Wednesday, 13 May 2009
Monday, 11 May 2009
Project Evaluation
Over the past 4 - 5 months myself, Jack Naylor and Omi Chowdhury have been working on a short 2 minute film for our media project. The film was finalised at approx. 1 minute 50 seconds and focuses heavily on the romantic comedy genre.
The film itself begins by entering the viewer into the film mid - flow in an arguement between our main characters (Jack & Omi) and their characters in their media project, Christopher Looms and Hannah Butler. A simple dip to black is used to enter the first scene, as if to show the lapse of time rather than an abrupt entry via a normal cut. The main purpose of this section of the film is to set the scene and surroundings that the characters are in, and to set the films plot in motion for the viewer. During this scene the camera remains to the rear of the room, showing the characters and props in the room - a film within a film when broken down. After Ms Taberham enters the room and disrupts the boys project, another dip to black with the text "The following day" is presented to singnify a second time lapse to the fllowing day, and the main outlying plot is the discussed by the two main characters in the common room. A mid shot shows both characters as they discuss their school related issues in the busy and noisey common room.
The mid shot continues as the two discuss their media project and its outlying faults as jack is startled and grabs Omi in disbelief. As Omi recovers from his rough handling, Jack asks for his advice on weathr or not he should approach this "fit girl". As Jack summons the courage to approach her (Played by Laura Bramley) several cuts ensue, cutting from Laura seeming to be flirting with Jack in slow motion with very cheesey, porn star - esque music playing in the background. The cuts to Jack are coupled with the normal sounds of the common room, as if to highlight Lauras importance and her overall impressive nature during this section of the film. As Jack gets closer, he shoots her a cheeky wink as if to return her flirtatious gestures. Another cut to Laura shows yet more playful behaviour as she flicks her hair and smiles, seemingly in Jacks direction. The final cut of this scene shows Jack approaching Laura from her perspective in her seat, as the scene enters a slow motion section and shows Jack falling to the ground. Fast 70's disco / techno music plays as the title of the film, "Falling for her" is shown along with a dip to black.
• In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our films underlying idea was that we would represent your typical teenager however with the addition of comedy - Jacks fall being the main highlight of this choice, also relating to the main title of the film. The films main task is to identify how different Omi and Jack really are despite how close they are friendship wise. Jack being the conforming, hard working "geeky" character with very little social reputation, whereas Omi is the quiet, yet very strong and confident character who wiould take the audience by surprise on numerous occasions. This sort of opposites attract nature of our characters makes them compliment each other really well and makes for some excellent screenplay, with ones downfalls being corrected by the other, such as Jacks inability to be socially outgoing and with Omi talking him into approaching 'the girl'. We have tried to keep the nature of the sitautions that the characters would be involved in as natural as possible, so no gun fights or robots, just things that could happen to your typical teenager during a normal day, and this is a key drawing point for our audience to our film.
This however, could have a negative impact on our audience draw as the lower - aged teens (13 - 15, for example) may not want such serious and regular humour, they may want something with a Disney like twist to hold their interest for longer.
The film itself begins by entering the viewer into the film mid - flow in an arguement between our main characters (Jack & Omi) and their characters in their media project, Christopher Looms and Hannah Butler. A simple dip to black is used to enter the first scene, as if to show the lapse of time rather than an abrupt entry via a normal cut. The main purpose of this section of the film is to set the scene and surroundings that the characters are in, and to set the films plot in motion for the viewer. During this scene the camera remains to the rear of the room, showing the characters and props in the room - a film within a film when broken down. After Ms Taberham enters the room and disrupts the boys project, another dip to black with the text "The following day" is presented to singnify a second time lapse to the fllowing day, and the main outlying plot is the discussed by the two main characters in the common room. A mid shot shows both characters as they discuss their school related issues in the busy and noisey common room.
The mid shot continues as the two discuss their media project and its outlying faults as jack is startled and grabs Omi in disbelief. As Omi recovers from his rough handling, Jack asks for his advice on weathr or not he should approach this "fit girl". As Jack summons the courage to approach her (Played by Laura Bramley) several cuts ensue, cutting from Laura seeming to be flirting with Jack in slow motion with very cheesey, porn star - esque music playing in the background. The cuts to Jack are coupled with the normal sounds of the common room, as if to highlight Lauras importance and her overall impressive nature during this section of the film. As Jack gets closer, he shoots her a cheeky wink as if to return her flirtatious gestures. Another cut to Laura shows yet more playful behaviour as she flicks her hair and smiles, seemingly in Jacks direction. The final cut of this scene shows Jack approaching Laura from her perspective in her seat, as the scene enters a slow motion section and shows Jack falling to the ground. Fast 70's disco / techno music plays as the title of the film, "Falling for her" is shown along with a dip to black.
• In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our films underlying idea was that we would represent your typical teenager however with the addition of comedy - Jacks fall being the main highlight of this choice, also relating to the main title of the film. The films main task is to identify how different Omi and Jack really are despite how close they are friendship wise. Jack being the conforming, hard working "geeky" character with very little social reputation, whereas Omi is the quiet, yet very strong and confident character who wiould take the audience by surprise on numerous occasions. This sort of opposites attract nature of our characters makes them compliment each other really well and makes for some excellent screenplay, with ones downfalls being corrected by the other, such as Jacks inability to be socially outgoing and with Omi talking him into approaching 'the girl'. We have tried to keep the nature of the sitautions that the characters would be involved in as natural as possible, so no gun fights or robots, just things that could happen to your typical teenager during a normal day, and this is a key drawing point for our audience to our film.
This however, could have a negative impact on our audience draw as the lower - aged teens (13 - 15, for example) may not want such serious and regular humour, they may want something with a Disney like twist to hold their interest for longer.
- How does your media project represent particular social groups?
The main social group our film represents is the middle class, (with some exceptions) socially available teenager. The underlying plot of our film is based around teenage life - relationship troubles and college work. This is backed up by our character selection, all of whom are between the age of 17 - 19. Also, the clothing selection reflect their middle class, relaxed nature - in one scene Jack is wearing a smart football jersey with track suit bottoms and a smart pair of trainers - a very typical teenage outfit. In another scene, Omi is pictured wearing a sock head hat, which is a very popular style choice amongst teenage males.
- What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
Before we started to actually film our media project, we each had research roles - the majority of our research progress was made by Jack, however, as he looked up films from our genre choice, romantic comedy, and did in depth research on a number of them. One thing that was apparent was that the main successful films from our genre were distributed by Universal Pictures (One example is the film 'Love actually' that was released in 2003 and to date has made a staggering $246,942,107), and thus if our film was to make it to production / big screen level, Universal Pictures would be my choice for film studio to use to produce our film. The film Love Actually may be seen as a more mature film, however I believe that our films underlying plot is geared towards being very true to life and 'grown up'. I believe that if a poster advertising our film was released that pictured our main characters, maybe with girl 'x' between them both, it would attract our audience regardless of the production company, and with Universal pictures sterling reputation it would be of a high standard.
- Who would be the audience for your media product?
The audience for our media production would typically be males and females between the age of 15 and 20. This may seem like a small target band, however with any film there are always people older / younger who watch films that are not aimed at them anyway. However with our films main concept being around teenage life and being filmed within a 6th form college, I believe that the people who could relate to this the most would be around the age 18 mark - well within our target band.
- How did you attract / address your audience?
The main attraction for our audience to our film is its plot, setting and character base. The plot, for example, is one based on coursework and relationships - something our target audience can deffinately relate to as at that age (15 - 20) they would be going through the same day to day routine as our characters. The setting was a major part in our films audience draw - our film would have seemed watery and poorly planned if we had have used our homes or a P.E hall as a main setting - using the common room and a classroom just highlights our films main structure - school life. Our character base is very typical of todays teenager, so characters that our audience can relate to and enjoy watching on screen.
- What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
I, myself, am very computer literate, however during the main filming of our product I was learning as I went along - as I wasnt actually in the film, I took responsibility for the majority (85%) of editing, filming and directing. We worked as a team, each offering strengths in the light of someone elses weakenesses - for example, if I ran into a dry spot deciding on the plot, I could very easily ask Jack or Omi for ideas to progress our film. When they were struggling editing a clip in Premier Elements, I could help out there. Using the cameras was tricky at first, especially with tripod placement, however after a few filming sessions we all were able to setup quickly and efficiently.
The main program use during this project was Adobe Premier Elements, a program that I had personally not used up until this point. I became quickly familiar with the program, as did my teammates Jakc and Omi - however with them being filmed and deciding on new plot ideas pretty much each lesson, the majority of editing was handed over to me, a task that I really enjoyed and feel that I showed my strengths in. During our final week of editing and final tweaks, however, I was unable to go to school due to illness (got the flu, not swine before you ask) and thus Jack and Omi had to put the final few edits into the film and add the music as well as burning it to a disc. Upon my return I watched the final edit and was very impressed at the two's competence in editing and their music selection as it complemented the film extremely well.
Thursday, 7 May 2009
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