EVALUATION Q2.

How does your media product represent particular social groups? 

Media representations are the ways in which the media portrays particular groups, communities, experiences, ideas, or topics from a particular ideological or value perspective. 

In our final product I play the role of the "popular girl."

The stereotype of the popular girl is that she is trendy, a show off, someone who cannot see past their reflection. We have followed the socially prescribed perspective of this character. 

Following these screen shots are 2 

similar pictures from actual movies determining this representation. These pictures is taking from the film "John Tucker Must Die;" a teen movie displaying the conventions of high school life. 

 















In the other screen shots we see Arber who plays an underprivileged youth dressed according to the stereotype.

The picture on the right is a screen shot from the movie "Ill Manors" and we see he is dressed in a similar attire to our character.

EVALUATION Q5.

How did you attract/address your audience?

Our target audience was for people between the ages of 15-30 and urban movie enthusiats. I believe the primary address to our audience was through sound. The urban instrumental 'Chipmunk - My crew' set the tone of the opening sequence and is a sound that many young people have previously heard.

Below is a brief presentaion of some of the screen shots from our final product that I believe provided appeal to our target audience


Audience attraction/address by Slidely Slideshow

Mise-en-scene of the female character

Props:
- Weave
- Small handbag
- Lipstick
- Tight jeans
- Skimpy top
- Earrings

Movement:
- Distinct walk
- Shy grin in the elevator
- Lack of attention paid to surroundings

Young females can relate to these factors therefore brings forward a sense of appeal. 

Mise-en-scene of male characters

Props:
- Dark clothing
- Hat
- Baggy jeans
- Stolen drink

Movement:
- First male greeting
- Head turn as girl walks
- Rapid movement after theft

Diagetic sound:
- Male tone "sorry again darling" (london accent)
- Female tone "I'm going to 3rd floor"
- Followed by male tone "aight lets go" ('aight' is colloquial; would attract the young modern male audience)

All of these factors set the mood of the opening sequence and would also bring foward appeal to our target audience


How I personally reached my target audience

I sent the vimeo link of our film to a few friends and these were some of the responses:

EVALUATION Q7.

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

I took the role of camera person for my prelimary task and overall, for a first time, I believe it went fairly well.

LIMITATIONS IN THE PRELIM:

. Lack of variety in the camera angles
. Camera composition was a little off e.g. space above head
. Rule of thirds was not considered
. Lighting was not considered
. Sound was poor

This wide shot was particularly poor as there is too much head space and poor lighting. My filming wasn't very steady and there was also a lot of back ground noise that I didn't pay attention to at the time.

I was content with the match cut we performed and I think this is the best shot filmed throughout the clip. 

Since then I have learned to pay more attention to detail, especially to sound and camera angles; and so went on to produce an opening sequence that was a little less amateur. 

The above screen shot is from our final product. We titled it 'Love & Education.'

Unlike my preliminary task, we did undergo some planning for our final product. A story board was created and extra ideas were jotted down on paper. Below is a presentation demonstrating the key things I have learnt in this process. 

LIMITATIONS IN THE FINAL PRODUCT:

. Sound used for the opening should have started earlier
. More match cuts could have been included
. Lighting should have been used more frequently e.g make up/bathroom scene
. Pay more attention to the motion of the I-dents during title sequence
. More planning during planning stages

Development across both productions:

. Learned the importance of match cuts (preliminary)
. Enhanced my undertanding of the Final Cut Pro software (final product)
. Manage sound appropriately (final product)
. Use a variety of camera angles (preliminary & final product)

Final Reflection Post

What has been achieved?

. Storyboard
. Editing evidence
. Opening sequence 

After several hours of work we have finally completed our opening sequence! Much to my surprise our best efforts has brought us to meet deadlines and produce a good film.

Sitting with Traivon from noon until evening, editing and blogging, was a strain on us both but completely worth it. All of the targets we'd set from the previous night were met and I believe the long hours I invested paid off. We had finished.

What have you learned?

I have learned a lot more about Final Cut Pro for example, the keys that alter the projection of sound. Whilst editing parts of our film I noticed some clips were louder than some; which brought my attention the keys just mentioned.

I have also learned the importance of time keeping and meeting deadlines. I strongly believe that if previous deadlines were met we may have been able to produce an even better opening.

What could have been done differently?

More attention could have been paid on framework e.g. rule of thirds. I tried my best to use a variety of camera angles during our film, e.g the low angle shot of vehicles, and I can only hope this is recognised. We could have also spent more time editing if we hadn't of had to re-film - this shows a lack of planning and also highlights its importance.

What happens next?

In the next week or so I will be evaluating our film and the journey up to its creation.

The completion of 'Love & Education'

Deadline Day - Final Push

To meet today's deadline it was vital that we began working immediately. We designated roles to one another, for example, Mustafa to edit first and Traivon was to re-film what was necessary.

The day started well. While we were huddled around to edit we noticed an incomplete clip (the book scene). With the equipment already pre-booked we quickly set up the filming apparatus and shot new footage (the library scene) to help tidy our current film.

By noon our primary focus was to finish our editing, including the title sequence and all special effects we desired to use. We didn't know

Schedule for deadline date

I have created a brief presentation using prezi.com to outline what is to be done on the deadline date of our opening sequence. What I want for tomorrow is for each of us to put in 110% through investment of all of our time and so meet the deadline for a completed film.

Hopefully all goes according to plan.

Enjoy :-)

Music - rough cut - Result

We have yet to find an appropriate sound to use for our opening. As I stated before I am someone who believes in an alternative plan so following my proposal to YoungMagicProductions (twitter name @YoungMagicBeatz) he responded a few minutes ago:

Thanks to social networking I was able to communicate with the young urban producer who assured me it was okay to use his 'my crew' instrumental in our opening film. He also sent it to my personal email address to help avoid any copyright issues.

Editing Day 3

Today's lesson was very productive because we managed to go out and re-film the shots which received bad feedback after we previewed our rough cut. We also managed to edit them in to our current editing progress. We had to be careful when we re-filmed because we had to wear the same clothing and use the exact same props as well as the same lighting. This was for continuity editing. During this editing day we also had feedback from Micky (member of staff for media) who told us we were making good progress, but pointed out minor improvements which we could possibly make.

We all felt like today everyone played an active part in the editing process.








Here is how we added a black and white effect to the fridge scene,we thought it would make it look more effective as a flashback if it stood out dramatically from the other scenes.

First we selected the scene which we wanted to put in black and white.

Then we found the colour filter which we wanted to apply to the film.

Here is what it looked like once it was added.

Opening Sequence - Rough Cut 1

We wanted to present what we had achieved so far during our editing process. This is only a rough edit of our opening sequence and is nowhere near complete; we have a few more clips to include.  

Missing Scenes:

- Remainder of title sequence

- Flashback clips (including the fridge scene)

- Book scene

Good things about our rough cut was:

• we have good angle shots for example our low angle shots of Characters exiting doors
• we have put in fades which adds dramatic effects to parts of the opening 
• we had music which fit our opening even though it is temporary

What we need to improve:

• finish it off adding the scenes
• add tittles 
• work on the jump and match cuts
• get the right music for it 
• make it clear of what it is about

Editing Day 2

Today continued to edit our film and make good progress towards its completion.We found that there was still a number of scenes which had to re-record, for the first half of the lesson though we edited what could of our film using the footage we had so far.

 

This part of our opening when the main character meets his friends upon the arrival to college was removed because we felt the shots we not strong enough and we rushed to record them.

The music involved in our rough cut

We are fully aware about copyright issues. The music selected for our rough cut of our opening needed permission from the creator of the instrumental, he wanted a "heads up" and this is what we did.

YoungMagicProduction released this instrumental on www.youtube.com for anyone to use for free. Although it is unlikely that we will include this sound on our final piece, I believe it is important to always have a contingency plan.

I had asked him via twitter if we could use it as part of an edit for a short film and we are awaiting a reply. Like other people who were interested in this beat, we hope to receive a similar response - for example, the one pasted below.



Fingers crossed!

Re-Production of opening sequence - part 1

Filming our opening sequence has been a fun yet educational experience. Bonding with the group members and socialising between shots kept us all in high spirits during our long hours of filming.

I believe we have all learned the importance of being punctual to all of our recording sessions for we had wasted crucial moments to conclude specific shots; for example the book scene which is to be previewed on our blog at a later date. 

During production we had to also be aware of framework. As one of the actors I found it a little difficult to maintain the correct positioning for the camera and this is something I need to improve and focus on for future recordings. I also feel I am to contribute a little more in regards to the accuracy of my movements to get the most out of each shot for the editing process. Overall I am content with what has been produced at this stage and look forward to the continuation of our film. 

Editing Day 1

Today we began our editing process


Initial Aims:

1. To delete footage we don't need

2. Decide on the order of which our shots should be in

3. To make a start on selecting appropriate audio for our film

4. Merge current footage together e.g neat match cuts

5. To create a production ident


Also:

1. Take screen shots of today's editing progress

2. Make a short video demonstrating our involvement in the editing process

Day 3 Filming final day

This was the last and most productive filming days out of the three, because we managed to get a lot filmed and we the most creative ideas on how to develop about film and explore shot types we may have neglected in earlier filming session.

Arber  and Mustafa setting up the equipment

Mustafa filming long shot of Arber stealing drink