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

Evaluation Question 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Conventions of a Title Sequence:

Titles:

Wouldn't be a title sequence without them. 

Order of Titles:

Our film follows the conventional order of titles.

We start with ident of Production and Distribution companies. We also repeat the name of these companies in the moving sequence.

Next we show the names of the actors who play the most important characters to our film. In this case it appears next to the character himself.

Next we have the title of the film title!

This is followed by further actors and other members of production crew e.g. Costumes, Music Supervisor, Editors, Director of Photography.

Finally we have the Director of the film which is the last title of the sequence.

Font

The font we used, called 'Corona' on Final Cut was chosen as we felt it replicated the urban look that we wanted to create from the opening as it looks almost like graffiti.

An example of how the font changes the mood of the opening can be seen in teen film Juno where the bright font creates a playful nature.

Forms and Conventions of Teen Film Openings:

There are certain forms and conventions that are common to many film openings. The opening I have produced uses and develops these conventions as a measure to inform the audience of what kind of film is to be expected from the opening. It introduces characters, sets up the location and establishes the genre as well as possible narratives.

Travelling and Arriving

Two methods of travelling seen in The Breakfast Club - by car or by walking - exploring different aspects of character. 

Eg. 'Criminal' character walks by himself suggesting his parents don't care for him.

Our main character uses public transport (train) to reach his destination in the opening of our film. This explores a situation similar to the 'criminal' character in The Breakfast Club.

Establishing Locations

This screenshot from the opening of Attack Block is an example of how the setting is set up in terms of geographical location.

The location of our opening is portrayed by an establishing shot of an estate in London. This tells the audience the film is located in an inner urban city setting.

Introducing Characters

Here we see our main character meeting two of his friends who, although we dont hear them speak, will have a strong influence on events that unfold.

Establishing Genre and Themes

It is also common for the themes and genres to be explored in the opening of a teen film. This in turn hints at possible narratives of the opening. For example, this scene from our opening suggests a romance between the two characters.

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 3

What Kind Of Media Institution Might Distribute Your Media Product And Why?

VLOG of distribution company used in title sequence, a similar company, and some ways in which the company will market and advertise the film.

Evaluation Question 4

Who Would Be The Audience For Your Media Product?

Post by Bobby Johnson.

(Click link above and view comments to see question explained)

Bobby Johnson represents a specific member of my target audience. He fits the criteria in a number of ways:

Basic Information:

Age - Being 16, he meets the targeted range of 14-21.

Gender - Although the film is for either gender, it is aimed more at males than females

Geographical Location:

He lives in England, the main market for the film. He also lives in London, a large urban city and, as his cover photo from his Facebook account explains, he lives in an estate.

Likes

His musical likes consist of rap and grime artists which infers he lives an urban lifestyle.

From his likes for films it is clear to tell he is a fan of the more gritty British Teen Dramas as it includes films such as Shank, Bullet Boy, Kidulthood and Adulthood.

This interest is key as CHANGE is of a similar type to these films and so will share the type of audience.

The same can be said of the TV programs Bobby watches. 

Evaluation Question 5

How Did You Attract/Address Your Audience?

For this question I thought it best for a member of my audience to say himself what attracted him to the film. 

In this instance this 'member of the public' highlights some ways in which our audience has been reached, through: College, Twitter, Cinema preview and release of exclusive material (snippets, bloopers and character profiles) through both Twitter and Youtube.

Feedback was also collected directly after a screening of the opening to the film to an audience compiling strictly of teenage students. Here's what they had to say of the opening sequence:

Some recurring aspects of the opening that appealed to the audience include:

• Relatable problems, characters and settings without generalising negatively too much
• The type of music and how the transition in music gave greater meaning to the plot
• The enigma created in the juxtaposition between his original estate setting and the university setting 
• The pace of the shots at the beginning to real them in -We chose to focus a lot more on this feature in response to the feedback we got for our rough cut as at first the pace originally seemed a bit too slow 
• How the name of the film tied in with the sound as well as the setting
• They seemed to appreciate the fact that they could work out the story/plot rather than it being fed to them e.g. the clue that he had been in trouble with the police from the letter in the mum scene being a subtle hint 

Evaluation Question 7

Looking Back At Your Preliminary Task, What Do You Feel You Have Learnt In The Progression From It To The Full Product?

One lesson I have just come to learn, the agonizingly hard way, is always keep a back up of your work at home. Now, of all times, at the last minute when it comes to finally uploading I find out all my work done on a completed question 7 is stored at college where I have no possible way of accessing it. Apologies for the lack of technology on this one but with 3 hours left until the deadline it's the best I can do.

Comparing prelim to final product:

Framing - The framing was much better in the final product, particularly when there was more than one character in the frame. In the prelim the back of the character in the foregrounds head dominates the screen when it attention should be on character talking.

 Prelim

CHANGE (Framing much better)

Pace and flow - The continuity of the opening is of a much higher standard in the opening compared to the prelim.

These improvements are largely due to the difference in levels of planning that was done prior to the filming of the sequences: the prelim only consisting of a script, whereas the final product was planned extensively so that when it came round to actually filming it was clear exactly what was needed.
A well planned story board and animatic made it abudandantly clear exactly what shots were needed, how they were to be framed and what kind of movement was required.

Animatic of CHANGE - Giving rough idea of outline of opening whilst also allowing me to develop my skills on Final Cut Pro

What knowledge have I gained and skills have I developed?

Making the product look more professional:

• From the prelim onward I have been developing my skills at match cutting as a way of seamless editing so that the footage flows smoothly and not disjointed. This form of continuity editing allows the audience to settle in to the piece as it creates a sense of reality
• I have learnt that jump cuts breaks the reality by making the sequence seem disjointed and so shouldn't be used unless for a specific purpose. This was a change that had to be made as result of feedback for my rough cut for my opening as one scene contained a jump cut
• The quality of camerawork is something i have also worked on and progressed in as it is this that determines whether or not the piece looks professional. Blurry shots and shaky camera movement being the main examples of bad camerawork and will break the reality of the piece.

About communicating to the audience with better clarity:

• I learnt the significance of mise-en-scene in establishing character types, and how using stereotypes make this task easier - location and costume being particularly useful tools in expressing representations of the character potrayed
• It has shown me the importance of sound and how it can change the mood. This was something we especially took advantage on in our opening sequence; changing the backing track to signify the change from a dark and hostile mood to a uplifted and promising mood.
• This was also reflected in the lighting - grey and dull to begin with and eventually getting brighter

Production Process:

• Difficulties of meeting production deadlines - The Breakfast Club remake had to abandoned without being fully completed as the production schedule doesn't seem to wait for anyone
• Working in a group - At times can be tense as tempers flare but as you learn to focus on members strong points rather than negatives it becomes an enjoyable process and lightens the load of stressful media coursework (which really is stressful - major lesson learnt)

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

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.

Making Sacrifices

Brief VLOG of how editing is going and some sacrifices that we have had to make.

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

Monday 3rd March 2014 - lesson plan

The plan for today is to get all the clips and shots we filmed over the past few weeks into the sequence ready to be a rough cut for Wednesday the 5th March.

As a group we have gone through most of our shots and put them into order using our storyboard as a guide line.

The plan is to have the rough cut of our sequence done by the end of the lesson, ready for Wednesday.

We used Final Cut Pro X to edit our film opening.

Video blogs - 26-02-14

Me and Durim - just a bit about what's happening (taking a break from filming)

Lesson review - 26-02-14

Me and Durim - the scene where I see him in the reflection of my mirror 

The shot where we both walk into the classroom - first contact of Sarah and Ashley..

Oh hai Durim!

We had a lot of fun filming this scene. The shot was amazing 

Wednesday 26th Feb 2014 - lesson plan

Today the lesson plan is to film all the classroom scenes amd maybe start editing even more shots if we finish early. We have three hours to do as much as we can

The plan is to have the rough cut ready by Monday the 3rd March 2014

Pictures from lesson on Monday 24/02

Durim and Joe working on the editing (sounds)

Using Grime music ofcourse

Sarah doing some independent research

Then using TimeToast

Our whole life is in this right now!

We used A and B for all our material so far

Editing our shots (got stuck with a really nice shot but we couldn't get the pigeon in it, cry cry!)

TimeToast is a very good website to use for producing schedules or just blogs in general which have a time pan etc

PHOTOGRAPHY - SABIHA