Monday, 26 April 2010
Thursday, 1 April 2010
Wednesday, 31 March 2010
Main Task- Behind Closed Doors This is WRONG. the Final Cut editing hasn't uploaded :(
Here is our finished product: Behind Closed Doors.
Thursday, 25 March 2010
Audience Feedback
In order to gain some feedback about our film and ancillery texts from our audience we created a survey using www.surveymonkey.com
This is the survey we created:
Click here to take survey
We then made a powerpoint that explains the feedback we recieved:
http://www.slideshare.net/LaurenDee/audience-evaluation-powerpoint
This is the survey we created:
Click here to take survey
We then made a powerpoint that explains the feedback we recieved:
Audience Evaluation Powerpoint
View more presentations from LaurenDee.
http://www.slideshare.net/LaurenDee/audience-evaluation-powerpoint
Tuesday, 2 March 2010
Evaluation of our Production
In what ways does your media product use or challenge the conventions of real media products?
After watching our short film we saw that we had used many of the main conventions of filming, making our film very similar to real media products. For example, as our film was not allowed to exceed 5 minutes in length we had to rely on ways of communicating the nature of our characters personality without the use of lots of dialogue. We therefore used the stereotypical filming convention of putting a low angled shot on the more powerful and authoritative figures and a high angle shot of the vulnerable, weaker ones. This is a common feature of many real media products, particularly films and TV drama as it is a key element of characterisation; if the viewer finds themselves looking up at a main character they are immediately aware that this is a person of high strength/status/importance. Therefore in our film we used a low angle shot on the poorer girls Dad and a high angle on the girl to show the power and strength the Dad possessed and the fear that he invoked in her. Similarly we also used many long shots in our film, particularly when the poorer girl was in shot. This is because the use of long shots is useful when exploring the issue of social circumstance as it places a slight emphasis not only on the character in the shot, but also their surroundings. For example, in our film when the poorer girl is walking home we used a long shot to show that she was getting off a bus and another one when she was preparing food in her kitchen to show the shabby condition of her house in the background; this communicated the idea that she was of a low social class. Other filming conventions we used include shot-reverse-shot (where we get alternate shots of each character as they have a conversation) and match on action (where an action of a character starts in one shot and continues in another). Examples of these include the conversation’s each girl has with her parent and the scene where the poorer girl picks up the picture of her mum in one shot and then carries it to the sofa in the next. The final filming convention that I am going to discuss is our decision to include studio and parallel sound. The studio sound we used was the poor girls monologue as she holds the picture of her dead Mum; because there was so much distracting noise in the background of the room we were filming it in we decided to record the monologue separately and play it over the top of the live action, in order to make sure there was no distracting the audience from the anguish that the girl is feeling, as they will clearly be able to hear our actors emotions. The parallel sound occurs when the poorer girl is walking home; the soundtrack begins to play as the girl is at the bus stop and then the songs pace quickens as the scene changes and the girl starts walking, thus the speed of the song matches the movement of the character. It also happens when the wealthy girl comes in from school, the soundtrack goes from being non-diagetic to diagetic, by coming out of the radio in her kitchen, which the girl then turns off; again this shows an example of the sound matching the action on screen. By using typical aspects of media such as this in our film we have ensured that our short film is very similar and shares similar visual and audio conventions to that of real media products.
However when it comes to narrative conventions, our film both uses and challenges certain aspects. After watching our finished film we decided that it fit into the genre of a drama, as it deals with serious issues (grief, financial strain, child abuse), realistic characters (teenage girls and their parents), realistic places (working class area) and a strong emphasis on character interaction and development (the relationships between the two girls and their parents). McConnell’s idea of the five genres particularly helped us in reaching this decision as he describes the melodrama in terms of the antagonist being trapped in the institutionalized state - which in our films case is the family; the poor girl being stuck with her father. However our narrative goes against the conventions of Schatz’s idea of a melodrama in which the hero’s personal antagonisms are resolved. Our film does not end with a resolution, instead it just shows the poor girl being hit by her Dad and calling her friend up afterwards for some support (which she doesn’t get as her friend does not answer the phone). Therefore our film does not stick to this particular aspect of the drama genre, rather it challenges it as there is no type of resolution at the end; the character is actually in a worse position than she was at the start. This idea of ending the film on the climax of the story is a convention of some dramas though, as it serves to leave the audience with a lasting impression on the serious and dramatic issue that our film addresses – child abuse and problematic relationships.
Finally, in relation to critical perspectives our film does adhere to some of the major ideas that are frequently used in many real media product. For example our film draws on Levi-Strauss’ idea of binary opposites – the inclusion of 2 characters, a protagonist and an antagonist, who are opposite in most characteristics, most commonly in films this is the hero and the villain. In our film we have the young poor girl who is the antagonist; she is the innocent character with whom the audience sympathise. In contrast we then have her abusive father – the typical villain of the film. Another critical perspective that influenced our film and makes it similar to real media products is postmodernism, in particular the theories of Baudrillard. When researching and planning our film around our stimulus of a crisis we were influenced by Baudrillards stress on the importance of signs and symbols in modern society, and how influential they are in the smooth running of society. In our film the symbol we focused on was that of money. Baudrillard would argue that money is merely a worthless symbol, and that it is just the value that we associate with it that makes it so important. In our film we reflect this idea as we show the contrast in two girls lives; one of the girls has plenty of money whilst the other doesn’t have much. Our film shows how different the quality of life is for the two girls, with the poorer girl having a much more depressing and deprived life, thus conveying that money is an extremely valuable symbol, not just in terms of finance, but the happiness it brings to those who have lots. On the other hand, there is a key convention of real media products, in particular those belonging to the genre of drama, which our film does not adhere to. This is Tordorovs idea of there being a state of equilibrium, disequilibrium, and then equilibrium during the film/narrative; the theory that the film should start with everything in order, then an event should upset that order and finally it returns to restored order. After researching different TV and film dramas we saw that this was usually the case (except for soaps as they were long running, therefore the drama must continue). However in our film the story does begin with an element of order, but at the end the we see a shot of the poor girl getting hit by her dad; the film finishes with no restored order or resolution.
After watching our short film we saw that we had used many of the main conventions of filming, making our film very similar to real media products. For example, as our film was not allowed to exceed 5 minutes in length we had to rely on ways of communicating the nature of our characters personality without the use of lots of dialogue. We therefore used the stereotypical filming convention of putting a low angled shot on the more powerful and authoritative figures and a high angle shot of the vulnerable, weaker ones. This is a common feature of many real media products, particularly films and TV drama as it is a key element of characterisation; if the viewer finds themselves looking up at a main character they are immediately aware that this is a person of high strength/status/importance. Therefore in our film we used a low angle shot on the poorer girls Dad and a high angle on the girl to show the power and strength the Dad possessed and the fear that he invoked in her. Similarly we also used many long shots in our film, particularly when the poorer girl was in shot. This is because the use of long shots is useful when exploring the issue of social circumstance as it places a slight emphasis not only on the character in the shot, but also their surroundings. For example, in our film when the poorer girl is walking home we used a long shot to show that she was getting off a bus and another one when she was preparing food in her kitchen to show the shabby condition of her house in the background; this communicated the idea that she was of a low social class. Other filming conventions we used include shot-reverse-shot (where we get alternate shots of each character as they have a conversation) and match on action (where an action of a character starts in one shot and continues in another). Examples of these include the conversation’s each girl has with her parent and the scene where the poorer girl picks up the picture of her mum in one shot and then carries it to the sofa in the next. The final filming convention that I am going to discuss is our decision to include studio and parallel sound. The studio sound we used was the poor girls monologue as she holds the picture of her dead Mum; because there was so much distracting noise in the background of the room we were filming it in we decided to record the monologue separately and play it over the top of the live action, in order to make sure there was no distracting the audience from the anguish that the girl is feeling, as they will clearly be able to hear our actors emotions. The parallel sound occurs when the poorer girl is walking home; the soundtrack begins to play as the girl is at the bus stop and then the songs pace quickens as the scene changes and the girl starts walking, thus the speed of the song matches the movement of the character. It also happens when the wealthy girl comes in from school, the soundtrack goes from being non-diagetic to diagetic, by coming out of the radio in her kitchen, which the girl then turns off; again this shows an example of the sound matching the action on screen. By using typical aspects of media such as this in our film we have ensured that our short film is very similar and shares similar visual and audio conventions to that of real media products.
However when it comes to narrative conventions, our film both uses and challenges certain aspects. After watching our finished film we decided that it fit into the genre of a drama, as it deals with serious issues (grief, financial strain, child abuse), realistic characters (teenage girls and their parents), realistic places (working class area) and a strong emphasis on character interaction and development (the relationships between the two girls and their parents). McConnell’s idea of the five genres particularly helped us in reaching this decision as he describes the melodrama in terms of the antagonist being trapped in the institutionalized state - which in our films case is the family; the poor girl being stuck with her father. However our narrative goes against the conventions of Schatz’s idea of a melodrama in which the hero’s personal antagonisms are resolved. Our film does not end with a resolution, instead it just shows the poor girl being hit by her Dad and calling her friend up afterwards for some support (which she doesn’t get as her friend does not answer the phone). Therefore our film does not stick to this particular aspect of the drama genre, rather it challenges it as there is no type of resolution at the end; the character is actually in a worse position than she was at the start. This idea of ending the film on the climax of the story is a convention of some dramas though, as it serves to leave the audience with a lasting impression on the serious and dramatic issue that our film addresses – child abuse and problematic relationships.
Finally, in relation to critical perspectives our film does adhere to some of the major ideas that are frequently used in many real media product. For example our film draws on Levi-Strauss’ idea of binary opposites – the inclusion of 2 characters, a protagonist and an antagonist, who are opposite in most characteristics, most commonly in films this is the hero and the villain. In our film we have the young poor girl who is the antagonist; she is the innocent character with whom the audience sympathise. In contrast we then have her abusive father – the typical villain of the film. Another critical perspective that influenced our film and makes it similar to real media products is postmodernism, in particular the theories of Baudrillard. When researching and planning our film around our stimulus of a crisis we were influenced by Baudrillards stress on the importance of signs and symbols in modern society, and how influential they are in the smooth running of society. In our film the symbol we focused on was that of money. Baudrillard would argue that money is merely a worthless symbol, and that it is just the value that we associate with it that makes it so important. In our film we reflect this idea as we show the contrast in two girls lives; one of the girls has plenty of money whilst the other doesn’t have much. Our film shows how different the quality of life is for the two girls, with the poorer girl having a much more depressing and deprived life, thus conveying that money is an extremely valuable symbol, not just in terms of finance, but the happiness it brings to those who have lots. On the other hand, there is a key convention of real media products, in particular those belonging to the genre of drama, which our film does not adhere to. This is Tordorovs idea of there being a state of equilibrium, disequilibrium, and then equilibrium during the film/narrative; the theory that the film should start with everything in order, then an event should upset that order and finally it returns to restored order. After researching different TV and film dramas we saw that this was usually the case (except for soaps as they were long running, therefore the drama must continue). However in our film the story does begin with an element of order, but at the end the we see a shot of the poor girl getting hit by her dad; the film finishes with no restored order or resolution.
Wednesday, 3 February 2010
Editing
Since the end of last week we have been in the process of editing our film. Again, we have decided to re-shoot one peice of footage, but apart from that our filming is complete as we have decided to miss out the opening scene as it isn't a key peice of footage and our film is already more than 5 minutes long.
Our media teacher recently installed the 'Final Cut' program onto our school Macs, so we did a class after school that taught us how to use this editing technique. This means that we get the opportunity to include split screen footage in our film to clearly show the contrast in the two girls lives.
Some problems we expereienced whilst editing was the inclusion of music in different shots of the same scene. As music was playing in the background it was hard to include match-on-action as the song wasn't quite matching up, despite our efforts to make it match up during filming. As this was taking such a long time and wasn't quite matching up we decided to mute the sound on the shots and add the music at the end; we have a shot of the girl pressing play on the speaker remote so we can make the music come on in sync with her pressing play. Another problem we had during editing was that we realised, due to the tri-pod's being new, that when we panned the camera round there was a creaking noise. We considered just muting the clips where this occurs but there's other noise in the shot that's needed, such as the rustling of carrier bags, footsteps, dialogue or background noise.
So far we have trimmed almost all of the clips and put them into order with transitions. All that's left to do now is to include the 2 songs that we want playing over the top and make the split screens. We also have to include the monologue as a voiceover as our actor wasn't able to remember the whole thing at once so we decided to make it a voice over and maybe convey it as an insight to her thoughts about the death of her mum rather than something that she's saying aloud.
Our media teacher recently installed the 'Final Cut' program onto our school Macs, so we did a class after school that taught us how to use this editing technique. This means that we get the opportunity to include split screen footage in our film to clearly show the contrast in the two girls lives.
Some problems we expereienced whilst editing was the inclusion of music in different shots of the same scene. As music was playing in the background it was hard to include match-on-action as the song wasn't quite matching up, despite our efforts to make it match up during filming. As this was taking such a long time and wasn't quite matching up we decided to mute the sound on the shots and add the music at the end; we have a shot of the girl pressing play on the speaker remote so we can make the music come on in sync with her pressing play. Another problem we had during editing was that we realised, due to the tri-pod's being new, that when we panned the camera round there was a creaking noise. We considered just muting the clips where this occurs but there's other noise in the shot that's needed, such as the rustling of carrier bags, footsteps, dialogue or background noise.
So far we have trimmed almost all of the clips and put them into order with transitions. All that's left to do now is to include the 2 songs that we want playing over the top and make the split screens. We also have to include the monologue as a voiceover as our actor wasn't able to remember the whole thing at once so we decided to make it a voice over and maybe convey it as an insight to her thoughts about the death of her mum rather than something that she's saying aloud.
Tuesday, 26 January 2010
Thursday, 21 January 2010
Poster research and drafting
Today in our media lesson we were given the task of researching some movie posters of films that had similar storylines/ themes similar to that of our film. The films I chose were 'My Sister's Keeper' as it focuses on the completely different quality of life that the two girls experience, similar to the two girls in our film; although for the girls in our film this lifestyle difference stems from financial aspects rather than health issues. However after finding a picture of the film poster for 'My Sister's Keeper' there wasnt an image of the two girls, rather it was an image of one of the girls and her mum. However I then found the book cover of it and found an image similar to the idea that we want to convey - an image of the two girls that shows a clear contrast in their lives (i.e. that one of them is bald).
But, because it wasn't a film poster I couldn't analyse it properly, but will still use it as inspiration for our poster :)
The 2 posters i decided to analyse in the end were:
1. Atonement
The first thing I noticed about this poster was how prominent the film title is, as it runs across the width of the middle of the poster in clear, dark capital letters. This is very eye-catching and clearly identifies to the viewer that this is the title of the film.
The two main actors of the film are the only people that feature in the poster - James McAvoy and Keira Knightley. As McAvoy's character is attired in a war uniform and looking down to the picture of Knightley below it is made clear that in the film the man goes off to fight in a war/battle but misses a female companion back home. Knightley has a look of contemplation on her face suggesting that she is indecisive about this relationship in the film. This all suggests that the film is a romance, based on the relationship crisis of the two people in the poster.
The poster itself is split into three sections, with the top and bottom thirds making up the majority of the poster and the middle strip containing just the film title and an image of a young girl. This picture of the young girl is ambiguous; it could be a relation of one of the two antagonists on the poster, or their daughter or it could be the young version of Keira Knightley's character. The top half with McAvoy's character has the man in his army uniform with an image of a busy town in the background with fires burning in the street - clearly a war environment. The bottom half has Keira Knightleys character with a bright poppy feild in the background, a stark contrast to the image above, this conveys that in the film the lovers live in completely different environments and also that the film may cover certain issues of an historical war.
The text contained on the poster is just the film title, the slogan and the actors names. The slogan is very catchy and evokes alot of interest and curiosity in the reader - "You can only imagine the truth." This immediately makes the person reading the viewer want to go see the film in order to find out this "truth" This also suggests that there are elements of secrecy and mystery in the film, and that huge revelations occur in it.
The poster, as well as containing the billing board at the bottom of the poster detailing the actors, directors, producers etc, it also mentions that the director of the film is also the maker of Pride and Prejudice - Joe Wright. This is an important aspect of the poster as it offers another incentive for people who liked Pride and Prejudice to go watch the film, as it will be of similar quality.
I think this movie poster is persuasive as it includes the names of the high profile sctors/actresses and director that are involved in the film, offers a catchy, intriguing slogan and conveys enough information to clearly show the genre of the film (romance/period), making the poster viewer eager to see the film.
2. Red Road
But, because it wasn't a film poster I couldn't analyse it properly, but will still use it as inspiration for our poster :)
The 2 posters i decided to analyse in the end were:
1. Atonement
The first thing I noticed about this poster was how prominent the film title is, as it runs across the width of the middle of the poster in clear, dark capital letters. This is very eye-catching and clearly identifies to the viewer that this is the title of the film.
The two main actors of the film are the only people that feature in the poster - James McAvoy and Keira Knightley. As McAvoy's character is attired in a war uniform and looking down to the picture of Knightley below it is made clear that in the film the man goes off to fight in a war/battle but misses a female companion back home. Knightley has a look of contemplation on her face suggesting that she is indecisive about this relationship in the film. This all suggests that the film is a romance, based on the relationship crisis of the two people in the poster.
The poster itself is split into three sections, with the top and bottom thirds making up the majority of the poster and the middle strip containing just the film title and an image of a young girl. This picture of the young girl is ambiguous; it could be a relation of one of the two antagonists on the poster, or their daughter or it could be the young version of Keira Knightley's character. The top half with McAvoy's character has the man in his army uniform with an image of a busy town in the background with fires burning in the street - clearly a war environment. The bottom half has Keira Knightleys character with a bright poppy feild in the background, a stark contrast to the image above, this conveys that in the film the lovers live in completely different environments and also that the film may cover certain issues of an historical war.
The text contained on the poster is just the film title, the slogan and the actors names. The slogan is very catchy and evokes alot of interest and curiosity in the reader - "You can only imagine the truth." This immediately makes the person reading the viewer want to go see the film in order to find out this "truth" This also suggests that there are elements of secrecy and mystery in the film, and that huge revelations occur in it.
The poster, as well as containing the billing board at the bottom of the poster detailing the actors, directors, producers etc, it also mentions that the director of the film is also the maker of Pride and Prejudice - Joe Wright. This is an important aspect of the poster as it offers another incentive for people who liked Pride and Prejudice to go watch the film, as it will be of similar quality.
I think this movie poster is persuasive as it includes the names of the high profile sctors/actresses and director that are involved in the film, offers a catchy, intriguing slogan and conveys enough information to clearly show the genre of the film (romance/period), making the poster viewer eager to see the film.
2. Red Road
Filming Progress
Last night (Wednesday 20th January) we successfully filmed some scenes of the richer girls lifestyle, mainly her coming in from school and having a casual conversation with her mum, and then her returning from a shopping trip - this will be set up in split screen against the poorer girl returning from work to show the contrast in how the 2 girls spend their leisure time.
One problem we encountered last night included the fact that we had music playing in the background in the scenes of the richer girl in her bedroom after she has come in from shopping. This mean that everytime we had to film the rest of a scene from a different shot (e.g in the match on action) or to show a reaction shot, we had to match up where abouts the song had got to on the bit that we were continuing from. This meant that filming short scenes was taking us a large amount of time, but as we used a similar technique in our last couirsework last year with a ringtone we were already prepared for this, and had allocated ourselves enough time to get the filming done. Likewise we also had to include a phone ringing in our new film, but we learnt from our mistake of using a complex ringtone last year, so this year we opted just for a siple "ring ring" as opposed to a melodic tone :)
On looking back at the footage afterwards we are very pleased with the quality of the shots we have got :)
One problem we encountered last night included the fact that we had music playing in the background in the scenes of the richer girl in her bedroom after she has come in from shopping. This mean that everytime we had to film the rest of a scene from a different shot (e.g in the match on action) or to show a reaction shot, we had to match up where abouts the song had got to on the bit that we were continuing from. This meant that filming short scenes was taking us a large amount of time, but as we used a similar technique in our last couirsework last year with a ringtone we were already prepared for this, and had allocated ourselves enough time to get the filming done. Likewise we also had to include a phone ringing in our new film, but we learnt from our mistake of using a complex ringtone last year, so this year we opted just for a siple "ring ring" as opposed to a melodic tone :)
On looking back at the footage afterwards we are very pleased with the quality of the shots we have got :)
Wednesday, 20 January 2010
Progress Update
On Sunday 17th January we did some more filming, this time doing the scenes we had to film in Harlow. Again, on uploading them onto the Macs in lesson on Monday we have decided that we are going to re-shoot them as we are unhappy with the quality of the shots and the lack of different camera angles - most of the shots are from a flat angle at mid shot. We now plan to re-shoot these scenes tonight (Wednesday 20th January) with more close-up shots and some inclusions of match on action.
We've also devised a shooting schedule for the other scenes that we are going to film, including the conversation with the girls in school and the argument between the poorer girl and her dad.
We've also devised a shooting schedule for the other scenes that we are going to film, including the conversation with the girls in school and the argument between the poorer girl and her dad.
Friday, 15 January 2010
Progress Update
As yet we have still not re-shot any of our old footage or filmed any new scenes. We planned to do the re-shooting yesterday (Thursday 14th Jan)however one of our actors cancelled at the last minute so we were unable to. This weekend though we will definately have all the Harlow shots filmed.
We've also been working on the poster as one of our ancillery texts. So far we've produced a hand drawn draft of our first idea and are organising when to take the phitographs. As we also need some back-up ideas for our poster we are also in he process of doing some research into other movie posters of films that have a similar theme to ours. So far these films include - My Sister's Keeper,
We've also been working on the poster as one of our ancillery texts. So far we've produced a hand drawn draft of our first idea and are organising when to take the phitographs. As we also need some back-up ideas for our poster we are also in he process of doing some research into other movie posters of films that have a similar theme to ours. So far these films include - My Sister's Keeper,
Monday, 4 January 2010
Uploading Footage
Today in lesson we uploaded the footage we shot on the 31st December in order to get a clear idea of where we were at and the quality of the shots we have filmed so far. This came in handy to do as we realised that a lot of our shots are quite shaky, which we then found out was a result of us not having set the camera onto the tri-pod correctly :) This was very beneficial as it has saved us from shooting the entire film with a shaky camera, and we still have time to re-shoot some of the scenes that have been affected by the un-steady camera.
Saturday, 2 January 2010
Filming Update
So far, we've only managed to get in one day of filming, due to the time it took us to prepare ourselves for filming and problems with actors availability. We got some footage done on December 31st in Dagenham. This footage consists of part of the poorer girls journey home from school, her returning from a day at work and the argument with her dad. We were quite happy with the scenes that we got shot, though we did realise after that during the rest of the shooting we should try to include a wider variety of shots, such as some close ups and establishing/long shots for the settings as the footage we have so far doesnt have many of these.
We still have the majority of our film still to shoot, part of which is to be filmed on Monday January 4th, as we need to be in school to get this done. The remainder is then to be shot in Harlow which may have to wait until the weekend of January 9th to be filmed due to the location (Harlow) being quite far away.
We still have the majority of our film still to shoot, part of which is to be filmed on Monday January 4th, as we need to be in school to get this done. The remainder is then to be shot in Harlow which may have to wait until the weekend of January 9th to be filmed due to the location (Harlow) being quite far away.
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