Evaluation Question 1

Q1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

 

 

A convention is something that you expect to find within a film from a specific genre.

Our genre for our movie was a teen drama therefore you would expect to find characters that fit into the stereotypes of typical teen social groups. For example, A popular girl who likes to party, or a geek who is always studying, they are characters which are binary opposites. Props that would be conventional in a Teen drama depend on the target audience and their age group however, typically you would find the use of mobile phones showing the audience that the characters are a young generation or  Drugs or alcohol to signify a rebellious teenager (also a very common teen film convention). Costumes can also relate to a genre and make the film conventional.

In our teen opening we decided to adapt to these conventions of a girly teen drama by using mobile phones playing music and being used throughout the opening as an iconic but not immediately obvious prop. The character is listening to music while walking down the road with her headphones in and also receives a text message in the opening. Also we decided to choose our characters costumes in relation to their characters conventional personalities that we created, rebellious girl wearing a party dress and heels (also an iconic prop throughout) and the nerd wearing big glasses which indicate her to the audience as a stereotypical teen character.

We use camera work and editing to show these conventions, we used a match put to zoom into the object that signify the conventions of our teen drama. the match puts to the shoes and phone of the protagonist make the audience link the character with her 'social stereotype' or convention in the movie quicker.  

The sound in the opening changes from a teen pop song of the first protagonist (the party girl) when she removes her headphones to a more mellow song which represents the new character soon to be introduces (the geek) we chose to do the switch of music like this to make it evident to the audience the two different personalities of the characters and what kind of music they would listen to. However, we still take into account that the songs must convey the conventions of the movie therefore we use sound which is directly linked to what teen would listen to.



comparison of our opening to real films by Slidely Slideshow

This short slide show is showing how we have been inspired by other teen films when making our own films, we have been inspired by the plot line of Sam and Cat, in this show two girls that are complete opposites who are pushed together by fate and have to live together. We adapted this into our own opening by using the idea of two opposites characters. We developed one of our characters from a show called Skins. Our party girl was inspired by the character Effy, we decided to use the idea of a part girl coming home from a party early in the morning. We also used a few of the same shot types in this scene as you can see above. From this we also were inspired to make our first location an ordinary London road. We also used an areal shot of the geek character much like in Skins of Tony.

Conventions of Title Sequence

We decided to follow a conventional title sequence, so we found a conventional teen movie and followed the title sequence, a starting of a distribution and production icons and then a following to introduce the 4 main actors in the film.

Evaluation Question 2

Q2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?

 

Representation are the description or portrayal of someone or something in a particular way. We have used many representations throught out our movie openings. We wanted our opening to introduce our characters and show how different they are, we used binary opposites to do this. 

The social groups we have presented in our movie are teenagers, we chose two different social groups of teenagers and chose two steryotypes . One steryotypical character representing the nerd social group and the other representing the party (popular) girl. We decided that in order to make the different very clear we would add 4  still shot camera elements at the beggining of the opening to identify each character. For the nerd we used books, glasses, DVD's and tropheys. 

For the party girl we used heels, dresses, makeup and a fashion magazine. (Which you can see in the short video below.)

We didnt just do this in the first 4 elements but carried this theme on throughtout the whole opening.

Showing Representations

A similar chatacter from a real tv series called 'skins' that we were inspired by was effie, the rebelious party girl. We tried to adapt Annalizas character to hers and make analiza a representation of Effie however, we didnt make the two character completely thesmame. We wanted to make Annaliza more adapted to the audience with the age range of 13-18 and therefore made the drama less urban than skins and more a teen drama. We adapted Annalizas look to also fit the description of a girly girl which was an element that was not included in Skins.

Evaluation Question 3

Q3) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Question 3 production and distribution from AgataKasz

Evaluation Question 4

Q4) Who would be the audience for your media product?

 

Evaluation Question 5

Q5) How did you attract/address your audience?


How we adapted our film to suite and appeal to our target audience

From the MES I think we picked out the costumes the most successfully to represent and portray the characters in a way which would make our target audience respond to the action. Seeing as our characters were opposites we made them wear completely different outfits, even their seemingly identical school uniform differed. The nerd has a long skirt passed her knee as the party girls skirt was really short. Although we made the girl wear completely different wardrobes they were still things teenage girls (our target audience) would wear, and therefore this helped them relate to the action. Also the set and the props of each character in their rooms were thoroughly thought out, one room was plain and the other very girly however, every prop in there was something a member of our target audience would have in their room making the MES seem familiar to them and therefore appealing to them.

The Actors were teenage girls themselves, and that with the fact that they had different personalities that different girls could relate to meant that they were appealing to our target audience.

We picked our storyline based on what is desirable to be seen within our genre Teen drama. Our storyline of the film focused on two opposites meeting in an unexpected way and developing their friendship while on the way encountering certain problems. The theme of friendship and troubles in the way to get it are very common themes in Teen dramas as they are also very common problems in real life, this is how we know that our storyline will be suitable for our audiences interests.

The action that can be seen on the screen is something that teenagers can understand and that they themselves may have experienced before, Partying or studying are very common themes that pop up in Teen movies.

The way we chose our sound was appealing as both of our music track were songs that our target audience teenagers would listen to, we portrayed the first track using the prop of headphones as a way to indicate that the music was coming through them and therefore personalizing the first track to the party girl. this then made it evident that the second track was an meant to reflect the nerd. I think this was particularly effective in attracting our audience as by making the binary opposites strongly evident between the two characters we are pulling in a wider rang of viewers that can relate to either character 1 or two, or even them both.

I interviewed our target audience to see what they liked and why it appealed to them. :)

Our rough cut feedback made us change the music we used which I talked about above, this I think made our movie a lot better suited to a wider target audience. Before we just had one single pop song all the way through that didn't really go with the action and didn't resemble the second character enough. We also changed a couple blurry shots which made it more comfortable to watch.

So far we have reached our target audience through creating a Facebook page of Double Trouble and putting our video up on Vimeo. We chose these sites as they are easily accessible to anyone, are free and finally because we know our target audience is very likely to see them on there as teenagers, especially girls use social networking sites very often.

Evaluation Question 6

Q6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Evaluation Question 7

Q7) Looking back at your preliminry task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Research

When starting the course and making our preliminary activity we had minimal skills.
We had minimal research into our task, I only learnt about basic shot types and a little about camera movement. such as what the 180 degree rule was and how to do match cuts. We did not do any further preparations sun as genre or convention research.

In comparison for our final piece we conducted a lot of research and experimentation into audience genre and its conventions. We knew what we would have had to include into our film for it to be appealing to our target audience and this made it more successful.

Pre-production/Planning

Our pre production planning was also a lot more developed in our final piece.
in our preliminary activity we had minimal planning, only including a few props such as a surgical mask, a notepad and a pen. Our location was limited to college and we did it in a classroom making it an unsuccessful location to the action going on in the footage. No further planning was done.

Our Final however involved a lot of planning including storyboarding, blogging to prepare for our filming, planning location and props as well as planning costumes and our actual opening idea. We did all this in order to make our filming as quick and efficient as possible. When we went out to film we knew exactly what we were going to be doing.

Filming


I think throughout the time our filming improved the most. We now know how to use a variety of different shot types and how they can be edited and work together to make a visually interesting scene.

In our preliminary activity we did use different shot types such but when constructing them we did not use a tripod and therefore our shots were shaky a lot making them look unprofessional and uncomfortable to watch. Our filming was also unfocused as at that stage we would forget to focus our shots. We also had no consideration for lighting or head space when shooting from different angles and at different times of day.

Our filming for our final however was well framed, we were aware of our head space and lighting for the same scenes. Our shots were also steady and focused. We also used things such as the rule of thirds or high low long and close up shots to make our opening interesting to watch. A skill we defiantly didn't have when filming our prelim.

Editing

In our preliminary activity our editing was very limited, we were not yet comfortable at this stage with using the editing software and we didn't know enough about continuity editing to be able to create successful  match cuts or cross cuts. At one point we broke the 180 degree rule in our filming. our sound levels throughout the footage was uncontrolled and therefore at some points you couldn't hear the text. Also we were not able to add text to out footage to create a title sequence.

However, by the time of creating our final product we were comfortable and able to edit using all those skills. We successfully edited match cuts cross cuts and shot reveres shots to make the editing continuous and seamless. We also added text on our footage and sound to accompany our action successfully. All these things made it possible to put together a well constructed film.

In summary I have developed greatly and learnt a lot from both these tasks. In my opinion my greatest development was in filming and you can definitely see the improvement in this most. 

Double Trouble: Final Cut Finished!

We have finally finished editing the opening sequence to 'Double Trouble'!

 In order to have finished our final cut we had to make sure all our shots were all in the right order, using a variety of shot types and angles, the sound was appropriate and suited our scene. 

We also had to make sure that all the credits were there in the right order and consistent in house style. 

Double Trouble: Editing The Final Cut

After completing our rough cut, we then received more feedback on things we could do to improve it in order to make it even better for our final cut.

We had to:

-Make sure our entire opening sequence was as close to the 2 minute mark as possible, in order to do this we had to cut our shots to make them as full of action as possible.

 -Make sure that all our shots were still using continuity editing and match cuts, this would make it look professional and impressive.

-Add the production and distribution indents to the start of our film, this is important to give our opening sequence a realistic and even more professional look.

-Add all the credits in the right order, following real films that exist and by following this, this makes sure that we make our opening sequence similar to films.

-Make sure all sound is at an appropriate level of sound, so that it blends well with our music, and also to layer the sound.

-Fade in and out all of the sound effects and music to insure a smooth transition between every sound.

Editing progress

This is day 7 of editing, so far we have made good progress with the timeline. We have received feedback from teachers and other peers to see what they like and dislike. After receiving feedback we have changed parts of our editing and rough cut. 

We have chosen sounds some foley and some real sounds from filming that will add effect to our opening sequence. Now we are trying to find music to fit our opening sequence.

Making of the production and distribution idents

We used a software called 'Motion 4' to create our own production and distribution idents.

This is Disney's personal ident, which is copyrighted to them.

As this was our first time using this software, we watched this YouTube tutorial on how to create our own animation.

At first we found it tricky to use but after this tutorial it became clearer. We played around using emitters, and text then added 3D effects and animations to it. It started to progress well.

Then, we had to decide on names for our companies, and decided as a group that our production company should be called 'Pull Focus Productions'. The inspiration for our name is that this relates to cinematography and cameras.

This is an example of pull focus being used. On the left it is being used on the flower, then on the right it is being used on her face.

 

Double Trouble; Rough Cut and Feedback

Our teacher gave us some feedback on our rough cut of Double Trouble.

She was impressed with the variety of shots used, especially our close ups and POV shots, and also liked our match cuts. Marisa thought the use of split screen to compare and contrast the two binary oppositions was done well.

However, she didn't like the use of our music and she believed it didn't fit the whole opening sequence so we are working on finding different pieces of music to use.

There was one shot where we filmed outside, but as the surface was uneven, the tripod was wonk so this shot didn't look professional. We have now deleted that shot and edited this shot out for another panning shot.

In an extreme close up and panning shot of the door closing, it was off focus in the middle of the shot, so we have had to cut this shot down so that the whole shot is in focus.

Rough Cut

Filming overview

Overall, filming was successful as we didn't have to re film any shots when we got back to college. We filmed a variety of shots, as we checked our shots at the end of every filming day, then ticked them off on our list of shot types. We also learnt from Micky's framing tutorial, and remembered that close ups are effective in portraying emotion and stand out overall so we included many close ups. 

Filming day 3

On the last day of filming, we finished off our filming with Analiza's bathroom scene. We experimented with a range of shots, including an over the shoulder shot of Analiza and her reflection in the mirror, taking off her smudged make up from last night's party. 

Also, we filmed four character establishing shots, such as makeup, dresses, heels and a girly fashion magazine. We also mirrored this in Julie's four character establishing shots, including her glasses, class work, DVDs and trophies showing her academic achievements.

Filming day 2

On the second day of filming we continued to film our opening sequence. We finished filming Analiza's introduction to Double Trouble, where she enters her house then up to the part where she walks into her bedroom. We also started and finished filming Julie's bedroom scene which consisted of her waking up and getting ready for school. 

We also came across problems when filming Julie's bedroom scene, as the birds eye shot was difficult to film, there was also problems with space as the room was small. We overcame this issue as Analiza stood on a stool, and we raised the tripod as high as possible.

We experimented with our shot types, using as many shot types and shot angles as possible to make our opening sequence as interesting as possible. Here Andy and Agata are filming a high angle shot of Julie in bed.

We had some problems with lighting, as some lightbulbs were broken on the staircase so the shots were slightly darker than the shots filmed outside. However we tried our best to use natural lighting from the windows.

Filming day 1

On the first day of filming we met early in the morning. We started of shooting all the scenes set outside as the weather may not be consistent on the next day of filming, this was also to insure consistency in customes. 

Using our creative minds, we came up with a innovative shot, using a small box on the ground then steadying the camera on top of the box, as we wanted to produce a variety of shot types used. We thought this would be an interesting alternative as this shot was effective and it was steady.

One problem was the steep road, as the tripod was not positioned correctly at the start of our shots, so some shots are wonky, but we soon came to realise this then re adjusted the legs of the tripod to make the shots straight.

Another problem we came across was the weather conditions, as it rained the whole day but we overcame this issue by using an umbrella and we were careful with the camera.

Pitch feedback

From our pitch we received feedback from our teacher and peers of things they liked and things that we could improve on.

They liked our idea as it conforms to stereotypes of the rebellious party girl but also the nerdy girl. Also, our choice of costume and how clear the difference was between the two was favoured with our peers. They also liked our name 'Double Trouble' as it is catchy and rhymes so people will remember it.

However, we also received some constructive criticism, such as our target audience and demographic needs to be more clear and concise. Unfortunately we didn't include our story board in our pitch so we need to add our storyboard to our pitch.

Pitch

Planning final project: location photos

We will be filming most of our opening sequence within Analiza's house in Winchmore Hill. 

Some parts of our filming will also be filmed on the road outside her house.