In my group i was given the role of Editor. This meant i had the responsability of editing my film once all filming had taken place. I chose this particular role because it is something that generally intrests me, also i have used an editing software previously.
I was also givin the task of writing the script for our piece. I completed this, but as a group we decided to go in a different direction with one of the characters so me and fellow group member Caroline Chicken tweaked to our vision.
Friday, 7 May 2010
Music
Every piece of properly released music, in current times is copyrighted; this means that you have to ask the artists permission to use it or pay the person that owns the piece to use it. To get around this problem we used a piece of un-copyrighted music.
We chose that particular piece because of the mystery and weirdness it instills in you when you listen to it.
We chose that particular piece because of the mystery and weirdness it instills in you when you listen to it.
Group meeting: changes
During production we made quite a few changes to our piece; we ended up deciding that our location we previously chose was not suitable for the whole group to film at due the distance in which are group live from each other. I believe that the location we have decided to use for our project is an improvement on the one we chose previously.
We also made a few tweaks to the script deciding to make the Levi character a lot less vocal than we originally intended. We done this so we could give a much more mysterious air to the character.
We also made a few tweaks to the script deciding to make the Levi character a lot less vocal than we originally intended. We done this so we could give a much more mysterious air to the character.
Vengeance script
Miller: (monologue) when you’ve been in this business as long as I have you find that nothing surprises you. The first thing you learn in undercover work is to learn fast, and trust no on, a few years ago yeas ago I never would have believed that a detective would conspire with criminals, but I was young and I trusted her.
Location: outskirts of Alexandra Park, Ipswich
Miller: where’ve you been? I’ve been trying to ring you
Grimwood: Look, I’ve been thinking, maybe I should go alone
Miller: no way, I’m the one who set this up, c’mon
Grimwood: Where is he?
Miller: I knew this would happen. There he is. Just let me do the talking. Your late
Levis: shut up
Grimwood: so, you got it yeah?
Levis: ‘course I have, why else would I be here? Where’s my money
Miller: you’ll get it just wait. It’s all there, now clear off
Levis: who you talking to
Miller : I’m talking to you blood, don’t worry I’ll be seeing you again real soon
Levis: yeah?
Miller: yeah.
(Grimwood hits Miller over the head with a brick)
Grimwood: I just wasn’t going down for this one.
Miller (monologue) I suppose it’s never too late to learn a few new lessons I the end, but this isn’t the end, and it’s never too late for vengeance.
Done by me with credit to Caroline Chicken
Location: outskirts of Alexandra Park, Ipswich
Miller: where’ve you been? I’ve been trying to ring you
Grimwood: Look, I’ve been thinking, maybe I should go alone
Miller: no way, I’m the one who set this up, c’mon
Grimwood: Where is he?
Miller: I knew this would happen. There he is. Just let me do the talking. Your late
Levis: shut up
Grimwood: so, you got it yeah?
Levis: ‘course I have, why else would I be here? Where’s my money
Miller: you’ll get it just wait. It’s all there, now clear off
Levis: who you talking to
Miller : I’m talking to you blood, don’t worry I’ll be seeing you again real soon
Levis: yeah?
Miller: yeah.
(Grimwood hits Miller over the head with a brick)
Grimwood: I just wasn’t going down for this one.
Miller (monologue) I suppose it’s never too late to learn a few new lessons I the end, but this isn’t the end, and it’s never too late for vengeance.
Done by me with credit to Caroline Chicken
Group meetings
To keep eachother updated and on course to completing the project our group held team meetings. This was a time; usually before a lesson where we could all come together and help eachother, show people work and share ideas etc. We all took specific roles during the production; but tried do do as much of the work as a group as possible.
Pre-production
Before we undertook this project there was paper work that had to be filled out; this included:
- A call sheet
- A risk assessment sheet
- Recky of the location
- And a conteact sheet.
Wednesday, 5 May 2010
Final evaluation
Final evaluation
In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
To make sure our film opening was noir like, we sat down as a class and watched several openings from both contemporary and classic noir, these included films like Brick, Double indemnity and a few more.
To really get a feel for Noir I decided to go a step further and watch a whole Noir film. I chose to watch the Maltese Falcon. I think that this gave me a better understanding of the genre and helped me in the long run.
I think that my film opening fits in with contemporary noir; I believe this because it uses all the ECMS from Noir but with a new modern storyline so we can attract our target audience. I also feel that my group kept very close to the codes and conventions of Noir; using double crossing, money, undercover police and a shady underworld character.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
In my groups film opening as I previously stated we put a very modern twist on the noir genre. In doing this we had to use a character that wouldn’t have been typical of more classic film Noir; a drug dealer. This character helps us to connect with today’s youth and bring the genre more up to date, whilst also using an underworld character; something that is more typical of the genre. We decided to make the ‘hero’ of the story an undercover police officer. The reason we came to this decision is purely for the fact that there aren’t that many private investigators around these days; this character also helps in our direction to bring the genre more up to date. The only other character in our piece was a femme fatal. When Noir films were first made women didn’t have that much power in society so a femme fatal character back then was something that wasn’t seen often in real life, nowadays that is not that case so a femme fatal character is something harder to pull of. We decided to still include this crucial Noir character, making her the character that actually double crosses our protagonist.
We tried to keep our film as close to real life as possible so shots, locations and characters were all as realistic and as close to what real life is like as possible, for example:
· Drug dealer- Shady, untrustworthy and violent.
· Policeman- trusting and smart.
· Location- offices (police station) and a small enclosed part of a forest (drug deal).
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
When distributing our product I think that we would look to use a British distributor. An example is Revolver entertainment; the people that distributed Kidulthood, I made a point of that because I feel that the direction we would take our film is the same as the kidulthood/adulthood films went.
My groups film would be in all big British cinemas, especially urbanised areas, as this is where its set and where the people that can relate to and that would enjoy this film live.
I believe that when my film eventually reached television it would end up being shown on channel 4; I think this because it is a more up to date, current station showing cutting edge programmes; due to that fact I think a younger generation of people would be tuned into this station compared to the ITV for example.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
When we started our project my group all decided that we wanted our film to be rated a 15. We done this so that we could get a reasonable amount of language and violence, but still include most of the teenage audience. We feel that this is a film for teenagers purely for the fact of the storyline and urban gritty feel is what is popular in film for British teenagers at the moment.
We felt a 15 rating was applicable to our film because of the violence that the film would contain. On the BBFC website it states that
“Moderate violence is allowed but should not dwell on detail. There should be no emphasis on injuries or blood”
Due to this fact we thought that our film would contain to much violence to fit into this category.
When we played our Noir to the class we got generally very good reactions. Most saying that this is a film that would want to watch; I think that this means the audience we aimed for whilst making this piece has been met considering our group is made up of 16-21 year olds. Some members of the group did say that our opening was a bit more thriller than Noir; I don’t believe that this is a justifiable point. When we made our film we aimed for a very new style of Noir something like Brick, which a younger generation could relate to and I believe that objective has been met.
How did you attract/address your audience?
As I previously mentioned we aimed for a teen to early 20’s audience when making our film. We attracted this audience by using typical themes from films that are popular with them e.g. violence, drugs and double crossings. The title of our film was also a means to address our audience which I think we used to our advantage; the name vengeance gives you an extremely strong clue to what type of film this is and what its context is. We also tried to use quick action-filled, very visual shots; we done this because teenagers have a very short attention span which we believe we have adhered to. Some of the members of my media group also stated to me that my groups films opening was very action packed; this is another positive point because it helps draw an audience in more and make them want to watch the rest of the film to find out what happens to these characters.
What have you learnt about the technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Whilst making this sequence I had to complete some research to find out about this genre that I had never previously heard of. This meant I had to use as many different routes to learn about this genre as possible. To start I decided to look over some students blogs from last year to give me a general feel for the project ahead. I had never previously interacted with an Internet blog so learnt a lot about it just from checking out some of these pages.
During the time when I was actually planning and making this short sequence, I came across a lot of technology and software that I had never used before so had to learn there in and outs from scratch. To help with this our lecturer done lessons on how to use the equipment and even gave out a kind of “dummies” guide to all of the filming equipment. This now means I no how to use all the equipment that we were expected to be able to use during the course. We used Apple Macs during the editing stage of our production; I had never previously used these machines and their software but found them easy to pick up after a quick five minute lesson.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
I think that since my preliminary exercise my filming skills have improved ten fold, for example in my prelim I made a mistake by crossing the 180 degree line; an easy mistake to make without much filming knowledge. I believe that my groups film opening could easily be the opening to a Noir film and has met our objectives.
When we filmed our preliminary exercise there was hardly any planning involved, we basically went straight out and filmed it. This would have been impossible to do when making my film opening, our planning, questionnaires and research etc was crucial to making a good product. I also believe that I have become much more film minded during this project, which meant that good ideas were spontaneous and didn’t always have to come from a preset script/storyboard etc. This in turn meant that we would change our mind about a shot when just about to shoot it and end up with a totally different visual style for a shot. I think my greatest help in creating a good film Noir opening was my new understanding for the genres codes and conventions through my prior research; this meant I could get my piece looking stylistically more Noir through my knowledge.
In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
To make sure our film opening was noir like, we sat down as a class and watched several openings from both contemporary and classic noir, these included films like Brick, Double indemnity and a few more.
To really get a feel for Noir I decided to go a step further and watch a whole Noir film. I chose to watch the Maltese Falcon. I think that this gave me a better understanding of the genre and helped me in the long run.
I think that my film opening fits in with contemporary noir; I believe this because it uses all the ECMS from Noir but with a new modern storyline so we can attract our target audience. I also feel that my group kept very close to the codes and conventions of Noir; using double crossing, money, undercover police and a shady underworld character.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
In my groups film opening as I previously stated we put a very modern twist on the noir genre. In doing this we had to use a character that wouldn’t have been typical of more classic film Noir; a drug dealer. This character helps us to connect with today’s youth and bring the genre more up to date, whilst also using an underworld character; something that is more typical of the genre. We decided to make the ‘hero’ of the story an undercover police officer. The reason we came to this decision is purely for the fact that there aren’t that many private investigators around these days; this character also helps in our direction to bring the genre more up to date. The only other character in our piece was a femme fatal. When Noir films were first made women didn’t have that much power in society so a femme fatal character back then was something that wasn’t seen often in real life, nowadays that is not that case so a femme fatal character is something harder to pull of. We decided to still include this crucial Noir character, making her the character that actually double crosses our protagonist.
We tried to keep our film as close to real life as possible so shots, locations and characters were all as realistic and as close to what real life is like as possible, for example:
· Drug dealer- Shady, untrustworthy and violent.
· Policeman- trusting and smart.
· Location- offices (police station) and a small enclosed part of a forest (drug deal).
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
When distributing our product I think that we would look to use a British distributor. An example is Revolver entertainment; the people that distributed Kidulthood, I made a point of that because I feel that the direction we would take our film is the same as the kidulthood/adulthood films went.
My groups film would be in all big British cinemas, especially urbanised areas, as this is where its set and where the people that can relate to and that would enjoy this film live.
I believe that when my film eventually reached television it would end up being shown on channel 4; I think this because it is a more up to date, current station showing cutting edge programmes; due to that fact I think a younger generation of people would be tuned into this station compared to the ITV for example.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
When we started our project my group all decided that we wanted our film to be rated a 15. We done this so that we could get a reasonable amount of language and violence, but still include most of the teenage audience. We feel that this is a film for teenagers purely for the fact of the storyline and urban gritty feel is what is popular in film for British teenagers at the moment.
We felt a 15 rating was applicable to our film because of the violence that the film would contain. On the BBFC website it states that
“Moderate violence is allowed but should not dwell on detail. There should be no emphasis on injuries or blood”
Due to this fact we thought that our film would contain to much violence to fit into this category.
When we played our Noir to the class we got generally very good reactions. Most saying that this is a film that would want to watch; I think that this means the audience we aimed for whilst making this piece has been met considering our group is made up of 16-21 year olds. Some members of the group did say that our opening was a bit more thriller than Noir; I don’t believe that this is a justifiable point. When we made our film we aimed for a very new style of Noir something like Brick, which a younger generation could relate to and I believe that objective has been met.
How did you attract/address your audience?
As I previously mentioned we aimed for a teen to early 20’s audience when making our film. We attracted this audience by using typical themes from films that are popular with them e.g. violence, drugs and double crossings. The title of our film was also a means to address our audience which I think we used to our advantage; the name vengeance gives you an extremely strong clue to what type of film this is and what its context is. We also tried to use quick action-filled, very visual shots; we done this because teenagers have a very short attention span which we believe we have adhered to. Some of the members of my media group also stated to me that my groups films opening was very action packed; this is another positive point because it helps draw an audience in more and make them want to watch the rest of the film to find out what happens to these characters.
What have you learnt about the technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Whilst making this sequence I had to complete some research to find out about this genre that I had never previously heard of. This meant I had to use as many different routes to learn about this genre as possible. To start I decided to look over some students blogs from last year to give me a general feel for the project ahead. I had never previously interacted with an Internet blog so learnt a lot about it just from checking out some of these pages.
During the time when I was actually planning and making this short sequence, I came across a lot of technology and software that I had never used before so had to learn there in and outs from scratch. To help with this our lecturer done lessons on how to use the equipment and even gave out a kind of “dummies” guide to all of the filming equipment. This now means I no how to use all the equipment that we were expected to be able to use during the course. We used Apple Macs during the editing stage of our production; I had never previously used these machines and their software but found them easy to pick up after a quick five minute lesson.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
I think that since my preliminary exercise my filming skills have improved ten fold, for example in my prelim I made a mistake by crossing the 180 degree line; an easy mistake to make without much filming knowledge. I believe that my groups film opening could easily be the opening to a Noir film and has met our objectives.
When we filmed our preliminary exercise there was hardly any planning involved, we basically went straight out and filmed it. This would have been impossible to do when making my film opening, our planning, questionnaires and research etc was crucial to making a good product. I also believe that I have become much more film minded during this project, which meant that good ideas were spontaneous and didn’t always have to come from a preset script/storyboard etc. This in turn meant that we would change our mind about a shot when just about to shoot it and end up with a totally different visual style for a shot. I think my greatest help in creating a good film Noir opening was my new understanding for the genres codes and conventions through my prior research; this meant I could get my piece looking stylistically more Noir through my knowledge.
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