Prelim task and evaluation

Prelim task and evaluation

The Show Must Go On! 

The task was simple, we had to create a short film on a genre of our choice, we chose a musical. In the presentation below it includes, self and peer evaluation, shooting schedule, storyboard, production diary, brief film treatment and risk assessment a long with a film poster.

The Show Must Go On!

Here is our short film that we created in our group, the genre is supposed to be a musical.
Group; Elona, Georgia, Jack and Luke. Mr Amato also helped in the short film.

Risk assessment and shooting schedule

RISK ASSESSMENT

SHOOTING SCHEDULE

First lesson of Prelim Task

First editing session

What we done

During our first editing session we managed to film 7 scenes, this included many shots including match on action, tracking shot, pan shot and top angle shot. As a group we think that we managed to film a lot of scenes for one lesson, our roles were Georgia filming, me storyboards, saying what had to be done during the scene, with Elona and Jack acting and Mr Amato also acting as the teacher in our film opening. 

Brief film treatment

Brief film treatment

Title

After a group discussion and deciding what the film is going to end up like, we decided on a title. We thought that it would be a good idea to decide the title after we decided on the storyboard and what genre we were going to do. We came to an agreement that the title would be 'the show must go on' 

Genre

After discussing as a group we decided that we were going to go with a musical, because with the horror and thriller genre already taken we could not use this genre, therefore we decided on choosing the musical. 

Idea

The film is basically about two children that are in school and have got detention on the night of one of the school plays/musical. The children have to try and escape from the teacher that is supervising detention in order to reach the school play. We decided to start the film with the children in detention and then progress from there, with the children attempting to escape to the show that is going to be shown in the hall. In order to make this work we decided to use an ordinary class room for where detention would be and then the show is going to be happening in primmer assembly hall, as we thought that this would be a better destination rather than using the drama studio. At one point during the film the children will be running through the hallways, therefore we decided to use the link corridor to film this part of the film. 

Music

1) Break free

2) Don't stop me now

3) We will rock you

Script

Limited speech

Teacher tells children that the they must stay in the room and they cannot go to the play. 

Children do not really say anything in response to this and communicate to each other through hand signs and nodding. 

Institution - Big and small Institutions

The big six

There are six major institutions that in a way rule the movie industry, these big six are; Sony, Warner Bros, 20th century fox, Paramount, Disney and Universal. All of these have introduced many great films into the world and the table below shows the movies each have helped in becoming great movies. 

Sony	Warner/Bros	20th Century fox	Paramount	Disney	Universal
Amazing Spiderman 2	Magic mike XXL	Taken 3	Turtles	Inside out	Ted 2
Equaliser	Gravity	How to train your dragon	Mission impossible	Avengers	Pitch perfect
Pixels	Get hard		Terminator	Muppets most wanted	Jurassic world

Lesson - Getting up-to-date

In today's lesson we spent the whole hour all getting up to date on our blogs and improving any posts if possible or adding posts where needed. I am nearly up to date but i just realised that the taken 2 part 1 film opening was just a picture saying buy tickets so i have got to find another film opening so i can analyse it using the acronym DISTINCT. Also, I have to add more information into my analysis of Jack Jack attack and the prestige, because in both of them I need to add Todorov thoughts, so the obstacle and if there is a beginning middle and end. Also, in the Jack Jack attack analysis i need to add all of the other people including, Levi-Strauss, Barthes and Propp.

Our preliminary task

Preliminary task 

In our last media lesson we were split randomly into 3 groups, my group is made up of me, Elona, Georgia and Jack. After a discussion we decided to go for the genre of musical, this was because both thriller and horror was already taken and they were the two we mainly wanted to do. In class for half the lesson in our groups we were discussing how the film will go, we have not completely decided on everything yet but are slowly mind mapping ideas to bring together a final piece so we will have an idea of what our film will be like. In our next lesson we should be able to get started on our storyboards and then start working even further from there. 

Animals Dancing/James Bond edit

                   


                         

The purpose of this task was to use Adobe Premier for our first time to try and edit a piece which consisted of both dancing animals and action. To begin with i did find the editing hard and needed to ask our teacher a few times where some of the tools were but as i used it more and more i began to find all of the tools and understood how to use the program a lot more. I found the action part a lot easier to edit than the Dancing Animals scene, however i think this was because by the time i was editing the action and James Bond scene i understood how to use Adobe Premier and new where almost everything was by now.

Our task was to create two scenes that consisted of different things, the first scene was for Dancing Animals and the second scene was about an action piece, but this was to be based around James Bond. In order to do this we used clips from the media shared area to import into Adobe Premier and choose the Dancing Animals scenes we wanted, i also used you tube but this was to get a James Bond scene that i wanted to use. Overall, i think that the mini film with dancing animals and action went really well and i think that the final edit was completed to a good quality and standard.

Juno - Filming

Filming Juno

When filming Juno we were in groups my group was made up of three people, me, Charlie and Connor, however when we were filming the first minute for Juno like the task asked us to do Connor was not in therefore me and Charlie had to do the filming as a group of two. We found this task quite hard because Charlie was on crouches and therefore it was hard to film. Although we did manage some of the filming was a bit dodgy because Charlie had to limp as he could not walk straight. However we managed to get everything filmed and some of the scenes we had to film later as we either did not have the correct props or needed Connor as a third person to help out in the scene. 

Overall, i thought that the task went really well and even though some of the film is dodgy because Charlie had to film whilst on crouches i think that the short film its self is as close as we could get it to the Juno shot film actual one. As a group we did think that it does not look as good as others because we did not have a girl in our group so a boy had to play the role of Juno, as a result of this the edit does not look as good as it could have if we had a girl in our group. Now i will be editing our Juno piece in Adobe Premier Pro and then be uploading onto my blog and you tube. 

Media Studies Talk

Media Studies Talk - Pete Fraser

Today, we were asked to go to the assembly hall as Pete Fraser came into to talk to all of the Media Studies students about the course and to give us some tips about the course and how to get the most marks possible. The man that came in talked about top tips, like actually knowing what a opening scene is, not getting confused with a trailer or short film. Also, Pete showed us some students past film openings and we the as a group would discuss why the film opening was given the grade it was awarded and what its strengths and weaknesses were.

All together we were shown four film openings from four groups, between the film opening all of the groups were awarded a level 1, 2, 3 and 4. Pete also gave us a top tip that was to improve every little thing we can, this is because all little things that are made better all add up to a big difference which could end up getting us a better grade. Lastly, Pete recommended that we checked out this website - http://www.artofthetitle.com/ - This is because they give of a lot of film opening and text on how to use titles in the opening and what makes them the most effective and how to create a good level film opening.

Juno Opening

Juno Opening 

This is the opening scene from Juno, our task was to try and re-create this ourselves, therefore we completed storyboards of what happened throughout the opening scene and then in our selected groups we were asked to video it. Our group will be filming in a few lessons. 

Film pitch and institution

Film pitch and institution

1) What is the main film outgoing audience?  16-24 year old. 

2) How do cinemas make most of their money? Not by selling tickets for films but it is the popcorn they sell to their customers when they go to watch a film/ 

3) How do you get a film into the cinema? Similar to music, you need to speak to someone that acts as an agent for film and media, this is like a distributor. A distributor is hired by the owner of a film to go around to different cinemas to ask if they can show your film in their cinema, sometimes the cinema will pay you to have the film shown in their cinema, however sometimes if the cinema has a free screen and your movie will not attract many customers then you have to pay the cinema to show it on their screens to their customers. 

4) What does a distributor do? A distributor goes around to different cinemas asking them to show your film in their cinema to their customers, this can either be the cinema paying you to show the film, or you paying the cinema to show the film. 

Audience

Audience - Class Work notes

User and Gratifications of Media

The main target audience fore the film-going and the new films that are released are generally 16-24 year old. 

User and gratifications can be shown and remembers by using the acronym PIES. 

Personal Identification

Information

Entertainment

Social interaction 

These are all the reasons why people tend to view media and receive gratification from it. Personal identification means that when somebody is watching the media and can feel relevant and related to the information the the similarity to their even they remember and the information is in the form of the media. 

Information is when people view the media just to gather information from the article or video, whatever the piece of information is from. Whether the information is the past present or the future the form of news can be displayed by a documentary or an article. 

Feedback on the film pitch

Feedback on our film pitch

The movie that we pitched to our class was called 'The Zootastics' this was a film that was targeted at 5 year old and was supposed to be an action film. After pitching our film we got feedback and a score out of 70 of what our class thought of the film and the way we delivered the pitch as a group and whether they would but the rights to our movie if possible. On average as a group we had a total score of 50 out of 70 and generally most of the class said that they would by the rights to our film. This meant that overall the class thought that the Zootastics was a good film and obviously thought it was unique because the majority said that they would buy the rights to our film. 

However, the constructive criticism that we received as a group was accepted and as a group we thought that these comments were fair and we could have improved where the class said we could have done better. These comments included being too similar to the Incredible's which was one of our inspirations when creating this movie, as a group we agreed that this was one point that we could argue against as creating an action for under 5's was not easy and we were trying to alter the Incredible's to make an enjoyable film for under 5's. So, as a group we accepted this comment but did decide that it was suppose to be similar to the Incredible's as this was one of our inspirations and we took ideas from this movie in order to create the zootastics. 

Finally, some other comments read that the title of the film 'Zootastics' did not really match the genre for the film which was action. Then again we did decide that we could have thought a bit more about the films title, rather than thinking of one and sticking with it, we could have listed a few potential titles and then decided from there. So, some of the comments read that the zootastics did not relate to the genre and that it should be changed to make the title of the film more suited to the genre.

Here is the film pitch again, it can also be found further down the page.

Individual film pitch from lukeweldon

Institution slide show

Institution from Luke_10

Film Production Logo

As a task we were asked to create a film production logo, I created this using photo shop and fireworks, this took me a lot of time but that is mainly because I took a lot of time looking for the right images and background to go with the logo, I think that overall the final piece is a good logo.

Film Presentation

FILM PRESENTATION

This is our film ideas and contains all of the information about our film, this is an action for under five year old. Its called 'the Zootastics' 

Individual film pitch from lukeweldon

Stereotypes, Archetypes and Countertypes

Starter

As a starter we were asked to draw our thoughts of a typical french man, Scottish person, inner city youth and someone of Arabic decent. The whole point of this starter was to show how we all decided to actually draw 'stereotypes' of these people and what we thought of them from what we heard from the media etc... When actually it could have been a much different french or Scottish person.

                                         Stereotype of a french man:                                             

Stereotype of a Scottish man

Stereotype of inner city youth:

Stereotype of someone of  Arabic decent:

Stereotypes
This is an instant understanding that is often negative, that we believe is real over time when we keep on hearing it on the radio or TV.

Archetypes
This is the ultimate stereotype. This is pushed to the points that it is not real anymore and is obvious by the way you are describing this person.

Counter-type
This is a representation that is the opposite of a stereotypical associations of groups, people or places.

Representation
The way in which people. events and ideas are presented to the audience. To break it down, the media takes something that is already there and represents is to us in that the way that they choose.

The male gaze (Laura Mulvey)
Cinema puts audience in a masculine atmosphere to watch the women on screen.

Film Language

Film language 

In today's lesson we were leaning about film language and specifically we learnt about the four main aspects of film language and what to analyse:

1.  Camera
2.  Editing
3.  Sound
4.  Mise En Scene

Camera

The acronym we learned to remember what to look for in the camera was FAM

Frame - Extreme close up, close up, mid shot, mid long shot, long shot and extreme long shot. 

Angle - Worms eye view, birds eye view and level. 

Movement - Pan, left to right, tilt, up and down, tracking shot, Steadicam and hand held. 

Editing

Transitions - Fade to black.white

Order of narrative - Beginning, middle and flashbacks

Pace - Slow, fast and editing in romance and horror and action scenes. 

Special effects (SFX)

Sound

Dialogue - What/how 

Music - Tells us how to feel in a scene

Diegetic - Sound that actors hear and we don't. Non-diegetic is opposite. 

Mise En Scene

Costume

Lighting

Actors - class, age, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, body language and make up. 

Make up

Props

Setting

Boyz n the hood Film Language - Link 

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=boyz+n+the+hood+dutch+subtitles&FORM=HDRSC3#view=detail&mid=BCA98CE309ED50662AF4BCA98CE309ED50662AF4 

Camera
The opening few minutes shows many different types of camera frames, one of them was the tracking shot. This was used to set the scene and show the setting of the movie. The tracking shot was used to follow the teenagers through their ride on the motorbike onto the murder scene, which was in a wide field. The tracking shot shows the background of the teenagers which shows graffiti and a discriminated place, which shows that the children have not grown up in a well place. Additionally, another camera frame that was used was the tilt shot, which was used at the start when it shows the STOP sign. This was very effective as it showed the directors views on the status of the African American community. Also, the angle of the shots are usually POV, this was to put us on the same level as the children, to make use feel like we were actually there as well.

Editing
An example of great editing was used when the mother is talking on the phone and Treys is walking down the street as the mother and teacher are almost narrating/summarising up his day as Trey walks through men fighting on his way back to home. This shows the environment that they live in and it makes it seem like Trey is used to seeing men fighting as he is not at all fazed by the fight that is happening next to him as he is walking. Also, the transitions to enter the shot of the group of four walking to the murder scene are very effective to establish the brutality of what happened and of the movie with color changes.

Sound
Diegetic sounds are very important in the opening scene with the sound of the sirens and people in the car talking. Additionally, the sound of the gunfire music with the sound on the car and men talking in the back ground. Non-diegetic sound us also used when Treys walks down the path with his mother on the phone.

Mise En Scene
All of the characters had varied costumes throughout the scene and the main child was wearing a much more smart/formal clothing while all of the other children at the school were wearing casual clothes and clothes that would represent clothes of youths. This shows that the boy is different to the community in the way he dressed, acts, walks and wants to be, this could represent a complicated character mixed any many different minds. The setting of the scene also sets up the setting for the whole movie as this gives a representation of the life that characters in the movie lead and will help the audience understand different attitudes of different characters.