Evaluation Question 1

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

A convention is something that you expect to find within a film from a specific genre. So when you are seeing a chick film film which was our genre, you would expect to see girly props and mise-en-scene which we eventually done. Shown in screen grabs 
We used several shots in the opening right after the production/distribution ident, we showed key props establishing the two characters in the opening scene. First, they was filming, not still shot, however, during the post-production, i edited the scene as if it was still shots.

This is the first shot that is is shown to show the key props that will be relating to one of the characters

This is another shot that is shown within the key props, however, as you can see, this is not similar to the other screen gab i've shown. This is a completely different prop to the other showing that there will be two different characters to each other in the opening scene. 

Our film has a specfic genre which is teen drama - girly film. We use the key props in the opening scene to meet this genre. Also the fact we only used two characters that is females to give an idea to the audience what the main characters will be throughout the film.

 Conventions of Title Sequence

To keep it a real media product, we used Title sequence to maintain our film as an actual independent film. Starts with the production ident followed up by distribution ident, then a following introduction of the starring characters in the film.

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 2 - How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our media product represent a particular social groups by showing mis-en-scene that relates the character in the opening scene as well as matching the target audience. We use key props for both different characters showing binary opposition 

Binary Opposition ( Created on Animoto )

Our film opening scene focuses on young female teenagers aged 14 - 18.

The animoto shows the genre of the film, however it is an opening scene so it gives and idea of the film genre and the characters. However, the binary opposition in our film were stereotyping two * typical * teenagers that are completely different form each other shown in Animoto.

We stereotyped a 'Geek' teenager who is every intelligent and her passion  about her education  by showing key props such as, glasses as she can't see well without them, books to show her intelligence. 

On the other hand, we also stereotyped a 'Party' teeneger who doesn't take life seriously and who loves to go out at night and comes home in the morning where everyone is sleeping. 

We was inspired by skins opening scene in the

very first episode in skins. Effy, the party teenager in skin was the first character that was shown.

So we use a similar character relating to Effy in skins in our opening scene and the film.

This is the ' Party ' teenager in our film. We used key shots to show the similarty between this party teenager and Effy in skins. Make up would be a key props for party teenagers showing how they care about their appearance in parties. Also, how they come home after a party in the morning, sneaking into the house without making a noise 

This is ugly betty, which is a teen drama series.
Which was inspired with our 'geek' character in the film having a different personality compared to the teenager coming home in the morning or known as ' the party girl '

As you can see, we used key props like the glasses to represent her as a geek for the film.

Evaluation Question 3

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

The media institution that was used to distribute our production was an independent institution - Big talks production - providing our a small budget for our film. We also added one of each of production and distribution

Evaluation Question 4

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

Our media product is a teen drama film which is the main genre for it, the sub-genre is chick flick.
A chick flick film will be similar to ' Mean Girls' which turned out to be a big blockbuster. The audience will be mostly be teenager girls aged 13-19. Chick flick films will relate to real life situation so that the audience ( teenage girls) will feel sympathy to the characters in the film.

We created a Facebook pages to draw our audience more than just the film, we wanted to created page where we can draw more of our target audience for our sub-genre.

Evaluation Question 5

Evaluation Question 5 - How did you attract/address your audience?

The Title of the film.

The name of the film is called Double Trouble. Based on two girls having different personality to each other and one day became friends to start of some business. Its a girl catchy name which is used for a chick flick film. We came up with the name as soon as we came up with the genre for the film and the genre is a teenager chick flick, drama  film. 

Mise-en-scene/Characters/Location

The mise-en-scene was perfectly fitted to our characters slog with the genre of the film. We use costumes that is suitable for the party girl, having a dress, make up and high heels to represent the party girl. Whereas, the geek girl has a plain room, but having books around her showing intelligence.

It appeals to the audience as its relates to real life situation, as perhaps there are girls who exactly do the same with the party girl shown in the Final.

This is the main characters and location we used for the opening scene for our Final.

The characters as you can see are completely different from each other. Theres the 'party' girl that is coming home from a party that she went out all night where theres a 'geek' girl just about waking up as soon as the party opens the door.

The location we used to film were a house of a member of the group, and two rooms, for each characters. The party girl has a girly room to represent the girly side apart from her party side. This appeals to the audience as our target audience are female teenage aged from 13-19.

We reached our target audience by showing it to the cinema and the whole of Media students. Additionally, we uploaded our opening scene on Vimeo for people to watch a home. We also made a Facebook page for the audience to like and have lasted details about the Film, as most of the target audience use Facebook as a social networking website.

Evaluation Question 6

Evaluation Question 6 - What have you learnt about teachnologies from the process of constructing this product?

Evaluation Question 7

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

In pre-production, I've learnt that it takes time to have an idea of what film we should do, thinking about the genre of the film, the target audience and what will be in the film, or the idea of the film.

However, it will never been compared to doing the preliminary film as we were given the idea of the film and all we had to do was to think of what types of shot we should do.

Planning the storyboard is the first thing we do before actually doing anything about the film. The storyboard is the film, but in pictures and little plan about the each shot will be about.

After completing the storyboard, we then moved on to filming the film, before filming, we had to get the mes-en-scene correct for the scene. After getting it organised, we then decided on what kind of camera work we should do, thinking about the camera angle, and what kind of shot it will be. For example, close up shot, mid shot, birds eye view or establishing shot. Also, we try to have the rules in our shot, the rules of having a good film. There were: No head space, Rule of third, No zooming in etc. So we tried to have all rules applied in the filming production.

Finally, the last step of filming is post-production where the magic happens.
Editing. The most fun part of post-production but could be very stressful. We had to get every member opinion for the editing as it will matter what individual think, because sometimes, small thing matter and it really does for editing. During post-production, I as the editor learnt new technical skills in Final Cut Pro. Which could be beneficial for me in future edits.  

This is the prelim i created which was shot-by-shot remake of the Breakfast club.

We didn't do much researching about about the prelim as the research was about the opening scene. Which was quiet simple to do. We just had to look at the shot they do for the opening scene then we had to remake of it.

The filming or the camera work was a bit poor as we didn't use the tripod much, instead, we used hand-held. Some shot wasn't focused but it was the only shot we could use for post-production ( editing )

For the editing, it was simple and basic as all we needed to do was remake shot-by-shot of the opening scene of The Breakfast club.

This is our final.

We spent amount of fair time into our researching for our film as we needed what to do for our film. For example, we needed to know what genre will the film be, what type of shot we will do etc.

Our pre-production was well planned as we planned it away from college, so we had each other number and made a group chat. During the pre-production, we had loads of idea we came up with, but we all had to chose one idea which was suitable.

For our filming, we had a big jump of improvement as we had a session of framing tips which boosted our camera skills for our Final. We applied most of the tips that was giving out from the session.

For example: no head space, Rule of third, no zooming in and all shot must be focused.

Post-production was my favourite as I was the one to edit the Final.

During the editing, I learn new technical skills for Final Cut Pro which was the software we used to edit our footage. 

Summary

To sum up the prelim and Final, I had made a big improvement from the prelim production to Final.

As the researching for both, I done more in Final was it was the real deal, whereas the prelim had a basic idea of remaking the opening scene of another movie.

Filming skills where it developed the most as it was important when it comes to editing, we had to re-shoot the scene more than at least 3 times for the editing to be easier.

Editing is where my strength is at. I happened to be more accurate in the Final where in the prelim, i copied the opening scene of the Breakfast club.

Throughout the whole pre/post-production, I learnt allot and improve from prelim to Final, I was dedicated in my Final.

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. 

Sound

I've noticed that most production and distribution companies have their own sound for their ident. So it would be difficult for us to add any music over our ident, however I have decided to add music at the very end of the production ident as it would be very appropriate for the opening sequence.

Post-Production

  The timeline of sounds

Music + Sounds(+foley)

The Editing progression and the days i have been editing

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. 

Cameraman/Editor

During the holidays, we were doing our filming for our opening sense. During the filming, I as the cameraman, took some risks of taking shots that would be excellent for me to edit. I also followed majority of the rules that we learnt in class such as: The rule of thirds, no head space, no zooming in etc. This will be big advantage for our opening scene to be the best.

If i was going to be the editor, and I'm also the cameraman, i would have to film about 3/4 times of the same scene as it would be easier for me to edit.

Although some shots were dark to see, but those are the risk i took during the film as the teen drama opening scene we were planning will match the shots that i have taken.

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.