planning- shot schedual

Shot 1- Will be an establishing shot and you will see Stanley walking up an ally way on his way to the shop, trying to avoid bumping into Adam. This shot will be used to show the full length of the character from a long distance. Also it could show the surrounding area and you can see how comfortable he is in the area depending on who is around and what area he is in.

Shot 2- cut to a medium close up of Stanley, This shot will be used to see an actors facial expression but also shows the actors body language, it is also good to distinguish what genre the film could be, as you can see the actors clothing. 

Shot 3-cut to an establishing shot and you will see Adam walking up an ally way to meet Stanley although Stanley does not know he will bump into Adam.   This shot will be used to show the full length of the character from a long distance. Also it could show the surrounding area and you can see how comfortable he is in the area depending on who is around and what area he is in.

Shot 4- cut to another medium close up of Adam walking in the same ally as Stanley but they have not yet met. This shot will be used to see an actors facial expression but also shows the actors body language, it is also good to distinguish what genre the film could be, as you can see the actors clothing.

Shot 5 and 6- cut to a medium long shot of Stanley this will show his facial expression and body language and also will show the audience what is around the actor and gives them an idea of what is going on in the film. 

Shot 7- cut to a high angle shot of Stanley still walking along the alley, this shot is used to show that Stanley is a weak character and how it can make them feel to have someone of a higher authority tower over them, he is getting looked down on.

Shot 8- cuts to the opposite, which is the low angle shot of Adam walking, which will show that Adam is the stronger character and has power over Stanley. Usually a character people look up to.

Shot 9-cuts to a shot reverse shot of Stanley then Adam then Stanley again you will see a close up of the two characters faces and Stanley is still oblivious that he will see Adam soon. This shot will be used to show a close up of both of their facial expressions.

Shot 10- cuts to back to a medium long shot of Stanley which again is used to see an actors facial expression but also shows the actors body language, it is also good to distinguish what genre the film could be, as you can see the actors clothing.

Shot 11- cuts to a side shot of Adam and tracking is being used as he come round the corner and shocks Stanley with his presence, this angle will show you the side of Adams body including his face this may show the audience his body language.

Shot 12-cuts to a reaction shot of Stanley’s reaction to seeing Adam coming round the corner and then coming face to face with him as a low tracking is being used also. Stanley looks confused and scared. 

Shot 13- cuts to a two person shot of Adam and Stanley this shot will be used to show Adam and Stanley and how they act around each other, it can show their relationship, friendship and how comfortable they are around each other. You can also see their emotion and can see both actors body language

completed and changes done by Malcolm Pocock

feed back from rough cut

Malcolm's evaluation

Question 1- In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? 

Due to our own media film being a revenge film as Stanley is coming for revenge against Adam due to drug deal in which Stanley is set up by Adam and as a result is sent away to prison and looses his childhood, which when he returns he is much more older and in search for revenge. Due to this for my influential film I have chose Adulthood due to the fact that the character Jay (Adam deacon) has had one of his closest friends Tj killed in the previous film Kidulthood which as a result the killer Sam (Noel Clarke) is sent to prison at the end of Kidulthood.So within my influential film Adulthood he has come out of jail and when Jay (Adam deacon) learns of this he goes for revenge against his friends killer.

How does your media product represent particular social groups

 Within our 2 minute opening film youth/gang culture is represented through two individuals of which both come from these kind of backgrounds the basis of this film is to educate teenagers from the age of 13-19 to steer clear of gang culture due to the consequences it may have and the problems it may cause. we was able to represent this throughout our film by basing it in a street environment however due to the fact that we are not near any south London towns or near urban culture environments due to the risk of being hurt our locations do not look as urban as we would of liked. Stereo typically young teenagers that hang around in large groups are seen to cause and participate in trouble in which we tried to portray through 20th century clothing for example Ollie (Adam) is wearing a long coat to give a suspicious dark look suggesting problems and threat. again the opposing character Malcolm (Stanley) is wearing again a long coat and trainers which is stereotypical for teenagers to wear and in which both characters are moving around in suspicious and a typical 'hard man' way to suggest a thought of not caring and thug like actions. With influential films such as fast and the furious, lock stock and two smoking barrels, shank and adulthood all involve situations that show clear gang situations and clothing views which allowed me and my group to take ideas from and improve our own film. 

what kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

media distribution is highly important within film making and producing a film due to the fact that this is how the viewers and audience are able to see the film and how film and film makers actually do make money. so due to our film being a uk based film productions that would help with the funding of our film would be funded by the national lottery which provides funds across a large amount of media products. the production and development fund offers mean that finical assistance is available for established film makers but also rising talent and also every level in between in addition to this there are many other ways of helping finical support for film makers UK sales companies and film festivals, National film agencies such as the capitals film agency Film London which directly runs several productions schemes supports local film making, additionally with UK based films the UK government is able to fund ad support. The UK Film Council was a non department public body set up in 2000 to develop and promote the film industry in the uk. it was constituted as a private company limited by guarantee. owned by the secretary of the state for culture, media and sport and governed by a board of 15 directors. it was funded from various sources including the National lottery.The UK film council also have a distrbution and exhibition programme which includes many companies that distrubutes UK based films in which our film is UK based these include: 

The Prints and Advertising Fund – provided £2 million per year to help UK distributors produce extra prints of non-mainstream or more commercially focused British films, or to publicise films more effectively through advertising and other channels.

The Cinema Access Programme (launched in 2003) – provided £350,000 to help cinemas purchase subtitling and audio-description technologies that improve the cinema-going experience for people with hearing and sight impairments. The programme also provided funds to YourLocalCinema.com, the film listings website of choice for film-goers with sensory impairments, and the Film Print Provision strand, an ongoing funding initiative that helps distributors produce fully accessible film prints.

The Digital Fund for Non Theatrical Exhibition (launched in 2004) – a £500,000 fund to help expand the activities of film clubs, societies community groups and mobile film exhibitors in order to improve viewing opportunities for audiences in rural areas across the UK that might not be able to support a full-time cinema.

The Digital Screen Network (set up in 2005 by the UK Film Council and the Arts Council England) – a £12 million investment to equip 240 screens in 210 cinemas across the UK with digital projection technology to give UK audiences much greater choice.

Capital funding – the Small Capital Fund (2006) provided £800,000 to help smaller cinemas meet the costs of essential building refurbishments and other improvements such as disabled access; and the Capital and Access Fund for Cinemas (2007) provided £500,000 to help cinemas upgrade their equipment and premises to improve the cinema-going experience for audiences. 

in which all of these will be able to contribute to distribution of our film allowing viewers to see this. 

who would be the audience for your media product? 

   

Here we have a young 18 year old by the name of Christian Mack. Years ago he had suffered from drug/gang related violence in which affected his family and friends very heavily causing him to lose close friends and any kind of social life due to how much he had suffered from gang/drug related violence. Thanks to 2 years of treatment and counselling and help from his close family he was able to stop and bring his life back together by re taking school years and applying for a number of jobs and now 10 years later is very successful for himself. However Christian still feels that the young generation of today are still in need of more access to information about drug/gang related violence which clearly portrays the consequences of this and how it can be very harmful. Furthermore the way he feels that this needs to be addressed is through ways in which the young generation of today will enjoy so therefore believes that they need to be addressed through films. so my audience for our two minute opening film is the young generation of today those of which include young males and females like Christian so they are able to gain knowledge of not to be afraid to speak up when needing to and understand that there are consequences of such serious matters and are in need of help if involved in such things. 

The audience for my 2 minute opening film will be of ages 13-19 due to with initial ideas scenes require a lot of thought to understand and also the scenes contain explicit ages that can only be shown to older youth so that it is not miss interrupted into being a poor role model or misleading 

How did you attract/address your audience? 

 Produced a questionnaire for 20 young generation of the public to fill out 

1. How old are you?

a. 15-25

b.26-35

c.36-45

d.45 or over 

2.what is your favourite genre(s) of film? 

a. Thriller

b. Horror

c. Action 

d. Romantic/fantasy 

3.Do you watch the genre of our film (thriller) ? 

a. yes 

b. No 

4.How do you like films to start? straight to a dramatic moment? introducing characters? or be told basic premieres of a film? if other please write on the line provided 

5.When do you believe titles should be seen ?

a. Before the start 

b. During the start

c. After the start 

6. Do you have any preferences if a film has music at the beginning? 

a. Yes 

b. No 

c.Other 

7.Within a film what story do you like?

a. Fictional 

b. Non- fictional 

c. True stories 

in which with our questionnaire we handed 20 different copies out in a public place to get a vary of different age groups so were able to have a varied amount of views. 

Results:

1.

15-25=12

26-35=4

36-45=2

45 or over=2 

2.Genres 

Thriller=10 

Horror=6

Action=3

Romantic/fantasy=1

3.Do you watch the genre of our film? 

Yes=20 

No=0

4.film starts 

Dramatic=8

introducing characters=6

basic knowledge of the film=6 

5.when titles should be seen? 

before the start=6

during the start=11

after the start=3 

6.any preferences to having music at the start of films 

Yes=18 

No=2

7.Within a film what story do you like? 

fiction=4 

non fiction=6 

true stories=10

Once me and my group had gathered our results we were able analyse them as a group and highlight any changes that we needed to make within our own story and expand on initial ideas that we had already  produced, having  a vast amount of difference in results meant that it was very complicated to analyse different techniques we had needed to use however we was able to make final decisions and agree together on what had to be done and were able to expand on our initial ideas and produce our final product. In addition by producing this questionnaire I was able to gain an understanding of what other Individuals like within opening scenes and not only my own personal preferred choice. Allowing me to target my audience a lot more and focusing on specific areas of my 2 minute opening. 

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

Technology that I have been able to use and expand my learning into are the seven products above. 

1) camcorder-Me and my group had used a camcorder to be able to record our final two minute opening film as it was small and productive meaning that we was able to move it from to place to place to record different scenes and sections in a number of places. However one problem we found with this cam recorder is the fact that some areas that were either loud or very windy the camcorder was able to pick this up much more clearly than the speech in which was said by the actors so due to this we had to further use a pod casting kit to allow the voices to be heard clearly meaning viewers were able to understand our story. 

2)Memory/Data sticks of 16 GB meant that when work was completed or even part way through completion we were able to save this onto our own personal data allowing us to make and changes or completion once at home meaning that as a group work was able to be done quickly without any problems of no one completing work or being left behind in terms of keeping up with the rest of the group. It also meant that as a group we was all able to have work saved as a backup if the work once saved on the computer was lost or damaged at all. 

3)To complete our filming and allow this to be a good standard meaning that it was able to be clear and understandable for the viewers was the use of a tri-pod  which allowed stability for our groups camcorder. Also thanks to some advice from our supervisor we were able to learn different aspects of how to control the tri-pod with more control we were able to see a difference within our filming and pictures taken due to the fact that they were either  a lot more clearer or more complex camera angles for example canted angles or tilt frames meaning that our film was able to become more interesting for viewers. within our group we did not find any restrictions from the tri-pod as if needed we was able to move the tri-pod around with ease and also increase or decrease the tri-pod in size and height to get the filming access needed. 

4) Panasonic headsets meant that for the editing needed within our group we were able to listen to music,speech and audio individually within a class room without disturbing others within the class. by having access to an headset the benefits we found were that it was clear and of high quality, ensuring sound was not muffled or unclear to analyse and make any changes if needed. 

5) This was the use of laptops or desktop computers which played a large part in producing my groups film and also all of the coursework required. due to the fact that blogger was only accessible on computer laptops or desktops. however problems we found when using desktop computers within school,we found problems with certain documents and software we found that it would either crash or fail on us meaning a delay in certain tasks had come up in which our group had to overcome and fix.However when using my own personal laptop at home i found that i did not find any restrictions with the internet or programmer used at home so was able to finish tasks on time as i found a laptop to be quick and easier. 

6) pod-casting kit was used for the majority of audio sounds within our film for example the voice over this allowed us as a group to record our two speakers when performing their speeches, to be able to record this effectively we are required to record our speeches in a silent environment, this ensures that we do not receive any background noise or sounds from the environment we were in allowing speech and sound to be clear when re-played this also is given on to the editor in which in our group is Holly in which she would let us know if any changes were needed to be made in which we would have go back to and change.

7) Audio cable/USB lead throughout the planning and production of our film this allowed us to be able to transfer film clips and pictures from the video camcorder onto our computer desktops or laptops allowing us to transfer to editing and production of our film.

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

within our media product due to the fact our preliminary task was our first attempt at producing a 2 minute opening clip to a film so as a result we was very in -experienced and did not have any knowledge of how to construct a productive and successful 2 minute opening clip that will attract viewers. within our group we had struggled with picking a suitable miss en scene as a result of using the cam-recorder for the first time as a result we had many interruptions within our film setting. 

Ollie's evaluation

Evaluation - Ollie Woodward

Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real life media products? (film openings)

Frame 1: The first frame is a mid shot of Vinnie Jones holding two double barrel shotguns shows that he is ready for conflict. We can also tell by the determined, angry look on his face that implies that he means business. The fact that he is wearing a black leather jacket and the skinhead haircut shows that he is a bit of a 'hard-man' and also looks like he might enjoy putting people in pain. The way he stands up tall implies that he is a confident man and knows that he is well respected and a feared person.

  

Frame 2: The second frame shows a medium long shot of a group of men around a big, antique looking table. The fact that the table looks antique looking and they are surrounded by old looking objects shows that these men care about money. They all have a rather serious look on their face which may imply that they are dealing with business (most likely to do with money). The man who is holding the cup of tea (far right) asserts the idea that this place is their safe house where they all can relax after dealing with their business, earning their money.

Frame 3: Vinnie Jones is shown again in a close up looking rather angry and frustrated. The fact that he is pointing his finger in quite an fierce manner implies that he doesn't like to be messed with by anyone, which links back to frame one when I said he is a bit of a 'hard-man'. His bold, silver chain also asserts the idea that he likes to spend money and look flash to make him look like a big deal to other people who do not know him.

Frame 4: The black man is shown in a mid shot and comes across as a rather important person. We can tell by the fact that he is dressed quite smart by wearing a black blazer with a black shirt underneath. The way he is dressed can assert power throughout the film. his facial expression shows that he may be dealing with business that he might not be happy about, I realize this as he looks rather frustrated by the way he is ferociously staring right at the person in front of his desk as if he was shouting. The background implies that he is in an office which also assert the idea of power and importance of this man.

Frame 5: The big, bald man is shown in a medium close up to show how he expresses anger and frustration in this frame by the way his face is screwed up as if he is shouting something taboo. The fact he is also pointing his face in a violent manner also shows that he is not a man to be messed with. What he is wearing also asserts power as the big, beige, sheep's-wool coat over a smart suit are stereotypically what gangsters wore.

Frame 6: In this frame Jason Statham and his partner are shown in a medium long shot loading their double barrel shotguns getting ready to deal with people that get in their way. The look on Jason Statham's face looks like he has been told something bad and caused him to pull a face as if he was disgusted by the news. The fact him and his partner are both wearing black suits show that they are not messing around when they deal with business.

Frame 7: The group of men are shown in a long shot walking down a dodgy alley with the man in front holding a big, black bag possibly with a large amount of money in it ready to do - what it looks like  - a big deal with another gang. They are all dressed in smart, black clothing like overcoats and suits which also implies that they want to look powerful in front of the enemy's. The fact that they have to meet in a dodgy alley may show that this deal may not go down very well.

Frame 8: In this frame, all the group are shown in a medium shot waiting in the car while the man at the steering wheel is on the phone they all show curiosity in this photo by their facial expressions and the way they are staring at the phone looking disappointed. The fact that they are in a car shows that they needed to be somewhere, it also shows that they would go quite far to make the deals they are about to encounter.

Frame 9: Finally, in the last frame all 4 of the group are shown in a long shot walking again with the same black bag they had in frame 7. The leather black bag may be a known icon for having money or guns inside it. They all again look very serious in what they are doing showing that they intend to do business to earn the money they patiently wait for. The back 3 people look like they are having a debate on what to do, while the front man who is holding the bag looks more concentrated and serious, therefore it may imply that he is the main guy for the job they are about to do.

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups? 

Within our 2 minute film opening both ourselves Myself (Adam) and my teammate Malcolm (Stanley)  are displayed as two young immature teenagers Adam that got into some trouble with a drug deal which caused them to fall out for a very long time. Revenge is wanted by the two characters…until they meet again in the street. This would make the genre of the story a thriller as it thrillers are usually centred on drugs and violence. Our group researched some thrillers for example: Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (which is what my 9 frame was on), Fast and furious 7 and Layer Cake and studied how they acted and stereotypically how people who are involved in drug deals are dressed for example you can see in our 2 minute opening, I am wearing a long overcoat. In today’s society, men are stereotypically involved in drug deals and violence and that is what Malcolm and I are trying to display in our film opening. The 2-minute opening will demonstrate how young people can remorse a lot of bad decisions that they have made in their life which may be caused by peer pressure or bullying so they are represented to be frightened and helpless. Stereotypically teenagers that hang around in groups or ‘gangs’ are known to cause problems in our society or to other people. We want to address to the audience that a lot of young people can be peer pressured into something that could ruin your life and destroy friendships and this is what I hope that our 2 minute opening represents.

Question 3:  What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Distribution is essential and one of the key things of a film it is part of the progression of making your film presented to the public so they are able to view the film. I believe that many media institutions could distribute my film product. There are numerous media institutions such as National Lottery Fund as it is a UK film. This would go through BFI then allocated to people making the film. A media institution is a company, public or privately owned that creates and/or distributes media products. Most if not all of these media distributors, distribute films that are so successful they win awards. As my film genre is a thriller, I think that a media institution that has distributed a wide variety of horrors and thrillers than the other distributors would distribute it my film. This will not only attract more attention to the film product it will bring an extended audience. The national lottery fund has distributed films such as The Kings speech and Woman in black; this primarily would attract the audience in, as they are aware of the genre that it supports. The company has continued to be successful throughout the years and is very well recognized.
  

Question 4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

Phil Mayweather is a 18 year old boy and lives in Maidstone, Kent. Phil enjoys going to the cinema with his friends as he likes to keep updated with the recent films. Phil loves being on the edge of his seat and enjoys watching thrillers such as: The Avengers, Fast and Furious, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. But if there is nothing that he likes on at the cinema then he would gladly watch TV shows that are thrillers like: Prison Break, Breaking Bad, Dexter and Better call Saul. He tends to watch all these shows on Netflix. Phil likes to listen to all types of music, he wouldn't listen to anything and like it.
I think our film would appeal to Phil as I think it would intrigue him into finding out the end but also entertain him and keep him on the edge of his seat. He would also be interested because it is similar to most of the films he watches himself.

Question 5: How did you attract/ address your audience?
 1. How old are you?
a. 15-25
b. 26-35
c. 36-45
d. 45 or over

2. What is your favourite genre(s) of film?
a. Thriller
b. Horror
c. Action
d. Rom-com
e. Sci-fi

3. Do you watch the Genre of our film?
a.Yes
b. No

4. How do you like films to start? straight into a dramatic moment, introduce characters or be told the basic premises of the film?

5.When should titles be seen? before the start, during the start or after the start?

6. Do you have any preferences about whether a film a film should have music at the beginning or not?

7. When watching a film trailer what kind of story's do you like more?
a. fictional
b. Non-fictional
c. True story

I created a questionnaire which included 7 questions to learn from the audience what type of films they like and what they like about it to get an of what genre is the favourite.

To get the results I needed, I printed off 20 copies of my questionnaire and handed them out to a variety of people from different ages. 5 copies were handed out to 4 different age groups: 5 were handed out to people aged 15-25, 5 copies were handed out to people aged 26-35, 5 more copies were handed out to people aged 36-45 and the last 5 copies were handed out to people aged 45 and over. I made sure that they were equally handed out to both sexes.

When the whole 20 copies were complete, I then completed a graph for every question, which revealed the most popular result for each question.

With the results in mind it helped me a lot to think about how I could improve my film to make it more appealing for my target audience. My film is intended for people aged 15+ who our group had already decided on to start with along with that genre of the film we wanted our opening to a film to be a thriller.

Question 1

There were 5 questionnaires given to each audience group so there were 5 people for each.

Question 2

6 people liked thriller

4 people liked horror

5 people liked action

5 people liked rom/com

Question 3

17 people said yes

3 people said no

Question 4

9 people said they like the film to start with a dramatic moment

4 people said that they like to be introduced to the characters

7 people said they like to be told the basic premises of what the film will be about.

Question 5

4 people said before the start

10 people said during the start

6 people said after the start

Question 6

13 people said that there should be music at the beginning

7 people said that there shouldn’t be music at the beginning

Question 7

8 people said fictional

3 people said non-fictional

9 people said true story

After studying the outcome of the questionnaire it has motivated our group to carry on with the thriller genre and for it to be based on a true story. It was very helpful to get feedback from my target audience, the reason for this is having a variety of opinions, will help my two minute opening to draw in a wider range of people instead of just what I think people will like. The questionnaire has given me a starting point to lead off for my future trailer.

6. What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

The tripod was a very important piece of equipment but neither I nor my group had used it before so were uneducated to how it is used. The tripod is a part of equipment that is used with the HD Panasonic camera. It can be stood at different levels and it holds the camera securely at the top. By using the tripod it made some of our shots more steady which made it look more professional then it would of if it was hand held. Throughout all of the shots we could use the tripod especially on our scenes that included shots like an establishing shot and tracking.

My group used a HD Panasonic video recorder to film which. This was one of the most important parts of technology that we used as it enabled us to record all of our scenes that we needed for our two minute opening to a film. The camera had a clear lens and allowed us to see the view clearly,  it also didn’t freeze and when we replayed the filmed scenes it ran smoothly. When using an iPhone camera, putting it onto a computer to edit scenes together would be unreliable as the pixels are low and the iPhone is mot created to record a professional piece. The camera was portable due to its small size, unlike cameras used for Hollywood films that are carried on your shoulder, so it was easy to film in different locations.

The computer was also the most important thing throughout this project, without the computer I would not have been able to upload any of the filming that we did and most importantly would not have been able to edit any thing together to make the final piece. YouTube was important as it was used to put up any videos like feedback from the class and the designed storyboard. As well as the computer being important, our blogger account ‘KMHO’ was also very important as it held all our work for our film on it and kept it in one place which kept the group organized.

We used the Voice recorder so that we could add speech into our film opening as it made it sound a lot better than the diegetic sound recorded as we were filming. Like the tripod, I was inexperienced with this piece of equipment either so I was learning how to use it and practicing until we were ready to record our final piece. The transcript within the film was short as it was only a two-minute opening so I added the voice over to make it look like it was what the actor was saying in his head in the scene, which did not take long to edit due to the length of the opening.

As a producer and director, I had to keep our work in a safe place in order to reduce the risk of losing it and also so we had a back-up. To keep our work safe I saved all the documents such as: 9 frames, our preliminary, pictures for our storyboard and other pieces on my memory stick. I made sure I took my memory stick every lesson so that we could access our work and update our blog.


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

From the time when we made our preliminary task to our main task, my knowledge and understanding of computers and the making of films has improved a lot. Our group was asked to use three camera techniques in a short film clip of only 2 minutes. These camera techniques included stability; shot reverse shot and 180-degree rule, as I was aware of all three shots I found it straight forward to link them all together. I knew that to carry out the stability shot I had to use a tripod which I had never used before, this is another skill that has improved between the time of my preliminary to my main task. To edit our preliminary task together we used final cut express which is an editing program we were all new to.

Our group created a small storyboard of the short film. We managed to find it very easy to film and we had recorded it instantly so that we would have a reasonable amount of time to edit our clip to a high standard. We used final cut express to edit our filming, as we had been given a chance to have a look at the software a few lessons before so knew briefly how to work it.

We decided that the clip needed some sort of music in the background to add to the effect of our film. As a group we all thought of a song that we thought would be the most appropriate for the scenario. We found that we had no way of uploading our chosen song to the computer so in the end we had to spend £1 on iTunes. After editing the scenes together, the film was then complete and we used all three techniques and finally added the music. We was happy with our finishing results and felt the preliminary task was a success. As a group we gained more knowledge of the software and technology that we would be using later on in the course.

Once we decided on who was doing each role for our main task we all begun with our individual work. We all shared a lot of roles in the preliminary task, we decided that we would do more of our own work and would then come back after finishing a task to review the work that we had completed and put it together, we found that this is a much more effective way to work.

I filmed our preliminary task with a tripod and hand held but at the time I did not have a strong knowledge on how to use the camera in the most effective way. By the time our main task come about I had a much better understanding and our film was recorded with more inventive and interesting angles that would be more appealing to the target audience.

holly's evaluation

1.In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products (film openings)

i have explained the differences and similarities all in one. 

Frame 1

The film that influenced me at first was the opening to the film ‘Shaft’ although throughout making the film we have made some changes this was the film that first influenced me. In frame one my influential film started with showing a production company logo, which was Metro Goldwyn Lion. This influenced me as all films start with a production and distribution logo and I thought it would look more professional if we had one too. Our film started with a production company logo, which we named Saints productions. It was quite easy to think of a log name, as it could have been absolutely anything. Our logo is obviously different from our influential film as we thought we shouldn’t spend too much time on making a logo and making it something like the Metro Goldwyn Lion logo would have took a lot of time and effort.

Frame 2

Shafts second frame was ‘Metro Goldwyn Mayer presents’ title, which we did have at first but then decided that at the start of our film we would have a fact page, which gave a fact about people taking drugs. With the film Shaft they had there titles running through the clip while it was filming but with ours we went to a black screen when we showed some titles. Both of the films played music over the top of this frame.

Frame 3

Shafts third frame was just a Birdseye view shot of the location with music continuing through the shot. With my film we have a phone call showed on the screen for the third frame this is again completely different but originary we were just filming one person walking to a destination but things changed.

Frame 4

With frame four in the film Shaft it showed the audience the title of the film in red bold letters but still filming the location in different shots. With my film our forth shot was a close up on one of the main characters as we thought it was good to start showing the character early on in the film.

Frame 5

In frame 5 Shaft and my film had a similar shot it was a close up of the main character this influenced me as I thought it was a good idea to introduce the main character as soon as I could because then the audience get to know the character.  In my film I put a title in this frame with was the name of the actor I thought this was a good idea again because it shows the audience who is staring in the film.

 Frame 6

In frame 6 the film Shaft and my film is again similar as in my film It was a panning shot of the location but also showed titles which was again who was staring in my film. With the film Shaft it showed the location with a bold title of whom the film was staring. This was an influence to me as I thought that it was a good idea to show the audience what actors will be staring in the film.

Frame 7

In the film Shaft frame 7 was a medium shot of the main actor walking towards the camera this was different to my films frame 7 as in this frame it showed a black background with the words based on a true story. This was to show the audience what kind of film they are watching. In Shaft I thought it was good that they showed a medium shot of the main character as it lets the audience know what kind of character he is by looking at what he was wearing.

Frame 8

In frame 8 the two frames where completely different again because in my film we thought we needed to get the title of the film in at some point and thought this was a good time to put it in. Shaft shows a side view again of the main character walking to his destination.

Frame 9

In frame 9 shaft showed us that the man was meeting another man and gave a two person shot. This is what our last shot was except it was the actors view of him meeting the other character, we thought this would work better as it was the persons point of view and you got to get a look at what the character looked and dressed like from close up showing his facial expressions toward bumping into this man.

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?  Add images one of a photo from your film and one from the media that shows social groups

In terms of representation all three elements work together to represent elements of a thriller. The 2-minute opening will show how young people can regret a lot of decisions that they have made in their life which could have something to do with peer pressure and they are represented to be frightened and helpless. Stereotypically teenagers are known to be a threat to the older generation as young people go around in groups or also know as ‘gangs’ and can be intimidating towards other people. A lot of younger people can be peer pressured to do a lot of things and this is what my 2-minute opening could represent.

 

These two images show a picture from the Internet and a picture of the two actors in my film. This shows social groups within my film. and represents teenage boys and how they can be intimidating to older people and even other teenage boys. With the two images that i have got above it is showing how one teenage boy can be a threat to another teenage boy. the boy in the right in both of these photos look like the weaker person out of the two, they do not look as confident as the people on the left. 

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLv2mLTatpc

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

I Have decided that my target audience is going to be 15 and over. The reason for this is from the research and my initial idea's my film will contain strong language and Flash images. Another reason why I targeted this audience is because they would be old enough understand the psychological elements, which will allow them to enjoy it more. My target audience would be teenagers and young adults that enjoy watching films that contain a gang and fighting. It is also a fact that males aged 16-35 is most likely to go and see a thriller at the cinema.

My 2-minute opening to a film would target mostly at young boys and men but not my film is not particularly targeting a specific gender, as the story line could be beneficial and enjoyable by both sexes. As the story line is based around drugs and gangs which is a common thing around today which teenagers and young adults may be able to relate to the story line as they may have had been in that situation or know someone who was in a gang.

This is Megan Paterson, she am 19 years old and is currently studying Primary Education at Canterbury Christ Church University.  When she is not at university or studying she likes to socialise with her friends and family, spending time with my friends and family is really important to her. Another interest of Megan's is singing, whenever she has time to spare she like to sing in her bedroom and maybe even write and compose music. She is really interested in musical theatre and occasionally takes a trip to see some west end shows. In 2013/14 she worked at Cineworld Cinema and her love for film grew massively, she often will go to the cinema to watch new films or watch old films at home. She feels that films can cheer you up, give you advice and make you laugh and that’s important to her. Finally one of her biggest hobbies is arts and crafts, she loves making new things, drawing and getting messy. 



   5. How did you attract/address your audience? 

I made up a questionnaire, which had 7 questions in it to find out different types of audience’s preferences they like in a film.

I printed off 20 copies of my questionnaire and handed them out to a variety of different age groups which were 5 copies to people aged 15-25, 5 copies aged 26-35, 5 copies aged 36-45 and the other 5 to people aged 45 and over and then equally was sent out to both sexes.

After all 20 copies were completed I then completed a graph for each question, which showed me the most popular answer for each question.

With the results in mind it helped me a lot to think about how I could make my film better. My film is aimed at people aged 15+ which our group had already decided on to start with along with that genre of the film we wanted our opening to a film to be a thriller.

Question 1

There were 5 questionnaires given to each audience group so there was 5 people for each.

Question 2

6 people liked thriller

4 people liked horror

5 people liked action

5 people liked rom/com

Question 3

17 people said yes

3 people said no

Question 4

9 people said they like the film to start with a dramatic moment

4 people said that they like to be introduced to the characters

7 people said they like to be told the basic premises of what the film will be about.

Question 5

4 people said before the start

10 people said during the start

6 people said after the start

Question 6

13 people said that there should be music at the beginning

7 people said that there shouldn’t be music at the beginning

Question 7

8 people said fictional

3 people said non-fictional

9 people said true story

After looking at the results of the questionnaire it has inspired our group to go forward with the thriller genre and for it to be based on a true story. It was good to get feed back from my target audience, the reason for this is having more opinions, will help my two minute opening to target a wider range of people rather than just what I think people will like. The questionnaire has given me a starting point to lead of off for my upcoming trailer.

6. What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

The camera my group used for filming was a HD Panasonic video recorder which was one on the main bits of technology that we used as it allowed us to record all of our scenes that we needed for our two minute opening to a film. This was an important bit of technology as it allowed us to film scenes giving a really clear image and picked up sound really well even though in our clip there was no talking from the original filming.  The camera was able to move around with us, which allowed me to film in a variety of shots and move to different locations. The camera gave a really good light for filming and I learnt that you could change the contrast of the camera if we needed to. Obviously the camera wasn’t brilliant as we learnt that the sound was not very good and sometimes it was really windy which you could hear but we covered that with a voice over and music. we made the filming with that camera  to make it look as professional as possible.

The tripod was a bit of equipment that I and others in my group had never used before, but became a big part throughout filming as it was used a lot during the filming of our two-minute opening. The tripod is a part of equipment that is used with the HD Panasonic camera. The tripod can be stood at different levels and it holds the camera securely. By using the tripod it made some of our shots more steady which made it look quite professional instead of having to hand hold camera throughout all of the shots we could use the tripod especially on our scenes that included shots like an establishing shot and tracking. If I was to handle the camera myself in these shots the filming may have been quite shaky which would have looked really bad.

My laptop was also the most important thing throughout this project, without my laptop I would not have been able to upload any of the filming that we did and most importantly would not have been able to edit any thing together to make the final piece. My laptop had all the software’s that I needed to complete any of my work for this projects which includes my editing software ‘IMovie’, the internet to carry out any research and planning, you tube where I searched influential film trailers and also looked at many film opening to give me and my group more ideas for our opening film. You tube was also used to put up any videos like feedback from the class and the animated storyboard. The Most important thing was our blogger account, which we have used throughout the whole of the project starting with the preliminary. I have learnt as I have gone along on the blogger as I had never used it before until I started this subject, I found that I got used to how to use the blogger really quickly but I am still learning new things about it.

My Memory stick was used throughout the making of this project, with out my memory stick I would not have been able to get things that I had done at school onto my laptop at home. After we filmed I used my memory stick to put all the filming that we had done onto it so that I could then get home and get it onto my laptop so I could use my editing software. The work that I did for the group was mostly done at home so to get it into school I needed to use my memory stick to transfer my work. I saved every single piece of work onto my memory stick that I did on my laptop or the school computer so that I had all in one place and saved it on my laptop separately so that I had two copies of it.

We decided to use the Voice recorder to add any speech into our film opening as it made it sound so much better. I had never used this piece of equipment either so I was learning how to use it and played around with it for a while practicing until we were ready to record our final piece. There was not a lot of script within the film as it was only a two-minute opening so I added the voice over in to make it like it was what the actor was saying in his head while he was walking. Getting used to using the voice recorder at first was out of all the equipment we used, the hardest to adjust too.  When I saved the voice recordings to take home to my laptop I couldn’t actually get the recordings up so I had to learn how to convert the recordings to ‘mp3’ so that they would work on my editing program.

7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the main product?

As a group of three we were asked to use three camera techniques in a short film clip of only 2 minutes. The camera techniques included continuity, shot reverse shot and 180-degree rule, as I was familiar with all three shots I found it easy to link them all together. My group decided that we would have a story to our short film, which was that there would be a Married couple arguing and then the wife goes to her room and reads her favourite book about the events of the 1940’s. She falls asleep while reading the book and then dreams about being in the 1940’s with out her husband and her dream turns into a nightmare. When she wakes up she is thankful for the life that she has already and apologises to her husband.We simplified the storyline and then identified who would be playing what part in the preliminary task. Ollie, Malcolm and Kennedy would be acting in the short film and I would be filming it, we decided that we would edit the short film together. 

We did a small storyboard of the short film clip and went into filming straight away. We found it very easy to film and we had filmed it in no time, leaving us plenty of time to edit our clip. We used final cut express to edit our filming, as we had been given a chance to have a nose around of the software a few lessons before myself and the rest of my group did not find the software that difficult to grasp. We had put the clips in the right order and had used transitions carefully, I would have expected a few problems doing this but it was all very self-explanatory and in the end it turned into an easy and fun job.

After editing our clip and watching over and over again we decided that there was something missing. We all agreed that the clip needed some sort of music in the background. As a group we all thought of a song that would fit perfectly in the background. This caused a slight problem for the group as we had no way of uploading a song to the computer and the computer had no songs on it. In the end we resulted into spending £1 on iTunes just to get the track we wanted. It used up a lot of time but as a group we were already a little ahead anyway. After we added the song we used final cut express to fade it in and out in the places we needed it. The film clip was then complete and we used all three techniques and also added music. As a group we enjoyed Planning, filming and editing our clip. The task helped us discover the group’s strengths and weakness's that we could later improve on to help us with our film-opening task. My group was proud of our finishing results and felt the preliminary task was successful. It helped my group gain more knowledge of the future software and technology we would be using later on in the course.

Since filming the preliminary task I feel like the main task has come along so much better.We were asked to film an opening to a film with it being as professional as possible. The first thing my group did was sat down together researching and looking at films and then came up with a pitch that we would work on. We did this by using ideas from influential films. We started research and planning before we did any filming. Our initial idea was to have an opening of a film that involved a fight between two men and then after researching into it, it seemed to difficult with the limited time that we had. Ollie and Malcolm who would have played those characters would have had to do a lot of research into how to stage fight, which would have been very time consuming. Our final idea was to have a man come back to his home town where many of his memories happened, sadly mostly ones he wished to forget especially when he bumps into a man that he had an unfinished drug deal with a few years ago.

After we had decided on who was going to do each role for our main task we all started to get on with our individual work. With the preliminary task we worked together with a lot of the roles but with the main task we decided that we would do more individual work and would then as a group show each other what we have produced and give each other advise on how it can be better. We did work together on one thing, which was the storyboard as we did change the pitch slightly a couple of times, so we had to work on the storyboard as a group.

In my group I am in charge of filming and editing the clip and I felt as though I managed to use the camera a lot better and was able to upload the filing onto a computer with out having any help as I had remembered how to do it from the preliminary task.

I feel like I have got so much better at editing with the main task as when I filmed for the preliminary task I found that I was quite slow as I was only just getting used to the software. I used a movie-editing program called ‘IMovie’ which is software on the apple mac. I learnt how to edit the different scenes together and how to add in transactions between each scene. After I had edited and put together a rough cut of the two-minute opening we showed it to the class and then got some feed back that would help us to make the film even better which was only a few changes which we took forward and a changed the opening from the feed back that I got and now have our final product.