Evaluation question 7

7. Looking back at your preliminary task what do you think you have learnt in progression from it to your full task?
We have learnt that we need to keep certain shots in the exact same place. This then could lead to interchangeable shots. Buts its important to keep the camera in the exact same spot for the same perspectives so we learnt from the preliminary task to film the different shots separately even if the sequences weren't in order so the shot location could remain the same.
We also learnt the very valuable lesson of not breaking the 180 degree rule in our preliminary task which were very careful to avoid in our actual final task.
We were also careful to keep an eye out on the surrounding Mise en Scene because in the preliminary task the background was very cluttered with household items so when we came to film in our main characters room we had to make it cluttered to make it look like a teenagers room but then tidy so the audience didn't get distracted from the main sequence of flow of the short film opening.
We also learned about actually following a script this time around where as in the preliminary task we just sort of made it up as we went along which led to the task being unorganized and not making any sense confusing the audience.
Lighting was also a issue in the preliminary task as we used artificial lighting which made the task look like the lighting was not supposed to be there. So in the actual task we decided to only use natural lighting (as much as possible) for a more realistic feel as if the audience was watching real life rather than a film.

Evaluation question 6

This is my 6th evaluation question

Just so you know there are some bloopers at the beginning as I just felt like the video itself just deemed a little too serious and uptight so I think the bloopers here helped because they're fun to watch and they show how things went behind the scenes of filming this task.

If you do want to skip them just fast forward to 0.28 of the video. Enjoy!

Evaluation question 5

Evaluation question 4

Evaluation question 3

Evaluation question 2

Evaluation Question 1

Roles

Evaluation (Extended)

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

Our film provides a different perspective on teenage life than you might otherwise see in another film of a similar genre. It challenges the typical stereotype of teenagers being lazy without there future bothering them particularly much. We have challenged former media products and films by providing a different perspective and using the prospect of teenagers being tired being due to long hours of studying not due to the stereotypical view of being lazy.
We had also ordered the titles so that the bigger names show first like The film title and main character actor. This was followed by the crew so that includes the sound, camera and editing. Then we moved on to the executive positions then the smaller roles and finished off with the Directors and distributers.
We used a number of establishing shots to show the audience where the film was set. So we would have a long shot where in the background you can see the fields on the hills that shows the audience that they are in the countryside.


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

Our media product represents the modern teenager as a hard working confused being trying to get used to the adult cycle of life that they have just been introduced to with Exams and employment.
This then led to the idea of the title "Routine" that everyday is the same and that its all just a list that you repeat everyday for the rest of your life until you retire. The idea is that we are trying to represent teenagers in their school to work year show be the time for trying new things not spending all there free time preparing for future life and exams.
It also very briefly with a few seconds gives a representation on parents. In the one shot that we see another character as Jack walks past her we don't see her face nor does she respond to his presence she only turns her head to where he is going. This shows that she is no longer a mother who has to care for her sons every move and has allowed him to be independent. We don't see her face as we tried to make it look like maybe the son had blanked her out of his life in order to focus on being independent and passing his exams.


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

We would use a smaller scale media institution like Film 4.
Film 4 granted is a larger media institution than most but compared to Universal Studios and Warner Bros it is very small. So we decided that for an indie style film that we should not go with the biggest distributors as it simply wouldn't make much sense as they usually deliver the much larger movies that are seen globally and are usually USA made were as ours is made in the UK. So it would make sense to make it an Indie movie as the budget was small. We would use a film company such as Working title. They are set in the UK so they much more local than a US film company. Working title however have links to Universal studios so if we did want to go big then links to a larger budget and bigger names in acting then this would be the line to go down.


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

Our audience would be targeted at the young adult. The reason for this is, is due to the fact that the audience can relate to what is going on in the film to there own experiences making them feel more immersed in the picture and therefore they will probably enjoy it more.
An example of a similar film that was successful with this idea would be The Inbetweeners franchise that targeted the young adult audience as well. They managed to recreate many problems that the modern teenagers face today which made it funny as the audience could engage with the film in front of them.


5. How did you attract address your audience?

We would attract our audience through the genre of the film. The genre being comedy attracts almost everyone as everyone likes a good laugh. Then we would narrow the audience down again by the Mise en Scene in which film posters would show The image of the main character being a teenager looking tired in scrappy clothing with the title Routine in a handwritten text. This indicates a film about teenagers due to the image of the character and exams/school due to the handwritten text. 
In terms of advertising/promoting the film we would use trailers with film posters dotted around inside and around independent cinemas as we our film is an indie film so getting our film into any large cinema chain would be next to impossible. So in theory our advertisement would be on a small scale as it is a small film on a small budget.


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

We have learnt how different camera angles/perspectives can change the view of a situation. For example not revealing the whole picture. It is a great way of making the audience think twice. We didn't use this technique much though as it can become confusing which in our preliminary task was one of the reasons why it didn't go so well.
We also realized how much of a difference a mic makes compared to the standard audio of a camcorder gains. In the end we didn't use this as the audio is a song over the top of the film in time with the cuts but it was useful information for the future anyway.
We also had to learn how to use Adobe Premiere Pro which for me especially was a massive learning curve as I have never used any editing software before. So the title sequences workshop really helped with this. It came in really handy whilst editing sound effects and the backing track into the clip.


7. Looking back at your preliminary task what do you think you have learnt in progression from it to your full task?

We have learnt that we need to keep certain shots in the exact same place. This then could lead to interchangeable shots. Buts its important to keep the camera in the exact same spot for the same perspectives so we learnt from the preliminary task to film the different shots separately even if the sequences weren't in order so the shot location could remain the same.
We also learnt the very valuable lesson of not breaking the 180 degree rule in our preliminary task which were very careful to avoid in our actual final task.
We were also careful to keep an eye out on the surrounding Mise en Scene because in the preliminary task the background was very cluttered with household items so when we came to film in our main characters room we had to make it cluttered to make it look like a teenagers room but then tidy so the audience didn't get distracted from the main sequence of flow of the short film opening.
We also learned about actually following a script this time around where as in the preliminary task we just sort of made it up as we went along which led to the task being unorganised and not making any sense confusing the audience. 
Lighting was also a issue in the preliminary task as we used artificial lighting which made the task look like the lighting was not supposed to be there. So in the actual task we decided to only use natural lighting (as much as possible) for a more realistic feel as if the audience was watching real life rather than a film.

Routine (response to feedback)

The title of our film opening is Routine.
The reason for this is because everyday life for all of us is very repetitive e.g. you wake up - go to school/work - come home sleep- repeat. It seems like everyday life just seems to be a routine that we go through nearly everyday and the film is supposed to bring the audience around to realising this.


The feed back that we received for the film was very good. The people loved the indie style of the film and some were even comparing it to the start of the film Juno.
Everyone really seemed to like the editing and how it matched the beat of the music so that it flowed well. The sound effects for the headphones seemed to be the part that everyone liked the most as it made them feel as if they were the character being shown and the 1st person perspective really helped to amplify this effect, this also helped the audience to relate to Jack as they then felt like they were in his shoes and had been in similar situations.

However we did have some issues pointed out to us for instance in the image above you can see the camera filming the shot which is not very professional so we have learned to watch out for reflections in windows and mirrors. An example of this would be...

Here we used a towel on the window to block the reflection of the camera man and still maintain the correct mise en scene for the everyday middle class bathroom.

Class feedback

We were recently lucky enough to get some final class feedback on our short film opening.
The overall response was very good everyone seemed to love the film (especially Jacks topless scene) and how it was edited. We got some good feedback from the class who helped us with some editing mistakes and a scene where you can actually see the camera in a reflection somewhere so that will defiantly get edited out. Apart from that the class really liked the camera work, sound and editing as it all came together to form a very acceptable piece of work.
You might of realized that I have done 3 of these audience reactions on all the stages of making this task. It has been helpful as it has allowed us to be more precise to our target audience as Qualitative research. Each time we have gathered new advice into how to improve our task making our task as good as it is now.

Media studies task final

Futher inspiration

We have pretty much finished editing our film now and we are ready to upload it onto YouTube.

However we have recently come across an editing technique which we feel as a group is worth putting into our film intro. 

The inspiration comes from an arctic monkeys music video and it involves the screen spitting into two and parallel editing people doing different things at the same time. 

I don't have an image of this cross cutting technique but I can show another picture to show what I mean. 

This picture shows off a similar effect to

what I was talking about before.

Two different images displaying the

same event only at different angles.

This is an effect we hopefully plan to

use.

New York

So I just got back from trip from New York so I am going to tell you all about it and luckily because I'm your typical tourist I took way to many photos of random things that have absolutely nothing to do with the city what so ever. Hopefully I remember to include the important photos.

Story time!

So we arrived in JFK airport around 5pm local time and it was freezing cold so naturally as soon as we all saw the first sight of our coaches to the Hotel we ran only to find ourselves sitting down for another hour.

 

When we all arrived at the hotel pretty much all of us stayed in our rooms including myself as we are all just generally lazy and didn't really realise that we were actually in New York but that there was a flat screen TV in our room.

Over the next few days we stood on top of the empire state building and the Rockefeller building, visited the statue of liberty and immigration museum, Ground zero and various Art museums you know the typical things a tourist wants to see in New York.

   Times square however was probably my favourite part of the city with its bright advertising lights and major shopping attractions such as the M&M store and Disney stores. 
This trip helped my research as it really opened my eyes into another culture and how America do things differently than the UK. The US in terms of the Film industry is much larger than the UK. In times square for example digital posters that moved and switched between advertisements. For example at this time Star wars and Deadpool were being advertised everywhere, this taught us on ways that the industry advertises its work. E.g. on top of taxi's and on sweet packets.
We would use a UK distributer such as working title though as it is INDEPENDANT with films such as Mr Bean.

Who will produce/distribute our film

When it comes to distributing our film we have a choice of UK and US

UK being local for us as we are filming in the UK so therefore it would be cheaper in theory to produce it here and distribute here in the UK film industry.

On the other hand we have US which would involve traveling to the US in order to produce our film which would be very expensive, however with the US having major film industry's such as Hollywood studios  it would be easier to distribute and get more attention for a higher cost.

I think we would choose UK as it is simple to do and wouldn't cost as much as going US.

Other peoples opinions on sequence

Today we showed off our first edit of our final piece so we were able to obtain other peoples opinions on the basic idea. Apart from the initial cheering after Jack released his nipple in bed the reaction was good, people loved the basic idea and the camera cuts in time with the music.
We did receive some vital criticisms though which we could use to improve our final opening sequence.
-We need to make sure that the camera is always in focus on Jack when he is moving s at the moment he is quite blurry which makes it difficult to read his facial expressions. 
-The Music must always be in time with the cuts of the editing so that the sequence flows well.
So our cuts when they speed up on a quicker beat is heading down the right track so we will need more of that.
-The titles when added will have to appear in scenes where either nothing much is going on so its easy to read or so that they flow out of movements in the sequence making the sequence look much more interesting and still easy to read without distracting the audience away from the actual acting.

Soundtrack ideas

As I have been given the fabulous task of directing the sound for this film opening I will be the one who directs what and how we use music, Diegetic and non Diegetic sound in each clip.
We have decided as a group that the opening sequence will consist of around 90% Non Diegetic sound as we will have a sound track on in the background. We will only need to use Diegetic sound when the character wakes up, takes his headphones out, and the end of the sequence when he either sits down at a desk or stands at the side of the road to show the real world closing in.

The use of music combined with the headphones will make it seem like he is listening to the music that everyone else in the audience is as he is (not being able to hear what goes on around him)
When he takes his headphones out and we can only hear the music in the background very quietly  as if we were actually standing next to him only being able to juuuust hear the simple beat coming from the speakers.






I will be making this soundtrack for Jack to walk along to so its important that I time the beat of the music with his footsteps to give the audience a sense of rythem.
The music also cannot be to quick or complicated that would distract them from the visual effect of the sequence which would lead to confusion. I will also need to link it with the genre of your stereotypical 'teenager' music. So this could be a simple hip hop beat to a Rock theme that would be used with an electric guitar as tey are commonly linked to young adults and the music that they listen to.
There will be three ways that I can get/produce this music:

1. Copyright (If needed)
We could acquire a piece of music already made that we like and use that. We could make this a well known song so that the audience could recognize it and link it as symbolism towards the age of your typical teenager.

2. Garage Band
We could also use Garage band to create our own tune with a wide selection of instruments such as Pianos, Drums, Guitar and strings all on an I pad.












3. Novation Launchpad
I have an instrument at home which consists of a 64*64 grid of Programmable buttons that I can use for what ever sound I want in the world. Whether that making loops or doing a solo piece this instrument can do all those things.
It would be more difficult however I think it is much more creative and will gain more marks.

Editing Style

For our 60% task the software that we will be using is Premier Pro.
Premier Pro will allow us to edit our different clips together, add effects, separate audio from the video clip so that we can add a music track on top of the Film. We can also use it to help add the title names of the into with the title ideas inspired from fresh meat, where the titles appear from behind objects or follow the movement of individuals.

The style of editing that we plan to use is quite slow. This means long duration shots with few intervals, we can back this up with slow music and play it into time to the sequence, for example we could have the beat of the song in time with the characters footsteps or the things he does.
We could use he fade tool so different clips fade into each other which could slow down the sequence even more. We could also apply filters to give the image more colour or remove the colour altogether to get a black and white effect. We could use these effects to give off the mind set of your typical teenager which is what our main character is.

More location shots

We got more location shots today as we got some more of the outdoor filming done.
We have decided that our character is going to be walking to school and as he does we see the setting and Mise en scene of where he lives and spends his school time.

This image shows the main road that

we plan to film along on Jacks

final approach to the

school.

This is the end to the first road that Jack

walks down. We liked the angles we

could achieve. The slight slope

also gave us editing ideas

like for e.g. Jack could

fade from the bottom

of the hill to the top.

This was an interesting shot as we can watch Jack walk

from one end of the frame to the other. We could have intervals during this to

show Jack walking from a different angle before returning to the

original shot.

Order of title sequences

With movie title sequences you usually see a repeated order with nearly every film you see.
It usually starts with the names of the actors that play the main parts. These are usually the names that attract the audiences to these films as their favorite actors are in them. Them being at the start of the title sequences reminds the audience that they want to see this film and that it will be great as they have a familiar face in it. It can also define the type of audience in a film with different actors known for other similar roles.
Then we get the names of the backstage crew, not all of them but only the man ones with the bigger roles like the executives, and directors of photography/ Costume designers, these are the kinds of roles that some people watching the film might be slightly interested in as they are important jobs, If not there just there whilst the title sequence flows on by whilst the audience are watching what's going on in the background.
Then we get some of the bigger names like the producers toward the end of the sequence.
And then the Director will come last as he has the biggest role in the entire film. Usually the sequence slows down at this point to attract the audiences attention to them as Directors also attract audiences to films as they may want to see directors like Spielberg or James Cameron.

So for our opening sequence the first name that will come up would be Jack seeing that he is the main actor in the entire sequence. Then we would get mine and Chris's name mentioned afterwards as our roles are behind the camera and then the directors name at the very end which would be mine. I like sound as it helps depict the mood and pace of a scene. The beat of music and the effect it has is important too. For example in a chase scent the music is fast and loud non (diegetic sound) the fast and loud music shows how fast the chase is and how intense it is where as in a slow dance romantic scene the music would be slow and soft to allow the audience to be more focused on what is going on in the scene.

No Copyright Sounds

We have recently been recommended a website called No Copyright Sounds. The site allows us to access a selections of songs that we can use in our 60% task without having to use a copyright claim which would cost money and time.
The music on the site has a genre of electronic/Dubstep which isn't really the type of music that we are looking for for our film intro as we need something that will link more to the reckless attitude of your typical teenager.

However this is definitely a useful resource to use in the future.

Location for our film

Our location that we are going to use is going to be your typical two storey family house on a country lane i.e. Jacks house. We wont be needing to use all of the rooms of the building but we will be using the Bedroom, Bathroom, stairwell, kitchen and the front door. The rest will be done outside as Jack walks down the street on his way too school.

The first room being the Bedroom Mise en scene wise will need to be a little cluttered as it is a typical teenagers room with clothes on the floor with posters on the walls. We will need to be careful here as if the room is to cluttered then the audience will become distracted and we will run into the same problems as the last task.   
In the bathroom we will need to fill the sink and shelves with bathroom objects like toothbrushes or towels. The kitchen would also need to be cluttered to some extent to show the rush of family life.