Finished Product

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

For this question George and I created a vlog.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Evaluation :How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Social groups intro

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We also looked at how our different characters were representative of social groups.

Social groups james

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Social groups alice

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Social groups sam

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Social groups paul

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Evaluation: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Institutionally our film is fairly similar to the following:

Evaluation :Who would be the audience for your media product?

In this Podcast we describe our chosen Target audience and the reasons behind that choice.

Evaluation: How did you attract/address your audience?

There are many genre conventions we adhere to and they are often used to address the audience. The film is an independent British film and it shows that through its use of Camera and editing which is often a lot more organic than the gloss seen in American blockbuster releases. The characters are also used to address our product’s audience as they are designed to represent the different aspects of the social group our audience is a part of.

There is no music in the piece this relates to the conventions of the genre we were working in. It also allows the audience to make their own assumptions rather than the music trying to guide them through music. The use of non-diegetic sound would also clash with the realism we were trying to achieve.



Our film was very similar in technical styling to fish tank as previously mentioned and also other films distributed by optimum releasing such as submarine and also four lions. The similarities between and relations to these films through optimum distribution (our distribution company) would attract an audience who seek quality, as optimum have distributed for film 4, who have a reputation for pushing boundaries and producing some high quality films.


Our Film provides an in depth look at southern youth Culture, specifically characters from a working class background. This contrasts to other films of the genre which are more likely to have London/ Birmingham based settings/characters and narratives. This would attract our audience to our product due to it being a fresh take on English youth culture.

Evaluation: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Evaluation: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Audience Feedback

From the feedback we got for our film. people said it was very much an independent British film. which was good as it fit with our brief. Some people commented on the use of handy cam and said it was a bit too much at times so in another production we would have used less handycam.or utilized a steady cam in order to reduce the more extreme movements in the film.
here is an example of some of the audience feed back. A comment from Youtube.

Like the titles over the various signs and some good editing, particularly the punch. There might be a bit too much handicam stuff but I am interested to know what George has done to provoke Sam.

The Edit

For the edit we used Adobe premier pro. as with our preliminary exercise I edited half the footage and George the other half. though this can lead to mismatched editing styles which would break the flow of the film we have a similar style so the film still flows between the two parts.
The majority of our edit was done in a short space of time. we were then able to tweak the film to improve it. a lot of time went in to the effects as well.

the effects were applied to the film by using windows movie maker. this was because the school computers didn't have blender/ voodoo or the other softwares I needed so I had to make and edit in the effects using my home computer and I don't have Premiere pro.

one of the problems we encountered was the length of the film. to make the conversations fell natural we had to cut down the time from the animatic drastically. as the timings ruined the pace of the film. this meant the film was only 1:30 long which was 30 seconds to short. we decided to re-shoot instead of lengthening shots as we didn't want to ruin the pacing or continuity of the film.
the extra footage was just a number of establishing shots and a couple of the main character walking, which was in-keeping with the rest of the film and also of the genre.

As mentioned we included a number of visual effects in the film. we decided to use them to have the effects in the "real world" with the characters, this was to enhance the sense of realism which we were trying to achieve with our film.
For this I used a program called blender and also voodoo and Gimp ( GNU Image Manipulation Program)

Production shoot day 2

Our second day also went well. we managed to finish all the filming. due to the problems we had with our actor before George recast the role. we had more freedom this time as we weren't as rushed for time as before, (our actors had work to do) so we spent the time setting the shots up perfectly and re-doing those which were missed before.
unfortunately it was a very windy day so the audio captured is not usable, we had recorded background noise the day before however so we plan to dub over the film once it's edited.

here are the production shots of day 2.

Alice - Beth Turner

unfortunately we don't have footage for production day 2 as it was not properly transferred off the camera, and the footage has now been deleted.Luckily the footage that was lost was not needed for the actual film.

Production shoot day 1

Our first day of production went well. we managed to get the majority of the filming done. this included every shot from the chip shop sequence to the end of the film. we were filming with Paul and Ollie two of our 3 males characters in the opening.
unfortunately one of ours actors was unavailable so we weren't able to shoot the entirety of the opening that day. overall I felt the filming went well. the shots we managed to capture were well done. we did have to work around a large amount of people as it was market day when we were filming and also the timing was close to lunch.
included are a number of photographs of the costume and props used. there was not a huge amount to do in terms of costume as the cast in our opening were people our age from a similar background.

Sam- Ollie Francis

                                

    Paul- Paul Richards

James - George Attwill

this final picture was taken as a reference shot as we will be having some simple visual effects for the titles. and one includes the use of this wall.

Whilst filming we also had another camera set up to show a behind the scenes view of the actual production shoot

Preparing for first production shoot

there are a number of digital effects which we plan to use in the film. this is so the titles are more dynamic.  for example a banner on a building bearing the name of the film, and also another as graffiti on a wall. we chose to do these effects digitally as there is no way we can do it in reality.

because of the amount if time involved in these kind of shots I begun work on them before our production shoot. 

Our first production shoot will be on Wednesday 9th march. our actors have been cast. costume worked out and we are ready to begin production. our aim is to get all the footage shot during this shoot.
We will be using one of the school cameras as we can then easily edit using premiere pro. I will also bring along my camera to document the production process.

Production schedule:

Wednesday 9th march
      11:10 - 2:10 (school period 3 onwards)
Thursday 10 th march
      11:10 - 12 :50 (school period 3-4)

we will need to assemble our cast: 
James: George Attwill

Sam: Ollie Francis

Paul: Paul Richards

Alice: Beth Turner

Props needed:

Chips

Costume:


Hoodie/leather jacket for Sam
Fake blood
standard teenage wear for other characters

Storyboard and Animatic

In our last lesson we finished our storyboard and made it into an animatic. when creating the story board we made sure to think about how the conventions of the genre would affect the shots and also how we would use our location in the shots.

Location & Storyboarding

This week George and i started work on our storyboard. when deciding on our shots we made sure to refer to the aspects we had discussed in terms of conventional camera angles and editing and whether we wanted to utilise those conventions or deliberately flout them. bearing in mind this will be the opening to an independent film i felt the shots should challenge the conventions regularly seen in most film.
For the inspiration for the sorts of shots we wanted we looked towards videogames namely the Mass effect series, well known for it's dramatic cut scenes and also the latest Halo game, Reach.

this clip is a cut-scene from the early levels of mass effect, the camera in this scene is extremely active it pans and tracks past the characters giving the scene a very dynamic look. this is a more extreme version of the kind of camera actions we would like to use but the same concepts seen here will carry over.
only the first couple of minutes, up to 2:10 of this clip are relevant the rest is game-play.



We also went to our location to get pictures of the area we wanted to film in. This will help us to plan shots as we will have images to reference, and will also help with storyboarding as we would have clear images of what will be in the scene, allowing us to more easily shape the mise-en-scene.

Confirming The narrative

This lesson was spent primarily deciding on the final aspects of our narrative. how the characters would react to the situation and so what we would be showing in the final film.

when planning we also had to bear in mind our target audience. this meant we chose to conform to certain conventions of independent films as it was the style which our target audience would come to expect from the genre

we also began work on our storyboard.
Using Google maps we found the location where we wanted to film, and used it to decide on the shots that we wanted and where that would mean the camera would be positioned.


View Larger Map

in deciding on the shots we remembered to think about the conventions of the genre we had discussed previously and how this would affect the shots we chose to use.

Also here are some more influences for our film

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VXkUzf1et4

Planning the Narrative

This lesson we decided on the core narrative for our film, and also the Characters which would be in our film.

Outline

The film is about 2 people with a grudge that began as something petty. The film is about the situation escalating and the consequences of the characters actions throughout the film. The opening is the present day whilst the film is seen as a flashback. In the opening we see the culmination of the events of the film, which leaves the audience with questions which lead into the rest of the film.

Characters 

James
Protagonist, confident arrogant at times.
Paul
Friend of James, brother of Sam.bit of a push over.
Sam
quick to anger, quiet, subdued,
Alice
strong willed, clever, frequently overlooked but accepts it

Target Audience
when we were designing our characters we also bore our target audience in mind. our target audience would be young adults from 18-35. specifically form the south of england as our film was meant to be regional based. so we chose our characters to reflect our target audience as this is commonly see in most independent films.


We also looked at the conventions of the genre, and decided whether we wanted to adhere to them or deliberately flout these conventions.

Conventions of independent films (used or deliberately flouting them)
No non – diegetic music in the opening
Non-linear storyline
Gritty(shown through costume, handheld camera,)
High key lighting for sense of realism
Washed out colour
Shots held for slightly longer. Drawn out 

We took inspiration from inception for the storyline of the film. in that we decided to have the opening as the present day and flashed back for the rest of the film. the style of the opening will however be more closely related to the opening of fish tank.

Film brief

We have now decided on the groups which we will be in for our final exercise, my group is comprised of myself and George. For our film opening we decided to do film brief 3.

Film Brief 3
An independent movie featuring a young protagonist
Your film should appear to be financed through regional funding
(Opening to Fish Tank, This Is England etc)

We felt this would be an ideal brief as its scope is both structured enough to give us a clear path and also open enough to allow us a lot of creative freedom. As it is an independent film the emphasis is on characters rather than high budget special effects, this would allow us to make a high quality film without having to cut corners.