Over All Final View And Simple Summary

Overall the hard work and effort we have all put into this project I think that the overall product was well worth all of this. Although it is not ht best video the world has ever seen we tried our best and I think we produced a well thought out and put together clip. Although at times we found time management hard to keep track of I think that we pulled all of our work back in time to keep up with deadlines and meet targets set by our teacher.

Through the project we decided that we would put extra time and effort into it and that we would spend as much time as physically possible on our project. We would all stay back at dinnertimes or afterschool to produce and edit in small chunks our video. This overall has made our video of a higher quality and standard.

We used allot of different tools in our editing process for example we used a tool which added dates into the corners of each shot which we did and this in turn would show the viewer the change in time difference. We also used a black and white effect on this part of the footage and this made it allot easier for the viewer to see the time difference. We decided to put it in black and white so that it looked like a memory, this gave the effect that the memory was in the past was a distant memory. We also added an effect to the edges of it like a sort of frame and this made the shot look almost like an old picture that had been taken.

I think our video could have been edited a little more to tweak small things like the gravestone situation which occurred, however I think that we did the best with the time we had and the effort that we all put in as a team and overall I think the video was a great success ! 

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

Looking back at the previous tasks’ that we have done this one has by far been the hardest we have had to face. However I think that as a group and an individual we have all learnt allot. For example none of us were experts at premier pro but by the end of this project and us all contributing to the editing process we have all realised that editing something to get it to a high quality or the standard that is needed is a very hard task to do.

For example we had to do the first task which was for a film called the prisoner. I think this video was good, but would have been allot better if we had the knowledge we have got now to have edited it and took the correct shots and things. During this production that we did continuity was also a massive issue, however the lighting and ideas behind the small clip were very good.

After the flop of editing and continuity in everyone in the class’ videos we had to do a continuity task. This was so that we could learn how hard the whole concept of continuity was, we had a list and wide range of shots which we would have to produce and capture to get the correct amount of marks we needed and this was in preparation for the piece we would have to do for our final piece. I found this task extremely useful and I think that it prepared me well for the final task which we had to produce. In the second continuity task we had to try and spot and plan a lot in advance so that their would not be anything in the shots that could be moved out of place or put in a different area so that it would be evident on the video. We went as far as moving furniture and things from the shots so that their was not overcrowding images in the shots. And different things in the fore and background. However we still faced a lot of different issues during the filming process. For example we filmed the footage at my house and this was an issue as in the hall way although it is quite a big area their was not enough room for all 3 of us, so when filming Callum knocking on the door we had to take a range of different shots from him being outside knocking on the door. The problems which we faced consisted of him holding the flowers in the wrong hand as he was walking up to the drive way in different shots. So we would have to re take certain shots to get the continuity task right however this would take time and we were filming in the winter months and weren’t left with much light to work with on the late hours, this then meant more and more things were left for us to do, like editing the video footage itself to get the colour and contrast right. Their was also a shot we took and at one point their was an issue because there is a mirror in my hallway, the shot and continuity was perfect, however you could see Emma in the mirror filming us and this meant we would have to improvise and use different angles and camera shots to get the clips we needed. This took time but our editing was still weak at this point in the project.

So looking back over time and the previous projects I think that all of our knowledge and awareness of how time consuming this project and a simple 3 minute clip is a very hard thing to produce. Not only do you have to worry about things such as costumes, lighting, tone of voice, makeup, appearance, location and setting but you also have to manage your time and keep time extremely well. We had problems at the start of filming the continuity task because their was an issue with the cameras. We had booked out a camera but because there are only a limited amount of cameras available to us at any one time all of the cameras had been taken up and their were none left. This was an issue but also an advantage to us, it meant that we could then use the time in lessons to plan more into our video and do a lot more research into the sort of clip we were producing and this would have made us achieve higher marks. This then limited our time to film and edit and would have given us a disadvantage in this part of the task. Continuity is also a massive issue when filming as even the slightest small change can make a massive difference and have a huge impact on the overall continuity and professionalism of the piece produced.

In this task we intended on doing something completely different to the task we had decided to do for our final piece to start with. When starting off deciding what we wanted to film we decided that we wanted to shoot the scenes of the girl in question in our story being drugged at a party and waking up in hospital, however to go ahead with this we would have had to film a party with alcohol and drug use for the filming to look effective. This would also involve allot of props and actors, after sorting out call sheets and individual call sheets for everyone we then had issues with timing and filming for everyone and decided it would be better to go for a simpler option. Through all the complex ideas we had come up with and the research we had done we all put our heads together to come up with a different idea. And with the thought that ‘less is more’ we went with the idea of using people we could rely on, people who were in our group. With only filming Callum and myself it meant that we could arrange dates between the three of us and Emma would do the camera work when me and Callum would star in the filming aspect of things. This made filming and the overall production allot easier that depending on other people and trying to arrange areas to shoot certain different scenes.

I think overall we have learnt the skills of time management and team work. We have also learnt that the editing process is long hard and extremely tedious! However with hard work and preservation I think we have powered through the hard times during our project and faced the problems in our way with full force. I think overall that the video is a success however there is always room for improvement, but overall our team has put forward excellent effort team work and dedication to the overall final product and I think I speak for all of us when I say I am extremely proud of the outcome of all of our time and effort over the past few months.

What Have You Learnt About Technologies From The Process Of Consturcting This Product?

From producing this product I have learnt allot about the different technologies used to produce a film. I have especially learned that the editing process is very time consuming and hard to grasp. However after hard work and preservation you can achieve a good video.  

Although we are not producing a huge Hollywood hit, it was still extremely hard to pick up on the certain areas of the film producing that we did. For example we had to use allot of different software to produce our clip to the highest of standards. We had to use such programmes as adobe fireworks and photo shop , we used premier pro and PowerPoint as well. Not to mention all of the different effects and problems which we faced during the editing process.

During our editing process we used all of the above software. Although the concept in our heads and the image of how and what we wanted our video to look like were clear in our heads, however producing and editing all of our footage and narrowing down footage to use was extremely hard. After taking all of our shots and filming for over 3 hours, we got into the classroom the next day and realised that we had not got some of the shots we needed for the exam marking purposes. This then meant that we would have to schedule another date and do more filming. But all of this was taking up more and more of our editing time and getting us behind on the editing front, so when in lessons we decided that it would be best to edit all of the necessary footage which we had collected and deleting all of the footage which we didn’t need.  

We kept all of our work on the media server at school, this was so that if one student was not in or available we could all access the work rather than having it on one persons school account. This made things allot simpler as it would mean that we could access the work at lunch times and dinnertimes.

I have learnt that technology is a hard thing when the media is involved and there is allot more work put into even small things such as adverts, never mind film making. When it has taken 3 people in my group over approximately 20 hours to edit a 3 minute clip, it just puts into perspective how hard it must be for film producers or even people producing soaps on telly to edit all of there footage and still take note to things such as continuity errors.

Continuity errors also occurred when we were filming for example people holding things in one hand then them changing hands in a shot, this would cause allot of problems as we would need to re film the whole footage again just to make sure we got it right, also in a preliminary task we were filming in the hallway of my house, this was a issue as we took a really good over the shoulder shot of me having a conversation with Callum, however… you could see Emma in the mirror next to us filming. Problems such as this are due to occur during filming but looking back on past tasks I believe that we have learnt allot about what is needed to produce a good film or movie piece and the time it takes individuals and teams to sift through work and piece after piece to get small details the way they want them to be seen by others.

How Did You Attract / Adress Your Audience?

We used younger people in our video as this would attract the kind of people that we would want to be viewing the video itself. For example if we used older people the video may not have had the same effect or shock factor as it currently has.

I don’t believe that we necessarily attacked our audience however we did decide to use a shock appeal when filming our video. With the death of our female character at the very start of our film this would then get the audiences attention as to what the film was about.

We used allot of different camera angles in our filming to show that we could produce a high quality video with the footage that would be necessary to the project that we were trying to produce.

 We used allot of close up shots to show the emotion in the characters faces and the emotions that they were feeling when the sensitive subject of doing drugs was brought up. We also used a panning shot to show the graveyard and a long shot to show the male character walking towards the gravestone. This was an effective shot because it had gravestones in both the foreground and background of the shot, not only creating an eerie scene for the viewer but all so giving the impression and thought that death is all around and that drugs are not something to be taken lightly.

Who Would Be The Audience For Your Media Product?

The typical audience that we would be aiming to entice would be a wide age range. From the ages of around 12 to late 20’s. we decided to make the age range quite large as drugs can effect anyone of any age, however we are expecting that it may not appeal so much to the older generation of people viewing the film.

The film relates back to the ‘Hoodie’ culture and the younger generations, for example people who are younger can relate to the people who are being shown and represented in the video. Whereas older people may not know what is going on or just think that there is one stereotype and one stereotype only for people of younger generations as being alcohol, Drug fuelled individuals.

We were aware that we would have to show a different side to the younger generations in our video, so we decided to show in depth the two different extreme sides of the youths. For example the female character was work driven and committed to her work and had a life plan set out. She was studying primary care teaching and the world was her oyster. Her boyfriend on the other hand, the male character in our story line was a waster, who would simply worry about when his next dole instalment was coming through and how much ‘gear’ he would be able to get out of it. The story line starts off with showing the two characters sitting having a meal and talking about their day and their plans for the night time, the girl was on about spending the evening with her friend, and the boy was planning on spending his evening getting more heroin. This showed the contrast between the two different stereotypes of people in our generation.

The story then goes on to show how you don’t have to be an addict like the male for drugs to effect your life, they can do it immediately. This is shown by the death of the female character in our story and then goes on to show how this then changed the life of the male character for the better as he realised what effect drugs could actually have on someone’s life and the massive impact on the people involved.

The age of the people we used in our clip was 21, however the film could apply to people of younger ages because drugs are becoming a lot more common and easy to get a hold of.

When discussing in our interview with Mr Earl we thought about the idea that our film could be used in schools in PSHCE lessons so that children were aware of the effects that drugs could cause, as people of a young age may know someone older or their own age that were doing drugs and the video could be educational towards them and they could then pass on the knowledge they have learned to another.

class presentation

this is the vided that we produced being shown to the other members in our class and their questions and queeries towards these.
Hannah, Callum and Emma - Regret presentation from Chris Earl on Vimeo.

Group evaluation

Callum, Hannah and Emma - Evaluation of "Regret." from Chris Earl on Vimeo.


this was the oral evaluation which we have compleated with mr earl about our own personal views on our production video.

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

I believe that the kind of media institution which would distribute our film would possibly be film 4 movies or a BBC movie production.

I think that these would be our main distributors because of the nature of our film, for example it is not a Hollywood blockbuster or a typical British film. We have gone with a different genre and this has made our film more original and will make the film stand out more in the film market.

I believe our movie and its presentation could be made allot better by several different ways, I don’t think that the actual quality of the movie and the images on the screen is as high as it could be but I think this would be allot sharper and more in focus if we were filming with different cameras and using different materials, for example lighting and professional equipment.

I think that 4 movies would distribute our film to cinemas or DVD or television because of the awareness that it is creating about the use of drugs and the dangers which they cause. The film’s story line is slightly like the storyline of train spotting and this makes it appeal to people of the British market. As film spotting was made in 1996 this makes it a relatively modern film, as the film was made showing the Edinburgh drug scene this may have caused some confusion to people abroad as it wouldn’t have been suitable for say people in America.

However despite this fact the film was distributed in America but was not a box office hit! The film budget was an estimated £350 000 and this is pretty average for the British film that is being made. However the film was quite successful and in its opening weekend in America it make $262 000 but was only shown at 8 cinema screens.  

Overall with our film being produced and it being a low budget film i believe that it would do quite well in the film industry but probably not well enough to get funding from big well known producers or sponsers.

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

I think that our video challenges the certain stereotypes of which teenagers/ young adults of the 90's generation face from the media. We are represented in a way which is mainly negative and all most 90% of the time it is not the case. For Example we used an unexpected couple. The male in the relationship was a waster to put it bluntly. He would sit at home daily and not look for a job while his long term partner would be at college learning how to become a teacher. She would go on placement and do different activities daily with the children. When the male would sit at home and take drugs all day or think about how he was going to get his next fix. By using this individual couple, in which one person does drugs and has for a long time, and the other has never done drugs before, it shows the contrast between two people who otherwise are very close for whatever reason this may be.

Our film then continues to show the Beginning of the relationship of the two people and how close they are even with their differences in consideration of this. The girl then persists to ask the boy what its like doing drugs, especially the drugs he's on, heroin. When the girl then asks about doing drugs the boy is weary of the decision and answer he then gives.

The film then goes on to show how the choices that the female character had were wrong and that she shouldn’t have made the decision which she had.

As most people of our generation are shown as heartless thugs we decided to combine the two, we showed the male in an attire which would make him look like the typical stereotype of a thug, he was wearing a hoody and some jeans in the shot of him at a grave stone, when he could have wore something more respectable, but to him his attire was adequate to the situation of which he was placed in. As he knew that his long term partner loved him and wouldn’t have minded what he visited her grave in just as long as he remembered her. The footage which we took makes the male look very emotional and like he's thought in depth about the consequences of his actions and what exactly they have caused.

The story then goes on to tell the story of how the man is living with his guilt and how it has turned his life around. Our film then goes on to challenge forms and conventions of real media products because it shows a different side to how teenagers or young people are presented by the media itself. For example kids are always on drugs, alcohol, or medication, all of which to fit a stereotype? Children are shown in series such as skins and misfits as being time wasters. We wanted to project another side of the traumas and emotions of teenagers and young adults of society.

The End

Today myself and Emma have stayed back at lunch time and after school to finish off our media video and pull together the final touches.

We rendered the clip over dinner time to save ourselves sometime over tonight... However the video did not want to co operate with our plans and instead decided not to render over lunch although we were under the impression that it had.

So myself and Emma have now sat for over 2 hours sitting waiting for the video clip to render. Howerver we have had to go through this process around 3 times untill it has finally rendered. We then had to export the video so that we would be able to save it in the correct kinds of format.

here is our finished, rendered and exported video !

Moving Forward

Today Emma has re-edited the image which Callum edited and it now looks allot more realistic than the previous image which we had of the grave stone. We are going to try and fit in in the project somewhere to emphasise the effect of the famail charicters death. We think that the simple image of the grave stone would have a good effect on the viewers of the video.

Today I have began to render the clip so that it is allot less jumpy when we are trying to watch it also to save time at the end of the project. I have began to start working on the evaluation part of the task which we were all given. After doing this i then decided to write up the titles for the end credits of our film so that once compleated we can just slot them into the video.

Todays Progress

This is the list which we have recieved from our teacher, the list stated all of the things which we needed to do to to make our progect better and more succesfull. We have read through the list and this lesson we have produced and tweaked the clip to the best of our abbilitys.
We have cut the music clips at various different sections throught the video so that it fits in with the mood at the current time in the clip. The highlighted things below show the tasks which we have achieved today.

1. You'll need to clean up the sound, although I would hope that the music will help with this.
2. I wonder if the first sequence would work better if you cross-cut more between the "cooking up" sequence and the graveyard - this would make it a little more interesting and would break it up a little.
3. There is an odd black-out at about 40s - is there a reason for this?4. There don't seem to be any credits at the moment - is the film title supposed to come up before the conversation?5. Where is this going? Although you've now got a range of camera angles, you still need to hook the audience in a little more. You could really do with a third scene which is designed to set up the story and the characters. You have 45 seconds to play with at least - think about how you're going to use them.

This Means That the only thing which we will need to concentrate on next leson is adding in the credits to our clip.

Today

today we edited the clips which we have and have decided to use the voice over instead of the other methods which we had chosen to use within our cilp. the editing is going well the only issue is to get the editing done on time which is possible and the sound on the clip is not as crisp and clear as it could be. we edited the clip halfway through so that a part of it was in black and white showing a distant memory of the past.

Todays Progress

today myself and callum have been editing the clip and reaserching further into films that produce the type of footage which we are using.

we have done this to make our clip look slightly more refines and wee thaught out. we may need to shoot some more clips over the weekend but will talk to emma about this when she is back in school as she is at a university shaddowing day today at newcastle.

Further Editing

We have edited the clip today and we had had some trouble with the grace stone which we had used.
The date of birth was far to old for the charicter in our clip and the date was relevent to the shot which we had took .

We have opened up the clip on various different software and are currently trying to change the numbers around so that they look belvable.

Editing

Not only have we got all of our clips now but we are beginning today to start the big cut!

We are using premier pro to edit our clips and create the final video , We will be adding in the new footage which we have collected of the conversation scene between myself and callum and add this onto the ending of our clip.

We have also sorted out the problem of the music clip not being able to play on the final video which we are currently producing.


We still have not got titles and things for our film clip but we will be adding these on closer to the end of producing the final video. their will only be a few things which we will need to edit and work on to progress and finely make our clip the best that it can be for the deadline date.

to make sure that this is done by the deadline and that we will have enough time to produce the video incase errors or problems occur we will be putting as much time into this project as physically possible. For example hours after school and dinner times to compleate the video to the best of our capability to achieve the highest grade possible.

Progress

as i asked oliver to produce the music four our clip to help us out as evereything else would need to be coppywrited he kindly produced some music for the start of our movie clip. myself and emma tried to add the music to the video however when we added it, it said there was no audio on the track. we believe we will have to change the format of the clip to make it work and this is something which we will need help with during lesson time from our teacher.Therefore we are going to try to fix this at a later date. Tonight we are shooting a few more clips that we realised we needed after we did our rough cut.

Video - rough editing

progress

as i was off the last few days i was unable to see the work progressing and how our team had progressed when producing the clip.

half of our video is rendered already and the rest is currently editing. myself anc callum have done some edditing today and this will help towards the final cut of our movie start.
we are rendering the rough cut and this will be placed on our blogs at some point throught the day.

all we need to add to the clip is titles and the opening to our film, the logo and film title.

filming

we have decided to take images and ideas from the first clip which we shot of me and callum having dinner. we think that for the time effort it would be allo teasyer if we just filmed us having a conversation rarther than having dinner. we will be filiming this either some point through tomorow or tomorow night then editing strait afterwards.

Filming

as our teacher pointed out it became clear to us that we did not get all of the shots which we needed to produce al;l of the shots in the video.
we have decided we needed to flim again but were not able to film over the weekend due to lack of equiptment and time. we are going to film the remainder of the shots tomorow night after school. unfortuatly we will have to use school facilities but this will hopefully work with our story line to fit in with the romantic / just meal between two people disgussing one's pesonal issues with drugs.
in the clip it will show emotion between two people and how they feel about the situation that is drug.
we will produce such shots as the 360 Degree rule and over the shoulder shots. to show a sense of emotion we will also do such shots as extreme close up and close up's to show the emotion of the two charicters.

we will also need to shoot the voice over of the man who takes on the blame of killing his girlfriend.

this will then hopefully get us back on track with all of our editing and make us be ahead for when the rough cut is in.

editing

Today myself and emma are rendering our clips. This is going to take the rest of the lesson and most of dinnertime. We will come back at the end of dinner and hopefully they will have rendered. We also plan to come back afterschool and do more editing.

the name of our film

We decided as now we have got our footage it would be an appropriate time to give our film a name. Heres a list of the possible names that we thought of:

• Never Forgotten
• Regret
• Guilt
• From The Grave
• 6 Feet Under
• The Decision

We chose to go with REGRET because we feel this best fits the mood of the film. We have tried to show as best as we can the fact that the male is in a lot of grief over the female and he cannot escape the fact that what he gave her had a direct impact on the way that she died. He obviouisly regrets giving her the drug in the first place which is why we think that this is the best title for our movie out of the names that we came up with.

Clips we shot

FILE0050 - is an image of the grave stone which we used as my grave in the story line, we will edit the date on this through things such as photoshop or paint to show a date more belevable to the age of the charicter.


FILE0051 - is a clip of callum walking through the grave yard, this shows him holding a reif and placing it down onto the grave.


FILE0052 - is a clip of callum once he is at the grave showing his emotion and how he is feeling at that moment in tim. we took this shot from behind to make the clip show the viewer his emotion without using his face.


FILE0053 - is another shot of callum buyt this time he is sitting on a bench, this clip shows callum looking distressed and angry.


FILE0056 - is a clip of callum walking towards the grave.


FILE0057 - is a clip of callum leaving the grave yard and walking away from the troubles that are on his mind and the guilt he feels.


FILE0065 - is the clip of me and callum having a meal and disgussing callums drug addiction, i then probe and ask him questions on why he takes heroin and what effect it is having on his well being and life.


FILE0067 - is a clip of callum burning the heroin ino a liquid.

Media filming

last night we filmed our media project in various different areas. however our footage that we have took is allot different from the script that we had planned out, we have had to change the script to something along the lines of a troubles drug user as his girlfriend is encurraged and then is forced to take heroin. the storyline was changed because of the fact that we were constantly let down by our actors. we then all came the the comclusion that it would be allot easyer if we just relied on the resources that we had and considering that it is for our media project we all pulled together to produce the starting of the film. we chose to film in a grave yard and at my house as this was the most conveniant place for us all to meet and their was a grave yard locally. this made filming ten times easyer for us all. we now have all of our footage and neeed to edit it now.

Revised call sheets

opening sequence to our movie

Here is the logo which we will be using at the start of our production video. we will be using this at the start of our video because we need a logo. our teacher kindly produced this for us and we believe it will work succesfully with the genre of our movie clip.

Hec Ident from Chris Earl on Vimeo.

Further Location Scouting

This image shows the common room of our 6thform we thaught that if we moved all of the lockers this would be a good place for the location of our story line, however after extended reaserch into this area we figured ti would be better to look for more rooms. 

this room is where we are choosing to film our movie. we have chosen this room because it is easy to access and their will be allot of people in the room. as the room has couches in we will be using them and we will also move in couches from the common room so that the room looks more belevable as a student flat. we chose to film inside of school because it would be allot easyer than asking people to travel to a place which may be a while away from their homes. however if ourselves and our actors lived in newton hall this would not be an issue. however this is not the case so filming in school afterschool seems to be the best option. we have permission for the room and for filming and will inform our actors today that we will be filming this on thursday night.

Mishaps

unfortuatly due to no fault of our own their was a slight problem with the cameras and this made us not able to shoot our rough draft of our film. when we recieved the cameras the battery was dead and it takes a few hours to charge. as we said to all of our casting crew that they would be their helping us for no longer than a hour this meant that we would have to re schedual the shoot to another day. we are planning on doing this shoot at some point this week. and filming the actual footage at the weekend.

Our Logo

This is the logo callum has designed on photoshop for our group to use for our production. I called it HEC productions as it uses the first letter of each of our names, Hannah, Emma and Callum.

The Scene

This is a photo of where we will be shooting our clip.

Unfortunately I could not get a shot of the inside of the room because it was being used for an exam.

We chose to use this room as our location as we believe it is around the same size as a typical university flat would be. Also because we are doing a party scene and we want to show our actors having a good time it is quite important that the room is small. To give a real party atmosphere and to show that the place is pretty packed because everyone is having a good time.

It is sort of a shame that the room is actually in school and we havnt gone offsite to shoot our clip but considering we have 10 actors to organise to meet at a certain time and place we thought that it would be the easiest option to use a room in school because we can meet up with everybody easily at the end of the school day.

Todays update

We went to secure a camera so that we could film our clip tomorrow. We could not get access to the camera straight away as the teacher we needed to see about the camera wasn’t in. We went to see one of our media studies teachers and she agreed to make sure we get a camera tomorrow.


The task for today is to make all of our actors fully aware of where they need to be and when they need to be there. We have asked most of the actors on out call sheet and most of them agreed. I will speak to the actors that said they weren’t sure whether they could take part or not today and find out whether they will be able to help us film our clip or not. If they can’t then I will have to sort out a replacement actor which is short notice which is not ideal but this is what I will have to do.


Come back tomorrow night for a post about how the filming went.


*ALSO* I am aware we have not storyboarded our clip. We aim to get this done tonight, and hopefully an animated story board will be published by the end of the week.

Call sheets

Here is our call sheet which callum kindly produced for the group. the call sheet includes all of the infomation we might need to contact our actors. We have created these call sheets for ourselves and our actors to try and ensure that everything runs smoothly witin our production task and filming. 


Everyone will be meeting in the same place at the same time. We have included contact numbers so we can ring people if they are late. They can also contact us if they have any problems or canot make it to the shooting of our film.



This is an example of the call sheet

we produced the call sheet as a general thing so that  we could hand it out to all of the people taking place in our production this was just to had out to all members of the group so they had a rough idea of what was going to happen on the day of the shoot.

 here is a picture of the individual call sheets that we have produced. these call sheets show what the charicter will do as an individual so that they can learn what they need to doo and reherse their part.  

Script

HI FRIENDS...

 

i had to write the script on here as my microsoft word will not workkkkkkkkkk. hence soz.

 

 

The opening scene of our opening movie sequence will start off with the title of the movie. However this we have not yet decided and we will need to sit down at a later point after filming our clip and decide this with one another based on the footage that we have shot. As the film is based on teen movies and we have done an extensive amount of reaserch on opening sequences and teen movies themselves. We have all done our own individual reaserch over the christmas holidays and this has contributed to each of our reaserch making us all have the best chance for getting the best marks for our reaserch part of the courswork. Throught the lesson today myself and callum wrote down all of the things which we need to do to compleate our allocated tasks on time. Between us in the lesson we produced a call sheet and a rough plan of action of all of the things we needed to do. We then allocated certain tasks to individual people in our group so that the work load would be equal and we had a better chance of completing all of our tasks on time.

 

As our script is about teenagers and their lifestyle's at university we will have to show all aspects of their lifestyles. for example we need to give people an insight into the lives of the youth of today but not percive it or show it in a negative way. We need to show the veiwers of our clips that not all teenagers are alcohol sex craving youngsters and that some have a sensible head on their shoulders. As young people of our generation (90's) have such a bad reputation with the press and other media aspects we thought that it would be a good idea if we projected and showed the good qualities of youngsters as well as their party loving life styles. This way people will get an insight into our lives rarther than just believing things that we are percieved to be in the media.

 

The script

The scene will take place in a small room. this will be the room that all of the people living in flat B6a use as their living room. The basic line of the story goes that one of the charicters Russel decides to invite a few girls back to the appartment for a drink. However when the girls realise that he takes drugs and this may rub off negitivly on them they decide to leave the party, untill a few of their other friends from university show up. As Maranda and Kadance enter the room with their male friends and a few others Russel decides not to take the drugs and puts them to one side so that he can just enjoy a normal night of casual drinking with his friends. However as the people that just entered the flat with Maranda and Kadence did not know that they were drugs of a higher class they decided to drop a few into one of the girls drinks to try and get her to sleep as she was being such a pain. However they did not realise that this may cause potential problems. As the night goes on events happen and we want to capture the good and bad things that these Teens will do. We want to show their wild side but also their sensible and sensative sides. So we are planning to film them being wild then sensible. The story line will inculde no dialouge as of such and positioning of charicters will be decided on the day so that the 'party scene' looks authentic and real. But none the less we will still use all of the neccesary camera shots and editing skills to achieve the highest possible grade we are capable of.

 

to capture each individual charicters emotions and feelings at the certian highs and lows of the party we have decided to freeze frame and eddit the shot to introduce each individual charicter to the viewers. We believe that this will be a posative way of showing everyone the good and bad signs to the youths of today. we got most of our ideas and insperation from the things we looked at in our reaserch. For example skins, misfits, this is england 86, kidult hood and adult hood. but the main insperation came from a clip what we were given to analyse for our other media task. the clip was from holyoaks later a few years ago and details and shows evereything we are aiming to achive but from a different angle . so we are using this as a guide to produce our work for this task.

Reaserch part 2

Myself and my group did a brain storm during a lesson we had . We did this so we could decide upon a genre to use for the final piece. After writing down all of the film genres we could think of we decided that we most wanted to make a teen film.

Genre: Teen

Research about the genre:

I Google’d ‘teen movies’ in order to find some names of teen films that have already been produced. I did this so I can analyse some current teen movies to see what codes and conventions are typically used. As I did this I came across a small summary of what teen films are generally all about. The summary is as follows:

Teen films (also called teen movie or teenpic) is a film genre targeted at teenagers and young adults in which the plot is based upon the special interests of teenagers, such as coming of age, first love, rebellion, conflict with parents, teen angst, and alienation. Often these normally serious subject matters are presented in a glossy, stereotyped or trivialized way.

Films in this genre are often set in high schools, or contain characters that are of high school age. Sexual themes are also common, as are nudity and crude forms of humor.

This was good to find as I have gained a small understanding of what is normally featured in films of this type of genre from it. I now know that they are often set in comprehensive school and normally feature comprehensive school students. I have also got a couple of film titles, which are shown in colour, that I can look at in more depth in order to go deep into the conventions of the genre. 

Before I started looking at specific films I decided to look at film studios. I did this because one of the questions we have to answer in our evaluation is: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? Looking at the studios now means that I can answer this question easily when it comes to writing my evaluation.

So I fired Google up as you do when you want to know something and I quickly found out that there are 8 generally recognized major film studios, these are:

- 20th Century Fox

- RKO Pictures

- Paramount Pictures

- Warner Bros

- Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

- Universal Pictures

- Columbia Pictures

- United Artists

I looked at 20^th Century Fox to see what teen films they have produced before. I looked for films that would also appeal to teenagers. I am doing this so I know if it would be possible for 20^th Century Fox to consider making out film.



I have found that all of the following films were made by 20^th Century Fox. (All of the films listed are from 1990’s onwards):

- Home Alone (November 16^th 1990)

- Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (November 20^th 1992)

- Toys (December 18^th 1992)

- The Good Son (September 24^th 1993)

- Power Rangers: The Movie (June 30^th 1995)

- Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie (March 28^th 1997)

- Home Alone 3 (December 12^th 1997)

- Dr. Dolitte (June 26^th 1998)

- Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace (May 19^th 1999)

- Big Momma’s House (June 2^nd 2000)

- X-Men (July 14^th 2000)

- Digimon: The Movie (October 6^th 2000)

- Dude, Where’s My Car? (December 15^th 2000)

- Dr. Dolittle 2 (June 22^nd 2001)

- Ice Age (March 15^th 2002)

- Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones (May 16^th 2002)

- Garfield: The Movie (June 11^th 2004)

- Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (June 18^th 2004)

- Robots (March 11^th 2005)

- Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith (May 19^th 2005)

- Fantastic Four (July 8^th 2005)

- Big Momma’s House 2 (January 27^th 2006)

- Date Movie (February 17^th 2006)

- Ice Age: The Meltdown (March 31^st 2006)

- X-Men: The Last Stand (May 26^th 2006)

- Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties (June 16^th 2006)

- Night at the Museum (December 22^nd 2006)

- Epic Movie (January 26^th 2007)

- Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (June 15^th 2007)

- The Simpsons Movie (July 27^th 2007)

- Alvin and the Chipmunks (December 14^th 2007)

- X-Men Origins: Wolverine (May 1^st 2009)

- Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (May 22^nd 2009)

- Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (July 1^st 2009)

- Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squekquel (December 23^rd 2009)

- The A-Team (June 11^th 2010)

- The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (December 10^th 2010)

20^th Century Fox seem to make quite a lot of teen orientated films which makes me confident we could talk to this production studio about the production of our film.

Now I am going to look at the opening sequences of some teen films to find the common codes and conventions that we will need to include in our opening sequence. I will look at six title sequences all in all to get a good idea of codes and conventions.

First of all I decided to watch Kidulthood. This is the trailer:





Kidulthood Trailer from ADAM on Vimeo.




The opining shot is of the titles is very bland. It is a black background with the white ‘Kidulthood’ across the middle of the screen. This seems to be boring but could have connotations of being secretive. The teenagers in the clip seem to be represented in a very stereotypical way, especially through the style of clothes that they wear. All of the teenagers that are featured in the clip seem to have their hoods up, creating the stereotypical ‘Hoodie’ image. Some of the actors have caps on and at one point in the clip we can see one of the actors looking at ‘cool’ Nike trainers. I think this image makes the actors in the film look like gangsters. At the very start of the clip the first thing we see is a DJ which we would associate with teenagers as they love to go to parties etc. Just after we see the DJ we also see someone smoking. We see the actors smoking quite a lot in the clip which represents that the characters aren’t particularly ‘nice’ characters. Throughout the clip there is a background track. It is a rap track and it seems to be quite heavy and fast. This is also stereotypical to teenagers even though not all teenagers listen to rap. It fits the image of the clip well and also fits the city area as you would imagine that the area is quite rough. I also saw a baseball bat in the clip which connotes violence. This shows that the teenagers fight quite a lot and hints that there may be rivalry from other gangs. We see quite a lot of fighting throughout the clip as well which backs up the fact that most of the characters seem to be violent. We see fighting from both male and female genres within the clip. One of the shots of the actors fighting is in the back of a taxi. One of the actors is shown stealing alcohol from a shop which portrays teenagers to be thieves. There are also hints at drug use throughout the clip. One of the shots shows an actor giving (What looks to be a reasonable sum of money) to another actor which hints at dealing. In another scene we see one of the actresses put her head down on a table to sniff a line. This is representing teenagers as being drug dealers and users. Most of the actors seem to be black or half caste. I don’t know whether this is so the characters fit with the stereotype better it was just something I picked out from the clip. During the clip there also seems to be a lot of hints saying that the teenagers are all sexual active. There is a shot which looked like two people having sex and also another seen where a male got out of bed pulling his underpants up. In one of the shots we see a lot of the actors in school uniform. I think this is done to put the age that the actors are supposed to be into perspective. 


Summary: This clip seems to represent teenagers as having a very ‘rock and roll’ type life style. There are a lot of hints at sex, drug use, alcohol and crime related to these areas. There also seems to be a lot of parties in the clip and the education side of there life isn’t shown in the clip at all. I think teenagers are portrayed badly in this clip as being ‘thug’ type characters.


This screen grab shows the stereotypical dress sense of teenagers of today:

The next movie I looked at was Trainspotting:

Trainspotting - U.K. Trailer from you_want_elvis on Vimeo.




The action starts almost immediately in the trailer. At the very start of the trailer, two of the main actors are shown running down the street. This means that the trailer is hinted at the criminal stereotype of teenagers straight away. There was a theme of crime in the Kidulthood trailer also. There is also commentary in this trailer from one of the actors in the film. There is an interesting way of introducing the characters on this trailer which is a method that we have thought about using for our own trailer. When the characters are on screen they are paused on the screen and then there name appears and the voice over gives a little bit of background information about the characters. I like this element of the trailer and have thought about using it on my own trailer. What I mean is demonstrated in the image below. The teenage sex theme is also present in this trailer as we can see one of the female actresses getting undressed in front of a male actor and getting ready to get into bed. Immaturity is also shown on this trailer. We see the actors doing a lot of things that older and possibly mature people probably wouldn’t do, for example, diving down a toilet in part of the trailer and appearing out of the toilet again towards the end of the clip and also going swimming fully clothed! There is a small theme of violence in the trailer as we see someone aiming a gun at someone else and then the other person’s dog. We see what he sees through the gun, as if we were looking through the scope, which I thought was quite a good effect as it makes you feel as if you are getting into the action. Also in one part of the trailer the voice over talks about junk food and we see a full fried breakfast at one point in the trailer. This is hinting at the un-healthy lifestyle of teenagers. The titles seem fairly simple on this trailer. The titles consist of Trainspotting in orange text which is against a black background which flashes between black and white. At the very end of the trailer all of the artists of the songs that are used in the film are shown in the same way.



Summary: From the trailer this film seems to be more comical than the Kidulthood film. I think the aim of this film is to show the antics that teenagers get up to in a jokey way and the other Kidulthood film takes the teenage genre more seriously.


This screen grab shows how the main characters are introduced on the Trainspotting movie:

The next movie trailer I looked at was Juno:





The trailer starts by showing a still picture for a couple of seconds with the awards that the film won written at the top of the picture. This is different from the other trailers and it is the first time I have seen this technique used. This moves to an establishing shot of the main character. After this are the details of the film director and it also has the studio name. The trailer shows that the film is about a teenage pregnancy. The trailer shows us more about the storyline, it shows that the girls first thoughts were to have the baby and give it away, and then changing her feelings over time and having to make the decision of whether to keep the baby or not. You have to watch the film to find out what decision she makes in the end. At the end the name of the film ‘Juno’ is shown against an orange and white stripy background. The text has a shadow and looks quite childish which could be referred to the age of the main character.


Summary: This trailer seems to give a lot more information about the film, for example, the awards it’s won, film director and the studios name. This is different to the other two trailers as the other trailers seem to concentrate more along the storyline.


This screen grab shows the first shot of the trailer which shows what awards the movie won: 

The next film I looked at was American Pie 2:





The first part of the trailer shows that the main characters are in college because his dad is going to pick him up. This shows the age range of the characters. Almost straight away the trailer shows one of the characters having sex which hints at teenage stereotypes. Meeting girls is a strong theme throughout the film and all of the boys meet different girls that the meet up with. The character is caught by his dad when he is having sex which is funny and reflects the immaturity of the film and the target audience it appeals to. After this point in the trailer the Universal studios name is shown with their company logo. This is the first time I have seen a studio shown in this way on a film trailer. The trailer shows the lads doing some crazy things which shows the immaturity of the characters. The main characters dad has a strong part in the film and his dad tries to talk to him about growing up which every teenage boy will also have had at some point during their teenage years so it makes the film relate to the target audience. On the trailer we saw a shot of band camp which also reflects the age of the characters. There is also a voiceover at the end of the trailer. At the moment I am unsure whether or not I like this technique in film trailers. The name is shown at the end of the trailer in red against a black background. This is a good contrast and red is a primary colour which could hint at the age of the characters.



Summary: The film is all about a group of friends who do a lot of crazy things together which reflects the immaturity in their age. There is a strong theme throughout of teenage relationships which is shown by all of the lads meeting different girls.


This screen grab shows an example of the ‘crazy’ immature things that the boys get up to: 

The next film I looked at was Superbad:














































The trailer introduces the characters in an interesting way at the start of the clip. It is similar to the technique which I want to use which is the technique which is used in Trainspotting. In that technique the characters are paused on screen and the name appears and a voiceover gives a little bit of information about the characters. In this technique the characters are paused in what they were doing but the background is replaced with a blue colour and the name appears in orange text. There isn’t any information given about the characters. Even though I prefer the other character introduction method I would also consider this method to use for my final piece. The film is about three lads who have just left high school and over the summer they get up to the type of things that other teenagers do. For example going to parties, trying to buy alcohol illegally, trying to make friends and meeting girls, which is similar to the story of American Pie. There is a theme of humor throughout the trailer as we see the boys getting up to funny things like using a fake I.D which has a silly name on it, which relates to the target audience, getting hit by a car and falling over and the trailer shows one of the actors running away from the police in a funny way. When text appears on the screen it is shown in the same way every time. There is a blue background and the text is always in orange, which is consistent. A voiceover is used when text is shown on the screen and the voiceover says the text what is on the screen. At the end there is a black screen which shows the studio that it was made in.



Summary: The film is about a group of three lads who you could stereotype as ‘geeks’ that are trying to make friends and also meet girls. They are at the age where they are leaving high school and they go to parties like other teenagers. The film seems to be funny as there are different funny situations that are shown on the trailer throughout. The way the film introduces the characters is interesting. It is an adapted way to the way which I wanted to introduce my characters. It looks good and I would consider using it in my trailer.


This screen grab shows how this trailer introduces the characters: 

The last movie I looked at was Step Up:





The start of the trailer shows the young man who is the main character in the film being sentenced to community service by the judge. This reflects on young people as being bad natured and criminals, this is a common stereotype of teenage people. He goes on throughout the trailer to turn his life around which goes against stereotypes. He meets a girl by doing her a favour but we need to watch the whole film to find out what happens between them.


Summary: The movie is about a youngish male who got himself into trouble with the law which is stereotypical to the teenage audience. He gets community service and meets a girl through this. He ends up doing a girl a favour and we can see that there seems to be chemistry between the characters but we don’t know from the trailer if he gets his girl or not.


Sceen grab showing chemistry between the two characters: 

The film I would most like to watch from watching all of the trailers is Trainspotting. This is because it appeals to me as a teenager which is the target audience that we want to base our film around so I can hopefully learn techniques from it and include them in our trailer to make it appeal to our target audience well. I strongly want to use the way they introduce the characters to the film as I have thought that would be a good way to do it from the beginning and the trailer proves in my mind that it is a good way to do it.


Target Audience:
By watching these film trailers, I have gained a good idea of the target audience of our film genre. Our target audience will be roughly the same target audience that the films above are aimed at. Our target audience will be youths aged 16 - 21. We will reach our target audience by dressing our cast appropriately, so that the characters appeal to the target audience as it is something that they can relate to. Hopefully our trailer will appeal to our target audience because they will find it funny and want to know the kind of things that the characters in our film get up to.