Final Post

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Question 7

Question 6

Question 5

Question 4

Question 3

Question 2

Question 1

Target Audience

The target audience for our opening sequence is aged 12-50 as we don't want a narrow age range to exclude certain people. As the storyline in our film is about a boy juggling two lives, it is highly unlikely that anyone else is going through the same experience, so our film does not relate to a certain group in that view. However, it does have elements of a teenagers life at school and in general so it does relate to the younger generation, but the elements of his work being a detective invites the older generations to enjoy this film too.

If our film were to have a age certificate it would be a 12 as there will be no nudity and sexual content. There may be violence but it won't be gory.

Mise-en-scene

Regarding props, the park scenes didn't need anything specific as it was just us. We used the park in its natural state, we did not place certain objects anywhere for a specific reason.

The mise-en-scene for the detectives room was full of objects such as coffee mugs with rings around them, half empty glasses and other things that personalise the desk towards the detective. These messy desk shows that he has is so invested in the case that he doesn't have time to clear up.

The pin board is full of things relating to the case such as the map containing the park where Yasmin was last seen, the school she goes to and her where she lives. It also has pictures of her friends and her passport.

Location

We wanted to have the montage of the girls messing around with the detective doing his work, so we had to think of where to film the girls. We chose Enfield Town Park park as many teenagers go to the park with their friends so it is relevant to and reflects teenagers in real life.

The detective was doing his work in his bedroom so we filmed in Morgan's room. We initially had the idea to have him in an office setting, but then we explored ideas for the rest of the film and once landing on the idea that he had to juggle two lives.  This means that his detective life is a secret so there is no possible way for him to have an office. Therefore we decided that it should be somewhere in his house that he works, and the way that we filmed it you can only see the desk and the computer. There is no suggestion that it is a bedroom but the mise-en-scene indicates that it is not a professional environment such as an office.

Showcase Feedback (Written response)

During the showcase everyone had a feedback form to fill out containing four questions:

• What did you understand about the narrative? (Quick synopsis)
• Did the chosen genre fit its conventions?
• How did the 'ending' make you feel?
• Any suggestions for improvements, if we were to shoot the whole thing again?

Overall we received 38 responses and 23 of them had a form of criticism.

I created this bar chart showing the types of criticism we received.

Lighting was mainly about how dim our opening sequence was and it should be a little brighter to make things clearer, however we wanted it dark to fit the conventions of our genre and also make the audience question what is going on.

Camera was about the camera quality and how it was slightly grainy, but this is because it was filmed in the dark.

Speech related to the fact that we were not clear enough when talking.

We also received 6 unique responses.

• More shots of the boy investigating
• Re-think about how to end the opening
• Film landscape, not portrait
• Better environment maybe? More of an office would be cool
• Title fonts
• When the video clips are bad quality looks like Snapchat quality

Regarding the ending of the sequence I stick by how we ended it because the boy rushes off in a hurry. This makes the audience question why the phone call made him leave and it makes them want to watch more to find out.

For the filming comments, we did use Snapchat to film our handheld clips because it is realistic as to what teenagers would do. It is rare that teenagers will film themselves in the park on a traditional video camera, they would use Snapchat on their phones in landscape mode. 

Plan

This is my plan for my evaluations. I have broke the paper into 6 boxes for the 6 questions and wrote bullet points on what I will talk about. I didn't need a plan for the 7th question as I have already filmed half of it so I knew exactly what I had to do.

I set up the camera in a room which has a white wall so that I can layer pictures and videos on the clip.

Nerve (2016)

I recently watched 'Nerve' directed by Ariel Schulman and I really liked the way it was edited, especially in terms of the scenes where Vee was on the computer.

It was edited so that the computer screen filled up the whole page and the camera would move around the screen. It also followed the mouse so we could see exactly what Vee could see which made the audience a part of the film.

It also had realistic elements to it such as when Vee and Sydney facetimed it glitched which is what usually happens when people FaceTime.

   

Results

For section A, gender representation in Sherlock, I got 29/50 which is a D. I am a little disappointed but I was expecting a low grade because for half of the question I forgot I was writing about gender representation so I just spoke about techniques in general. I know that when I do another question I will focus entirely on exactly what the question is asking.

For section B, the internets role in marketing and exchange, I got 38/50 which is a B. I'm happy with that grade as I remembered all my quotes and figures for each case study. I believe I need to do more and more questions to strengthen my writing skills to bring my grade up to an A.

Overall I got 67/100 which is a C. I was aiming for a B but I understand where it went wrong and I aim to improve my exam skills.

Actors

For the girls we used ourselves as we weren't reliant on other people's time tables. We also called eachother by our names instead of giving eachother fake names. We did this as when filming we were genuinely messing around so we would've forgotten to call eachother by the fake names. Also acting as ourselves makes it more natural.

For the detective it took us a while to think of someone to play him. We wanted a boy to fit the stereotypical view of a detective but also someone who is young so it ties into our storyline. After asking a few people (who unfortunately said no) we decided to use Kelsey Morrissey, Morgan's 14 year old brother as he was avaliable and didn't mind being on camera. Plus he looks a lot older than 14 and we were aiming for a 16/17 year old.

127 hours

In class we watched 127 hours, directed by Danny Boyle, and overall it was a great film with so many unique techniques.

While watching the title sequence, the name A.R. Rahman struck out to me. He is an Indian singer-songwriter, composer and producer and I have heard many of his songs before.

The music in this film was one of my favourite aspects as it made the scenes more enticing. For instance, the scene where Aron had to amputate his arm, the song 'Liberation' was used. Just the title itself relates to the scene as Aron is cutting free from the rock that glued him to the spot, he is being liberated. The music builds up and at the part where he reaches his nerve a sharp 'buzzy twang' noise is added to relay the pain he is in towards the audience. In my opinion, the music and sound effects made this scene what it is. I could easily watch this scene if it was mute, but the sound effect of the buzz made me on edge, I was forced to look away. This is why I believe A.R. Rahman did a excellent job at using music to engage the audience.

Script

For our opening sequence we didn't have a script. We had bullet points and general ideas of what we were going to say for our voiceover but when we were in the park there were no points on what to speak about as we felt that if it was scripted it wouldn't sound natural.

The voiceovers Morgan and I did were natural but we wanted to mention the fact that we went to the park after school, the fact that Yasmin went home by herself and that she had problems with her father.

The part of the detective working had no speech as there were voiceovers.

Showcase Feedback (Verbal Response)

On the 20th March the media department had a showcase where all the AS opening sequences and all the A2 music videos are shown. Yasmin didn't come so it was just Morgan and I again. I spoke about it before we showed it to everyone, and afterwards we gathered feedback.

17/02/17

We came in again to continue editing, this time focusing on titles.



The problem that we spoke about regarding that one title that wouldn't move we eventually fixed by using a very straightforward solution, pressing enter to bring it a line down. Honestly that frustrated me as we spent so much time trying to fix it when the solution was simple.

16/02/17

During the half term Morgan and I came in to edit our work, mainly focusing on the music. Yasmin couldn't come.

Direction

In the park we didn't know exactly what we were going to do, just that we would be walking around and having fun. As mentioned in the "Script" post we did this to make it more natural.

While filming the scenes of the detective, we just asked him to watch the videos and skip some of it to represent that this isn't the first time he is watching it so he can skip parts.

We also made sure that he stayed somewhat still as we didn't want to show his face. The fact that he is young and a student is something the audience should figure out later in the film so we didn't want to give that part away in the opening sequence.

There were also parts without the detective where the camera just panned around the set to show all his work.

Section B

Section B was about how internet helped with a films marketing and communication. I used three case studies:

Captain America: Civil War (2016)
Paranormal Activity (2007)
The Interview (2014)

For Captain America I spoke about how if a fan tweeted #TeamIronMan or #TeamCap they would receive a video from the films twitter account of a cast member agreeing or disagreeing with their choice. This is because it engaged fans which made them excited to watch it.

Paranormal Activity used Eventful.com and fans would demand the film in an area near them. This created 'hype' around the film and once it hit over one million demands Paramount revealed that they would expand the film to cinemas.

The Interview was my negative case study on how internet does not always help. The film was marketed and purchased online, but torrent sites got a hold of it and it was viewed illegally millions of times, creating no profit.

I was also going to talk about 'Shawshank Redemption' (1994) but I didn't know enough about it. I started the paragraph but realised I was waffling on and it didn't really make sense so I crossed it out.

Along with these case studies I used quotes and figures to prove why my statement was correct. I think I have done better in Section B than Section A because I knew in-depth information about the films.

Section A

Section A was asking about Gender representation in an extract of Sherlock Holmes episode 1 season 1. I spoke about the four main elements, mise-en-scene, cinematography, camera work and editing, however halfway through I remembered that the question was about gender, so I had to go back and link my points to gender representation. I know that my lack of paying attention to what the question was asking will bring my grade down and it has taught me to always stay focused towards the question.

Overall thoughts

On 10th March 2017 we had our media mock, which consisted of the June 2016 questions.

Overall I believe it went well, however for Section A I lost sight of what the question was asking but I managed to link my sentences to the representation at the end.

For Section B I knew straight away what case studies I would use for the particular question.

Evaluation Questions

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

4. Who would be the audience of your media product?

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

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

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

Due on 28th April 2016

Advertising Idea

As our group started filming our opening sequence again, no one in the class knew what we our new opening sequence was about. Some classmates have asked us and only two people have seen it before we showed it to the class. This made me think about if we were to advertise our film. Keeping the rest of the class in the dark made them curious and if we could advertise our film with minimal information on what its about the public will want to know more. So our posters and tv adverts would most likely be a dark picture, to tie in with our genre, with little text. Instead of seeing an advert where you know exactly what film is being shown, our one will make people wonder "What film is this? What is it about?" It will draw audiences in, making people want to watch the film which increases Box Office takings as many suspenseful audiences will buy tickets to understand what the film is about.

Titles in the sequence

As this is a title sequence, there obviously has to be titles.

Our first title was 'Starring Kelsey Morrissey' and we placed it slightly higher than the bottom left corner. We did this as we didn't want it to obstruct the paper which has the writing '10th December 2015' as this is a significant date as it shows up at the beginning of the title sequence and it is the date Yasmin went missing.


Another title which had a specific place was 'Directed by Morgan Morrissey'. We wanted to place it on the wooden part of the pin board as having it higher didn't look right. We prefer it on the wooden part as it is the right length for that title and the natural wooden lines are vertical which helps the text flow. As iMovie does not allow you to place the titles where you want, we had to place this title in the top right corner and attempt to bring it down. We tried various times using different techniques but every time we finished it would jump straight back up. In the end, I figured out we could just press enter to bring it down; such a simple solution which took over half an hour to find.


The rest of the titles are in each corner and vary between shots.

The font we used for our titles is 'Gurmukhi MN' . We wanted a simplistic font so that it wont draw attention away from the actual sequence. Plus, we already have so many complex elements to our sequence (non-diegetic music, voice overs, handheld clips) so having a simplistic, minimalistic font brings it all together.