Thursday, 27 March 2014

Evaluation question 5


In addition we had used other ways to get in touch with the audience for example we had made tours around schools and colleges; target audience, to keep them aware about the film and they could keep people around them notified. Nevertheless, we approached the audience through the social networking sites Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and MySpace. 

Wednesday, 26 March 2014

Evaluation Question 2.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?


Definitions:
Representation- The action of speaking or acting on behalf of someone or the state of being so represented.
Social Groups- People sharing some social relation
Media Product- A text that has been designed to be consumed by an audience, Eg: Movie.

There are four different Factors which effect the presentation of a representation in a movie: 
Mise En Scene- The arrangement of scenery and stage properties in a film.
Sound
Camera Work
Setting- The place or type of surrounding where something is positioned or an event takes place. 

Firstly our group tends to represent the expected or stereotyped social group from teenagers which is being a criminal. Our group member Shah Kamaly was the person who was playing this role and we have got him ready for this stereotype in a particular way. 


 As we can see that he is wearing clothes which is fully 'Blacked-out' to portray the negativity and give the understanding that he is not a character which is to be a role model(Mise En Scene). The Camera is set to give a long shot so we could see that he is exchanging drugs with another member of the college. The setting was chosen to be outside as it represents the characters personality; he doesn't prefer being inside the college doing some work, however he is outside selling drugs. The music behind does also relate as its a 'ghetto' soundtrack. we was inspired from the Teen movie Adulthood where this type of characters did exist and it does relate to our current era. 



Secondly we did have another character which does relate to the Criminal and we decided to make this character a female. We saw that it is too mainstream for a male character to be in a negative role and be the 'Bad Guy' however, its not expected for a girl to be a bully and we have done it. We decided to make this person as the bully as it challenges the stereotype that girls are naive and soft like in other teen movies for example, Breakfast Club and its really unconventional for a girl with a hijabi to be bullying someone. Her Mise En Scene is well used to show her negativity as her skirt is ripped and she wears a 'hoodie' to be the 'bad girl'. She doesn't have much screen time in the opening to make the audience interested however, we did choose to show her with the other negative character which is the criminal to show the similarities these two characters.

These are now more expected at the current era because, we see both sexes being convicted with crimes and now in films we do expect some females being involved in gangs for example the Teen movie KidultHood.  

Evaluation Question 6.

Monday, 24 March 2014

Evaluation Q1;

Evaluation Q2;

Evaluation Q3;




The idents above are the ones we created and they are currently in use in our teen movie opening. We created these idents using the software Motion. Looking at the Artificial Eye ident our ident is not very different because it is about the same length and we also have a background sound to go with the introduction of the ident. We wanted our ident to be a self produced one because we couldn't find a suitable distribution company to distribute our film. This meant that we had to fund for the advertising and the marketing of our film ourselves without the help of a company, our company compared to Artificial Eye also a small distribution company is way smaller than the Artificial Eye because we are a newly based company which has started from scratch.


Evaluation Q4;

Evaluation Q5;

Evaluation Q6;

Evaluation Q7;

Evaluation - Question 1

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


 Conventions used in film openings; 
Titles
Travelling and Arriving (Mainly in Teen Films)
Introduction to Stereotyped Characters (Also in Teen Films)
Narrative of the Film
Mise-en-Scene Related to Genre
Use of Music that Relate to the Images



This Timetoast shows the amount of different conventions used in the film - 'The Roommate.'
This film contains conventions used in majority of films for example; Travelling and Arriving - to show each character arriving to the location, which is normally used in majority teen films.  Titles - used to introduce the production company by showing their ident, then the film title, then the actors, this can be shown in order of importance or the main character to the character with the least amount of appearences or the first actors name can be the one who has been paid the most later on introducing the guy in charge of Casting, Costume, Music and then the Executive Producer, Producer, Writer and Directer - The Directer is always last as he is the most important out of everyone and its also a way of people to remember who he is cause his name was last. Mise-en-Scene related to Genre.

Here is the opening scene of our final film;



We have used many Forms and Conventions in our final film 'Life@Candi' - Travelling and Arriving as been used to show how each character arrives to college.. The Jock arrives by train, The Joker arrives by bus, The Criminal is already there and The Bully walks each arrive in that order. It shows that the Joker and Bully are from deprived backgrounds and that the Jock isnt as he arrives by train. It is also in order of positivity, the Jock is the most positive character, then the Joker and so on..
Titles have also been used - Production Company Ident, Characters and then Director at the end.
As well as using many forms and conventions, we have challenged one of the conventions - the Bully which is my character. As you can see my character is a hijabi girl who has been portrayed to be the Bully, this is unconventional as you would never see a bully who is a girl and wearing a scarf. 

Sunday, 23 March 2014

Evaluation - Q1

This is our film...


This is another teen movie…


Evaluation - Question 2

Evaluation - Q2

Evaluation - Q3

In our film we created 2 different types of production/distributing companies which are 'Smokey Productions' and 'Thunder Productions' 




Our production companies are independent companies who only distribute films that are targeted to a niche audience. They mainly produce small films that are not global they are more national for example like Kidulthood and Adulthood, they were targeted at a niche audience and were national films.

They are a small independent company who help distribute films for people that need help and cannot do it by themselves. They do the marketing for the people who produced the film so in that way they help throughout the distributing and marketing, this is much cheaper than global distributors and the film makers receive more profits than if they were to be with a global distributor...They market through social networking sites for example Twitter and Facebook.

                                  


Another way they distribute is through YouTube by uploading the trailer onto the website for people to view it and grow interest in it to go and watch it in the cinemas.

Another marketing strategy is that they organise interviews on tv shows, the radio and magazines and articles for the actors, so this builds up reputation for the film as well as the characters.


We think that Optimum Releasing aka StudioCanalUK would be best suited for distributing our film ‘Life@Candi’ as they have previously distributed films like ours for example Attack the Block.
Attack the Block is a mixed genre movie mainly based around crime and comedy, which is exactly why we picked this distribution company as it links to our film 'Life@Candi'. This also helps us to attract the target audience that we want - young adults.



<-- Gang Members in the film Attack the Block









We have decided to go with this indie distributor as they market and advertise films the exact way our distribution companies do - we didn't go for a global distribution company as our budget was very small and our audience was niche and we also thought that we wouldn't be able to work as well with a big company as they have more demands than us. 






















Evaluation - Q4

The audience for our film is the youth and teens of our generation. We did not go for mainstreme as our film will only appeal to certain target audience which is why we decided the audience for our film would be niche.

An example of this is...

Although this example is a male, our film is not just directed at males also females as one of our characters is a female but playing the role of a bully which is unconventional. 

This here is a teen who attends the college where we filmed our film opening, 17 years old and a student.

This shows the age and gender

This just shows his lifestyle and what he gets up to

This shows that his interest and likes in film is similar to our film as we based our film on the films Kidulthood and Adulthood. 
 Our subgenres were a hybrid of Crime, Comedy and Realism... these two films are an excellent example of these subgenres that is why they influenced us. The audience for these types of films and our film are teenagers both male and female because they can relate to the characters within the film becuase of the realism.



Teen movies are generally watched by teens however are sometimes watched by the elder generation for them to have in insight to teenage life as they were once teens.

Our USP is one of our characters which is the bully who is played by a female, this is very unconventional and challenges the sterotype view of girls in general. 




Evaluation - Question 4

 Who Would Be the Audience for your media product?

Teen Movies are targeted at both young males and females. These are seen through the stereotypes portrayed – Males are mainly attracted to the ‘Popular Girl’ as she is displayed to be tarty, bitchy and sporty – cheerleading. Whereas, Females are attracted to the ‘Popular Guy’ known as the ‘Rebel’ as he is displayed to be troublesome and flirty which entices the girls even more.

Initially, the target audience for our media product would be teenage boys aged 13 to 18. But our film product can also appeal to a wider-audience such as adults as they might like to explore and find out what really goes on in a sixth form college and in a teens life.
Here is a perfect example of our film’s targeted audience: 




 He has liked films from the past such as Kidulthood, Adulthood and Anuvahood which also relate to our film as they are from the same genre -  Crime.









Our film product’s specific target audience based on its USP would be Muslim teenage girls who wear and not wear a hijab, as the USP of our film product is my character - ‘The Bully.’ A bully who isn’t a normal conventional bully but is a bully who also happens to wear a hijab. This would appeal to Muslim teenage girls as they would want to know what happens next and the story behind my character.
You can tell that I'm the bully as in the final film I am wearing a hoodie with ripped up clothing and I'm walking like a boy.




Evaluation - Question 5


Q5 – How did you attract/address your audience?

We showed our film to the class, as they counted as our perfect target audience and their feedback was positive – we reached our target!
-       
       Our unique selling point appealed to them more as it left them wondering and wanting to know what was going to happen next, why the bully was bullying the joker and what was the story behind the unconventional bully as well as every other character.
-   We asked if they would go and see it in cinemas and they said yes as the opening scene of our film seemed quick and snappy which drew them to the film even more. We also found that the soundtrack used 'I Get Money - 50 Cent' also bought the perfect target audience in as it is a grime track which suits our storyline. 
    The audience also said that our opening reminded them of the film Kidulthood which made us happy as were able to reach out to our target audience. 


     <-- A short gif showing a clip from kidulthood.









    
      
    One the day of the cinema screening, I didn't have time after to interview the audience to see what they thought about the opening sequence but I did record the screening and what the audience's reaction was whilst watching it .. 





Evaluation - Q5



Evaluation - Q6

Evaluation - Question 7

Saturday, 22 March 2014

Evaluation - Q7

In my prelim I did not have any experience with working with the technology that I worked with, it was a new experience for me, I did do media in school however a-level media is completely different and all the equipment and technology are more advanced. As I was new to the equipment and technology I was learning how to use everything and working out what everything does.

In the prelim we were given a script and we had to act it out, in my group we had a very short script, we did not need to make a storyboard we just made it without a storyboard. We planned what camera shots and angles we were going to use and we used very basic shots such as low angles, high angles, midshots and over the shoulder shots. As dialogue was already given to us we didn't really need to do much. We all learned how to use the digital camera and we took turns on filiming, I mainly filmed which enabled me to get used to the camera.

We didn't really concentrate on mise en scene becuase that was not our main priority however we did decide to do it in a classroom so the location was a classroom, the lighting was neutral, there were no costumes and we did decide to use props such as the table and papers.

The editing process took us a bit of time as this was the first time we all used final cut pro, we managed to join the clips together and form the prelim, although it lacks quality this was good for our first time.

***

In my actual film we had to plan everything from the title, narrative, sub genres, locations, mise en scene, camera angles/shots, storyboarding, sound, a production schedule, target audience and so on... This was independant group work so as a group we had to do everything by ourselves and come up with everything.

Plan...





Location...



Sub genre...




Mise en scene...




Storyboard...









In our film we added titles which were at the beginning and our own sound we had to find from soundcloud that played throught our whole opening. We also took turns within the group to edit our work and everyone played a major part.

If you were to compare my prelim to my final film, my final film is better in every single way, planning, storyboarding, camera work and skills, mise en scene, setting, location, props, costumes, lighting, editing and so on...

The quality in my final film is way better than my prelim as my prelim lacked so much quality and my final film looked and sounded so much more better in every aspect.

We used a variety of shots and angles in the final film whereas in the prelim we only stuck to a few, and you can see this if you were to compare it.

Our control of the camera was better in the final film, the quality of editing was a lot better all the clips seemed continuous and smooth.

Overall my final film was completely better than my prelim.

***

I learned a lot from doing both productions, I have also developed a lot of new skills that could come into use in future. I have learned how to use new softwares/programmes which could come in handy if I was to do another production, I learned how to use new technologies such as Blogger, Soundcloud, Creative commons, HandBrake, Final cut pro, Motion, Digital camera's, Flip camera's, Camtasia, Prezi, Mac packages and so on… All of these technologies have either helped me in my research, planning, editing and filming; so they have helped me a lot, most of them I have never used before but now I know how to use them properly and I know what they all do.

Thursday, 20 March 2014

Question 4. Evaluation

Q4. Who Would be the audience for your media product? 



The audience for our film is targeted for the teenagers and youths at the age between 13-19. This is because, our film 'Life@CandI' does is based and related to the current era and generation, so it may not be found really interesting or amusing for older people. Our film would be Favorited by college students as it would relate to their everyday life. 

In addition, the film is not specifically gender targeted it would serve the interest of both males and females. Even though it involves  masculine genre's such as crime and realism it does have female characters; which one of them being the bully (

as one of the main characters)- which could be interesting as its unconventional and it rejects the stereotype of women being 'naive' and 'weak'.


Here is an example of a college student which would prefer to watch our film and also recommend it to others.







He attends to the college where our filming took place.




 He Tends to watch and like the films which we can relate to our own film.



Our USP is one of our main characters which is the bully who is acted by a Muslim female, It is unconventional because it challenges the female stereotypes and she wears a hi-jab so she goes against her beliefs and her religions rules.

Wednesday, 12 March 2014

The Opening of Our FIlm

Our film opening is inspired by the film Breakfest Club because, similarily like breakfest club we have shots of the locations which the films actual setting is which is the college that the characters attend to. Firstly, it starts with the labels and the companies which we are sponsored by the the credits come together with the name of the characters and producers. After, it carrys on with showing how the jock gets to college which is by taking the tube. we have decided to use the jock to be the first character which is introduced because, he is the most innocent or ideal person out of the 4 characters, as the joker is a silly character and the bully and criminal is also not a good role model. The character who played the role as the bully wasn't shown much or didn't have muhc screen time, this was done to make the audience to think about who this person could be and why she is s bully as she doesn't look like one. This helps the audience understand some kind of comedy is waiting for them because, it would be funny for that person to be bullying someone. The joker uses the public bus to get to college as its the most ideal way of him to communicate and socialise with people so he could joke around and etc. The crimnial lives local to the college as its a ghetto area; a place where he does the illegal acts

Skills Learnt

I have recently just learnt how to use Motion…





I used this to create the Ident's for our film, as this was the first time using a programme like this I was struggling at first but then I learned what to do.

This is toolbar I used to create the ident, this toolbar has everything in it and I went through everything to check out what everything was… then I used to ones that appealed to me the most.


This is how I changed the font and the styling, the animation and colours.


I learnt a lot of things by using Motion and now I know how to use it so I if in the future I was to use it I wouldn't struggle neither will I need assistance from a teacher. 







Changes To The Rough Cut

From the feedback we were given, we made a few differences such as making it clearer for the audience to understand who each character is and how they are… we made the clips shorter because before it was slightly long and boring, so we made it quick and snappy so you can stay alert, we changed the structure of it to give it more of a rhythm…

We have made all these changes and it looks much more better than our rough cut.

What i have learn't from editing


Ident

Mirkan and I made the two idents and logos for them in the last lesson, the software we used was called  Motion… we tried out different tools to make the ident, it took us quite some time to get used to using this software as it was the first time we used something like this. We finally ended up making the two and this is how they look.



The New Skills I have Learn't

I have learn't a lot of new skills while producing our product, as I contributed to everything that has been produced. One of the new software's I learn't to use was Prezi, Prezi is a software just like Microsoft Powerpoint, where you create Slides and write about what ever you want to show the the slides, but Prezi has a different layout which takes time to adapt to well at least it took me some time to adapt to. Another software I learn't how to use was 'Motion', I used motion with a fellow member of my group to create the idents for our film. Finally, the last software I learn't to use was 'Final Cut Pro'. 'Final Cut Pro' became the main software for producing our product because it was the only system on the Mac that was capable of putting our shots together for our film.


Motion:


Final Cut Pro:

Rough Cut

Making the Ident

Today we made a ident for our film using the software 'Motion'. When we first started using the software we were really confused in how to do the things we wanted, so we got the assistance of our teacher. Getting assistance from our teacher helped us understand the software a bit more, to the point where we didn't need help as much as we needed it at the start. After learning to use the software we had to choose the name of our ident and our decision was to use  'Thunder Productions' as the name for the ident. I say decision but it was more me that really wanted the name to be 'Thunder' because I thought it was an interesting name and it was a name no-one had used before, so there were no problems with copyright.


Wednesday, 5 March 2014

What i have done for editing today



Pictures

These are a few pictures of me acting in the film playing my role of a criminal… I am a stereotypical criminal selling drugs dressed in all black wearing a hoody and other aspects that are conventional for my character…

This is me selling drugs to my friend in the film


This is me walking away from the drug exchange


This is me smoking and waiting for someone to come and buy drugs off me, I quite like this shot as it is a low angle and I'm at the bottom corner of the frame.


This is another drug exchange 

What I Learnt

Throughout the process of editing I learnt a lot of things such as… how to put clips together, how to turn the sound off the clips so it doesn't over lap with the music…


Also fade out for the clips and music…



Overall what I have learnt will benefit me in the future with other projects or if I wanted to do one myself I now know what to do.

The Skills I Developed While Filming,

While we were filming the opening of our film I was also involved in the recording certain scenes. This mean't I had to get to get to grips with the camera quickly and had to learn how to use the camera because I had to film at the highest standard possible, as our film had to look good in every scene. In addition I learn't that I had a very still hand which made recordings easy and perfect, which mean't I didn't need the assistance of a tripod.

Music change

Today we decided that the music we chose for our film was not very suitable so we changed it to something that best suited our genre of film which was comedy, crime and realism. We felt that the song we picked was very suitable to our films genre because it was a instrumental from one of 50 Cent's songs,which of course was copyright free as we downloaded it from Soundcloud. Furthermore, the hook 'I get Money', used in the instrumental, links to the criminal in our film as he makes his revenue from selling drugs.