AS Media Complete Opening Sequence - We Are Not Alone

Matt Healey
Jack Quinlan
James Robinson

AS Media Evaluation - Question 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms of conventions of real media products?

Our media product uses conventions of real media products in numerous ways, for example



As you can see in this classic zombie television show the font titles they use in this opening sequence are Impact and this convention can be seen reflected in our media film.


 Also title reveals use the same generic effects in their titles.

The setting and location of this media product also develops conventions of real life media product. We shot the entirety of the film in a woodland background; the woodland background is constantly used in real media products such as The Walking Dead http://www.amctv.com/shows/the-walking-dead

And Dead Snow

Also we played on genre conventions, for example the way to kill a zombie is through an attack to the head, so for our movie the protagonist dispatched of the zombies within this way, also the idea that in a zombie apocalypse food is scarce we played upon. It can seen that the protagonist is now having to hunt for his food and scavenge what few resources he can find, the facet he also uses a bow and arrow and knife for the most part of the film also shows the conventions of noise attracting zombies attentions which is to be avoided at all costs. The shot types we used in this also play with continuity and conventions of zombie genres, for example the ‘he’s behind you’ shot was used where the monster his approaching the protagonist from behind and also shots in which the monsters point of views are shown. We used these variety of shots to follow the genre codes and conventions which will show that we use and challenge real media products.

Our media product also challenges media products as it is adapting to the new market of post apocalyptic dramas, by making our story purely character driven the audiences become more engrossed in the film.

Also our product develops the real media through its special effects. The effects allow us to add the realism to the film and make it compete with films of the zombie genre.

AS Media Evaluation - Question 2 - How does your media product represent particular social groups?

For our film’s central character one of the main inspiration was Daryl Dixon from the Zombie TV show, The Walking Dead. 

One similarty we can see is the costumes which the two characters are wearing dark but ‘normal’ clothes which shows how they were both regular people before the zombie outbreak, not a soldier or somebody with experience for extreme situations. This isn’t reflected on their body language however, as we can see that they are not nervous or experinced, they have adjusted to the world in order to survive. As they both take place months after the intial outbreak and they have gotten over the part where they are unsure what is exactly going on. Both characters have similar backstories as they lost someone important to them, Daryl Merle from The Walking Dead loses his brother and ‘The Hood’ loses another close family member (which is shown in a flashback scene). One thing we took inspiration from was the weapon Daryl uses in The Walking Dead. Normally in a Zombie apocalypse, the traditonal weapon would be some sort of gun, but both of these characters use a bow and arrow, which shows how they are different to the normal survivor.  

One difference between the characters is their personlity and they way that they show this is through their use of dialogue. While Daryl from The Walking Dead regualry talks to the other survivors  and even makes some jokes at times, The Survivor from our film dosen’t speak once in the opening of the film. One reason for this is that the survivor from our film is more of a loner, and takes care of himself. His personality more matches a character like the ‘man with no name’ from the Good, the bad and the Ugly and other Western characters which have the mystery, ruthless characters. The role that our character and Daryl from  The Walking Dead in their respective films is also different, as Daryl serves as a side character and rarely has a main storyline in the TV show, our character is the main character which means that he has to have a ‘stronger’ back story.

Our film dosen’t really deal with social demographics but as the main character, but as he is Irish, he would probably more identifiable with the C2DE social group. During the film the audience learn that was a normal, working family man, who had to change because of the zombie outbreak. This means that many people would be able to identify with him because he was just like them at one point. This film also shows how social groups become irrelevant in times of distress, and as the story progresses we learn how everyone is affected the same. 

AS Media Evaluation - Question 3 - What kind of media institution might distribute your product and why?

For our film, we debated on mainly, not deciding what studio it will distributed by, but rather if it was an independent film or a mainstream, ‘Hollywood’ film. About 10 years ago we probably would have gone with an independent studio, as the genre wasn’t that popular at the time. The zombie films being made then were mainly cheap, ‘B-Movie’ type films, but as time has progressed, so has the genre. ‘Dawn of The Dead’, ‘Shaun of The Dead’ and ‘I am Legend’ are just some of the examples of films which were picked up by the big name studios. Even then, in 2004 at the time of the ‘Dawn of the Dead’ remakes release, the genre still wasn’t that popular. Zombies just weren’t that scary to the audience anymore, so the genre needed a revamp, which came in the form of AMC’s television show, ‘The Walking Dead’. The ‘Walking Dead’ revolutionized the genre, it made zombies scary again, without even using a lot of zombies, but developing realistic, relatable characters and putting them in positions which seem scary. The show isn’t about killing zombies, but more about surviving in a world where some of the people are as much of a problem as the zombies are. We could have easily made the typical, zombie horror film, and made it more of an independent film, but decided that by making it more realistic and more survival based it would have a better chance of being picked up by ‘Warner Bros’, ‘Columbia Pictures’, etc. These studios might not be known for distributed just films of the zombie genre, but we feel that our film is more than that, and crosses across other genres such as, drama, post-apocalyptic and even has some Spaghetti Western, elements included within the film.

Even if the film was picked up by a big studio, we would still need to promote the film and as it is a new brand, a new franchise, marketing would be an important part of making the film a success. We were looking at various marketing campaigns and saw that the using YouTube for videos other than trailers was a huge success.  20^th Century Fox marketed ‘Rise of the Planet of The Apes’ by created a video of an ape, but did it with a fake account, to make it look like it was real. It created a lot of buzz, some of the audience even thought that it was real, a it meant that the film had a lot of interest from just a twenty second clip. We would like to emulate that sort of thing, creating fake profiles with clips of survivors during the outbreak. This sort of ‘hidden advertisement’ has proven to be popular in the past and it is something which would draw interest from the audience, making them want to see the film without even having to actually mention it, the most unconventional forms of advertisement are normally the most successful.

AS Media Evaluation - Question 5 - How did you attract/address your audience?

AS Media Evaluation - Question 6 - What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

The first thing that I learnt from the process of constructing this media product is the methods it takes in order to create special effects in the production. For example in our production company name ‘Dark Orbs Productions’ we decided to have mystical looking orbs rotation with the camera angle creating a pan and zoom effect over the top of it. This required the use of After Effects; to begin with a set of masks and adjustment layers had to be added to the production, this was done by locating all necessary files from both the internet and programme’s built into After Effects. Using spherical effects and feathering the images used were able to fit the orbed shape that we wanted to acquire.  Next setting the motion of the orbs and position of the camera, the effect that the orbs were spinning and the orb in the background was coming into focus.

During the product a scene in which the protagonist was in focus of the screen and a zombie was slowly coming into focus in the background was needed. Adding a depth of field to the product gave it a realistic effect that can be seen in horror movies across the zombie genre. It was done by first adding a mask over the protagonist character and then adding a fast blur over the rest of the clip. The blur was put on a timer so that the depth of field would change, and as the clip went on the protagonist went more out of focus and the zombie came into focus.

Also with editing the film I learnt that to give the overall product a more realistic feel, colour correction needed to be applied in order to add extra gloss to the clip. This was done by going into the effects tool bar adding fast colour corrector to the clips. From this tool we were able to change the colours of all of the clips to a blue/grey colour to create the atmosphere that the production took place in a cold environment. The next effect that was used was the motion paths of certain clips, for example in the scene where the protagonist is walking and zombies can be seen in the background, a slow screen size increase was used to focus in on the zombies to add a more serious tension to the product.

Another effect that was included in the product was the use of title sequences with entrance paths. We added an eerie and scary entrance path for all of the titles included in the product in order to fit with genre conventions. These effects in technology are helpful to the product as I learnt that through the use of these effects it keeps the product interesting, if the titles had been static and unchanging the audience’s attentions would not have been grabbed as well.

Exporting the video was another thing I learnt about the technologies used to construct the product. Exporting is what gets the clip into film format so it can be uploaded onto social media sites such as YouTube so they can be viewed by the world. When exporting, certain criteria needed to be met before it can work; we tried multiply times to export on MPEG2 but the format refused to upload. So we decided that if used the ‘Match sequence settings’ option and then exported the product onto memory sticks that had higher memories. So the next time we decide to create and upload a product we will use ‘Match sequence settings’ and export it to memory sticks in the future.

After exporting the video onto memory sticks the next step was to upload it to YouTube and embed it onto Blogger. This was done through logging into the YouTube account and clicking the upload button, the clip then has to render and finally upload, the problem that we found with this is that the product needs to have a small capacity (Mb) so that the up loader doesn’t crash half way though. After the YouTube section was complete embedding the file onto Blogger was needed. Using the insert video option we can now embed the product directly from YouTube and onto our blogs so that it can be viewed and evaluated.

 The handheld camera was used to capture the entirety of the product. We learnt that they are highly sensitive when it comes to zooming and tracking. In the first few tries of tracking our protagonist in the product the camera would often shudder and the shot wouldn’t work out. This was due to the stand that the camera was on being lifted up leaving no control over the cameras movement with it being up high. So the way we got around this difficulty was to simply take the camera off of the stand and slowly step with the person being filmed to imitate the motion of the track. 

AS Media Evaluation - Question 7 - Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in progression from it to the full product?

Since the preliminary task I feel that we have learnt a lot; from the very first time we used continuity editing. Trying to match up the motion of the man walking down the corridor and through the door was an example of this. We had trouble trying to find the right angles to shoot from so that the character was still in the same positioning and following the 180 degree rule.  However, we tried many different camera angles and possibilities, until eventually we managed to get it right to the best of our abilities. The preliminary task was a real eye-opener to what camera work and editing really was. It wasn't as easy as we believed it what be. Seeing that it’s only about thirty seconds, we thought it would be very quick. We soon discovered that that was not the case, and actually a bit more thinking and trying of different angles is very beneficial.

A pan screen-shot from the preliminary task and the final project.

The preliminary task was very tedious to say the least. The feedback we got from our teachers helped us to understand new techniques of camera work/angles and how the position the actual camera. When it came the actual project, we spent the majority of the morning of filming deciphering where the put the camera, where the actors should be and working with the lighting (as we shot on location). The lighting was something quite difficult to work with, as we hadn’t had any experiences with it. When shooting the preliminary task, we shot it in an already lit corridor and room. We didn’t take the lighting into account. However, when it came to the actual film, we found ourselves trying to find the perfect spot. That was the biggest thing that we learnt throughout this because it’s something that was vastly important. For the perfect shot, we had to get the perfect lighting first.

Something else that we didn’t do in the preliminary task that we did in the actual film was working with actors/people. To put the actors in the right place and to get them to do what we wanted to do was very tedious as well. Putting makeup on people was also a very strange thing. It was really awkward initially as we didn’t know what to fully do, then where to put the makeup on. But we got it how we wanted it eventually. It looks kind of cheap, but there’s a certain charm to it. We tried to make the makeup look as good as possible with what we have, but seeing as neither of us had any past experiences with applying makeup. It didn’t look that professional, but it still looks good overall.

The preliminary task opened our eyes into what we needed to do for the project. It was very important in that we took many different approaches in the task, rather than rushing it and trying to get it done as quickly as possible. We took our time, and our project looks a lot better for it. That’s the biggest thing we took from this. Take your time. Don’t rush, have patience and your project will look so much better for it.