AS Media Studies

G321 Foundation Production

Evaluation

Daisy Nicholls

Question one- In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and

conventions of real media products?Titles:

What we are trying to show the audience is that our films going to be a social realist

drama genre.We have gone for the monochrome look throughout our titles as that gives it an

edgy/dark look. Our titles are sharp edged and bold, like they are almost shouting at you-

which we made in a graffiti maker, we thought this was appropriate because the graffiti is

present in a lot of films to do with social realist, as they are usually shot on estates that are run down or based in naturalistic scenery.

Use of Flashforward:•This is our opening

shot to our film opening. We started

with a flash forward so that this will have the

effect where it will draw the audience in to

watching the rest of the film.

•We went for the more dramatic image for the flash forward opening, so that the audience

know straight away that this film is dealing with

serious issues.

InspirationAmerican beauty was our inspiration as it is a drama that is set in the present, which also begins with a flash-forward, which gives us an idea of the story genre and story line that we will be faced with.

Mise en scene:

•For our film opening we used very

naturalistic/basic Mise en scene.

• As our film genre is social realist, we decided to set in in basic settings as it would make it more

realistic to real life scenarios.

This shows our naturalistic interior to

our film opening, showing it is not a

glamorous location and it is just a normal basic

house.

InspirationFor our inspiration we used the film train spotting, as that uses very naturalistic mise en scene and also run down rough areas. We used our inspiration to shoot in poles lane as that is quite rough and scummy looking, as we used an ordinary house to not symbolise ‘glam’.

Use of Sound:

Our Music we ended up using is called ‘The Third Place’, we chose this because it gave an edgy feel to our film opening, which created a high amount of suspense and tension to our audience. Originally we filmed Bethan singing ‘ The A team’ by Ed Sheran, After converting it into our video we realised that this music was not suitable, as it was to up beat. And also was sung a little flat at times. Therefore we come across this soundtrack which we thought was appropriate in building tension.

Characterisation of Poppy:

For our characterisation we wanted to go for lower class and rough looking. As the main character is a prostitute our main focus was on her, making her look like a stereotypical prostitute ,wearing revealing clothes and keeping to black and white colours.

Inspiration For our inspiration we used ‘ London to Brighton’. We thought this was a very appropriate film to look at, as Kelly is a very stereotypical prostitute, who looks rough and very lower class .We used very similar clothing style to her.

‘Pretty women’ however was completely opposite to our idea of a stereotypical prostitute. Julia Roberts is made up to be a very Hollywood view of what prostitutes look like, and this was not the route we wanted to go down. We wanted the more run down, lower class look.

Question Two – How does your media product represent certain social groups? Explain who

your main characters are.

Sympathise - We aim for the audience to sympathise with Poppy as she is the victim. We did this by Poppy being the only voiceover and not having the murderer speak at all, to get the audience on her side.

Characterisation of the murderer:

For the characterisation of the murderer, we wanted to give him the lower class/rough look. We achieved this by giving him the hoodie, the cap and also the cigarette to empathise the ‘bad’ look.

Inspiration: Our inspiration for the characterisation of the murderer was inspired by London to Brighton’s Derek. He is the powerful character in the film and is the pimp and has control over the prostitutes. We used him as our inspiration because Harry has control over Poppy and is the bad guy in our film opening.

Question Three – What kind of media institution might distribute

your media product and why?If a film distribution company was to back our film, I think that Channel 4 films would put fundraising into our film and show it on their channel. I feel this because Channel four do films similar to ours in genres being social realist and serious dramas.

This is England 86’ is a channel four series production which is similar to our film opening, in ways being that it is a social realist drama which deals with serious issues.

Art house Cinema – If our film was to be screened in cinemas, I feel that it would be exhibited in art house cinema as it has the absence of Special effects, upbeat storylines and famous actors, which draw people into going into multiplex cinemas. Our film is independent and low budget, therefore would be shown in Local art house cinemas.

Our film would be entitled to The national Lottery funding by first light, which give money to first starter film companies that have just started out in Film making. As we are British

and filmed in Britain, with a British director, this also entitles us to funding from the Lottery.

Question four-Who would be the audience for your product?

Classification-The age rating for our film would be a 15. We decided this because of the drug and sex content it holds, and also the appearance of violence throughout our film opening. Which would not be suitable for under 15’s.

The main audience to be attracted to watch our film would be people who have

previously watched social realist dramas, such as London to Brighton, Shifty and Trainspotting, As these films all involve content unsuitable for under 15’s as it

involves a high level of sex, crime/violence and drugs. These three films also deal with serious issues which are hard watching, just like our film Honeybear, it deals with serious

issues.

Target Gender -Our film opening would be targeted at both genders, due to the social realist genre, that deals with serious issues

that would grip both male and females. Although the genders may have different

views of the films storyline, i.e. who to sympathise with etc.

I think the event that people would go to watch this would maybe be a date or a

girls/boys night out.

Question five – How did you attract/address your audience?

Camera Style – In our film we have used handheld cameras, to make it seem more realistic and to create more tension and suspense. We got our inspiration from Paranormal activity, as they have used handheld cameras throughout all three of their films, and have successfully created thrills and tension throughout.

Music – Our music has a big effect on the mood and feelings of the viewers. The tense and suspicious atmosphere the music creates makes the viewers feel on the edge and grips them into the film, as the music clearly insinuates something bad is coming up.

Emotional Appeal – Our film opening has emotional appeal to the audience, due to the fact that it deals with serious issues that involve a hard hit to the audience. This makes it emotional to the audience because of the serious issues it deals with, causes them to sympathise with various characters and to engage with what they are feeling.

Question six -What technical skills have you learnt and how has your understanding of the film production developed during the process of

constructing this product?Blogging Since the start of our film production, we have all learnt how to blog about our updates on the production and everything that is happening with them. Involving pictures, comments, posts, videos, hyperlinks and animatics.

•I have learnt how firstly to create a blog, we used www.blogger.com as it is simple and easy to use and create a blog. •I also learnt to upload photographs from our production onto the blog. These photographs include pictures that we took on set shooting and photographs of pieces of important paper that everybody in the group need to see. • Every time we did something to do with our production, we done an update on our individual blogs. Whether it being things such as; music choice to evaluations of our shoots. • We also learnt how to upload animatics. By using these it helps give a good portrayal of what happened on our shoots as we are showing a huge range of photographs.

•We have also learnt how to upload videos and slide share PowerPoint's. On our blogs we have our first and second cuts of our film opening and also title research PowerPoint using a slide share software. • Another thing we have learnt to do is to put hyperlinks on our blogs to film extracts. We use these because then it gives more of an idea of the inspiration we have used and included in our film opening.

Camera Skills Since starting the production I have learnt how to use the handheld cameras properly. This is because we used a handheld camera throughout the production and we used our inspiration from paranormal activity sequel films. •I have learnt how to use the zoom on the camera’s and correct camera angles. We learnt properly what camera angles proper names are, how to indentify them and what correct way there is to use them when shooting a shot. We bared the camera angles in mind when shooting our production. •We also learnt how to upload our videos from the camera. At first I felt nervous when having to do this part, as I was never quite sure how to actually do it and needed help. But eventually I managed to learn how to do it, it involves the black mains lead with the number that matches up to the camera, and also the usb lead to upload them onto the computer ready to edit.

•I also learnt how to use the boom microphone when doing our production, as some of our filming involved sound, therefore we wanted it to be clear, so we added the boom microphone into the slot on the camera. This involved me holding the camera on the boom pole as close to the subject as I could without getting it in shot. This then enabled us to get clear and loud speech in our production. Our Camera Shots

Extreme close up Long shot Medium Close Up

Editing For our production, Premier was a big part of it, as it was our editing software we used to put our video together

and what we used to tweak our production.

• Premier was the hardest thing for me whilst doing our production. I found editing the hardest part as I found premier very complicated, and that there was a lot to remember which I struggled with quite a bit and needed more guidance on. Only towards the end of the making I got the hang of things. • We learnt how to import still images into the editing line and also how to edit in sounds. You do this in the same way by going onto file- import and then going onto

your documents to find the attachments wanted. This then goes into your imports at the left hand side of Premier.• We also learnt how to do special effects in our production, by using things such as cross fades and fade to black to make it look more visually interesting. •In our productions we also used captions to add the names of the actors, directors and myself and Shaunagh’s name and candidate numbers. This was simple and easily done, once adding the captions you added it into the editing line and then they will appear in your production.

Understanding of how films are made

In the time we have been making our films, I think we all learnt the importance of who is involved in making films and all of the other parts that go into the making and preparation of the film.Director – They control a film's artistic and dramatic aspects, while

guiding the technical crew and actors. Whilst going through the production of our film, we learnt the importance of the directors job. As once we shot in poles lane without our director present, this didn’t turn out well as then we found out we did things wrong; due to not having our director present to direct us. We learnt from our mistakes after this shoot, and continued our filming and made sure that every time we had our director Nicola present with us.

Importance of location- We learnt that our locations were of importance in our film, as the mise en scene is the atmosphere creator. Such as poles lane creates a sense of eeriness, and Poppy's bedroom mise en scene creates the atmosphere of dark and gloom, which gives the sense of something being wrong and portrays tension to the audience.

Production – When we first started producing our film, we all did a storyboard of our idea as a group and then photocopied it so we all had a copy. This included the shots, the camera angles and what the actor/actress has to do in the shot. This helped us because when it come to actually shooting it we knew exactly what we was doing, which saved us time in the long run. It also involved the time we shot Planning/Organisation - Planning and organisation is a key importance

when producing a film. Therefore we created a call sheet at every shoot we went on, this involved contact numbers for everybody, times of meeting/where and what each member of the group has to bring along to include in the film – props, camera equipment etc. We also involved health and safety, such as making sure there is no trailing leads, obstructing doorways and suitable shoes and clothing for all weather conditions.

Question seven –Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the

progression from it to the main product?Organisation – I feel that our organisation from when we did our preliminary has progressed whilst doing our production as I have learnt the importance of planning. Although we did a storyboard so we knew exactly what we was doing when filming, we didn’t do a call sheet, therefor it made it a bit unorganised as we wasn’t sure of what we needed to bring prop wise etc. To avoid pitfalls when doing our production, we made our storyboard a lot more detailed with timings and camera angles and used a detailed call sheet which informed the group exactly everything we all needed to know. This taught me that the planning of the production was very important to our success.

Editing – Since doing our preliminary task I feel that I have gained more confidence on using premier software to edit our production. Before now I have never used premier and now I feel that I have basic knowledge on the tools on the software. Such as using the razor tool to cut off bits of unwanted video shots. When doing the preliminary task I feel that I struggled a lot using premier and relied a lot on my group to do most of the editing, as I didn’t feel confident enough to put our groups work into my hands.

What we learnt from the Preliminary task and kept in mind for coursework -In our preliminary task we made a few mistakes which we wasn’t happy with. •Eye line match did not look correct•Match on action was not right•180 degree rule was not obtained Therefore when doing our honeybear film production we made sure we did not repeat these mistakes, as they had a big influence on our first task.