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

EQ1

Our media product uses forms and conventions of real media products with titles, music, characters, travelling and arriving, and the introduction to characters.

Conventions of film openings are things that occur a lot in movies, so much so that they become conventional. Conventions are the way they are because everything must have a strict order. The director is always last because they have put the whole film together and have the role of making sure the film works well for the target audience to watch.

For example, an ident:

Kidulthood:

Change:

Introduction to characters:

Kidulthood:

Change:

Travelling and Arriving:

Kidulthood:

Kidulthood didn't focus on travelling and arriving as much as we did

Change:

A film that does do travelling and arriving would be Donnie Darko.

We start off with the main characters first and who casts them because they hold a greater importance in the film compared to other characters, for example, backing characters. In our film opening we made sure Durim, who played our main character, was the first person to be seen and his name was our first title too.

Unlike Kidulthood, we put the title after some footage of the main character. Kidulthood had the title before any action or character was seen.

We have followed most conventions like the ones above including music too. We used music with no lyrics because it doesn't draw the attention away from the actual film opening, just like Kidulthood did. 

EQ2

Representation in TV Drama

In TV Drama, there are different representation areas as shown above in the Animoto presentation. Media representations are the ways in which the media portrays particular groups, communities, experiences, ideas, or topics from a particular ideological or value perspective.

In our film opening for Change we have represented the teen social groups clearly. For example, age is clearly represented by the way the characters are dressed and the way they speak/communicate.

In our opening, when the main character (Ash) walks up this friends, he touches their fists with his. This is the way that certain age group (15-19 year olds) greet each other.

Ash and his friend 'spud' each other

The way we have represented the teen social groups have come out somewhat positive. However, in the rest of our film it would seem negative. This is because we would see another character called Preston who would cause a problem with Ash and there would be tension. This would represent the teens as rebellious and always looking for trouble.

We see a different environment when Ashley goes to college at UCL. This is a representation of social class. It contradicts with his look of a "hood boy" and is a huge contrast to the people around him who are affluent and from a more educated background.

We see a different ethnic background portrayed well using mise en scene where Sarah, played by me, is wearing a head scarf or 'hijab'. It shows the multicultural environment of the college. It includes white, black and Asian people. However, the majority of the college is white due to the area it is located in.

We don't represent regional identity as much in our film opening but we do hear Ashley say "bye mum" to his mother. From that, we can hear the stereotypical "Hackney/Cockney" accent. Although it isn't strong, if the film was further produced, we would hear a contrast of accents between characters from UCL and characters from Hackney.

EQ3

EQ4

Here is the Facebook page of an example of our target audience. His name is J Brown and he is the average 17 year old from Hackney in East London.

LOGIN: aa82461@student.candi.ac.uk
PASSWORD: group22media

For our film 'Change', the specific target audience is teenagers aged from 15-19. Whoever is into films like Kidulthood or Shank, they will definitely enjoy watching this. The USP of our film is the fact that something happens to CHANGE the main character. In the majority of most teen films related to grime and the 'hood' life, the bad person always remain the same but ends up in a lot of trouble and regrets it way too late.

However, in our film, our character realises what he is doing is wrong on his own and the good people around him in his new environment. (The college). Therefore, it is more interesting to watch and is less cliche. It makes the audience wonder how he will get rid of his old life without getting into trouble or getting dragged back in.

EQ5

 

 

 

 

 

The opening of our film appeals to the target audience (teens from 15-19) with many aspects. For example, mise en scene.

 

Ashley's hoodie may appeal to many male bodies but also to the area, if any of the audience are from around that area or a similar environment.

 

The actors could even be some reflection on people the audience know or the audience themselves. For example, some girls could relate to my character, Sarah, who was clearly into her fashion statements and looking good, but can easily get distracted by new boys.

 

The sound could be very relative to many of our young teens now who like grime music or up beat music. Although the songs didn't have any lyrics, the audience could still relate to the beats and specific rhythms of the songs.

 

The feedback definitely helped when trying to improve the opening of our film. For example, we changed the song in the last part of the video to suit the second environment where there are affluent people a bit more. It showed the contrast between the two lives Ash lives but also added to the meaning of the title "Change".

 

The students who come to watch the film get a 10% discount. This would appeal to students because they watch it for cheaper, but also shows that it is understandable that students may not want to spend too much to watch a movie etc.

EQ7

What did I learn?

In the past few months I have learnt a lot whilst making the opening to our film "Change".

- How to use different applications and types of blogs such as TimeToast

- Working with a team of people who may have not worked with before

 

- Trying to get loads done for deadlines!!!

 

 

- Learning different types of shots and types of films

- Trying to make sure we don't lose focus on the actual subject and target audience

- Having too many shots thinking we don't have enough was stressful

- Keeping everything consistent so the film looks realistic (same costumes, weather, moods etc)

- Doing a lot of work in LITTLE time

- Travelling all over the place just to get good shots and scenes

- Remembering to blog everything all the time

- Being organised and structure everything

- Making sure we don't fall out as a group 



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.

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

Production and Distribution

I have been working on the production ident.

It took a lot of time to find something that not only represents our production company but also be quick and appealing to the audience's eyes.

I used Motion to edit the animation.

For the distribution ident I decided to use the Candi Studios ident:

What is a rough cut?

WHAT IS A ROUGH CUT?

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.

Ideas for our teen drama opening

Ideas for teen opening sequence

The Plot:

• Boy from estate moves to posh school

Locations:

• Urban/Posh (travelling)
• Estate 
• Bus/train
• Prestige building
• View of the city 

Themes/Genres: 

• Friendship 
• Romance
• Drama
• Acceptance/change
• Pressure

Characters:

• Main character (Protagonist) -  Ghetto but trying to change, intelligent and male
• Antagonist  - Posh, male, bully, good-looking, arrogant, wealthy and has the girl
• Popular Girl - Posh but down to earth, smart, pretty, going out with antagonist, 'high shcool-sweetheart'
• Mum of main character - Stressed, doesn't care about son
• Friend of main character - Ghetto, holds main character back, silly, gets into trouble

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 

Costume change

I play Sarah and initially I thought it would be good to wear a black shirt but we decided to change the costume because she has a girly personality and quite fashionable. This is her new outfit. (Above)

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