Queation1 

How does your product use or challenge conventions & how does it represent social groups or issues? 

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Conventions

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Mean girl 

1] Aside from the title sequence, the clip opens up with the traditional “gossip girl “scene, which is a convention that have been used frequently in school thriller and drama genre to intensified the conflicts. This type of character often tells the audience who they are on the first appearance with a distinct character and easily decodable personality. We use this convention to inform the audience about Daisy’s background before transferring to this new school and build up an initial equilibrium before everything happens. And also, the character of the students gossiping classmates conform the mean stereotypes in reality, which drives the plot and often takes the supporting role within the development to climax. 

 

Exclusion and isolation 

Out main character Daisy grow up in a single-parent family, in thriller genre, to have an unhappy childhood and a broken family is always commonly used by directors to give a reason for the character’s ‘flawed personality and the ways they behave. We used this convention to explain some part of Daisy’s irrationality. And this also represent on social issues that some children grow up with single parent does not necessarily get enough care and patience which lead them to lack of security. Also showing the exclusion of disadvantaged new students, reflects the reality where students with tough background are not treated well in and out of school. And shows prejudice from other people may also cause the kid to grow an inferiority complex. 

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Lighting 

Low-key lighting is used frequently as a convention in our product as well as in movies fall under thriller genre.

 

Editing 

Convention used in the perspective of editing in thriller include montages and flashbacks. These editing techniques is specifically useful to present non-linear time lime , to build up tension, to creates doubts and promlems and reveals the truth. With the use of these techniques, audience are intrigued to keep watching by the suspense feeling that it established. Examples include memento and god father 

 

Sound

Low pitch music to show treat

 

Social groups and issue 
Exclusion of disadvantaged students. Growing up as a single parented child she was constantly mocked and teased by her classmates. It reflects the reality where students with tough background are not treated well in and out of school. Our project also demonstrates the corrupt school system. Where staff members ignore and overlook these acts of bully. To conclude, it all shows the unsafe environment disadvantaged students have to study in.

 

2] challenge conventions 

Stereotypes of homosexual people acting in a overly 'feminine' way, heavy make-up, a high pitched voice. 

 

Chris' bedroom is based on the interests of a homosexual friend I have, such as celebrities (Lana del Ray, Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Lady Gaga and Troye Sivan)

 

When planning the narrative, we did not consider the portrayal of Asians or mix-raced characters in a specific way, in retrospect, the characters' behaviors are extremely similar to the actors' manners as we asked the actors to bring their own interpretation of the role into the acting and repeatedly said 'if it was you, how would you perform this line?' Which challenged the conventions of serotypes according to race.

 

 

Question2 

How does your product engage with audience & how would it be distributed as a real media text? 

 

Demographically, we our products is suitable for all class and ethnicity. Targeted audience; age 16-40 and audience who has special favor in thriller genre. 

 

As the genre of the film is psychological thriller with drama elements, the audience body should be large. 

1. Semiotics 

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Title “Daisy”

Daisy is a flower which represent purity and innocence, however juxtaposed with Daisy’s real personality—further informing Daisy’s identity of being double sided. 

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School uniform

Age group of teenagers, and “E” group. Engage with our targeted audience by giving audience sense of familiarization, audience empath with the characters.

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Knife 

Potential violence for people who enjoys thriller genre.

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Oscar statue 

Showing the histrionic personality disorder of Daisy. The cross cutting between Daisy and the statue also gives the sense of uniformity between them.

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Color coding 

 

Mirror scene

Take the mirror scene as an example, the jump cut o Daisy wearing red bathrobe issss her ideal mind projection. Color purple and blue projected from both sides not only implying Daisy being multi-faceted, but also create an ideal personal space inside her mind. The color of lights is highly saturated, gives a mysterious verisimilitude sense to create Daisy’s self-utopia.

Color coding

 

Flashback montage 

Within the flashback montage, color in green and red tone are complementary color, they are not often put together for a please aesthetic. But this effect of being not harmonious emphasizes the juxtaposition. 

 

Our media product will be distributed through common advertising strategy, include poster design, trailers posted and create social media official account.

 

Our product will be marketed through niche marketing, target on specific audience group, save cost and release on the internet and those entertainment video broadcasting platform but not cinemas. 

 

 When facing Chinese market, there are special strategy for a film to advertise. When the media product is still in its preparation stage, production companies started to give out primary news of the film to raise the amount of exposure and therefore more people anticipating especially celebrity fans, as the most active participant in interactive media, will uplifting the reputation of this new born film in to another level. So, we may use this as on one of the strategies not only in preparation stage of our media product. After the film has been fully completed, we now into the distribution stage, the product will be marketed through:

 

1. Social media - marketing and distribution

2. Microblogging platform – the news of film release 

3. Shot video platform – trend-trailers and introduction video

4. Online streaming platform - internet release for a larger audince base 

 

Question 3 + Question 4

How did your production skill develop through the project? 

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At the start of the year, my experience of shooting using camera is 0. A camera is such a heavy equipment for me to hold without the constant vibration of shaky hands. Also, I have not got enough knowledge in how to control the movement of camera and finding the best angle for specific shots. When I compare footages done in different time period along my study journey, my skill of shooting is much more mature than the start of the year after practices. 

 

I have experiences in editing clips before I did this project. However, the clip that I edited isn’t specific continuity editing using shots that I shoot by myself and from a story with chronological order. Before, all of my experience is to pick moments from TV series or film and put them together to form a video which only focus on one person, and that what we called fanfiction. Editing fanfictions is completely different with editing film clip. However, the experience still helps me in getting started faster.

 

What did I specifically learn about?

 

camera technique 

 

We used Nikon camera for our filming process. Within the process, I have learnt how to adjust the parameters in setting, which gives a more natural effect than edit it after filming. Aside from basic setting like ISO, aperture, shutter speed. I also encountered and learned how to adjust white balance, exposure mode and etc. to changes the color grading and creates effects straight out from the camera.

 

For example, white balance is the color temperature of a image. Nikon camera provide you with default settings under different situation that you can choose from, but you can also adjust and set it yourself base on the effect you want to create. Not only temperature, the tonal range is also changeable. And this is a big thing that I learnt and actually creates some shots with very good color grading. 

 

 

Moving away from the camera setting, I also learnt how to apply the shot angles and movements that we learnt in lessons to reality when I was physically handling the camera. 

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editing technique 

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editing technique include codes and conventions of thriller genre, who specific editing technique like montage contribute to the meaning construction within the storyline. Also ,I learnt about continuity editing with logic. And familiarized with softwares like JianYing Pro, Pr. 

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Q4. How did you integrate technologies- software, hardware and online in this project ?

 

 RONIN Camera Gimble 

 

Although a stabilizer further adds on the the weight, but when it connects to the camera, no matter how hard you hand shake, it will stabilize you camera perfectly and creates stable footages. 

Before using it, you need to balance the gimbal. It takes me a whole afternoon try to learn and balance the camera so it is reading when we need it. Balancing is required in all axes (tilt, roll, pan), and also I download a app to do the final balancing when activate and control the movement of the axes.

 

 Tripod 

 

I also learnt how to use tripod for unmoving shots, as it maintains the camera at a same level, but when you want to move the camera with stability, tripod is not a good choice.

 

Softwares 

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Jian YING + luma fusion + Pr + wink

JianYing Pro, a Chinese app, is not hard to handle. However, this app include variety of functions and are easier to operate than Pr. This app included free special effect and transitions which you can use by pressing one button. And also include large number of sound effects and image source from its own storage. Therefore, JianYing Pro made the initial editing very easy as I don’t need to spend a lot of time online finding a free sound effect to use. 

 

Compared with JianYing Pro, Pr seems to be more difficult to handle. However, I only use Pr to Stabilize the motion picture using its distort stabilizing function; and color-grading as it is more professional with the function of Lumetri color.

 

Lumafusion: I use Lumafusion to do key frames, but it is only for experimentation and not used in the final cut.

 

Wink: wink is an app to restore the resolution of the footage, which improve the quality of the shots. 

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ONLINES

when blogging 

I used  wix.com for uploading the research, planning, progress, and development. This is a professional website designer that contains variety of elements for website design.

 

when designing questionnaire for rough cut

We used microsoft form to gather feedback from our audiences, because when we did the project the school are in lockdown, so we cannot have real audience filling the physical forms for us. Therefore, we decided to use Microsoft form for questionnaire and distributed it through microsoft teams in different group chat.

 

We use Onedrive to share and ave the file for backup just incase unexpected technological breakdown.

 

When dong the creative critical reflection. The forms of the media that I used include: podcast, creative video, presentation and prezi.com 

 

I used prezi video for the podcast that I can present the visuals, text, and myself speaking in the same frame simultaneously. This software works very well because users has template to choose from and a resource bank to find the wanted visuals. After typing the information and visuals you want and adding animation for transition of slides, users can just video themselves using prezi video simultaneously with presentation of text and visuals. 

 

I used prezi.com for a interactive presentation. The presentation engage with the audience more because audience will have to click on different branches on a mind map-like content to explore the content themselves. Information are interconnected through topic s and subtopics. Audience can interact with the presentation in their own way and explore the information in the order that they want. In prezi.com there is no specific order and audience will not forced to look at the content that they don’t want to explore. Also audience can feel the sense of information being extended and shown in more detailed alongside of the connection through text bubbles.

 

I used Lumafusion, an editing software on iPad to edit the creative video in CCR. Lumafusion is a lot like Premire pro but more easily to handle. Functions include keyframes, and matting are a lot more professional than JianYing Pro, but easier to operate and straightforward than Pr. Also, lumafusion contains variety of filters and automatic color-grades that can be added onto the image directly. So, when editing a creative video, thees functions are extremely useful to add on to the dynamic and  interest of the video. 

 

I used Canva.com for the traditional ppt. The reason Chose can rather than Powerpoint is because the PPT templates in canva.com has more variety and esthetic, also categorized into different categories for users to find the most suitable ones. Some of them converges with the trendy elements that audience will not find boring and even attracted by the design and style of the presentation templates. 

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