Closing Post

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Evaluation Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our film is centred around the protagonist, Lola, a 17 year old girl from London. It follows her struggle with drug abuse and her downward spiral in her mental and physical health. Although the storyline is focused on Lola it also follows the lives of her friendship group and her deteriorating relationship with them as well as the breakdown in her relationship with her boyfriend, Marlon.

With our opening sequence we attempted to explore the forms and conventions of real media products and either develop or challenge there form, genre, narrative structure and style.

Form

Genre

Our film fits into the Teen Drama Genre.

Style

As our film is a British Indie Film we wanted its style to fit its genre. The main way we wanted to connote this was through camerawork and this played an important role in pre- production, production and post production. With our opening sequence we wanted to create a distorted feel with lots of movement to reflect the emotions of confusion that the protagonist was feeling. We found the best way to present this was in a fast paced montage sequence which would introduce all the characters and their lifestyles whilst giving us creative licence to explore different shot framings and camera movement.

We introduced our filming style with the big opening tracking shot which introduces the audience to the friendship group as well as introducing some of the dynamics in the group.

We also experimented with interesting camera angles to give the sequence a more artsy feel that is often seen in British Indie films.

We tried to adhere to the forms and conventions of real media products as closely as possible as the reason why these forms and conventions are created is because they are effective. However, we did try and put our own spin on our project as it is important to somewhat challenge the norm to suit your project and the purpose of it.

Evaluation Q2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The main representation we wanted to focus on and address was our representation of age. By using influence from other films and TV programmes in the media we attempted to conform to and revert some of the stereotypes that are enforced in the media.

British Teenagers

The age group our film opening represents is teenagers. There is a lot of representation of teenagers in the media as many TV programmes and films are centred around teenagers. This also means that many stereotypes for teenagers have been developed, both positive and negative ( the majority being negative).

Dress

It was really important to us that what our characters wore accurately represented what teenagers in London wear today to make our sequence as identifiable and idealistic to our audience as possible. We wanted to give our actors as much freedom as possible to allow them to truly represent their style. Instead of designing each actors outfit we gave them guidelines for what we suggested they wore. We made suggestions based on what we wear ourselves and also what we see teenagers in films and tv dramas wearing, seeing as most of our styles are inspired by the media.

Branded clothes and streetwear/sportswear is very popular amongst teenagers in London and we ensured that this has come across in our project. 

Often the negative representations that are placed on teenagers are also placed on the clothing they wear e.g. hoodies and other streetwear. My exploring the individual personalities of our characters throughout the film and presenting them in a positive light we wanted to show that even though our characters are wearing clothing that can be associated with anti- social behaviour they themselves are not delinquents, to enforce that you cannot stereotype people and make assumptions on their behaviour and personalities based on their clothing.

Behaviour

Teenagers are known for partying and having a good time and this is something we were keen to put across in our opening. We wanted to create an almost idealistic party lifestyle for the audience as it is evident the characters are having a lot of fun with their friends. 

However, teenagers are also often presented as badly behaved, rowdy deliquents in Tv programmes and films. This can be seen in programmes and films such as Skins, human traffic and kidulthood.

Although there is drug and alcohol usage in our opening the focus is much more on the dangers of this and we want it to stand as a warning to the consequences of overuse of drugs and alcohol.

Overall we wanted to adhere to some of the typical stereotypes of teenagers so that we could attract our target audience of teenagers as the film would be relatable to them. However, we also wanted to show through further character development that there is much more to our characters than just drugs and parties and at the same time bring awareness to some of the problems that teenagers face that are often undermined in the media.

Evaluation Q3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Production Company: Stealth Films Ltd.

Why we chose Stealth Films Ltd:

• London based production company so will understand London culture to help give us a more accurate and realistic film.
• Stealth Films produced Kidulthood and West London 10. Both indie films shot in London.
• Kidulthood has a similar gritty, urban feel to our own film.
• Kidulthood was produced on a 600,000 budget which is a similar budget to what we would want our film to have.

Distribution Company: StudioCanal UK

Why we chose StudioCanal UK:

• Based in London. It's useful to keep the Production company, the Distribution company and the filming locations all in one place for maximum efficiency. 
• They have experience in distributing British Indie Films as they distributed Comedown in 2012 which also has the same director as Kidulthood.
• Important to have a UK distributor as our film is for a UK audience.

Our release plan:

Marketing:

Due to our low budget for marketing we would have to heavily rely on social media. Creating online awareness for our film would be the best way of reaching our Target Audience. We would create a FaceBook, Twitter and Instagram page for our film and regularly use it to update our followers. One of the best ways to create mass awareness for something would be by getting videos and pictures to go viral as this is the best way to reach a large audience. Therefore we would have to create interesting and exciting, current content to keep our followers interested in the film.

Posters would also play an important role in our film and by creating an artsy poster this will attract our creative, young audience.

Evaluation Q4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

To conclude, through our core audience, secondary audience and tertiary audience our film is intending to reach a broad range of people and we ensured that this was taken into account in post- production, production and pre- production. The primary purpose of the opening sequence is to appeal to its audience and it is important to take into account that all of the audience has different wants and needs and to cater to these needs to the best of our abilities.

Evaluation Q5: How did you attract/ address your audience?

We attempted to use the Uses and Gratifications theory to attract our core target audience (16-24 year old British teenagers), our secondary target audience ( Fans of the British indie genre) and our tertiary audience (Domestic abuse campaigners). The theory states that audiences 'are not passive but take an active role in interpreting and integrating media into their own lives' and that they use media to fulfil their own gratifications, typically one of the following four:

• Identity - ability to recognise product/setting/person or role models with similar values, someone you would aspire to be
• Educate - ability to acquire information, knowledge and understanding]
• Entertain - getting enjoyment and form of escapism from consumption
• Social Interaction - ability of product to produce topic of conversation between people and spark debates

Below is a table where you can see how we used the 'Uses and Gratifications theory' in our finished product:

In my first evaluation question I discussed the ways in which our project developed and challenged forms and conventions of real media products. By conforming to many of the expectations of the audience this will help to attract and appeal to them.

Throughout our project we stressed an importance on obtaining audience reactions and feedback to our opening sequence. We found this was a really good way of altering our project to our audiences needs.

After our test shoot and during the editing process we were constantly getting friends to watch our project to see what they liked about it and what could be improved. These were some of the comments we got during the process:

At the end of the project we created a short questionnaire to find out what our audience thought of the project. We put the answers in a bar graph which can be seen below.

Overall we found the best way to find out what our audience liked was to have constant communication with a variation of different people within our target audience. This gave us a good idea of what we needed to do to attract them

Evaluation Q6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

During this process I have become a lot more comfortable with the technologies used in both the Hardware and Software used in the production and post- production process.

Hardware

Canon HFG30.

Tripod.

Software

Adobe Premier Pro.

I had already used Adobe Premier Pro before this project and was pretty comfortable with editing together a basic sequence. However i really enjoyed exploring the software and using it it to the extent of its abilities in this project whilst fine tuning my editing skills. I had never used the effects on it before and this project was the perfect opportunity to try some out.

We used the ghosting effect on the shots from Lolas point of view to highlight her level of intoxication and it really allowed us to develop our story effectively

Livetype.

We used LiveType to make our titles which are obviously very important for an opening sequence. It was important to us that the titles themselves fitted the general vibe and feel of the opening sequence.

Overall I feel that I have massively developed my knowledge of different technologies as well as my developing my skills when using them. I found the biggest challenge for me was using some of the trickier tools on the editing software, however, I feel that by the end of the project, although definitely not perfect, my editing skills were much improved.

Evaluation Q7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Our Preliminary task

At the beginning of this project we created a preliminary task which required us to create a short video showing continuity. There were clear differences between the task for the Prelim and the Main task brief.
Preliminary Task Brief:

"Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. The task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule."

Main Task Brief:

"The titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes. All video and audio material must be original, produced by the candidate(s), with the exception of music or audio effects from a copyright-free source."

The main differences between the Brief's:

• The Preliminary task brief is much more specific about what the sequence could contain.
• The prelim task brief tells you what techniques you should demonstrate.
• The Main Task brief is much broader, allowing candidates to demonstrate their creative ability.

Their was a definite progression between how we dealt with Preliminary task and our Main task in terms of pre- production, production and post-production.

Overall, I felt that the preliminary task provided us with the opportunity to perfect some of the basic skills which would be essential to our Main task moving forward. I think it is evident from the clear differences between our prelim video and our final product that we massively developed our pre- production, production an post production skills throughout this project.

Construction Post 10: Looking back - reflections on our final outcome

I am extremely happy with the final result of our opening sequence. Originally I thought it would be very difficult to achieve the vision that our whole group had in our head and we all had very high expectations for the finished project. However, I think we have surpassed even our own expectations and I am very proud of what we as a group have achieved in such a short, but intensive period of time. Also I think we successfully took on our own and as well as others criticisms and did everything we could to improve upon them. Obviously our project is not perfect and if we had had  more time on this project I would have liked to have spent some more time on the development of the storyline in our opening sequence and ensuring that it was clear to the audience as it is slightly ambiguous at times. Although overall I am very happy with what we have achieved.

Construction Post 9: My technical learning curve

What I learnt:

      Production:
       -How to film a successful continuity sequence.
       -How to set up professional lighting kits (and the safety precautions that must be taken).
       -How to prevent lighting issues.
       -How to organise a large cast.

      Post-production:
       -How to cut up shots into different sections.
       -How to grade shots.
       -How to use LiveType to construct titles.
       -How to use sound and video fades and transition effects.
      -How to use the ghosting effect.

My Strengths:
-Cutting continuity sequences together.
-Filming shots (framing and movement)
-Creating titles on LiveType.
-Adding key frames and visual effects to shots
-Controlling the actors.

Reflections
There was a clear progression in my technical ability between the preliminary task and the Main Task and this was clearly reflected in the differences in quality of our projects. I also realised that the best way to learn is by making mistakes and then resolving them, therefore, I'm glad we had the opportunity to do a test shoot, main shoot and back up shoot as it allowed us to improve on our project every shoot.

Construction Post 8: My Personal contribution to the Edit Sessions

Our group editing together

As I previously did GCSE media studies I already had quite a good grasp of how to use the editing software in our media department. However, I wasn't very confident at editing and over the course of the project my confidence, and speed in which I edited, improved dramatically. I think I was especially useful in doing the finish touches of the project and fine tuning the finished product. I also did the majority of the grading for the sequence and really enjoyed perfecting the finished product.

The process of grading our shots

Construction Post 7: My personal contribution to the Shoot sessions

We delegated the roles out relatively evenly when shooting, with each of us having specific roles.

My individual responsibilities:

• As we were shooting in my house I was very involved with setting up as we had to move lots of chairs and tables around.
• I filmed the majority of our shots in the main shoot as both Eleanor and Ella featured in the opening sequence.
• I also played quite an organisational role. Ensuring that the cast new what they were doing and where they had to be.

Reflections

Im happy with myself for how I handled a complicated shoot. I'm going to take a lot from this experience and it has really helped me to start noticing the tiny details in film making. Also shooting this project really allowed me to explore the creative side of film making.

Construction Post 6: Reflections on Edit week 2

Edit Week 2 ran seamlessly. By this point we had figured out how to use the editing software quickly and effectively so it didn't take long to edit in the extra clips for the back up shoot. We then dedicated the rest of our time to editing our titles on LiveType. We decided on a font immediately but we didnt have a clear idea in our heads of the effect we wanted on it so we went through all the effects on LiveType and eventually decided on a flickery one. However, we felt this didn't fit with the pace of the opening sequence so we then changed it to a different effect that came on tot the screen much quicker.

We then spent the remainder of our time grading our shots. As we had thought a lot about the lighting of our shots they didn't need to much grading, however, we made subtle changes to the shots that hopefully made the opening sequence have a more professional finish.

Construction Post 5: The Back- Up shoot

The original slap that didn't work well for our continuity

For our back up shoot there was only one shot in particular we wanted to re shoot and that was our slap shot. We felt it didn't look very convincing and took away from the rest of the sequence. So we re shot it with a slightly different angle so that Ella didn't actually have to slap Noah, she could just fake it.  We also re shot some of the bathroom scenes to see if we could improve the ending at all, however, when it came to editing them in we felt that, with a bit of tweaking, the originals actually worked better.

Construction Post 4: Reflections on Edit Week 1

As we had decided to take on a different approach in our main shoot, due to the advice of our teachers and target audience group, by taking lots more spontaneous, improvised shots, we ended up with a lot of footage. So one of the biggest tasks in edit week 1 was being selective about the shots we wanted to include in our sequence. I felt that we worked really well as a group in this part of the process as we made decisive, collective decisions about which shots we wanted to include. The whole edit process ran very smoothly and by working and sticking strictly to our edit schedule we managed to finish the edit easily in the time we allocated for it.

Construction Post 3: Reflections on our Main Shoot Session

Overall our main shoot session was very successful. I felt as a group we learnt a lot from our mistakes in the test shoot and went into this shoot with a completely different attitude. I think one of the main differences between our test shoot and our main shoot was that for our main shoot we decided to scrap the shootboard and instead make a list of all the essential shots we needed to get. As when we showed the edit of our test shoot to our target audience group one of the comments they made was that they felt it was 'too structured' which made it look 'slightly unrealistic'. Although shoot boards are very useful for most projects we believed for our opening sequence it was important for us to slightly improvise and be giving the freedom of not keeping to a schedule to allow us to get a variety of different and realistic shots for our montage sequence.

Construction Post 2: Our Post production kit

In post production we used two different softwares:

Adobe Premiere Pro

Adobe Premiere Pro was the main editing software we used to edit our sequence. We used it to simply cut together our clips into the sequence and cut each clip to the time duration we wanted them, as well as trickier editing with transitions and effects. I found that it was a really useful editing software. It was easy to use and good for the more simplistic editing as well as the more complicated editing. It allowed us to get a really professional end product.

Livetype

As we were creating an opening sequence it was imperative that we had titles in our sequence. We used LiveType to create ours. It was very useful as it had a wide range of fonts and effects that were easily accessible.

Construction Post 1: Our production kit

During filming we used:

• A Canon HFG30 Camera- We used it on manual settings.
  
• a Shotgun microphone- To pick up the dialogue and diagetic sounds.

• A tripod- We kept the camera on the tripod at all times. This helped us to keep our shots steady and made it easy to move the camera to pan.
• A clapperboard- We used to organise our shots and how many takes we had done.
• A lighting kit- As we were shooting a party scene we had to shoot it at night so that it was dark outside. However this caused many problems for us with lighting as in our test shoot the footage came out grainy. 

The technology was used to edit:

• a PC with dual monitors
• Adobe Premier pro- in which we used a variety of tools to edit our clips. One of the most useful tools was the razor tool which we used to cut up clips, this was especially helpful when doing shot/reverse/shots.

R+P Post 20: Reflections so far/ looking ahead

As a group we've learnt a lot from our test shoot. One of our main problems with it was it just didnt look like a wild party. So for our main shoot we've decided to give our actors and ourselves a bit more freedom and we going to get them to do what they would normally do at a party and just film spontaneous clips of them. This is very similar to how Project X was filmed, they basically just had a massive party and filmed it. Not only are we going to have more actors but we're also going to make sure the framing is a lot tighter on every shot so that we can create the illusion that the party is busier than it actually is. I'm confident that we can make big improvements on our test shoot in our main shoot.

R+P Post 19: Our rough cut

We were not very happy with our rough cut as it did not fit the vision we had in mind for our opening sequence. One of our main problems was lighting. As our opening sequence is shot at a party we wanted the clip to be relatively dark to show that it was night time, however, we did not light the room well enough and this led to a lot of the clips being very grainy. Another of our main problems was that the sequence was not fast paced enough and didn't feel like a montage. We made a list of the main problems with the shoot so that moving forward into our main shoot we can rectify our mistakes.

R+P Post 18: Our test shoot

We wanted to run our test shoot as similarly as possible to our real shoot as it was a good way to rehearse everything from setting up the kit to organsing our cast. Before we could sheet we hd to have a completed shoot board, a completed shoot organisation form and a signed equipment release form. Before shooting we also had a lesson in which we were taught how to set up all the equipment and how to use it safely.

The shoot began well and we managed to do the individual shots of ella quite succesfully. However we only had 7 actors in our test shoot, as it was difficult to get such a large cast to commit to 3 weekends, so we struggled to create a busy, party atmosphere.

R+P Post 17: Our planned costumes, hair and make up

This is the costume list that we distributed amongst our actors. Costume was extremey important for us because we wanted to accuratley represent the way in which London teens dress as they are our core target audience. To make our casts outfits as realistic and representative as possible we left much of the syling down to themselves and just gave them a loose idea of what we wanted the to wear. We found this was the best way to let our cast express themselves and there identity as teenagers.