EMAZE

 

(Left to right; Me, Max and Millie) Prelim group selfie taken in our media room whilst in the making!

 

Production Diary

Production Diary

Meeting number 1, we were put into groups and told to choose our genre. I was put in a group with Max Duffy and Millie Ecott and we chose the genre Thriller (bear in mind it was first come first served with the genres as no two groups could have the same). To begin with we forwarded our individual ideas to each other. Initially we were extremely vague about a storyline, a theme and characters which were not at all set in stone, however expanding each other's ideas allowed for creativity and originality.

Meeting number 2, we had had some time to think about further developing what we had discussed the lesson before. We created a list of all the shots that were necessary to put into our opening (e.g high angle shot, match on action etc) and then matched up some of our ideas to the shots to begin to get a storyline. We researched and watched thrillers meanwhile which allowed us to be influenced whilst in the making of our film opening.

Meeting number 3. Having had more time to think about good ideas and details on meeting number 3 we decided a name for our film which we chose to be 'Surrender'. We felt this was appropriate for our film as it is short catchy and summarises the entire film in a title whilst still leaving some enigma for the audience. Most of our clips we decided would be shot on the premises of Great Baddow High School which we initially thought would limit our creativity however we proved otherwise.

Meeting number 4. At meeting number four we began to film our preliminary task. We started off by getting all equipment necessary for this process such as a tripod, a camera and other props. We came across a few problems during the start of the filming process such as the limited amount of people in our group, we required a last minute extra. After we had tackled a few disturbances we promptly continued filming all the required scenes.

Meeting number 5. We then assigned tasks to each of our group members to ensure our responsibilities were evened out and ended up complete. Max was in charge of the editing part (He is amazing), so cutting the scenes appropriately etc. Millie was in charge of putting everything together and keeping things organised and I was in charge of doing the Production diary and helping out with other bits!

Dancing Bears FT James Bond

Dancing Bears FT James Bond

 



To begin with, I found premiere extremely intimidating and difficult to use. After I started experimenting and becoming more familiar with its features, it made it easier. To begin with I experimented with the more drastic edits such as major colour changes and distortion, however I soon realised that less is more so I kept some obvious effects with some discreet lighting changes.

Institution 10 Questions

 

BOYZ IN DA HOOD

 



Camera:

At the start of the film, they say that "one in every twenty one black Americans will be murdered in their lifetime." When they start the film, they do a close up, this shows that the director thinks this is wrong. The first scene the directors use is a long shot which is filmed by using the tracking shot method. They use this type of shot to show the audience what their neighbourhood looks like and how it could possibly affect their ways of living. The characters copy their older brothers and people around them, they use extremely offensive language because they do not know any better due to everyone around them are always using that language.

Mise en scene:The boys are dressed differently. One of the boys are dressed in the stereotypical gangster. In the classroom, he referred to the Crenshaw mafia. This shows that he could be influenced by it, hence the clothing he was wearing. The other boy dressed very smartly but he still spoke and acted like the other boy, this could suggest that his mum is making an effort to look after her son and keep him looking smart. The girl was very opposite compared to the two boys, she wasn't outgoing like the other two. From the opening, we can tell that the setting of the film is in a very deprived area, full of crime and gangs. From the quote at the start and the characters used suggests that most of the people are black Americans. The opening scenes are quite dull this lighting could suggest that this area has lost all of its peace and happiness. This links into the first quote at the start of the film where "one in every twenty one black Americans will be murdered in their lifetime." This suggests that the boys curiosity to the shootings meant that they could be a victim of crime in their later life.

Editing:
In the first scene when the kids were walking to school, binary oppositions are shown to convey that the boys were more involved into the activity of the neighbourhood compared to the girl, who was quiet and well behaved. The pace of the opening is quite slow, it matches the speed of them walking to school. It isn't fast paced because they stop and chat, secondly they stopped to look at the crime scene. There aren't many sound effects in the film except from the background sound, the only background music was the shootings right at the very start of the film, when it was a black screen. In my opinion, the director has done this to show what happens when them kids go to sleep/ what happens around them in day to day life.

Sound:
Mostly all of the sound used is all diegetic sound, such as people talking in the background etc.

FILM PITCH AND FEEDBACK

FILM PITCH FEEDBACK PEER EVALUATION

 

 

 

 

 

Feedback

Mainly the feedback we got said that our title didn't fit the genre of thriller enough. We also got told to explain our marketing which could be expanded however we do have a wide range. We got told that our characters were good however we didn't have an extreme range in age, although we found that many people appreciated our justification as to why we used those specific characters. 

 

 

DISTINCT

DISTINCT

DISTINCT stands for Describe In detail Setting Theme Icons Narrative Characters and Text analysis.

 



This opening starts by introducing bold, bright colours. This sets the mood of this opening scene and straight away gives the viewer the impression of a happy teenage film. The background music highlights the bubbly youth behaviour that's supported by the first character shown to be smiling and happy. The lighting is bright to represent a jolly clean atmosphere. Her bright choice of clothing symbolises her bubbly personality which contrasts with her fathers which is white a simple suit in a greyish dull colour, which symbolises his moody character.

Semiotics

Semiotics

 

In todays lesson we learnt about semiotics. Semiotics is basically a study of signs. It can be anything that stands for or represents something else. 

 

• Denotation - what we see when we look at an image.
• Connotation - what we understand from a image.
• Polysemy - different ways of reading text.
• Preferred reading - how the writer/person wants the audience to view the media text.
• Oppositional reading - when the intended meaning of the text is totally opposed by the reader.

 

                                           

The eye on the top left is the thing that stands out the most as it has the darkest colours and covers quite a large area. The fact the eye is staring directly at the camera gives a feeling as though this actor is actually focussed at staring at you.

The close up image with the staring eye has not got very sharp features as the image seems blurry and lacking detail, this makes the skin seem unblemished. This suggests that society doesn't realise that there is anything wrong with anyone because there is no visible evidence to things like mental health issues.
The logo/title 'Girl, Interrupted' is written in a fairly scruffy font which draws attention to the film poster questioning why it is like that and not in a generic tidy font. Also the title of the film looks like it's been torn from athe above image. This makes the audience think that the character could have some sort of problem, possibly psychological as her face looks distorted by the tear.

Pete Fraser part 2

Pete Fraser part 2

Despite these rules generally only are useful to those doing A2 media studies, I found a few helpful and easy to relate to AS. These are a few things to consider when doing a music video, however many of these apply and can be useful for other things.

Equipment

• Test shots for effects
• Camera quirks
• Tripod (and 'shoe')

...Relating to equipment there are 2 questions you must ask yourself;

1. Have you experimented with editing?
2. Have you got the music and an audible source?

Shoot

• It is advised to shoot 10 times with a different set up
• Cutaways
• Experiment with lighting change
• Close ups (extremely important)
• Enthuse your performers
• Shoot more than you need (applies to many things in media)

Edit

• Synch up performances first
• Get whole picture rather than detail
• Cut & cut again
• Aim for a dynamic piece of work

Blog

• You must show your whole journey on your blog as evidence
• Research, Planning and Construction
• You must note your thought process, is it bad? Why?

Pete Fraser

Pete Fraser

 

In todays lesson, we had Pete Fraser come in and help us learn a lot of things about film openings. He began by showing us a few different openings and getting us to analyse them etc. He emphasized the importance of a good, relevant film opening and gave us a few tips on what not to do. In film openings you want to have enough enigma to keep the audience hooked however it mustn't be too overwhelming otherwise the audience can feel confused. After he had shown us each of the film openings, we discussed what mark we would give them (1-4, 4 being the best) and also discussed why. This was a good exercise to do as whilst we were the audience judging a film opening, when making our own we could go back to the position of being the audience watching our own subsequently making it easier to improve.

 

 

There are 5 important parts of a film opening;

1. The Appearance
2. The Setting
3. The Genre
4. The Characters
5. The Narrative

 

Juno Final

This is my final Juno Opening Scene. I used Premiere to create a similar effect to the original shown in the top right corner. I added various different effects to replicate the cartoon effect on the original. After shooting we realised that we had missed out a few shots. This meant we had to work with what we had. This may be because of the story board that was drawn out. If I were to re do this task I would definitely take more time to plan to ensure that all my clips would be correct and that I would have accurately got all of the shots.

Juno Storyboard

This is the Juno storyboard we roughly put together in order to ensure our shots would be precise and match exactly the ones in the original juno opening.