therefore meaning it would be associated with the E4 brand, something I would not want.

The slogan ‘DO IT!’ was also influence in part by the company Nike, whose slogan is ‘Just Do It!’, which is a directive that commands the audience and has been very successful and well known for many years. With this in mind I believe that my slogan ‘DO IT!’ combine with the image of ‘Uncle Sam’ pointing at the target audience would be a powerful statement.

Although the poster achieves many things it does not entirely stick with the previous colour themes (i.e. purple background with white text) and also makes brand recognition harder for target audience. The frame seems too cluttered with eight ‘DO IT!’ slogans, therefore detracting from the simplicity. The composition of the frame also makes it less related to the ‘Uncle Sam’ poster as it is landscape, not portrait.

The third poster that I created is following the same theme as the second, with the ‘Uncle Sam’ image being used again. In this poster its composition is landscape, with the central image as ‘Uncle Sam’, on a white background and a slogan below this that reads ‘ALL 4 YOU’ with the E4 logo, the ‘ALL’ in purple text and the ‘YOU’ in red text. This slogan links back to the first poster and this is good for brand recognition between the two.

This poster is a lot simpler than the second poster and links more closely with the actual ‘Uncle Sam’ poster, therefore having more relevance, but having said this the image composition again detracts from the relevance as it is landscape, not portrait. The image of ‘Uncle Sam’ has massive connotations of Americanism, which can be linked to the amount of American import programs that E4 shows, but could also be a bad thing as it many detract from the channels sense of British identity which may be lost on these posters.

The website that I created was eventually made using a program called Adobe GoLive CS, I made this decision to change from Dreamweaver because I found the program easier to use whilst being very similar to Dreamweaver.

The website consisted of seven pages; this included the front page which was a site entrance. The overall website kept to the original purple and white E4 colour scheme, each page is the same, with the white side and top areas and purple in the middle with white text. Each page has its own title at the top of the page.

The start page is an entrance to the website and is all purple with the E4 logo as a picture with a link to the home page, this also includes links to other Channel 4 website pages, these are; Channel 4, More4, 4 On Demand, Radio 4 and Film 4.

The home page gives a short introduction to the website, telling the target audience what E4 is and giving a bit of background information. The page also includes two banner adverts; this is just for illustration purposes. The music page includes text describing E4 Music, a scrolling news banner, an interview section and an embedded music video (section called Video of the Week)The TV page also has descriptive text, a schedule and images of three programs shown on E4. The E-Speak page is a concept page which I took from the E4 website and includes text and an image. The E-Stings page is about the E-Stings competition and includes text and some images of previous Sting competition entrants. Finally the Contact Us page includes simple text with contact detail of E4 on.

The overall website is very simplistic, which keeps in theme with the posters, but it is possibly too simplistic and does not contain any further pages (e.g. Program websites) and is no better than the previous E4 website, although having said this it was a re-branding process and the website has been changed to fit in with the concept that was developed.

In this project my main downfall was my project management, this is because I did not stick to my schedule and so ended up rushing to complete the final products and this meant that they were not as good a standard as I would have first hoped for. The stings were especially problematic for me as I did not complete them in time and therefore did not submit them.

In conclusion the project did not turn out how I hoped, but was not a complete failure. The poster campaign did keep an undertone, but was unstructured and did not stick to the purple background colour theme with white text and logo. The website was simplistic and this was a good point, but it was not large enough or professional enough for a company like E4. If I had to do this project again I would focus on my project management and make sure that all my tasks were completed.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E4_%28TV%29

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E4_%28TV%29

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E4_%28TV%29

[4] Cyberbranding – Brand Building In The Digital Economy, Deirdre Breakenridge, 2001

[5] Beyond Logos – New Definitions Of Corporate Identity, Clare Dowdy, 2004

[6] http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/colorselection/p/purple.htm

[7] http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/colorselection/p/white.htm

[8] http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/colorselection/p/red.htm

Idents Feedback/Thoughts

2007-05-28T17:23:00.000+01:00

After finally handing in my project i knew that id not done well at all, i hadn't stuck to my plan and as a result my final project was sloppy and rushed, I think my problem has been the same with most of my work and i know that i have to improve on this greatly next year. It was good to recieve feedback on my work and i can now take all the criticsm and put them in my evaluation, of which there are alot.

3D Animation

2007-05-05T20:11:00.000+01:00

Been getting to grips with 3D Studio Max, its a really good program but its complex and it pisses me off most of the time but i suppose thats only natural with a program so big. Ive been doing the name jump and modelling the character both of which i found fairly easy compared to the hopper and squid which i found that i had problems with both, hopefully i can sort them out but it does get really annoying.

Evalution of group narrative project

2006-12-07T13:17:00.000Z

Highlight the skills and knowledge you have gained and developed and show how you have gained them. Provide suggestions for improvement and how these attributes will inform your study in future modules this year.

In this essay I shall review the project that was created by me and my narrative group. As a group we firstly arranged a meeting and decided that we would post our ideas on the discussion forum where we could post from either University or accommodation, meaning that ideas could be exchanged at the same time as keeping a record of them. Although we did use the discussion forum we found that we generally exchanged more ideas when we were in meetings where we could use and develop each others ideas more freely than online where we would post ideas and then have to wait for ideas. As well as this not everyone had internet access at their places of accommodation and therefore we found that we only used it in situations where we had ideas outside of meetings or to arrange our next meeting and log it so that everyone knew when and where it was.

As a group we came up with many ideas, our first idea was a narrative which portrayed people who had compulsions to do something that they knew they shouldn’t, this idea could have been developed into serious or comical situations, as well as making the events trivial or important. The group’s second idea was about our reliance on technology, and in this case especially mobile phone and what would happen if this technology is taken away from people, how it affects their lives and whether or not they could live with out it. Another idea was to base the narrative on how people with opposite personalities clash, this may have been something as simple as musical tastes, or a more complex subject such as political views and how it effects relationships.

We eventually decided to create a narrative with a focus on an aspect of university life. Our chosen genre was comedy and our target audience was chosen as university students, more specifically first year university students, this is because we believed that they could relate to any university related events. After this we agreed that it would be set on a first year students first day at university and so created the title “Day One”. As the narrative had to be 2 minutes long exactly we concluded that we would have to write the narrative based on key events of the 24 hour time span which would be a series of comical events occurring to the student on his first day and would be done in the style of a linear narrative.

The next step was to agree on what type of format our narrative would be shown as. After deciding on using pictures (stills) to create our narrative, we thought that it would be a good idea to add in a comic book style to give it more of a comedy effect and we were heavily influenced by ‘Max Payne’ (Rockstar/Remedy, 2002, www.maxpayne.com) a successful, multi award winning video game which was first released on PC and then made successful transitions to both PS2 and XBOX video games consoles. The game was most notable for the style in which it portrayed its narrative through use of a visual comic book style and was also accompanied by a VO (voice over) which helped to carry the narrative as well add more definition and depth to the main character, this character being Max Payne.(www.sg.hu/kep/2001_09/max_payne_bemutato_02.jpg)

As well as being influenced by Max Payne, we were interested in the music video for Roll Deep Crew’s song, ‘The Avenue’ (AKA ‘Heartbreak Avenue’) (2004, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzyGy3I6b9U) in which the band members are transformed into comic book characters after being real life human beings and it was also taken into consideration that we could use both real life video footage which could the transform into a comic book style using images, although this idea was never brought to fruition.

After we had finalised the ideas we decided which tasks and roles each of us would be assigned, at this point we agreed that even if people did not have skill in a certain area then they could be helped by experiencing the process. We then made a schedule of work that each area would have to be completed by, although this was not followed as closely as the group had planned or hoped, the end product was completed in time.

When our ideas and plans were then presented in front of other narrative groups and the lectures, this allowed us to realise how much of the project we had not considered and how we could improve on our ideas. This feedback was necessary for us as a group to hear and be able to improve on future project presentations as individuals.

The first part of the post production stage involved editing photos in Adobe Photoshop where we added a Max Payne style, after which we added speech bubbles and storyline banners along the top and/or bottom of the pictures which told the narrative. The ‘Max Payne’ cartoon style effect was added to the pictures by Isaac, who worked on his own from home and therefore no one else was able to learn the process in which the pictures were changed from normal to comic book style and in this section of production I believe that team work should have been enforced better, therefore allowing the whole group to learn new skills or enhanced their currently existing skills. The research into Photoshop tutorials led me to find a mass of information which could be helpful in future work and in learning new techniques (http://webdesign.org/img_articles/2204/mpcomic.mov).

At this point in the project I tried to help by finding tutorials for Adobe Photoshop of how to create a ‘Max Payne’ style and decided that such things could be used as a contingency plan if Isaac’s method failed. I also experimented with my own methods and found that a simple method in Photoshop was to use the ‘Fresco’ effect, which created a good ‘mock’ ‘Max Payne’ style image.

The next stage in the project was to record the sounds, this was done in one of the sound booths and we therefore learnt about some of the equipment involved in the recording of sound. As we had not yet learnt about how to use the equipment, we firstly recorded the sounds using a portable mini tape recorder. After this we were required to transfer this sound to a file on the computer and therefore we requested the help of a technician who taught us how to transfer this sound using audio jacks and a program named Sound Forge. After the sound was transferred to the computer we decided that it would be more appropriate to edit it in Adobe Premiere at the same time as the pictures.

In the final stages of editing, Sejpaal who was knowledgeable of Adobe Premiere put together the edited stills and then edited the sound by selecting the parts that we needed from the recording session. In this part of the project I observed what Sejpaal was doing in Premiere, this is so that I could add to the knowledge that I already had which is only a basic understanding of the program. I also attempted some of my own tests in which I practiced using the transition which was relevant to our groups project, this being the ‘page curl’ as we wanted to achieve the effect of the viewer reading a comic book.

I believe that although my contribution to this project may not have been much I did still have input on what went into the final product and this is reflected in my 65% effort grade which was award to me by the team. I believe that I was able to achieve a good relationship with the rest of my team which allowed me to learn new skills and to refresh my memory of old ones. I feel that although this project was largely focused on creating a good end product, its main target was to get people used to working in a team and learning new skills.

When reviewing the end production I believe that although it was visually very well done, the narrative left a lot to be desired, this is because I do not believe it was funny enough to warrant it being in the genre of comedy and this should have been more of a focus. As well as this I believe that we did not leave or self enough time to review the end product after we had produced it and it should have been tested on our target audience before being handed in, this could have notified us of any problem that may have occurred as well as being able to have feedback on the actual narrative.

In the future if I was to do another group project I would want to be more involved, therefore I will work on my technical skills and hopefully be able to be a bigger part of the final product. I would also ensure that as a group everyone could trust each other and be able to rely on them, as well as trying to involve everyone in every task as this would not only improve knowledge and skills, but team relationships which are very important for group projects.

Testing, Testing, 1,2,3…

2006-11-27T13:00:00.000Z

Just a quick post, went in one of the sound booths on friday to record some sound for our group narrative work, needless to say it was wicked, the equipment was top of the range and we worked off 2 massive mac screens which were interconnected with each other, the whple proccess was a good learning experience.

Image Composition Meaning

2006-11-27T12:31:00.001Z

After thinking long and hard, i realised that the item that I own and like most is my mobile, which is a Motorola Black RAZR V3 and I believe it is the most aesthetically pleasing object because of its slim and sleek design which is very modern and attractive, inspired by today’s minimalistic lifestyle.

In its functionallity it is able to store and play MP3's, record videos, take pictures, browse the web with 'web 'n' walk', play games, send things via bluetooth, and most importantly make calls and recieve texts (obviously). Its much more suited to me than my other phone which could only take very low quality pictures because i like to be able to take lots of videos and pictures and this allows me the freedom to do so (baring in mind the limited space) meaning that i now have lots of videos and photos from it stored to my harddrive.

I think that this object communicates to me that with changes in technology, it is possible to have style and functionality at the same time without compromising either. It also communicates that technology continues to expand and more and more features will become available meaning that most pieces of equipment will become multi-functional tools.

Image Composition Meaning

2006-11-27T12:31:00.000Z

VAST

2006-11-27T12:27:00.000Z

Hey just thought I’d post a links to a websites that I found whilst browsing the net, its called VAST which stands for ‘Visual Audio Sensory Theater’, it’s a flash site and I really liked the layout and design of it, heres a pic and a link to it, take a look see what ya think;

2 Short Films

2006-10-30T11:13:00.000Z

Deviation Link

I found this short film at a site called ‘atom films’ which is dedicated to short films. This film title is ‘Deviation’ and is a machinima film which is a genre of film that is created using a video game, this one comes from the game Counterstrike (an online pc game) and was made using voice actors from across America who never met in the real world. I think that I liked the fact that it seems like a simple way to create what I thought was a good short film and that is why I like the machinima genre of film, along with the fact that it means that people can make films based on games which is not that common in the film industry with the exception of films such as Resident Evil and Final Fantasy (although these are not machinima films, but films based on video games). The storyline I felt was the best point to the film as it was relevant to video games and as a person who plays video games I could relate to it.

This second film that I found on YouTube was titled Static and was of the horror genre, and I found that I liked its simple, yet effective style which allowed the story to develop well and I enjoyed how the narrative was non-linear, unlike many other short films. It was also done in a Japanese style horror, like films such as Ringu and Ju-On.

My First Post

2006-10-09T10:55:00.000+01:00

Test

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Evalution of group narrative project

Testing, Testing, 1,2,3…

Image Composition Meaning

Image Composition Meaning

VAST

2 Short Films

My First Post

Robs Big Fat Multimedia Blog