Joewoodhall99's Blog

• RealNetworks is best-known for its audio- and video-streaming technologies, its stake in the Rhapsody music service
• Officially launched at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco this week, new social-gaming platform “GameHouse Fusion” is a platform for developers to build social features into their games with minimal effort.
• The service creates a profile for gamers based on information from their social-networking profiles, as well as offering things like top scores, leaderboards, and trophies to game developers who want to build those features into their titles.
• Beyond the social-profile aspect, RealNetworks is also offering developers an easy way to have their creations ported to other platforms without having to do that extra step of work.
• That cross-platform approach means users are able to carry over their high scores, profile information, and even progress from title to title, no matter what device or service they were playing it on. However, the current iteration of the platform has been designed mainly for use on social networks like Facebook and MySpace.

This article could be used in an As exam question because as it used across all different platforms there would be a very wide target audience so you could talk about who they would target and why. Also convergence could be used in a question because the way social networks are used either for Promotion (which could be used in a question because as social networking sites are one of the biggest advertisers on the internet) or development of technology.

media presentation

http://debsidowu.wordpress.com/2009/12/02/135/ (Link to the blog entry with the powerpoint on it)

This our final cut of our thriller opening sequence:

The main changes we made, as stated in my Rough Cut blog entry, were adding more sound effects, increasing the level of sound continuity and making the titles more appropriate.

The one difficulty we came across was when we used Adobe After Effects to create a day to night conversion allowing the scene to look as if it was shot at night. We had trouble rendering it as the computers we used were not able to handle the memory needed to do it. We therefore decided to scrap that idea and produce it regardless.

I think our final cut of our thriller opening sequence has been highly successful and was a fun task to complete.

We got 28/60 for our rough cut of our thriller so we had a lot of changes to make to increase our mark.

Our rough cut:

The feedback we got from our rough cut that the visual continuity was good but the sound continuity was failing. The real sound we had also clashed with the sound effects as it was overpowering due to the noise in the background of other cars. We were told to scrap the real sounds completely and only use sound effects which proved difficult as there was a limited amount available to us. Adding these sound effects will create a more realistic scene as they are all the ‘little’ noises that people rarely actually notice but make a huge difference in the overall production.

Another criticism was how bad the titles were. They offered no relationship to the thriller in their font, colour or size so we decided to completely remake the title sequence.
We also decided to extend the time of our initial title sequence as our thriller currently did not meet the minimum time limit. Instead of re-filming to extend the time, lengthening our title’s was the most applicable option in our case.
We will try to extend the title’s to roughly 25 seconds. We will animate them and add digetic to make the 25 seconds not look extended just to make the time limit. We will have them introduced before any footage is shown to set the scene and give the audience an inkling of what is going to happen.

Overall we do not have much to change and should not take more than a few hours to complete.

Characters involved:

Anne-Marie Nicholson as the protagonist.
Barney Nash as the antagonist.

Outline of the thriller

The basic plot our our thriller is that the protagonist is driving home and comes across an oddly placed pram in the middle of the road, she inspects it but finds nothing except a doll. She pushes the pram to the side of the road and walks back to her car. As she reaches her car door she realizes it’s open, not the way she left it. She reluctantly drives on but within a few seconds the antagonist appears to be sitting in the back of her car. The thriller then blacks out leaving the audience on a cliff hangar.

How it meets thriller conventions
A crime at the core of the narrative is shown towards the end of the thriller as the antagonist has unauthorized entry into the protagonists vehicle. The audience also percepts that more crimes will come after the black out such as rape or murder.
Our thriller offers a subdued complex narrative structure, with false paths, clues and resolutions as before you even meet the antagonist there are clues placed in the narrative. The doll in the middle of the road heightens the tension as it’s an unusual item to find plus the stereotype of doll’s in thrillers will be in the back of the mind of the audience. It’s used as a false path as it is not directly linked towards the antagonist at first but towards the end a relationship is shown mainly through non-digetic sound.
The titles used in our thriller look as if they have been written in blood which reflect an aspect of the protagonists psychological state and give the audience an idea of what will happen. Although there is no blood in our thriller the ending leaves the audience of a cliffhangar and lets them make up their own decision of what will happen which the majority of will be centered around death. Therefore I feel that the titles were a good representation.

Amazon.com partnered up with Rockstar to be the games official retailer. Rockstar allowed Amazon.com to be the initial retailer of the special edition version of the game. The special edition included an art book, CD Soundtrack, a Rockstar keychain with a safety deposit and a rockstar duffel bag.

Rockstar also allowed Amazon.com to sell songs from the in-game radio stations by texting a services number on the in-game cell phone. This allows players to get the information of the song that is being played sent to their e-mail address. They could then order the song off Amazon’s website. Rockstar decided to get rid of Amazon.com and replace it with itunes for the music database and the release of the expansion pack.

Here are the scanned in copies of our storyboards, and also a powerpoint presentation explaining the shots used.
The scanned in copies are the main scenes, whereas in the powerpoint presentaion there are a few shots added in, just to give the thriller a better overall effect.

When doing any filming on location, we need to do a risk assessment to make sure that all concievable problems have been thought about to prevent anything from going wrong.
This is ours:

Storyline:
A young girl is driving down an old country lane late at night. She is tired. Her eyes open and close slowly as she tries to refrain from falling asleep. Suddenly, the radio she was listening to goes static. She tries to change the station, fumbling with the radio on the dashboard. She looks down, trying to find a station that will work. As she glances back up at the road, her headlights show a pram in the middle of the road. She screams, slamming down on the brakes and halting to a stop. A deep breath in. She opens the door and climbs out of her car, slowly making her way over to the pram. It’s cold. Dark. Noises echoing all around her. The pram is old but what is it doing in the middle of the road? She walks over to it. There is something under a blanket. Her hand reaches slowly and unsteadily towards it. She touches the edge of the blanket and rips it backwards. She screams again. An old doll with eyes and limbs missing was staring back at her. As she stands there catching her breath, she fails to notice her car door opening slowly in the background, and the shadow of a man climb in to her backseat. She backs up slowly from the doll, laughing at herself for being so jumpy. She gets back into the car and locks the door, switching on the engine and drives away. She checks the back mirror and sees the pram that caused her so much terror fading away into the distance. But a flash of movement catches her eye, and as the realisation floods through her body, she looks into the eyes of the man in her rear-view mirror, letting out one final scream.

Setting:
The setting For out thriller idea was inititally down an old country lane, in the middle of the night. This would be the perfect location, if we were able to have artificial lighting to enable the night time filming! However, as we don’t, we have decided to film during the day time, and then during the editing process, change the brightness, contrast and lighting in order to make it seem as though we filmed it during the night.
The setting is still down an old country lane and we will be traveling to East Tilbury to film.

Title:
We still have yet to come up with a title!

Roles:

Actors-
1) Ann-Marie will be playing the Protagonist driving the car who finds the doll.
2) Barney will be playing the man getting into her car, though he is not really seen properly.

Camera Work-
We will be having two cameras filming at once, one camera doing the filming for our actual thriller opening, and another camera doing a ‘behind the scenes’ video of our shooting experience. Because of this, we are all going to be doing some filming.

Editing-Again, all of us want to be involved with the editing in some way. Debra and I will be doing the editing of the scenes, whilst Joel and Joe will be doing the sound editing. Barney will be helping with both.

Soundtrack-Barney has been creating a soundtrack that we will be able to use, and will be helping to put it into our video in the editing process.

The props we are using are:

A Pram – The pram will be the most shown prop used in the thriller. The story line will also be based around the pram because there are many enigmas surrounding the pram, for example why is the pram there? Who left it there? Did they leave it there for a reason? The pram will be placed in the middle the road so the protagonist has to get out of the vehicle to move it. The Thriller convention voyeurism is based around the pram as someone is waiting and watching for a car to come along and get out to move the pram.

Car – The car will be one of the main props used in the thriller. The story line will also be based around the car as a lot of mystery is involved with the car for example if someone actually got in the car when the protagonist is out of the car. The reason for the protagonist to be driving the car late at night is because she is on her way home from work. The car fits into the thriller convention that extraordinary events happen in ordinary situations for example driving home, and having to get out and move a pram which is in the middle of the road which leads to someone jumping in the vehicle. The car relates to the target audience because teenagers who are able to drive have to drive home late at night down dark country lanes.

 Doll – The doll will not be a main prop in our thriller. The doll will be inside the pram to add a sense of fear, anxiety and add enigmas as you also don’t know if it is a real baby, if it’s a doll and if it had been put there for a reason.