What do you feel you have learnt in the progression from your preliminary task to the full product? Ev7

The task taught me a lot of things about making a short film which I then went on to use in our final film opening. Here are some examples.

Camera work:

In the preliminary task, we had a set storyboard that involved a wide range of camera shots and angles. This meant that we knew exactly what we were doing so that filming was easier as we had a clear vision of what the film would look like. We used this skill in our final film as we knew we had to plan every specific shot and know what we were doing. We used storyboards to do this, and also filmed each shot a number of times at different angles so that we knew for definite that the camerawork would be what we planned if not better.

From our preliminary task we also learnt about different camera angles such as the use of closeups, mid-shots, two shots and the 180 degree rule. We tried to in-cooperate all of these angles and shot types in our feature film opening to make the sequence seem more exciting and to highlight the important features such as facial expression, setting and costume.

In the preliminary task, we used a close up of the characters faces to show they are main focuses of the sequence. This focuses the audience's attention on that specific character as they are the main thing on the screen. We transferred this idea to the short film by using a close up of Courtney's face. We did this to focus the audience's attention to her, making them recognize that she is the important character in the film.

Framing:

Framing of a shot is important as it allows you to show specifically what you choose to in a shot. In our preliminary task we had a problem with framing as our setting was given to us. This meant that for a lot of the filming we had no control over what was in the shot and what wasn't. In order to fix this, we had to rearrange the space we were given so that the table we used was in a good position with the lighting we had.

For our opening sequence, we avoided encountering this problem again by carefully selecting the settings and characters we used. This meant that framing was easier as we could create the specific effect we desired without having other factors in the background such as a pile of tables which we had in the back of  our preliminary task.

Mise en scene:

The mise en scene in our preliminary task was another issue. We did not do enough planning for the sequence and so the characters costumes were just the clothes that they came into school in, they have no props, and the lighting and settings were only what were provided. This meant that we had less control over what was seen on the screen as we did not make enough decisions in relation to this.

In our final piece, we planned as much as we possibly could in relation to costume, props, setting and lighting. This overcame the problem we encountered in our preliminary task as it meant that we controlled everything shown on screen.

Costume:
For example, we made sure that each of the characters are wearing a different costume in each scene by filming on two seperate days. We also made sure that the characters are wearing clothing that suits their stereotype, for example out of fashion "nerdy" clothes for the geeks, hoodies and tracksuits for the chavs and "trendy" clothing for the popular girls.

Setting:
The settings of our film is in a school and at a party. These are typical features of a teen-angst film and so we decided to follow the generic features and show these two settings.

Lighting:
The lighting in the classroom scene is high-key natural lighting to show that it is a normal school day in the daylight. In the party scene the lighting is low-key, with only a small amount of light as at a party the lights are usually quite dim. This also connotes mystery as Danny walks towards Courtney and takes her away from the party. We used this effect as it is then up to the audience to decide what happens next as the movement is ambiguous.

Props:
The props we used are specific to the setting and the characters that possess them, for example, text books for the geeks, cigarettes for the chavs, and a  note being passed around the classroom.This is iconography of a typical classroom and school setting, making it seem more relatable to the audience and also making it fit the stereotype of a classroom.

Mode of address:

In the preliminary task, we only had three lines of dialogue. These were:

Rhiannon: I baked you a pie.
Liz: What flavour?
Rhiannon: Pie flavour.

This is a set of adjacency phrases, used to make a direct and fast conversation between the two characters. The dialogue is short and over quickly, making it seem unrealistic. This is because the speech uses no normal non-fluency features which we use in almost everything we say in real life. The characters also use standard english with no slang or taboo language to address each other, making the conversation seem formal and important.

In our feature film opening sequence, the main character Jessie addresses the audience through use of a voiceover. As we can see the character on screen most of the time, it gives the effect that we are listening to her thoughts and opinions on each of the social groups. The voiceover uses colloquialisms such as "fat cow" and "they all wanted a piece of me" to relate to the audience as they will also use this language. These phrases also show that the character is a teenager as they are using words and phrases associated with that specific age groups. Normal non-fluency features such as pauses and laughter are also used in the voiceover to make her seem more realistic as she is formulating her thoughts at the same pace she would if she was speaking it aloud.

Editing:

In our preliminary task, we learnt to use the 180 degree rule. This means that the camera only stays on one side of the action, as if a line was drawn through the scene. Here is an example.

The arrow shows the line in which the camera must not cross by any means in order for the product to be continuous and make sense. We used this so that the film is continuous, meaning that the characters do not jump from one side of the screen to another. This was one of the main aspects that we had to include in our preliminary task, meaning that we knew how to effectively use this during the filming of the main film. Match on action is another aspect we had to include in the editing of our preliminary task. This is where you can miss out a slight section of the action to make it flow better. For example, when Liz walks through the door, you do not see her open the door from both sides. This makes the action flow more smoothly as there are not large chunks of unnecessary footage to make the scene feel long. We learnt to use this in our main film for example when Courtney walks through the main door to make the action seem more smooth. We used a transition of a heart being drawn on the screen and then dissapearing into the next scene. The heart is in pink, which makes it look more feminine, a typical aspect of teen angst film. In our preliminary task, we used no transitions as it was one simple scene which only required cuts. We decided that to link two scenes together we need to use a transition in order to show that they are on different days.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? Ev6

When creating our film, we used a number of different technologies to enable us to make the best product possible. Here are some examples of the technology we used, how we used it, what I learnt from it and how it benefited our film.

We used mobile phones as they are highly capable of technological convergence. We started by using them to communicate with people both within and outside of our group. This helped us to coordinate and organize prior to our filming day, especially as the main actor we planned to in-cooperate in both scenes was ill on the second filming day. He let us know an hour prior to filming, meaning that we had time to adjust the script accordingly. The phones also had available email apps, giving us the ability to communicate large chunks of information such as scripts to one another in a free and easy way. Other apps available to us were the blogger app, helping us to complete our blogs in any time or place, and social networks on which we carried out audience surveys. We also used mobiles to take photos and send them to one another via email, texting and applications such as whatsapp.


In the editing of our film, we also used laptops. These were useful as they allowed us to move around the school wirelessly and still be able to carry out the same standard of work. They also allowed us to have input to the editing of the film. For example, by taking a laptop into the mac room where the film was being edited, I managed to find images to include in our film such as arrows and edit the title logo, while at the same time having my say in what the film was to look like. This also meant that the other members of my group could have input as to what images and iconography we used without having to constantly move between rooms. Using the laptop saved us time, meaning that we could focus on getting the best media product we could create.

Google was a big help to us in the creation of our film. Rather than just being a search engine, Google has now branched out in a way that means by having one single account you can access more applications than just finding results. We used Google search to find images, both from other films in the same genre, and images that would eventually be used in the final film, for example, the arrows and the dummy in the Baby On Board logo. Google also has an email application, meaning that we could send one another the work that needed to be complete as well as images, links to videos and plans. We also used the Google drive application to create, save and sends documents to one another. This helped us a lot in the planning of our film as we could create plans and scripts no matter which of us are in school and where we all were. This saved us time as it meant that we didn't have to wait until all of us were in school to complete the work. 

 

Another app that is part of having a Google account is blogger. In the making and planning of our film, we used blogger to document our progress. This meant that we had a constant record of what each member of the group had done both as part of the group and individually. Each blog is accessible to everyone else in the class, meaning that if one member of the group was absent, they could go onto someone else's blog and catch up on what they missed.

 

YouTube also has a partnership with YouTube, and so we used this as a platform for the promotion of our film. By putting a video on YouTube, it is then accessible for the rest of the world to view. By adding tags that appeal to our target audience (such as celebrity figures they recognize: Justin Bieber, The Wanted, One Direction) it means that if they search for those words on YouTube, our video will come up in the results. We also used YouTube so that our video was available to be added onto our blogs. This helped us to track our progress and see the differences between each draft and the finalized product.

I used social media networks such as Facebook, twitter and instagram to create audience research surveys and gain feedback for our film. By putting the survey online, it saved time as people could answer it when they felt like it, rather than me having to approach people and ask them the questions. This meant that people could also be anonymous, as the results would be copied and pasted without their name attached. On Facebook alone, I gained 13 responses from people at every end of our target age group. I then used this research to tailor our film to what these people preferred, such as an exciting, relatable and funny opening sequence. Facebook and other social networks helped to complete this as they gave me a quick and easy platform for the survey to be carried out on.

The social media helped to make the film as well as the surveys go global as the worldwide user totals of these sites are:

• Facebook: 1.23 billion users
• Instagram: 150 million users
• Myspace: 36 million users
• Skype: 300 million users
• Snapchat: 26 million users
• Twitter: 243 million active users (monthly)
• Tumblr: 26.3 million monthly users
• Whatsapp: 450 million users
• Youtube: 1 billion users 

How did you attract/address your audience? Ev5

The annotations on this video do not show in full unless the video is played on full screen or in YouTube.

Who would be the audience for your media product? Ev4

The target audience of our film Baby on Board is mainly teenaged girls aged 12-18, mostly white British and living in the UK. They shall be in the income bracket E, meaning they are unemployed and students. We chose this audience as this is the age group and geographical region that the characters within the film are. This means that the audience can relate to the characters as they may be going through similar difficulties within their lives. Here are some examples of the typical people at the lower end of the age bracket for our target audience.

To help make our film more relevant to the audience we specified, I created an audience research survey which I posted on Facebook.

Here are the responses I got:

Demographics:

Age: 12-18 year olds
Gender: Females although may interest males too
Class: Working/middle class people, like to socialise
Race: All races, mailny white British
Georaphical location: London and Cambridge, England

Psychographics:

Interests: Our film is aimed at students who like to go out with friends and enjoy activities such as going to the cinema. The film supports this as it includes groups of friends doing things together as a group. The background music matches what our target audience enjoy, such as pop and acoustic music. This will help to attract our target audience as they may know songs in the film.

Beliefs: We aim to make the audience in our film believe that the story is a true story, and so we tried to make the settings and characters within the film as realistic as possible.

Values: Our film values parties, popularity, alcohol and sex. This will help to target our audience as it means they can relate, since these are things real teenagers value and have interests in.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media and why? Ev3

A production company is the group of people responsible for the physical production of the film. They fund the project as well as ensure that all actors, props and settings are in order ready for the filming. They hold all legal and financial  responsibility behind the film.

The distributor for our film is Artificial Eye. We chose this company as they specialize in distributing low budget films such as The Selfish Giant, which we previously used as a case study. This means that our film will appeal to the company as we have a low budget yet well made film.

We would get finding to create our film from the BFI Film Fund. They recieve £26 million of lottery funds each year to invest into new, low budget films. I chose this company as they also run film festivals such as BFI London Film Festival and BFI London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. Our film could be included in these festivals which also means they will recieve more publicity.

Within the credits, we have named these people:

-Premium Films
-CRC Productions
-Courtney Holdaway (Editor)
-Rachel Patterson (Costume)
-Adam Michaels (Music)
-Chloe Faris (Director)
-Courtney Holdaway (Actor)
-Rachel Patterson (Actor)
-Chloe Faris (Actor)
-Alex Ross (Actor)
-Danny Barnett (Actor)
-Ellen Ryan-Gill (Actor)

We chose to feature these people in the credits as they were vital in the production of the film. For example, the director is credited because he put together what each of the actors portrayed is doing. The music is credited as it is playing at the time, so people link the two together and remember the name. Actors are also credited as their faces are shown on screen, meaning that the audience recognize who they are.

Our film is similar to films such as The Selfish Giant institutionally. This is because both films are British, low budget films aimed towards younger people. The Selfish Giant is also funded and produced by the same companies as we chose for our film, and was shown at similar festivals.

How does your media product represent particular social groups? Ev2

A stereotypical feature of teen angst films is the portrayal of different social groups within a specific age group.

We decided to portray stereotypical characters within our film as we had a scene in a school setting. The different social groups give the scene more depth and more defiant characters. We chose the four main social groups: geeks, chavs, popular girls and sporty boys, as they are the most recognizable.

It also means that within the audience, a person has different groups of people to identify with if they can't relate to the main character. The social groups are also recognized by people who can relate with people from other groups.

We chose to use people we knew who had personalities that could be exaggerated to fit the stereotype of one of the four social groups

Geeks: 

 
The academically perfect student who achieve the highest grades possible but seem to have no life outside of school and homework. In films they are portrayed as unattractive, wearing glasses, braces and clothes that went out of fashion years before the time period the film is set in.

 I played the main geek in our film as I am seen by my friends as academic and quite shy. For the filming, I exaggerated these traits in myself by having a notepad which I continuously worked in as well as wearing stereotypical geek glasses and a t-shirt with digital coding on.This fits with the stereotype in films and the media of a geek as I made myself seem academic and not necessarily the most attractive.

Here is an image of three of the geeks in our film. They are shown doing work which none of the other people in the classroom scene are doing. They fit the general stereotype of geeks as they are all wearing the same style of clothing, even though it is slightly outdated. Taylor's purple jacket is zipped right up to the top, connoting embarrassment or unease within the social environment. He also has facial hair which is not normal within a high-school setting, making him seem undesirable in the context of this film, shown by how far away I am sitting from him.

Chavs

A chav is defined as, "a young lower-class person typified by brash and loutish behavior and the wearing of (real or imitation) designer clothes." They are stereotypically shown as wearing tracksuits and hoodies, smoking and using a vocabulary made up of mostly slang or swear words. Like the geeks, chavs are also seen by most people as socially undesireable, so this is put across in the way that they are represented in the media. Some of the best examples of chavs are shown not in film, but through real life people shown on tv.

Above is the transformation between the people who played the characters in real life and in the film.We got the chav characters in Baby on Board to seem as though they don't really care about school, as this is the typical attitude of real life chavs.This means that the characters fit their natural stereotype as they are acting and behaving with the same mannerism as chavs that the audience will see in the street or their school. Also, there are cigarettes on the table as well as the characters wearing typical "chav" clothing such as leather jackets and hoodies. This also helps the stereotype as by using this mise-en-scene, we are making them seem more realistic to the way chavs are seen in real life.

Popular girls

The popular girls are often seen as the "queen bees" of the school in real life, and so the film industry picked up this stereotype and made it even more real. They are always shown as the pretty girls, loved by everyone in the school and dating all of the "hot" sporty boys in their year and the years above. They run the school and everyone is shown to bow down to them. They often wear stylish, top of the range clothing and  match colour schemes so they look like a tighter group. An example of this in a film is Regina George and the "Plastics" in mean girls.

In our film , we used a few attractive females to play the popular girls, the main one played by Ellen Ryan-Gill.













In the film, the popular girls are all shown wearing the same colour scheme of black and khaki green clothing. This makes them seem like more of a clique, following the stereotype set up in teen angst films where the populars wear the same colours to make them in fashion and very similar. They also have stylish bags on the tables showing that they can afford nice things. Ellen is the person who reads out the note that has been passed around the classroom, showing that she's the most powerful in the class and everyone wants to please her.


Sporty boys

The sporty boys (otherwise known as the "jocks" or "Jack the Lads") are generally shown as the popular boys in the school. An example of this is the Wildcats in High School Musical. In teen angst films, they are shown as the attractive boys in the school, always seen wearing either fashionable, attractive clothes or their school sport team uniform. They usually have props such as footballs, basketballs or other sporting related items as iconography. If they are not shown as sporty, they are normally shown as being the popular boys that all the girls want to date.

 

  




Below are the boys we chose to use for our "popular" male group in our teen angst film. We chose them as they are seen as popular within our school's social groups, and they are also funny and charismatic like the stereotype of the sporty boys. They are also wearing clothes that were fashionable in the time that the film is set, and so this makes them relatable to real life as well as fitting the stereotype of being stylish. They have hairstyles that are all different but roughly the same colours, making them seem different to one another but at the same time a tight group. The group are laughing and joking together, showing that they are a team and all together.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Ev1

Above are 9 screenshots from our film, Baby on Board that show a use of different camera angles, iconography and editing. I shall explain each of my choices in detail.

 

This shot shows a long shot of the main character, played by Courtney, walking past a door. We chose this shot as it shows a typical school setting, with neutral colours of brown and black to contrast with the green of Courtney's jacket and the bright red of her hair. This makes her seem to stand out, showing that she is the main focus of the film. We chose to choose a paper effect on this title to show that the film is set in a school setting, a typical feature of teen angst movies.

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 Once Courtney is off the screen, the camera zooms into this door and the CRC Productions logo appears. The main character walks past the door to connote missed opportunities, or that things have changed from the normal, as she doesn't use the most convenient door to her. We used this as a typical convention of teen angst films as they normally give credit to people important to the creation of the film. In this case, the production company is the most important creator, as they are legally and financially responsible for the film.




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This is a two shot of Courtney, the main character and the teacher. They are sat at quite a distance apart, and there is an empty seat between her and the girl next to her. This shows that people of all ages are judging he, finding her disgusting and repulsive. The christmas decorations represent a passing of time between the opening scene and the party sequence. The word learn is above Courtney's head, connoting that people can learn from the character's mistakes. The classroom is cluttered to show the cluttered lives of teenagers. The writing is in two shades of pink to show girliness, aiming the film towards the target audience.




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This shot shows the title logo of our film on the classroom whiteboard. The whiteboard displays clearly a classroom setting, with daily tasks and a smartboard next to it. This is iconography to the target audience as they would instantly recognize that this is a classroom setting. The whiteboard next to the smart board also shows that the film goes by old school ideals such as using the original whiteboard rather than the new technology. This connotes that the film and the school follow the idea that pregnancy and sex should not occur until after marriage, showing why the people in the school are judging Courtney's character so much.
 


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This shot shows part of the long shot pan around the classroom. At this point, the camera freezes and an arrow appears above Chloe's head while the voiceover explains her character. This shows that she is the character being spoken about, making this clearer to the audience. The arrow is in pink, again targeting the set audience as well as being a generic convention of teen angst films.





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The transition we used to change from the classroom scene to the flashback party sequence was a heart that appeared as if being drawn. then wipes across the screen.This effect shows a feeling of love as the heart is a connotative icon of this emotion. The wipe shows a transition from Courtney's face where she looks sad to a previous emotion of happiness. Danny's character is the first to appear after the wipe, showing his dominance and that he is in Courtney's mind as the first memory of the party.



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This high angle shot of the party shows that Courtney's character is in a weak and vulnerable position. Danny is shown walking towards Courtney from a block, showing that he is of a higher level of power to her. He is seen as dominant and above her.


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This is an extreme close up of Danny taking Courtney's hand. We chose to use this shot as it shows that he has power over her as he is leading the movements. Courtney is wearing bracelets to show that she is very feminine and cares about her appearance and therefore what he thinks of her. She doesn't pull away from him to show that they are in a mutual relationship and she cares about him.


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The final shot is a closeup of Ellen's face. She is looking shocked as Danny has just taken her best friend away from her. Ellen's character throughout the film is a spiteful, hateful girl who doesn't want to be friends with Courtney's character, only ever wanted to be with Danny's. This shot shows this as she looks angry and shocked at the same time. She has blonde hair and is pretty to fit with the teen angst stereotype of the nasty best friend. This also fits the stereotype created in films such as Mean Girls and A Cinderella Story.