Evaluation Question 6

What Have You Learnt About Technologies From The Process Constructing This Product?

We dicided to do this one as a group - each of us focusing on a specific stage of the production process

Coursework Evaluation: Question 1

Our media product uses forms and conventions similar to real media products with conventions such as film openings, title sequences, the introduction to characters, music and other members of the distribution company.

Convention of film openings is used to clearly show action and begin the viewers interest so they get immediately hooked  into the film. Most film openings are 2 minutes long. However our opening 'CHANGE' is 2 minutes and a half. The conventions of a film openings introduce the production ident, key characters, the title of the film and the members of the distribution company. It also introduces the plot of the film by showing the audience the type of scene the film is based on so for example our film the scene is based in hackney. Title sequences follow a strict order as the first thing that should be presented is the production ident and then either the title or the main character and then the rest of the characters and members of the distribution company.

First thing that has to be introduced is a Production Ident:

Attack the Block Ident:

Change Ident:

We started of the film opening with our Production Ident and  Distribution companies

Introduction to Characters:

We then introduced the actors that play the role of the important characters in our film. This image shows the actors name and the character next to each other so that the audience to know who the main characters are.

Titles:

Attack the block:

Change: 

We decided to have our title in a moving scene with the character as the whole idea of the film is that his journey to a better life is the 'change'. Also we thought it looked good and unique.

We then finally introduced the members of the distribution company such as the music director, director of photography, costume, editor, director etc

.

Another convention we used was music. We used music with no lyrics as we wanted to keep our audiences attention and not get carried away with music that has lyrics. We didn't want to draw the attention away from our actual film opening so we used a repetitive sound to match with the flow of our film.

Travelling and Arriving:

We have a travelling and arriving scene which is the most important scene of our opening. The scene where it allows the audience to see the sign of the 'change'. The travel by train shows the audience how our main character travels away from his bad life to arrive at a place where all that can 'change' for him, where he can make something better of his life instead of reminiscing on his bad past. 

Coursework Evaluation: Question 2

 

Coursework Evaluation: Question 3

We used Motion to create our production ident and for our distribution company we have used the colleges. For the production ident, we created our own design because we weren't aloud to use a copy-right version so motion really helped us with designing our very own production company.

G22 productions is a smaller independent company, It doesn't stand a chance to Universal or 21st Century but it does give a chance for the younger generation who want to go into filming as the production company itself was only just made and is looking for skillful editors and directors. The company is mainly trying to promote films that are suitably appealing to the younger generation but is also interested in making films that would appeal to the older generation. Budget wise for G22 production is not that high as it is just a new starting company and with the new film 'Change' they didn't look to spend so much on our film. That is why we have made promotional packs and have made student offers to not only promote and attract the audience but to also make some money in the making.

CandiStudios is a distribution company that have decided to join partners with us to invest in order to hopefully make G22 Production a massive and well known company. CandiStudios is a slightly more well known company and has budgeted a lot into creating our film which was premiered in the Cinema this week.

'HanWay Films' would be best suited to distribute our film as it that company has distributed the likes of Noel Clarke's film 'Kidulthood'. 'Kidulthood' is a film 'gang' related and is very similar to our film 'Change'. The film was very popular and had a very high box office. I think that if 'HanWay Films' was to distribute our film then it would possibly receive the same sort of feedback.  The company itself is not that well known but for producing films like Kidulthood and Shank which have made a massive 5 star hit in the cinemas could easily get our film up there too. To this day, people are still watching Kidulthood and Shank like it just came out yesterday. The film 'CHANGE' could definitely be up there. 

Coursework Evaluation: Question 4

For Teen movies in general, a variety of teenagers and young adults are attracted by the sort of themes teen films provide. Themes such as, love, friendship, excitement, fun etc. all are a convenient part to  attracting these audiences to watch teen films. As well as that, the sort of story teen films provide also relate to the reality of teenagers which makes it even more appealing for them to watch.

Here is a Facebook page of 'Eddie Smilezz' a 16 year old from London, Hackney who is a specific member of our target audience.

For our film 'CHANGE' the sort of audience who are more specific to our sub genre are teenagers aged 15-19 who are into 'hood' 'gang' related films. Films like 'Kidulthood' and 'Attack the Block' have really inspired us to create our own version of a 'gang' 'hood' related film. However the second series of Kidulthood, Adulthood has inspired us the most as the film shows how Noel Clarke the main actor who comes out of prison and decides to change his ways similar to our film 'Change'. In the majority of films that are hood related all come to a sequence where the hood guy always remains the same and is involved in crime and drugs etc. Whereas our USP is a clue in the name, 'CHANGE'. Instead of films like this being too cliche we decided our film will have a little twist where our main character does his best to try and change his life and make the most out the oppurtunities he's been given. This therefore makes it much more interesting to watch and allows the audience to wonder throughout the film whether or not he actually changes.

This is Eddie's description 

Eddie supports Arsenal and listens to rap music

Eddie likes to watch films that are gang related similar to our film 'Change'

Coursework Evaluation: Question 5

How did I attract/address my audience?

In our teen film, there are many different aspects which appeal to our specific target audience. Making the film look appealing allows the audience to enjoy and want to watch the rest of the film. However, seeing as tho we only had 2 minutes to make an opening, we had to fit in all the conventions in such a short space of time to make it best apeal for our target audience. The audience is attracted to teen films due to the use of conventions such as mise-en-scene, actors, the story line, the genre of the film , film name etc. For our film our target audience were teenagers aged 15-21 so we needed to think what sort of things those age groups would like to see in a film. Because in our group we are all 17 we thought of stuff that we could relate and that people that we know can relate too. 

A lot of young people are into films like 'Kidulthood' and 'Adulthood' films that portray an Urban lifestyle. A life that includes gangs, drugs, money, and the 'Hood'. 'Kidulthood' has really inspired us as it is a real hit with the younger generation; a lot of teenagers are attracted by the sort of conventions it portrays. Story line is very important when it comes to films if you want to attract the audience. We tried to portray a similar sort of theme but with a twist. Instead of the 'suggested criminal' (main actor) to travel a road of bad influences and troublesome and end up no where but bad. In our film we have the main actor who travels a road of troublesome and bad influence but challenges that and eventually makes something better for himself (hence the title: CHANGE). 

Mis-En-Scene has a really important part of attracting our audience. Using costume, body language, location etc.

Location: An establishing shot of the geographical area, Hackney. The location where most teenagers are from. Living in a council flat estate like Ashley can appeal to the audience as they can relate with him and know what sort of lifestyle he lives.

Actors also have a really important part of attracting our audience. 

We don't see a lot of these actors (Ashley's friends) but from their appearance we can definitely see that they are involved in crime by the way they dress and speak. Audiences love this as it creates tension later on in the film. The audience can guess that something bad might happen involving those two 'hooded' teenagers. That is another way that we have attracted the audiences attention, they like to see drama filled with twists and conclusions.

Our genre is an 'Urban' 'Action' 'Romance' type of film.

A teen movie wont be a teen movie without there being a convention of romance being involved. We ended the opening to the scene where Ashley meets our Sarah because it makes the audience wonder, whether or not they take things further. We left our audience on a sort of cliffhanger as we only did 2 minutes. However in those 2 minutes we've filled in clues to what may happen later on in the movie, giving the audience everything they need to be appealed by it to make them want to watch more.

 

The rough cut feedback helped us massively as we used Dan's tips from this video to improve our film to get the reaction we expected from our audience. Before receiving the feedback from Dan I asked a friend if he could have a look and wanted to get his feedback and he said it was good but then he looked at it after we made some changes and was blown away. Taking tips from Rebecca and Dan has ultimately made our film get the best reaction from the audience. One type of feedback that has really helped us is the music, for our second sound we had a more up tempo beat but apparently to our feedback's it didn't really suit with the flow of the film so we decided to change the sound and it worked out really good.                    

We watched our film and everyone else's in the Cinema this week and it was really fun, I felt like a movie star, watching myself on the widescreen. It was nice to see the peoples reaction during the opening and after, so one of my group members decided to record reaction feedback towards our film:

How did you attract/address your auidence?

Feedback was collected after a screening of the opening to the film to an audience full of teenage students. Here's what they had to say towards our opening sequence

Here we have an interview of the actor Durim Sllamniku AKA 'Ashley' who talks about how hectic his promotional schedule for the film.

Coursework Evaluation: Question 7

What have I learnt in the progression from looking back at the preliminary task to the full production?

FINISHED - FINAL THING

We've finished our film and have the evaluation deadline on Friday the 14th of March.

It's been a great experience making this. Although it was difficult, tiring and an extremely long process just to make 2 minutes of a film opening, it was worth it. It taught us a lot about film making and different softwares too.

PASSWORD: student

22 - Joseph Jackson, Sarah Obende, Sabiha Rahman, Durim Sllamniku from 283goswell on Vimeo.

New Editing Technique - Colour Correct

Above are 2 screen shots from our opening sequence. The first is before colour correct the second is after. As you can see the effect makes the footage have a slight blue tint to it. The reasoning behind this was to make the first scenes in Ashley's estate looking area to seem 'depressed'. The blue colour connotes a coldness that represents the glum aspect to our characters home life.


However, we also used colour correct to make the second half of our opening to stand out more and make it seem bright and having a warm glow. This occurs with the change in music and change in setting as his surroundings suddenly become more up-lifting. This further establishes Ashley's transition form the negative of his estate life - to the positive nature of his education surroundings.

A subtle effect but one we found really worked with the narrative of our opening

Roles for filming coursework

1) Title of your movie - GROUP

2) The treatment (brief outline of the whole film, then brief outline of the opening to that film) - Sabiha

3) What sub genre of Teen Drama is it? Which real film openings have inspired you? - Sabiha + Joe

4) Planned locations and location shots - Sabiha

5) Props, costumes and other mise en scene - Sarah and Sabiha

6) Full storyboard and animatic including titles - where they will be placed, what they say and the order in which they will appear - Joseph and Durim

7) Ideas about sound from Creative commons and the sound fx folder - GROUP

8) Production schedule using TimeToast - Sabiha

9) Risk assessment - Sabiha

10) Skills audit to date - Joseph

11) Institutional detail - which film company would produce your movie and how would that affect PDE - Sarah

12) Audience detail - who is your target audience and what would appeal to them about your film? - Durim

Individual Analysis (blogging):

I and the other members of group 22 have put a lot of work on this project to make it look the best. Blogging since December, we've posted individual blogs and group blogs to show how we've developed and our travel to get to this stage. Friday 5th is when we have to submit our coursework (blogging) and it has been a very tense and stressful few months but its also been really fun and I've enjoyed every bit of it.  So far this is our blogging statistics :

By the end of Friday we should have more blogging posts and everything else to be finished.

Hard work really does pay off.

Nearly Finished!

With all the editing done, all that's left is to add in the ident and titles. With the deadline in just a few hours we need to make sure its done quickly but also professionally.

Sacrifising shots:

At first we all thought we didn't have enough shots but when editing I saw that we had too many shots and not enough space to fill the maximum 2:30 of film. It was stressful because we had so many shots that would make our film look good but we had to cut it down as it went over the limit to nearly 3 minutes. However, with advice from Dan and Rebecca (our teachers) cutting down shots was the best idea. The shot above was meant to be our dialogue where Ashley talks to his friends about what they did in the past and what his friend plans on doing but we've cut that out. Now we only have the scene where Ashley and his friends touch fists. Also, the sound in the dialogue was really poor as the wind was really loud so you couldn't make out what was being said. Now the only dialogue we have is when Ashley saying bye to his but doesn't get a reply. This is to show that him and his mum are in a rough time as the letter from the police portrays his involvement to crime. That is why we want to show a transition as he heads off to university, to show him leaving his old life and starting a new one.

Saleh 'Salzz' wasn't too happy with cutting the scenes with him in it as he felt that it would've attracted a lot of the female attention if his face was on the cinema screen. Sorry Salzz aha!

Outcome of Cinematic Research:

Before using Colour Correct

After using Colour Correct

The video i researched has helped me a lot to make our film look even better. As you can see in the 'before and after' pictures, colour correct has made a massive difference. Staying after school working on the film has been very tiring but the outcome of it looks brilliant. I cant wait to see our work being presented in the cinema on the 25th. I'm really excited!

I used this to change the colour of our film to make it look more of a cold surrounding as that was the intention and transitional feeling towards the theme of the film.

Also as you can see there has been a change in the widescreen. Before it used to look like the above picture but after looking at the video on how to make a film look more cinematic i managed to find out how to change the widescreen to 2:35 instead of 2:16. I had to change the widescreen for every shot which was a very long procedure but the outcome of it looks really good. Now it looks like a real cinematic film.

Individual research - how to make our film look more cinematic

Seeing as though we only have Tuesday and Wednesday morning to finish off our rough cut i decided to do some final cut pro research on how to make our film look more cinematic in order for it to look really professional. The video explained everything i need to know to edit our shots and make the film look really cinematic. I have devoted most of my sociable hours to this film and I am willing to get it finished by Wednesday; even though it is only a rough cut I will do my best to try and complete the whole film so then we have enough time to post blogs before our deadline on Friday. On Tuesday I will be spending most of my hours finalizing and using my knowledge from the video to try and perfect our film and make it look the best before being presented in a real cinema in front of all our other colleagues and the members of staff and teachers in the Media department.  

Analysis of Acting:

The one thing that can really degrade the quality of the film is acting. If the acting is poor then so is the film no matter how good the shots are. I volunteered to be the main character in the film not just so i can showoff my handsome face and maybe get signed as an actor, but because i felt that id suit to play Ashley. I've never been filmed for a movie so this was new to me. I really enjoyed going out to film, it was a new experience for me and i hope that we do something like this again in the future.

Here are all my filming pictures:

Filming the last scene with sabiha

                                                           

I thought my acting skills were great in this scene

Getting ready to act 

Salzz was really excited to act as a 'badman'

After many shots we were finished

Unfortunately all those hours of filming the dialogue scene went to waste as we had to cut it out

So many bloopers, we had a lot of fun.

Couldn't keep the laughs in

Rough cut review from Dan (VLOG)

We asked Dan to have a look at our Rough Cut and his feedback was very helpful as he pointed out shots that we could improve to make our opening look much better then it was. He told us that some of the shots could've done with a bit of trimming to make the pace of the opening fluent. We've took his feedback into consideration and this lesson thats what we will do; edit some parts, make changes and make the pace fluent.

The video above is a recording of Dans feedback towards our opening rough cut that me and Jay have worked hard on.

Me and Jay are all ears as Dan uses his talented skills to give us helpful advice on how to improve our opening.

Lesson review - Monday 3rd March

We edited our shots and made sure most of it was in the sequence, ready for the rough cut showing on Wednesday.

It was difficult to try and not get distracted by making sure the shots were perfect, because the main aim was to just get everything into place to ger a rough idea.

Three scenes made it easy to look at details and see what was wrong or right.

Group 22 were tired

VERY LONG MONDAY