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Final Blog

CCR_A_Level_Media_Studies

Trailer_1_The_Nightmare

Trailer_2_The_Nightmare

Website_The_Nightmare

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FINAL POSTER

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Sound Links

Panic_ Sound Panic sound

Dark_Tension_Sound  Dark Tension sound

Door_Open_Sound  Door open

Khwaab_Music_Sound   khwaab

Horror_Sound_Effect   Horror sound effect

Love_Sound_Effect   love sound effect

Background_Suspence_Music  Background suspense music

[narayanzero0]

October 3rd Week

This week I started with question 4 of CCR, our ma’am suggested we should do something different so, we all decided to do the answer 4 on Pixton software, where we can write the answer in the form of a comic but, later we found out that there is no provision for attaching evidence to it so we came back to Prezi as it is a familiar software for us. As our cinematographer was working on the website so, for the homepage of the website we conducted a photoshoot of our lead actress Nishtha, and our cinematographer shot her in a dark location with the scary makeup. this week our team completed the designing of our movie website, though the website was made earlier but there were some changes in it which have to be incorporated, I have put the snapshot of the earlier homepage of the website in September third week. later this week, I completed my CCR question 4 and then I started with Prezi, putting all the answers and evidence in it. As I mentioned in my earlier blogs that I was the lead actor in the other team’s trailer so, they also had their photoshoot for the homepage for their website so, I and my co-actor had a photoshoot in the school’s garden. The next week is our Diwali break, so this will be my last blog of media studies. 

Thank you

[narayanzero0]

October 2nd Week

HEY ALL,

I did not work in 1st week of October as I had my English and Law exams. We were free from our exams by the second week of October and again I started with my editing and finalizing the trailers and while I was giving my exams my director had already finished the poster and then our cinematographer was doing the website. I was doing the color grading in my trailers and was making some necessary changes like adding the titles, adding effect to them, adding production slides and small improvisations that came to me at the last moment.  For our website, we purchased the domain name from godaddy.com and the website was built on wix.com.

In parallel to this, I was also doing my CCR questions. I started with the first question, then second and then third and mailed it to ma’am. I finalized my trailer and rendered the trailer and gave it my cinematographer to add them to the website. Then later this week, I completed my CCR questions. Also, my director was making a poster and finalizing everything, I too worked fast as the deadline was very close. 

[narayanzero0]

October 1st Week

This whole week we had our Mock examinations, so we had fewer classes and in that too we revised for our mock exams.

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September 4th Week

This week I was studying LAW as next week I have my  LAW board exam so, I  did not attend my media class, meanwhile, our director was working on the poster and I will join the media class after my exams are over.

[narayanzero0]

September 3rd Week

We started this week by Component 4. we studied about audiences and theories related to them. An audience is a spectator or listener who consumes media texts, such as films and video games. Audience theory focuses on three main ideas regarding the way in which the audience consume these texts, and what happens to audiences by consuming them.

The first theory is Effect mode and this suggests that the consumption of media texts affects or influences the audiences, typically in a negative way. The message of the media text is powerful and influences the passive and powerless audience, similar to a needle that injects a message into the viewers, with the audience having no control over whether or not they receive this message. Albert Bandura developed the Bobo doll experiment to prove that children who observed violent behavior to a doll were more likely to act violently, with 88% of the children imitating it. Bandura used it to support his argument that all human behavior was learned, through imitation.

Another popular idea within the audience, the theory is the uses and gratifications model, which argues that the audience is active and utilizes the media text for its own gratification or pleasure, as opposed to being used by the text. Unlike the effects model, the uses and gratification model suggest that the power lies within the audience and not the producers of the text, meaning that media texts are received in very different way. This model also argues against the effects model in that it suggests that the active audience member may freely choose to consume a media text to alleviate aggressiveness and violence.

The third theory surrounding audience theory is reception theory which is based on the idea that media texts are able to be interpreted in a variety of ways, differing depending on gender, race, age, religion, or personal values. This is because the audience interprets the meanings of texts for themselves as they receive it. Stuart Hall argues that when a producer constructs a text it is encoded with a particular message that the producer constructs a text it is encoded with a particular message that the producer wants to convey to the audience.

The first type of audience reader that Hall suggested is dominant, as they are able to decode the producers’ message as intended and broadly agree with it. The second type of audience is negotiated, as they may accept, reject or refine the message of the texts. The third type of audience is oppositional, as they are able to decode the message but reject it for cultural, political or ideological reasons.

Another theory regarding audience is cultivation theory, which holds that ideas and values may be normalized and accepted through repetition. This means that, through repeatedly playing violent video games, audiences may become desensitized to violent actions and would, therefore, be less morally opposed to such actions. George Gerbner argued that continued exposure to media’s message is likely to reiterate, confirm and nourish values and perspectives.

An alternative theory is the two-step flow model, theorized by Lazarsfeld and Katz. This theory argues that, although we may often consume texts independently, we share our experiences of the text with others afterward, influencing our behavior.

This week I even started editing and adding background score to the trailers. I even started searching for dramatic effects and learnt about few tools. 

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September 2nd Week

This week we studied how we have used digital technologies and they have helped to create our media products. If we talk about hardware, from the very beginning of the year, we started practicing for the camera and editing. For shooting our A2 portfolio we used Nikon 750D

We used Microsoft Office for all our documents works like MS word, MS Excel, MS powerpoint. Digital Technology has been an integral part of both productions. We used this software to write scripts, screenplays, to make master break down, shot division and to do the scheduling.

 I have developed to be more professional with each and every digital technology I have used or played with. So, I was more prepared and had more knowledge when I started with my A2 project. This time I used a sony recorder to record the sound.

My skills with internet researched developed in regards to streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hotstar. As I watched films, trailers and videos regarding editing and other things related to our portfolio on YouTube during my research part. 

We used two systems with LED LG screen in school which both had an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 ti 6gb graphics card, 8gb ram and Intel i7 8 generation processor and windows 10.

This time I did not have much difficulty in editing the trailer as we used the same software which we used in the A1 project which is Adobe Premiere CS6. We planned to use Adobe Photoshop CS6 for poster designing.

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September 1st Week

In this week we started the component 4 topic ‘’Research and Planning ‘’and “Real Media Text”. Research and Planning is a pivotal process in media production and thus has been a large part of several of my media productions since AS. Improvement in skills regarding research and planning has resulted in more successful media productions. Real media texts have had a profound impact on the way in which my media productions have been created, providing great sources of inspiration and informing me of a particular genre’s form and its technology.

Research and Planning

The very first research we that we did was watching trailers of the horror mystery genre films so, that we get to know about the codes and conventions of this type of genre, this all we watched on YouTube and we even watched videos of the 180-degree rule, match on action and shot-reverse-shot to get an understanding of these terms and implement it in our projects.

My skills in researching form has also developed and improved over time, by doing plenty of research during my A level project. My skills with planning locations have developed through doing the AS project and A2 project as I have done plenty of scouting for locations during both projects. For A levels I scouted for locations like isolated locations with dull lighting and a little bit of scary. Through having the opportunity to repeat certain processes in various projects, I have been able to develop my researching and planning skills as I was more aware of which methods needed changing for the next project.

Real Media Text

Real media texts have had a profound impact on the way in which my media productions have been created, providing great sources of inspiration and informing me of a particular genre’s form and its technical. Researching real media texts was of fundamental importance to influencing my own media production, in terms of representation. Had I not looked into real media texts, my understanding of technical conventions, the representation of particular archetypes and the features of specific genres would have not been as great

This week we also did an activity where our teacher told us to make a table with the headings- Genre, Form, Techincal conventions, Symbolism, Representation, Real product, and make two columns each for one of our productions. In Research & Planning, we have to write how did we complete the Research & Planning of our own production.

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August 4th week

We did not study much this week as our school had a career fair and we all were given duties so, we all were busy

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August 3rd Week

This week was the most important week for me as this week we started with editing and I was the editor of my team and now it was my responsibility to make the trailers look good and impactful. I watched trailers of horror films as s it helped me to gain knowledge about how a trailer is made and what constitutes a trailer like high tempo background sound, fast cuts, scary fonts and etc. which I have to keep in mind while editing a horror mystery genre trailer.  The trailer even contains production slides in between the trailer and also as this a trailer so each scene will have limited time on the screen.  I did editing on Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 and it's user-friendly and I did my A1 media portfolio on this software only so I have knowledge of how to use this project. Firstly, I added the videos of my trailer on the software and then extracted some parts from the trailer which I and my director find appropriate for the trailer. Then parallelly I started finding out the background sound for the trailer from YouTube and then converted them into mp3 from the mp3 convertor site. I researched for sounds which are mysterious in listening and little bit horror and sounds which rise from slow tempo to high tempo, as mainly these types of sound are used in horror mystery genre trailers.

Later after adding the sound I started with adding the video transitions on the clips in the trailer and in between the clips, I used video transitions like Dip to black, Dip to white, Fade in, fade out, zoom and even masking. To make the trailer more impactful and scarier we used masking, I used this for the first time and it was quite difficult to do but still, I did it and the impact it is creating on the trailer is mind-blowing and eye-catching. Masking is the effect mask feature allows one or more effects to be applied only to a specific region of a clip. Masks can be animated over time, for example, to follow a moving object in a video. Masks are made up of three or more points, each of which can be animated separately.

While editing the trailer I got to know that in trailers clip is matched according to the sound and not sound is matched according to the clip. This is because the sound had certain variations like high tempo, slow tempo and etc. so, we have to put the appropriate clip-on that sound effect so that it makes that specific scene more eye-catching for example a tensed scene will be matched to the sound which has a little bit of high tempo. 

This time I even learned about Scaling.  Scaling is changing the size of a video frame, which to an extent gives a zoom out and zoom in effect. I basically used scaling in the title of our trailer and in the production slide. Like this time, I was editing trailers so I also need to make end slides for both the trailers. An end slide consists of a production company logo, cast name, the title of the film and the name of all the crew of the film. In our team, we did not have any crew members so we mentioned the name of the director, editor, and cinematographer, the same end slides will be used in both the trailers.

Then I started adding the titles in the trailer, and for that, we researched for many fonts like a vampire, fingerprint font, and many more and then ended up using the font Deadrattle BB font and joker movie’s font. I used Deadrattle for the title of the movie and the Joker movie’s font for mentioning the name of cast and crew. I even gave effects to the titles so that they look more attractive, effects like dissolve, cross zoom, fade in, fade out, and dip to black and dip to white.

In, the comes the color grading, I started researching about the color grading and what types of color are used in a horror mystery movie, through researching I got to know that mainly purplish blue is used in such types of genre movies, and even green sometimes which was seen in the film the Rings, otherwise purplish blue is used. So, in my film I mainly used a mixer of blue and purple in almost all the scenes but in the scenes where the couple are shown spending quality time I used a little bit of yellowish tone to grade the scenes of the couple’s montage. In the scenes where the Sonam our victim is shown in clothes with the red color of blood all over, I used red color grading in that scene. So, this is how I ended my editing though there are some changes which I will keep updating as per the requirement if there are any. I took the color reference from the film “the rings” it has blue with a mixter of purple color in the color grading.

This time I also used Freezing effect it means  generating a static shot somewhere in between a floating video clip.

[narayanzero0]

August 2nd Week

After completing all the pre-production we started this week with my team’s shoot. Our shoot was scheduled for three days and the other two were for other team’s shoot. 

Day 1

The first day of the shoot was of the apartment shoot which was held in the school itself so, a day before starting the shoot we arranged the apartment with all the necessary things like fridge, TV, sofa, paintings, and some necessary things to set up the kitchen. On the first day of the shoot, we started with a shot of Nishtha (our lead actress) when she entered the apartment and starts takes a look at all the rooms in the apartment and starts cleaning the house and all to show that she is new to the house. We even sprinkled some sand in the room so that they look old and also covered the bed and wardrobes with white clothes. I also did aging of the newspaper it means making the newspaper old through spreading black all over it. 

Due to some emergency, the actors we contacted were unable to come and we have to arrange other actors on the spot as we already had a backup. We informed them to come the next day and decided to complete the night shoot of Nishtha in the meanwhile. 

Day 2

On the second day, we had the scene which was to be shot in the apartment in the morning. The other scenes montages were shot in a restaurant where we already arranged the shoot after having a conversation with the manager.

We did the makeup of the actors and made our actors dressed in the nicest way possible. In the meantime, the cinematographer was setting up the camera for the shot.

Day 3

The shoot was canceled as it was heavy raining on this day

Day 4

On the fourth day, we had the call time of 7′o clock as the shoot was scheduled to be shot in the night. That day we went an isolated lane where there is no one around as we had to shoot the burial shot of our trailer and also the scene where Ananya meets Sonam. Though there was difficulty in shooting as there was no light but still we managed to do it with the help of lights of our vehicles. On that day we got free a little bit late as the shoot continued for a little long time.

Day  5 & 6

The next two days were the shoot of other teams, on these two days we were assistant to the members of other teams as at the time of our shoot they were assisting us. Their shoot took place on only two locations, one was the school itself and the other was our friend’s house so it was easy for us to manage and coordinate the things as they only had one exterior location. As their story demanded a young-looking boy not so young but aged between 17-18 so, they cast me as their lead actor and I agreed to act in their film, it was quite fun shooting for the trailer as I first time acted in the front of the camera with experiencing the how shooting is done.

 In approx. 5 days both the teams were done with their respective shoot and then we all were ready for the post-production, in which I had the main role as I am the editor of my team and this time not only editing but we have to make a poster and a website but of Of course these both tasks were given to my teammates. 

[narayanzero0]

August 1st Week

We in the month of august with media language which is part of component 4. 

Media language is the means by which a creator implements a meaning into their text, for it to be either consciously or unconsciously decoded by the audience. All media texts are constructed through signs, as meanings can be communicated to the audience through words, images, gestures, and sounds.

 A semiology is an approach that can be used to decode signs through analyzing signs, denotation, connotation, context, etc. Ferdinand de Saussure said that the sign is the sum of signifier and the signified meaning that the physical form of the sign and the mental concept that is evoked by it creates the meaning of the sign.

Roland Barthes thinks that signs take on the dominant ideology of the society within which they created. For example, a common political ideology of western culture is based on democracy and freedom, and so, this ideology may be the bases from which signs in media text may get there meaning.

This week I even started searching for PEGI case studies. I took the case studies of GTA SanAndreas, Sniper Elite 4 and Fortnite.

GTA SanAndreas is a game developed by Rockstar Games in 2005. The game contained sexual intercourse between the main character. The game was rated 18+ rating by PEGI.  PEGI ratings are enforced by law in many European nations, making it a criminal offense to sell 18+ games to minors. In the United Kingdom, the BBFC similarly gave the game an "18" rating (as of 2012, the BBFC no longer classifies video games, and PEGI was adopted instead).

Sniper Elite 4 was given a 16+ rating by BBFC. The game was released in 2017. The game was given 16+ rating because it contained frequent bloody violence and is not suitable for persons under the age of 16.

This game was given the label of a wrist which means it contains violence and of 16+.

Fortnite was released in 2018 and was given 12+ rating by PEGI for containing frequent mild violence and is not suitable for people under the age of 12.

[narayanzero0]

July 4th Week

In the last week of July, we started with our component 3 in which we have Film Promotional Package which consists of two trailers, one poster and one website with blogs and CCR. Firstly we had a discussion about which genre should we chose and. Later on, with lots of discussion and research work, we ended up taking horror mystery as our genre for the trailer. Our genre is a club of two genres which are horror and mystery. Horror is a genre of fiction whose purpose is to create  feelings of fear, dread, repulsion, and terror in the audience—in other words, it develops an atmosphere of horror. In mystery genre  is a genre of literature whose stories focus on a puzzling crime, situation, or circumstance that needs to be solved. The term comes from the Latin mysterium, meaning “a secret thing.” stories can be either fictional or nonfictional, and can focus on both supernatural and non-supernatural topics. Then accordingly we started making the script, we developed 2 stories and our second story was liked by the teachers. Then we started with the screenplay and master breakdown. Our director was working with the screenplays and I was working on master breakdowns as well as on producers ppt. Our first screenplay was rejected as it was more like a film's screenplay not of a trailer, then we made the changes accordingly.

Later on, I completed the master breakdown and the producer's ppt. In parallel to this, we were finalizing our locations and our actors. We took pictures of our locations, one was in the school itself, other locations were like lonely streets and one was our director’s house.

This week we also had a practice session of Adobe Premier Photoshop CS6 as I earlier I mentioned that in the film promotional package we have to make a poster of our film.

 This week I also started researching for editing as I am the editor of my team and to even improve my skills so, that at the time of editing I will be in a better position. This time I tried to add a smoke effect though I did not use it in my trailer, I used the freezing effect, and also this time I watched videos to know how to do color grading. The videos which I watched are -

  Colour_Grading – color grading 

 Smoke_Effect – smoke effect

 Freezing_ Effect  – freezing effect

[narayanzero0]

July 3rd Week

In the third week we studied how advertisements are regulated.  Advertisements help promote and stimulate competition. It draws attention to a product and service. It tells consumers how much it costs and keep them up to date. It makes us aware of different brands and helps fund media. It also helps in changing social behavior and warn people about the dangerous activity.

Now the question is why regulation is important and the answer is that the information provided by advertisements are accurate and does not mislead and can be trusted by the consumers.

To regulate advertisements ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) was established in 1962 to keep UK advertising legal, decent, honest and truthful.  Its role is to:

1.  Make sure that the ads are honest and truthful

2.  It is funded by a levy on advertising space but operates independently from advertisers and gov.

3.  Acts on complaining to make sure that consumers are protected misleading ads.

4.  Even a single complain can lead to a formal investigation and an ad being withdrawn.

CAP (Committee of advertising practice) it writes the advertising codes.  

As I mentioned in my previous blogs about BBFC, later in this week, we found out case studies of films which are censored by BBFC. I took the case study of Deadpool and Human Centipede 2(2011).  The distributor of Deadpool submitted the film to BBFC in December 2015 for an advice viewing. This is where the distributor submits a work, often with a category in mind and asks the BBFC to view it, often in an unfinished state. Deadpool has a stronger focus on violence: blood, injury and process detail feature much more heavily. Despite some mitigation factors, such as the fantastical nature and comic tone, the visibility of such detail removes it from the 12A category. Other issues include strong language, over fifty uses of “FU#K” and almost 20 uses of “mother Fu#ker”. Strong language is permissible within a 12A but the frequency of use in Deadpool puts it firmly at 15.

Another example of effective regulation is “The Human Centipede 2 (2011)”. The film was refused classification because the main character of the film recreates an experiment from the first film, suggesting that this sort of film is imitable to the first film. After most of the objectional content was removed, the BBFC finally passed the film at 18. This was effective regulation by BBFC as it prevented harmful content from reaching the audience

As we have talked about BBFC and its case studies, now we were taught how effective is media regulation in current time? The answer is that contemporary media regulation has changed over the nearly century of it being put in the place. There are several reasons surrounding this including social changes and the vast expansion of new technologies. When looking at contemporary media regulation, 2 of the most important practices to look at are that to classify, give advice, a certificate to films as well as ASA who deals with the regulation of advertisements. Another is that it is important to consider its effectiveness although there are problems with regulations. One must look at, whether presently it could be done any different or not.

The BBFC’s effectiveness has been put in the spotlight for many years by those such as Adriaen gill, to believe that “either we as a society don’t need regulation, or that the BBFC is not regulating in the right way”. Previously many of BBFCs issues were surrounding passing films at lower certificates then, the public believed it should be. When the film was becoming popular, with the great British public, a contract showing the social struggle was banned as fears it would lead to unrest such as films like on the dole(1941). However, these implements are of the key arguments. “The BBFC regulates by few and for the masses”, believing they know what is best for the masses. Today things are quite different from people from different social statuses representing a broader population. Another issue that came up in the past but is still relevant today is cutting of a film to lower a certificate which may, in fact, change the meaning altogether, making it worse. A classic engage of this was “Henry”(2015) which was cut to be passed at 18, but made the content of the situation in the film worse.

[narayanzero0]

July 2nd Week

As in A level we have to make 2 trailers which are part of component 3 so we started the 2nd week of July with trailer analysis. In this we analyzed how trailers are made, what sound effects they contain, types of cuts a trailer contain and many more things. We did a trailer analysis of films like- Ittefaq, conjuring, joker, and lupt. 

In this week we also studied the nature of BBFC. In this, we learned how BBFC and how it used to work in earlier times. BBFC is a non-governmental organization founded by the film industry for national classification and censorship of the film. However, in 1984, this changed to suit its new role of film classification which was thought to play a larger role in the board's work.  As now we are modernized and our social attitudes have been changed towards the film. Our culture and society have changed and laws have been changed and modernized to reflect this. Earlier issues like sex, violence, sexual language, and etc. were not shown to the audience or we can say that people use to feel embarrassed while talking about these issues but now mostly all communities and societies are open about such issues. BBFC has changed, with changing in the nature of societies as society is now desensitized.

There are certain classifications introduced by BBFC like U, PG, 12, 15, and 18.  In recent reform, there was one more classification introduced 12A, which encourage deciding what their children should watch.  BBFC nowadays also provides more information about reasons for the classification than past, forex.  PBFC provides the information for the reason of classification. BBFC guidelines are revised and published every 5 years now.

In this week we learned some key media regulation terms, which are :

1)Media regulation- The control or guidance of mass media by governments and other bodies.

2)Gate Keeping- The process through which information is filtered for dissemination, whether for publication, broadcasting, the internet, or some other mode of communication.

3)Classification- Preventing people from accessing material that is deemed unsuitable for their age

4)Censorship- Removing material from public material. 

5)Moralists- Believe that people need to be protected from the harmful effects of media. For example, parents believe children need to be controlled in using video games or films. 

6)Pluralists-  believe people should choose what they want.  

In this week we also brainstormed about component 3  in which we have to make 2 trailers, one poster and one website for the trailers. We chose horror mystery as our genre for component 3. We started thinking of stories, watched horror films and trailers. All these 3 things were new to all of us.