Unit 3 - D1

Omniya Tajni

D1: Analyse how post-production techniques and processes create meaning in the media product to meet the client brief

I believe that after careful planning, a successful production and intense editing that we have been able to meet the client requirements.

The client brief has asked us: ‘To produce a teaser scene for episode one and a title sequence for a new science fiction TV Drama. The show has a lead actor who plays Captain Crain. The teaser scene should hook the audience into the episode and establish the storyline to follow; your teaser scene should be no longer than 2 minutes 30 seconds and will flow directly into title sequence. ‘

Within our proposal we had stated that we were going to cut between the conference room and control room scenes in order to create meaning for the audience. I believe we have done this as we used quick cuts and a few dissolves within the teaser to cut between the two locations. This flowed well as we used the audio from the conference room scenes whilst the visual in the control scene went on.

These are still shots from our teaser scene

Due to the fact that the client has asked us that we produce a teaser scene for episode one, my team decided that we should do the opening of the first episode, to establish what’s to come and because it is a teaser scene, it will give the audience an insight on what’s to come and for them to decide whether they would like to watch this when it gets released. Our teaser scene took place in a conference room, where the head of the mission, a woman called Heather, will be explaining the objective of the expedition to the members of her team. Whilst she is speaking, the camera will cut to different actions that Captain Crain will be doing to prepare herself for the expedition ahead. This will flow really well with post-production techniques, because we intend to have sharp cuts and sometimes voiceovers of Heathers dialogue, on the shots of Captain Crain, and the visuals would link with the dialogue. We intended to have sharp cuts, between the two locations but also included some transitions where we believed look out of place between the two, we only included the ‘dissolve’ transition as we wanted it to flow well between the 2 different locations, voiceovers and allow the audience to not notice it.

The client brief has said that ‘the show involves life on board a space station after an explosion which has crucially damage infrastructure and communication systems. In our teaser scene, there was a part where Heather says ‘Our cutting edge technology gives me hope that this mission will succeed’ this was done on purpose as later on the show, that information is actually false so although the audience don’t know the communication systems fail and the spaceships gets damaged, it kind of gives an enigma code to the audience. When heather says this line, it flows to a shot where Captain Crain is fixing the systems, with the voiceover over it. This post-production technique creates meaning to meet the client brief, because not only is Heather just bragging about it, the audience are able to actually see what she is talking about and see a visual representation of some of the communication systems that they have and will somehow allow the mission to succeed, this will hopefully draw the audience to want to watch it, to see how they ‘succeed’.

This is a still shot of Captain Crain using the communication systems

The client brief has explicitly said that the ‘the teaser scene should hook the audience into the episode and establish the storyline to follow’, I believe we have successfully done this, because we made the teaser scene for the first few minutes of episode one. The scene establishes what’s to come very well. Heather explains the whole mission to the other team members, and in between there are shots of Captain Crain getting ready, and setting up the control room and communication systems, until the last shot where she pulls the lever and the spaceship takes off. I believe that this requirement was achieved very well through the narrative, post-production techniques and actions. We are able to put the shots of the conference room and the control room together, and everything that Heather explained to her team members linked with the actions Captain Crain did, and sometimes the dialogue of Heather were voiceovers of the shots of Captain Crain’s actions. I believe this will hook the audience as they would want to know more and want to see how Captain Crain and her crew go out on the mission to see whether life outside of Earth would be suitable for humankind.

Overall, I believe that the media product we have created has met the client brief and the post-production techniques and processes were able to create meaning, this will aim for the audience to get hook up on to it and want to watch it as soon as it gets released.