Thursday, 30 April 2015
Week 15 Reflective Blog Post
This was the week where we had to finalise all of our evaluations which had featured me completing my parts 5-8 evaluations which were the longest as it took up the most time in my opinion. i found these evaluations the most channelling because I had tow rite more about less which i had struggled with because i had written what I already knew which didn't seem enough for me to get a good grade on my coursework so I had to ask my classmates on what I could add which in the end had helped me a lot. I found part 6 evaluation quite interesting because we got to hear people's opinion on our final production which had helped us to identify the mistakes we may have made which then enabled us to make our final piece even better than before.
Monday, 27 April 2015
Week 14 Reflective Blog Post
In this week, I began to write my evaluations for my overall production of my opening sequence "Skrew It". I had done parts 1-4 in this week which involved filming, discussing my search and planning, talking about my target audience and mis-en-scene we sued. This week was very productive for myself because I had to get a lot of things done to ensure I had completed my evaluations to a high standard. I managed to complete my first four evaluates quite quick;y because i already had some knowledge on what research we had done into our film and so on.
Friday, 24 April 2015
Evaluation Part 8 - Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Research and Planning for my Preliminary and Main Task
Firstly, my preliminary task was to create a scene where someone walks into a room, sits down and has a conversation. My Partner for this was Chris Mitsinga. The main type of research in which we looked at before making our preliminary task was researching what other people had done in different schools in the country to know the expectations we should be meeting or doing better. By watching other groups do their preliminary task it gave us the idea to do a job interview based scene. This was because we didn't seem to find any job interviews type video so we though that would be a great topic to do our preliminary task on because it was something different to what we had seen other do which was
our objective. The planning procedure in which we too which helped us get a clear idea on what camera shot/angle and movement to use, the length of the scene and who was in it, we did a storyboard to help us structure our work. Doing the storyboard didn't take as much time as we expected because through our research we basically outlined what we was going to do so when we were doing our storyboard it was a really quick procedure. Now moving on to talk about my main task in which me, Fabio and Myles had done. For our main task we had to film a 2 minute opening sequence with the theme being British social realism.
Our story line is based on a smart and upper class kid who choose the wrong path ad begins to take cocaine with the drug addict that is already in the scene. Our two main protagonists in our opening sequence are called Edward and Bailee who are played by Fabio Fernandes and Omario Morris. The main type of research in which we did which helped us with coming up with your story line was from watching Trainspotting and Fish Tank. We thought that bringing in two films and mixing up their story line would help make our film that much different which would make our target audience of 16-24 year olds more engaged with what our opening sequence is about. A weakness from watching these movies as our example is that we struggled to find the movie to watch so we started to watch clips until we managed to get a hand on both of the movies. However, a strength from watching these movies is that it had made our process of planning and researching becoming a lot quicker and easier to do.
Digital Technology for both Preliminary and Main Task
The main digital technology in which we used for both my preliminary and main task is a camera where we recorded some scenes for both task.s This was a useful resource because in my preliminary task me and Chris already knew how to use the camera as we used it previously so it was easy for us to know the basics. This leads to a strength on my behalf when it came to doing my preliminary and main task in Media because i already knew how to use a camera so it allowed me to teach my group members how to use it and how to follow some rules such as the 180 degree rule. However, talking about the disadvantages, a disadvantage of using a camera was that the battery pack was really weak so it continuously kept dying and needing to charge every 10 minutes which was very frustrating for our entire group. However, a positive from using a camera was that it enabled us to try a new and variety of handheld shots which helped us to make our scene seem more realistic.
Creativity for both Preliminary and Main Task
In my opinion, I think that creativity from all of my group members was the key to our success of producing a good two minute opening sequence for our target audience of 16-24 year olds. The storyboard in which we had created which had helped us to outline what exactly we was going to do. On our storyboard i decided to get very creative with the drawings of what we wanted the scene to look like. I did this so that my storyboard could stand out and so my group members could see what my view on what that scene would look like which we had used in the end. The scene was within the firts 30 seconds when you see Omario walking down the corridor and telling Fabio (Edward) to come for drugs after getting told off by his teacher. I chose this scene in particular to be creative the most on because i felt that this scene brings the whole story line as a whole and begins to show a big difference between the two protagonists of Bailee and Edward. However, my other two group members Myles and Fabio got creative at the scenes towards the end this was because i suggested that we should make our ending the most appealing scenes at all so we could set that cliffhanger feeling to our audience which we hope will make our target audience engage and be appealed to wanting to watch our British social realism film as soon as possible. From this i had learnt more and more ways i could become creative to enhance the original standards from my work that i do.
Post-Production for both Preliminary and Main Task
In our post-production period myself and my group mainly focused on using a software Final Cut Pro to ensure our opening sequence was to the best standard that we could possibly want. We seemed to have multiple issues throughout the period of using Final Cut Pro, this was because it kept freezing on us which led to us having to re upload our clips and edit again which we found annoying. It didn't happen to us often but it was very annoying when it did. Also, we had to deal with removing other clips which were uploaded of previous groups work which had taken up a lot of our time because there were over a 50 clips to sort out of previous groups. Although i had learnt to be more patient when it comes to finalising our work because i tend to want it done ASAP and try to avoid any problems which could lose us time which at that point i had no control over but know i realise that there will always be challenges in the process of finalising random pieces of work.
Firstly, my preliminary task was to create a scene where someone walks into a room, sits down and has a conversation. My Partner for this was Chris Mitsinga. The main type of research in which we looked at before making our preliminary task was researching what other people had done in different schools in the country to know the expectations we should be meeting or doing better. By watching other groups do their preliminary task it gave us the idea to do a job interview based scene. This was because we didn't seem to find any job interviews type video so we though that would be a great topic to do our preliminary task on because it was something different to what we had seen other do which was
our objective. The planning procedure in which we too which helped us get a clear idea on what camera shot/angle and movement to use, the length of the scene and who was in it, we did a storyboard to help us structure our work. Doing the storyboard didn't take as much time as we expected because through our research we basically outlined what we was going to do so when we were doing our storyboard it was a really quick procedure. Now moving on to talk about my main task in which me, Fabio and Myles had done. For our main task we had to film a 2 minute opening sequence with the theme being British social realism.
Our story line is based on a smart and upper class kid who choose the wrong path ad begins to take cocaine with the drug addict that is already in the scene. Our two main protagonists in our opening sequence are called Edward and Bailee who are played by Fabio Fernandes and Omario Morris. The main type of research in which we did which helped us with coming up with your story line was from watching Trainspotting and Fish Tank. We thought that bringing in two films and mixing up their story line would help make our film that much different which would make our target audience of 16-24 year olds more engaged with what our opening sequence is about. A weakness from watching these movies as our example is that we struggled to find the movie to watch so we started to watch clips until we managed to get a hand on both of the movies. However, a strength from watching these movies is that it had made our process of planning and researching becoming a lot quicker and easier to do.
Digital Technology for both Preliminary and Main Task
The main digital technology in which we used for both my preliminary and main task is a camera where we recorded some scenes for both task.s This was a useful resource because in my preliminary task me and Chris already knew how to use the camera as we used it previously so it was easy for us to know the basics. This leads to a strength on my behalf when it came to doing my preliminary and main task in Media because i already knew how to use a camera so it allowed me to teach my group members how to use it and how to follow some rules such as the 180 degree rule. However, talking about the disadvantages, a disadvantage of using a camera was that the battery pack was really weak so it continuously kept dying and needing to charge every 10 minutes which was very frustrating for our entire group. However, a positive from using a camera was that it enabled us to try a new and variety of handheld shots which helped us to make our scene seem more realistic.
Creativity for both Preliminary and Main Task
In my opinion, I think that creativity from all of my group members was the key to our success of producing a good two minute opening sequence for our target audience of 16-24 year olds. The storyboard in which we had created which had helped us to outline what exactly we was going to do. On our storyboard i decided to get very creative with the drawings of what we wanted the scene to look like. I did this so that my storyboard could stand out and so my group members could see what my view on what that scene would look like which we had used in the end. The scene was within the firts 30 seconds when you see Omario walking down the corridor and telling Fabio (Edward) to come for drugs after getting told off by his teacher. I chose this scene in particular to be creative the most on because i felt that this scene brings the whole story line as a whole and begins to show a big difference between the two protagonists of Bailee and Edward. However, my other two group members Myles and Fabio got creative at the scenes towards the end this was because i suggested that we should make our ending the most appealing scenes at all so we could set that cliffhanger feeling to our audience which we hope will make our target audience engage and be appealed to wanting to watch our British social realism film as soon as possible. From this i had learnt more and more ways i could become creative to enhance the original standards from my work that i do.
Post-Production for both Preliminary and Main Task
In our post-production period myself and my group mainly focused on using a software Final Cut Pro to ensure our opening sequence was to the best standard that we could possibly want. We seemed to have multiple issues throughout the period of using Final Cut Pro, this was because it kept freezing on us which led to us having to re upload our clips and edit again which we found annoying. It didn't happen to us often but it was very annoying when it did. Also, we had to deal with removing other clips which were uploaded of previous groups work which had taken up a lot of our time because there were over a 50 clips to sort out of previous groups. Although i had learnt to be more patient when it comes to finalising our work because i tend to want it done ASAP and try to avoid any problems which could lose us time which at that point i had no control over but know i realise that there will always be challenges in the process of finalising random pieces of work.
Tuesday, 21 April 2015
Evaluation Part Seven - What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Pre-Production
One of my examples for the Hardware in which i had used which allowed me to set up my 'Skrew It' was by using the Apple Mac. The Apple mac was our main equipment during our pre production work because on the apple mac we used it for Microsoft Excel where we prepared our shooting script, going on you tube and getting examples. The main reason that we used apple macs was because we were provided with these and we didn't really get the chance to change if we didn't like the Macs. The cons of using Macs was that i never had used a Mac before i started Media Studies and i was a bit worried that it would be quite confusing to use but it turned out to be quite easy to understand. Therefore, my personal development was good when it came to using the Macs because I eventually managed to get to grips with the basics of using the Mac.
One of my examples for the software in which we had used in our pre-production work for our opening sequence was blogger. At first i wasn't really confident with using blogger because i rarely heard about it before i began Media Studies so it became very interesting to me when i found out we would be completing and posting our classwork on blog as evidence. One of the cons from using blogger is that i had a lot of issues of presenting my images with some pieces of work and getting them in the right position. Occasionally the images I wanted to use in my blog never appeared i don't know why so i had to write more and leave a web link to show where i had got my image from to ensure that i have some piece of evidence. A benefit from using blogger is that i got to show the work that i produced world wide which I found was very cool and fun to do because i can share my research with people across the world in America and so on. So my personal development with blogger wasn't so great because even up to today I still have issues with my pictures not begin visible to myself and anyone who views my blog.
My second Hardware in which myself and my group had used was DVD's. We had the availability to watch certain BSR's like Train-spotting, London to Brighton, Kidulthood and so on. All of these movies had helped us come with the idea to use certain props like cocaine, the location inside the school and deciding what classes pour characters should be. In London to Brighton we see the scene of the mother and daughter eating chips in the cubicle so we had taken a while to decide whether or not we should have the two main protagonists taking in a block or in the cubicle which we saw in the movie London to Brighton as i said. Tis had helped us with gaining some ideas of how our two main protagonists would take the cocaine. We also saw the movies Wild bill which is based on a man trying to get his family back after being in prison for some time. This movie had helped us to use some different camera shots for scenes that we didn't think was appropriate to use camera shots. An example would be a crab shot when Bailee is walking and sending a message to Edward we also see this at the start of Wild Bill where he is walking out of the prison and along the cow try side.
Production
During our production of making 'Skrew It', one main hardware in which we had used was a camera. The camera we used had allowed its to film multiple scenes of what we wanted to be in the film then at the end look at all of them and se what we can do different or what e could add. benefit from using a camera was that i already had a clear idea on how to use a camera is that it allowed me to help my other group members if they were struggling with certain aspects of the camera. However, one drawback of using the camera was the fact that our battery pack was very weak which meant that we didn't have a lot of time to film because the battery kept dying. At some points we would have to miss entire day of filming just so we can ensure that we can get a lot of filming done in one day to make up for lost time which at the end had worked out well for myself and everyone in my grip as we managed to finish our opening sequence. My personal development when it came to using the camera was very strong because i feel that i am even better than i was with the camera before which could help me in the future.
One major software in which was really important during our production of 'Skrew It' was final cut pro. Final cut pro was a built in software on the mac which enabled us to edit our film entirely which meant shortening scenes, adding effects and so on. One benefit from using final cut pro was that i had already used it once or twice which meant i knew how to use it straight away which had saved us a lot of time in the end as we had finished our production before other groups. Also, my other group member myles, had used it swell which meant that we could get to grips with what effects and transitions to use more quicker than other grouse which saved us a lot of time looking back. However, a drawback from using final cut pro was that at some points it had crashed which meant we couldn't edit at certain points which was very frustrating for us all because we had really good ideas for our credits but couldn't include them in because final cut pro had crashed unexpectedly which was a major drawback for us when it came to finalising our opening sequence. My personal development is still the same because i had previously used final cut pro and knew how to record and delete clips easily.
Another software programme that we used during our production of our opening sequence was Abode Flash. The only point at our production where we had used Abode F;ash for was after we did our credits so we can make our institutional logo. Our institutional logo was called FAM Productions and was shown it moving in the cinema. We did this so our title could relate to where we want to show our movie first before releasing it on DVD's. One benefit from using Adobe Flash was that we had already designed what our logo should look like so when it came actually creating it we didn't spend days or hours discussing what it can and should look like. However, one drawback from using Abode flash is that i never had used it before which had led to leaving Myles with doing the whole creating of our logo with me and Fabio giving our ideas on what colours and how to position our institutional logo. My personal development for using Abode Flash was quite good because despite not being good at using it i have a bit of knowledge of the basics which could help me sometime in the future.
Post-Production
One piece of hardware in which we had used in our post production from our opening sequence 'Skrew It' was a projector. We used a projector so we could show our audience focus group our final version of our opening sequence so we could get feedback on what was good and what we can improve on for next time. The benefit of using a projector is that it allowed us to show our opening sequence on a big screen which could stand out more and be more appealing for our target audience of 16-24 year olds who were also members of our focus group. However, a drawback from using a projector is that it is a very confusing type of hardware to sue because it takes a lot of steps of setting it up and ensuring it is in the correct position which had wasted a lot of time where we could of been evaluating what went well and even better if. My personal development which didn't really have an overall factor when it came to projectors because i was just focused on ensuring that the camera was well positioned so we can see their reactions and asking them questions about our product effectively.
A software programme in which i had used is Microsoft PowerPoint. I had used powerpoint to write up a part of my evaluation talking about how our characters are represented in specific social groups. I only did three slides because there was only three characters in our opening sequence but i managed to write a lot about each characters. On my powerpoint i talked about how the clothes on each character represents that specific audience group mainly. One benefit from using powerpoint is that i already knew how to use power point well which allowed me to finish this part of the evaluation quite quickly and to a very good standard. However, an issue i was having with powerpoint is uploading it onto blogger. This was a problem because i was a bit late on uploading tho apart of my evaluation because my powerpoint wouldn't fully upload onto my blog which was quite frustrating. My personal development with using PowerPoint wasn't really improved because I had used PowerPoint before but seeing all the layouts, transitions and designs in more detail made me be more acknowledge in what Microsoft PowerPoint can really provide.
Lastly, a hardware that we used in our post production of Skrew It was our phones. We used our phones to film our audience focus group. We used our phones because our camera was broken at the time and we had little time to get this part of the evaluation one so we decided to use a phone to record our audience focus group to save time and to prevent us spending a lot of time trying to get our camera to work. One benefit from using our phones was that we could immediately upload it onto our blogs because we had brought our cables which allowed us to upload our video on onto you tube and on our blogs. However, a drawback from using our phones is that the quality and the sound was not to the standard that we had hoped so it was hard to see and hard to hear which was a let down but we had to deal with it. My personal development wasn't as great because i didn'tr eally use my phone for much just only pressing record and holding it.
One of my examples for the Hardware in which i had used which allowed me to set up my 'Skrew It' was by using the Apple Mac. The Apple mac was our main equipment during our pre production work because on the apple mac we used it for Microsoft Excel where we prepared our shooting script, going on you tube and getting examples. The main reason that we used apple macs was because we were provided with these and we didn't really get the chance to change if we didn't like the Macs. The cons of using Macs was that i never had used a Mac before i started Media Studies and i was a bit worried that it would be quite confusing to use but it turned out to be quite easy to understand. Therefore, my personal development was good when it came to using the Macs because I eventually managed to get to grips with the basics of using the Mac.
One of my examples for the software in which we had used in our pre-production work for our opening sequence was blogger. At first i wasn't really confident with using blogger because i rarely heard about it before i began Media Studies so it became very interesting to me when i found out we would be completing and posting our classwork on blog as evidence. One of the cons from using blogger is that i had a lot of issues of presenting my images with some pieces of work and getting them in the right position. Occasionally the images I wanted to use in my blog never appeared i don't know why so i had to write more and leave a web link to show where i had got my image from to ensure that i have some piece of evidence. A benefit from using blogger is that i got to show the work that i produced world wide which I found was very cool and fun to do because i can share my research with people across the world in America and so on. So my personal development with blogger wasn't so great because even up to today I still have issues with my pictures not begin visible to myself and anyone who views my blog.
My second Hardware in which myself and my group had used was DVD's. We had the availability to watch certain BSR's like Train-spotting, London to Brighton, Kidulthood and so on. All of these movies had helped us come with the idea to use certain props like cocaine, the location inside the school and deciding what classes pour characters should be. In London to Brighton we see the scene of the mother and daughter eating chips in the cubicle so we had taken a while to decide whether or not we should have the two main protagonists taking in a block or in the cubicle which we saw in the movie London to Brighton as i said. Tis had helped us with gaining some ideas of how our two main protagonists would take the cocaine. We also saw the movies Wild bill which is based on a man trying to get his family back after being in prison for some time. This movie had helped us to use some different camera shots for scenes that we didn't think was appropriate to use camera shots. An example would be a crab shot when Bailee is walking and sending a message to Edward we also see this at the start of Wild Bill where he is walking out of the prison and along the cow try side.
Production
During our production of making 'Skrew It', one main hardware in which we had used was a camera. The camera we used had allowed its to film multiple scenes of what we wanted to be in the film then at the end look at all of them and se what we can do different or what e could add. benefit from using a camera was that i already had a clear idea on how to use a camera is that it allowed me to help my other group members if they were struggling with certain aspects of the camera. However, one drawback of using the camera was the fact that our battery pack was very weak which meant that we didn't have a lot of time to film because the battery kept dying. At some points we would have to miss entire day of filming just so we can ensure that we can get a lot of filming done in one day to make up for lost time which at the end had worked out well for myself and everyone in my grip as we managed to finish our opening sequence. My personal development when it came to using the camera was very strong because i feel that i am even better than i was with the camera before which could help me in the future.
One major software in which was really important during our production of 'Skrew It' was final cut pro. Final cut pro was a built in software on the mac which enabled us to edit our film entirely which meant shortening scenes, adding effects and so on. One benefit from using final cut pro was that i had already used it once or twice which meant i knew how to use it straight away which had saved us a lot of time in the end as we had finished our production before other groups. Also, my other group member myles, had used it swell which meant that we could get to grips with what effects and transitions to use more quicker than other grouse which saved us a lot of time looking back. However, a drawback from using final cut pro was that at some points it had crashed which meant we couldn't edit at certain points which was very frustrating for us all because we had really good ideas for our credits but couldn't include them in because final cut pro had crashed unexpectedly which was a major drawback for us when it came to finalising our opening sequence. My personal development is still the same because i had previously used final cut pro and knew how to record and delete clips easily.
Another software programme that we used during our production of our opening sequence was Abode Flash. The only point at our production where we had used Abode F;ash for was after we did our credits so we can make our institutional logo. Our institutional logo was called FAM Productions and was shown it moving in the cinema. We did this so our title could relate to where we want to show our movie first before releasing it on DVD's. One benefit from using Adobe Flash was that we had already designed what our logo should look like so when it came actually creating it we didn't spend days or hours discussing what it can and should look like. However, one drawback from using Abode flash is that i never had used it before which had led to leaving Myles with doing the whole creating of our logo with me and Fabio giving our ideas on what colours and how to position our institutional logo. My personal development for using Abode Flash was quite good because despite not being good at using it i have a bit of knowledge of the basics which could help me sometime in the future.
Post-Production
One piece of hardware in which we had used in our post production from our opening sequence 'Skrew It' was a projector. We used a projector so we could show our audience focus group our final version of our opening sequence so we could get feedback on what was good and what we can improve on for next time. The benefit of using a projector is that it allowed us to show our opening sequence on a big screen which could stand out more and be more appealing for our target audience of 16-24 year olds who were also members of our focus group. However, a drawback from using a projector is that it is a very confusing type of hardware to sue because it takes a lot of steps of setting it up and ensuring it is in the correct position which had wasted a lot of time where we could of been evaluating what went well and even better if. My personal development which didn't really have an overall factor when it came to projectors because i was just focused on ensuring that the camera was well positioned so we can see their reactions and asking them questions about our product effectively.
A software programme in which i had used is Microsoft PowerPoint. I had used powerpoint to write up a part of my evaluation talking about how our characters are represented in specific social groups. I only did three slides because there was only three characters in our opening sequence but i managed to write a lot about each characters. On my powerpoint i talked about how the clothes on each character represents that specific audience group mainly. One benefit from using powerpoint is that i already knew how to use power point well which allowed me to finish this part of the evaluation quite quickly and to a very good standard. However, an issue i was having with powerpoint is uploading it onto blogger. This was a problem because i was a bit late on uploading tho apart of my evaluation because my powerpoint wouldn't fully upload onto my blog which was quite frustrating. My personal development with using PowerPoint wasn't really improved because I had used PowerPoint before but seeing all the layouts, transitions and designs in more detail made me be more acknowledge in what Microsoft PowerPoint can really provide.
Lastly, a hardware that we used in our post production of Skrew It was our phones. We used our phones to film our audience focus group. We used our phones because our camera was broken at the time and we had little time to get this part of the evaluation one so we decided to use a phone to record our audience focus group to save time and to prevent us spending a lot of time trying to get our camera to work. One benefit from using our phones was that we could immediately upload it onto our blogs because we had brought our cables which allowed us to upload our video on onto you tube and on our blogs. However, a drawback from using our phones is that the quality and the sound was not to the standard that we had hoped so it was hard to see and hard to hear which was a let down but we had to deal with it. My personal development wasn't as great because i didn'tr eally use my phone for much just only pressing record and holding it.
Friday, 17 April 2015
Evaluation Part Six - How did you attract/address your audience? - Focus Group
Our evaluation part six was our focus group video. In this we showed a random group of students our final opening sequence which we had uploaded onto you tube and recorded their reaction and their opinion to how successful it was.
Overall, i think our audience found it very interesting and it could of done with some improvements such as readable credits that we will take on board and try to do next time if we ever get a similar task.
Overall, i think our audience found it very interesting and it could of done with some improvements such as readable credits that we will take on board and try to do next time if we ever get a similar task.
Tuesday, 14 April 2015
Friday, 10 April 2015
Evaluation Part Four - Who would be your target audience?
Above is our part four evaluation where we are talking about how our opening sequence appealed to our target audience of 16-24 year olds, middle classed and living in London. Along with our target audience we also talked about mise-en-scene, location, clothing and camera angels and why it would be suitable for our specific target audience.
Tuesday, 31 March 2015
Wednesday, 25 March 2015
Evaluation Part Two - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products.
Narrative and/or Performance
Settings/Locations
The primary location in which we decided to use was Lilian Baylis Technology School. We chose Lilian Baylis Technology School as pour primary location because school is a unsuspicious place where you wouldn't expect drugs to be taken especially in a cubicle in the boys toilets. Also, the opening scene of the main protagonist (Fabio) studying inside the school premises shows that these school is filled with knowledge and intelligence as you see Fabio with a pile of books with him. We used a medium shot to show the main protagonist studying because we wanted to capture the image of the work he is looking at and some of the background to show that he is still inside the school. Now moving on to our secondary location which is inside the boys toilets. We decided to use the boys toilet as our secondary location because we wanted to show realism to our piece and not place the two main protagonist taking the drugs in a unusual location such as under the stairs so we thought that the most realistic place students would do drugs on school premises is inside the toilets because no teachers ever check there and we saw that as our perfect spot to shoot the drug taking scene with Fabio and Omario.
We used some camera movements such as the tilting of the camera upwards when Fabio and Omario (Bailee and Edward the two characters) were taking the drugs. We used this specific camera movement so the audience can know that they had took the drugs and through the zoom out of location and the sound effect of them reacting to the drugs it creates a sense of realism to our target audience. As this was quite a difficult scene to shoot it took us more than two retakes to ensure we were happy with our final scene because due to the limited space we had it was quite challenging to find the perfect spot to film our drug scene.
Effects and Transitions
Throughout our opening sequence we didn't use a lot of effects and transitions because we want dour opening sequence to have the same use of effects and transitions as existing BSR's and we didn't want to make ours look completely odd to a usual BSR because we wanted people to recognise that our opening sequence is a BSR and not another genre. The transition we used was our logo of the title of our film ' Skrew It' zooming in closer to the screen.
Our film title is called Skrew It, we included a transition on this logo because we want the audience to see clearly what our film title was called and so they could know which one was the most important as we made this the biggest out of the others. The 'K' in skrew it connotes the modern informal language otherwise known as slang which the usual south london teenager uses. We swapped the C with the K in our title so we could appeal to our target audience which is 16-24 year olds. This is why we used the zoom in transition on our logo to inform the audience immediately how our title relates to our BSR genre. The only effect in which we used in our opening sequence was a fade to black effect between the first scene of our opening sequence and our own production logo. We used this effect so we could make our opening sequence look well done and not looking like we rushed it which seems to make our final sequence look better.
Lighting
The two types of lighting in which we had used for different parts of our opening sequence was ambient and artificial lighting. We used these two types of lighting because one we wanted to show realism to the scene and the story with whats happening and two to set the mood of some scenes that were considered darker than others. I feel that we used these lightings well because it made our opening sequence appeal to our 16-24 year olds target audience as they tend to enjoy films that doesn't use natural lighting throughout a film. The ambient lighting connotes realism tot he scene they are in for example when they are taking cocaine we used a for of brighter lighting than usual to show what they were experiencing from our view. We didn't really have too much problems with sorting out our lighting when we had edited our piece because we didn't have to change the lighting for every scene which helped us to finish our editing in a short amount of time. The main reason for using natural lighting throughout most of the film because we wanted our opening sequence to have a bit of a similarity between our opening sequence and other BSR's but not exactly similar so our opening sequence can remain appealing towards our specific target audience.
What had inspired us?
These three movies: Trainspotting, sky-fall and fish tank had inspired us in some ways which had helped us with finalising our opening sequence because trainspotting involved quite a bit of drug taking which we was already using in our piece so we got a few ideas on how we could get the two man protagonists to take the cocaine so we came up with the idea for our two main protagonists to use their oyster cards to line up the cocaine to inform the audience that they are still young people that are doing the wrong thing. Our theme of drugs problems also came from watching trainspotting because despite drugs being used in a lot of movies we could make it a lot different which explains the fact why we used a school to take the drugs and not a estate in London. The Sky-Fall opening had inspired us to create the zoom in transition of our logo because they did it quite slowly and used a background sound effect which made us be engaged immediately with what was about to happen. So we decided to make our title come out slowly after the main protagonist Fabio throwing the paper away to show he had given up. Last but not the least a scene in Fish tank where the main character is walking towards the camera which had inspired us to make Omario (playing as Bailee) to do the exact same thing to show his body language and his facial expression towards the situation.
Did we use conventional pace?
Yes we did use conventional pace however it was slow. This was because we wanted to keep the same pace as other BSR's does which is usually quite slow so we had to edit to make sure our scenes wasn't flowing too quickly because our plot was about a slow and depressing story about a kif=d who was once smart who turns out to be an drug addict.
Throughout the process of filming our british social realism opening title sequence which we named it as 'Skrew It'. We used a variety of camera shots and camera movements. We used handheld camera movement for the majority of our filming as it denotes realism to the story we are trying to tell. Another camera shot which we used in one of our scenes in our film is a close up of the two main characters taking the cocaine. We decided to use this specific camera shot so we could show the audience not only the facial expression of the characters whilst they're taking the cocaine but the cocaine (baking soda) itself to engage and inform our target audience. Using a close up to show the cocaine also represents realism to the usual BSR genre as most british social realism films uses these sort of drugs such as, kidulthood, fish tank, trains potting and many others which had inspired us to create this film and storyline. Now looking at the clothing and the performance of our characters. The drug dealer who is played by Omario is wearing the usual hoodie and jeans combination which is what you would expect from an drug dealer. However, the drug addict who is supposed to be intelligent in school becomes addicted to drugs through previously family problems which sees him to throw his school life away to become a junkie. The student who is played by Fabio usually wears smart clothes to connote intelligence and smartness which he is shown in the first part of our opening sequence but is suddenly changed.
Settings/Locations
Effects and Transitions
Throughout our opening sequence we didn't use a lot of effects and transitions because we want dour opening sequence to have the same use of effects and transitions as existing BSR's and we didn't want to make ours look completely odd to a usual BSR because we wanted people to recognise that our opening sequence is a BSR and not another genre. The transition we used was our logo of the title of our film ' Skrew It' zooming in closer to the screen.
Our film title is called Skrew It, we included a transition on this logo because we want the audience to see clearly what our film title was called and so they could know which one was the most important as we made this the biggest out of the others. The 'K' in skrew it connotes the modern informal language otherwise known as slang which the usual south london teenager uses. We swapped the C with the K in our title so we could appeal to our target audience which is 16-24 year olds. This is why we used the zoom in transition on our logo to inform the audience immediately how our title relates to our BSR genre. The only effect in which we used in our opening sequence was a fade to black effect between the first scene of our opening sequence and our own production logo. We used this effect so we could make our opening sequence look well done and not looking like we rushed it which seems to make our final sequence look better.
Lighting
The two types of lighting in which we had used for different parts of our opening sequence was ambient and artificial lighting. We used these two types of lighting because one we wanted to show realism to the scene and the story with whats happening and two to set the mood of some scenes that were considered darker than others. I feel that we used these lightings well because it made our opening sequence appeal to our 16-24 year olds target audience as they tend to enjoy films that doesn't use natural lighting throughout a film. The ambient lighting connotes realism tot he scene they are in for example when they are taking cocaine we used a for of brighter lighting than usual to show what they were experiencing from our view. We didn't really have too much problems with sorting out our lighting when we had edited our piece because we didn't have to change the lighting for every scene which helped us to finish our editing in a short amount of time. The main reason for using natural lighting throughout most of the film because we wanted our opening sequence to have a bit of a similarity between our opening sequence and other BSR's but not exactly similar so our opening sequence can remain appealing towards our specific target audience.
What had inspired us?
These three movies: Trainspotting, sky-fall and fish tank had inspired us in some ways which had helped us with finalising our opening sequence because trainspotting involved quite a bit of drug taking which we was already using in our piece so we got a few ideas on how we could get the two man protagonists to take the cocaine so we came up with the idea for our two main protagonists to use their oyster cards to line up the cocaine to inform the audience that they are still young people that are doing the wrong thing. Our theme of drugs problems also came from watching trainspotting because despite drugs being used in a lot of movies we could make it a lot different which explains the fact why we used a school to take the drugs and not a estate in London. The Sky-Fall opening had inspired us to create the zoom in transition of our logo because they did it quite slowly and used a background sound effect which made us be engaged immediately with what was about to happen. So we decided to make our title come out slowly after the main protagonist Fabio throwing the paper away to show he had given up. Last but not the least a scene in Fish tank where the main character is walking towards the camera which had inspired us to make Omario (playing as Bailee) to do the exact same thing to show his body language and his facial expression towards the situation.
Did we use conventional pace?
Yes we did use conventional pace however it was slow. This was because we wanted to keep the same pace as other BSR's does which is usually quite slow so we had to edit to make sure our scenes wasn't flowing too quickly because our plot was about a slow and depressing story about a kif=d who was once smart who turns out to be an drug addict.
Friday, 20 March 2015
Evaluation Part One
For our film 'Skrew It', the film production was FilmFour. This is because FilmFour is mostly involved in productions towards young people and difficult lifestyles mainly in London which our production is strongly related to. This is so that their main attractions that watch their movies are young people which are their target audience to begin with can be engaged with our production and make it more appealing to our specific target audience. Our target audience is teenagers between the ages of 16 and 24 as this is the perfect audience that would be interested in our movie, as it is aimed at them due to the characters' age. For example, our main character (Fabio or Edward) is 16 years old and our other main character (Omario or Bailee) who is 18 years old and becomes and influence on Fabio who is they younger and smarter student. We had chose this storyline to get some more teenagers to watch our product as they could be interested since they could relate. The ethnicity which we would mostly aim this towards would be white and black teenagers because our main characters are from these backgrounds. The social class that we would mainly want to attract would be lower class people living on benefits and in cheap estates because they are the ones that are most likely to do drugs (D to E class status), but it can attract some people from higher classes such as our main character (Fabio) who comes from an wealthy background. Our film includes genres that fit into the usual BSR setting, drugs and youth corruption. Drugs can be seen in our movie in the cocaine scene which is taken inside the boys tilt and in one of the cubicles to show the dirtiness of their crimes along with youth corruption. This can intrigue teenagers or people who have gone through these experiences and so, get more people to watch our product. The only real inspiration that we got was from the movie trainspotting and fish tank. This is because trainspotting has a big emphasis on drug use, even though it is not cocaine which we are using it is morphine and meth that they use instead which helped us to use cocaine instead of morphine and meth because we didn't want to copy any real life products. We could use Trainspotting to find out about the emotions of characters upon drug use, and try to implement them on our own product and Fish Tank to help us with locations and camera angles we could use to show our main characters more in depth.
Tuesday, 17 February 2015
Week 13 Reflective Blog Post
In the second week of our post-production work, we were in the middle of editing and this week we began to come up with ideas of what our logo would look like for our company name. Our company name was FAM productions which stood for Fabio, Adam and Myles production. Our first initial thoughts was to have FAM on a bird and seeing it fly which we thought was good but not good when we had to relate it to a BSR. So we saw this as an inappropriate logo to use. We used photoshop to help us come up with ideas and to design our logo which had taken up a lot of time.
Friday, 13 February 2015
Week 12 Reflective Blog Post
Now that my group had finished with our filming our opening sequence for "Skrew it". It was time to begin with our post-production work. The first part of our post-production work was to begin to import our clips from our camera onto the macs so we could begin to edit. From this point we started to think of sounds to use, what our credits should look like and how to get rid of some scenes to ensure we meet the 2 minute mark. The was because we were given two minutes to ensure we completed our opening sequence. We used a programme called final Cut Pro to begin our editing process of our opening sequence "Skrew It".
Monday, 9 February 2015
Week 11 Reflective Blog Post
During week 11 this was probably our most productive , we began shooting our new idea for our opening sequence which was to have our two main protagonists taking drugs in the cubicle and not on a table in the corridor which was our original idea. This had allowed us to get a lot of filming done as we could do it in school since that was our main location. This meant that if we did not have a lesson during that period which we didn't, we could use that time to our advantage and get more filming done, something that we did. However, we wanted to do the drug scene first as we thought it would be the hardest to create to a good standard and so, creating it first would give us more time to edit it and possible re-shoot it. Other than the drug scene, we filmed the new opening of the opening sequence which in our opinion looked a lot better as it wasn't just me walking, but instead there were things actually occurring, such as Omario texting me to "Come 4 food". This can intrigue an audience into finding out what 'food' is and so would allow us to keep our audience watching as they would not get bored.
Wednesday, 4 February 2015
Week 10 Reflective Blog Post
This week was one of our most important week yet in our media year because we had created a whole new opening sequence since we thought that the old one was very boring and not showing much of our main character lifestyle and background. Our target for this week was to create an opening sequence that would intrigue our audience and contains some action to not only appeal to our target audience but to ensure that our piece wouldn't be boring to watch for our target audience of 16-24 year olds and to make it something that could make our audience be deterred from watching our film. Our idea is completely new, but based around the same plot that is a teenager who is involved with drugs but who is extremely intelligent and getting the top grades in school. Rather than just having Edward walking outside of his house all the way to the school which we knew was really boring, we decided to jump straight in to the school scenes and film the teenager's desire for cocaine. This is so that the audience understands what type of personality my character has right from the start which could make our audience want to see more. We believe that this idea is much better than our previous idea as it contains more action and is far more interesting for our specific target audience of 16-24 year olds.
Tuesday, 3 February 2015
Week 9 - Reflective Blog Post
This was the week that we came back to school. In this week we began to edit our opening sequence which we had filmed during school days and throughout the christmas holidays. We began our editing by putting in and choosing the scenes we wanted to use for our opening sequence. We managed to get quite a lot done in this week for our editing but we realised that there was room for improvement. We decided to re film our main scene which is of the main character taking the cocaine in the toilets. We decided to re shoot this scene because we wasn't too keen with the original camera techniques so we decided to improve the camera techniques we previously wanted to use.
Week 8 - Reflective Blog Post
In this week we filmed our first few scenes that we were going to use for our opening sequence called Skrew It. We filmed the scene of our main character 'Edward' leaving his house and walking to the school. In this scene we wanted the audience to know that 'Edward' was a posh boy. We did this by using a pan left to right and an establishing shot showing there entire location which was a rich area. What went well for that day was that we had a opening scene for our opening sequence that we could create other scenes relating to those few scenes we filmed that day.
Thursday, 29 January 2015
Week 7 - Reflective blog post
In this week of Media Studies I was very busy. I had to ensure that all my pre - production paperwork was done to a good standard. This pre production paper work consisted of call lists, production schedule, recci and shooting script. All of these paper work helped me and my group to make a opening sequence which relates to the theme BSR which our opening sequence is based on. One of the problems in which I faced this week was me uploading the pictures on my blog for my recci. This was a problem because on all my other blogs most of my pictures which i used did not appear so I had to leave the pictures and just give an explanation for each of the pictures I had used.
Thursday, 8 January 2015
Wednesday, 7 January 2015
Production Schedule
Above is our production schedule for January. As you can see on the 16th we had planned to re do some scenes we weren't happy with. As you can see i have included all the actors we need and what actual scene we are filming. The reason that we area doing it agin because their is a mistake to do with continuity of the camera work which we didn't like so we are improving this scene to make our opening sequin better. In the previous week on the 6th, 7th and 8th of January i had planned to edit my opening sequence with my group which we did. However, we are going to have to edit again on the both to replace the old scene with the the new one.
Week 6 - Reflective blog post
In week 6 of Media I looked at and designed a timeline about the evolution of BSR movies - looking at how they were designed in the 1960s and then moving onto present times. What I saw from this was the evolution of the diversity in characters for example in the 1960s, it was rare to find a black actor to be in a BSR whilst in the present times of 2000-2010 there is a greater diversity as there are black characters, Asian characters, Hispanics and white. Because of this I know that I should have more characters of a larger diversity in my opening sequence to make it as realistic as possible as we are doing an opening sequence for a British social realism film. In my group I have Fabio Fernandes and Myles Glaven who I am doing our own BSR opening sequence with.
Week 5 - Reflective blog post
In week 5 of media studies. I learned about different themes that are used in BSR's such as corruption of youth, drug use, violence, rape and both child and adulthood. These themes will help me when deciding for some more ideas on what I could use to create my own opening sequence. As all of these themes are used often and thus I can look at these movies and gain more ideas. Also, I compared themes between BSR and Hollywood so that I know the difference of things that are used in BSR and in Hollywood movies so that I do not confuse myself and accidentally use something that would be more conventional in a Hollywood movie and not in a BSR. So, this exercise and task had helped me a lot to figure out differences between Hollywood and BSR which will help me in the future. On another blog i have already done a comparison between some films that are a BSR and hollywood and I'm analysing the differences between the two.
Tuesday, 6 January 2015
Editing Techniques
For this task i have to explain what some of the main editing techniques that are used in films and give examples to show what each editing technique looks like and it's effect.
Dissolve - Where the image dissolves away into something else. This is a clip from a hollywood film called Citizen Kane where they use a dissolve transition.
Dissolve - Where the image dissolves away into something else. This is a clip from a hollywood film called Citizen Kane where they use a dissolve transition.
Wipe - A transition that cleans away a scene to move into another. Below is a clip off you tube where it shows what a wipe transition does
Fade In - A slow transition in which the images fades into the screen
Fade out - A slow transition in which the scene slowly fades away from the screen.
Below is a demonstration of how both fade in and fade out is used in a certain scene and how it effects the audience.
Fade out - A slow transition in which the scene slowly fades away from the screen.
Below is a demonstration of how both fade in and fade out is used in a certain scene and how it effects the audience.
Super imposition - To edit something or someone into the scene
Above is a clip of someone's reflection and they used super imposition to put themselves in the scene. When i first saw what a super imposition was i thought that the person init was the actual character.
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