2 Minute Film Opening: Ecstacy

Our final cut of our opening.

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

Evaluation: Question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Evaluation: Question 3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Evaluation Question 4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

As mentioned on our research and planning blog, we decided that the most suitable audience for our film would be 15 to 24 year old male and females. Upon discussing this concept, we decided that this would be the most appropriate age range due to the usage of drugs, sexual content, alcohol, and strong language. Having our target audience as both male and female was decided due to the aspects and content of the film also. Most females enjoy romantic films, which is an underlying genre within our film – Candice and Nathan eventually getting together after a long struggle of being on “opposing teams”.

     In order to ensure/prove our decisions, we decided to create a survey monkey (Which you can see here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CSDNV8K ) and put it alongside our opening on Facebook, therefore allowing us to get the public’s opinion on what audience they believed to be appropriate.

Our first question on our Survey Monkey was “Are you male or female?” This immediately enabling us to see which gender is going to be susceptible to being influenced by social media, and hearing about our film that way.

This graph shows that the majority of the people that took our survey were males. This could be due to the fact that it is simply because more males are on Facebook, and had heard about this post more than females, or because more males watch videos over their Facebook newsfeed, therefore enabling us to take into account which gender will be more susceptible to public influences over social media.

 

Our second question on the Survey Monkey was “If male, what aspects of the opening appeal to you?” This question enables us to analyse whether we were correct in our analysis of what appeals to males in films, which then either agrees or disagrees with our research and planning blog.

From this pie chart you can see that we were correct as on our blogs, we noted that males would be into the action part of the film.

Also from the pie chart we can notice that the males are also into the sexual content and drug and alcohol consumption. Even though not as popular as the action, this notifies us that we succeeded on many aspects of our film, and will have the male audience interested at all times during the film.

Romantic interest has also taken up a small segment amongst this pie chart, showing that even though a very minute amount, some of the male population also care about this aspect within films, which means we will also be catering for this audience.

The third question takes into consideration the females which took part in our survey: “If female, what aspects of the opening appeal to you?” As mentioned on the male’s part, this question enables us to see whether we were correct in our analysis of what appeals to females in films, which then agrees or disagrees with our research and planning blog.

From this pie chart, we are able to see, as predicted, that romantic interest plays a very large role in the female interest to films, telling us that we were correct to include this aspect to our film in order to allow a wider audience opposed to leaving it fairly narrow.

Unsurprisingly, sexual content also seems to appeal to the female audience. As this, normally, coincides with romantic interest, this was expected from the females which participated within our Survey Monkey.

However, action makes an appearance on this pie chart in a fairly large way. This shows us that even though the majority of females would be interested due to the romantic/sexual side, action would also attract the feminine audience, even if it is only a small amount.

Drug and alcohol having shown an appearance is no surprise either. Due to the age group which took part within our Survey Monkey, this was expected, as seen on the pie chart within the next question.

Question four on the Survey Monkey was, “How old are you?” As seen on the following bar chart, the majority of people that took our survey were around the target audience which we were aiming for.

This has enabled us to see if our target audience has liked our idea, and if it has been successful in attracting the correct audience. In both cases, we have succeeded.

“Have you shown an interest in this film from the opening content” was the fifth question on our Survey Monkey. This shows that our opening was extremely popular! Even though this chart shows that an interest has been shown, it also shows that you cannot please everyone. Not every movie is going to be a hit with the entire population.

Our penultimate question was “What type of audience do you think this film would be best aimed at?” This question gets us a “second” opinon on what the audience should be.  From this pie chart, we can see that the biggest segment is for “Teenagers (13-19 years old)”. This agrees with our original idea on what the target audience should be. As does the only other segment on the pie chart of “Yound Adults (20-28 years old)”. From this, we can understand that the content which we have included is ideal and attracting the correct age group.

The final question was “Do you feel that this film would relate to a specific ethnic group? If so, what one? And Why?”. This question allows us to see if we have created a film which is particularly aimed at a specific are of society, opposed to it being completely generalised.

From this first chart, we can see that more people didn’t think it was  specified to a specifc ethnic group which is what we were aiming for. However, a few people did think that it was specified, which is why we included the following parts to this question to find out more.  

This chart gives us information on what ethnic group the public thought our film was aimed at.

As we can see on the chart, each ethnic group is equal. This could be due to the fact that the idea of it being specified to a particular ethnic group is down to interpretation opposed to the film leaning towards a group.

This final chart gives us the final piece of information that we need to see why some people felt like our film related to a specific ethnic group. The largest segment on this pie chart is casting. As there is both black and white people as the main characters within this film, this could have influenced their opinion. With the content being the second largest segment on the pie chart, we can see that it is an important aspect on influencing people’s idea on whether a film focuses/relates to a specific ethnic group. The final segment is location. With it being set in urban London, people may instantly think of the black community, not due to racism, but because that is what the majority of urban “chavy” areas consist of.

Evaluation: Question 5: How did you attract/address your audience?

Evaluation: Question 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

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

Preliminary Video:

When beginning the Media Studies course, of the majority of the group were completely new to the subject. I, however, and one other, were not as we had done Media Studies GCSE in our previous school.
   In order to ensure that I was able to successfully carry out the AS level project, I had to create a preliminary task to learn and display my knowledge of the basic rules of creating a media product.

Planning
  When I started planning for my final piece with my partner (Beckiee Turner), we looked at both of our preliminary tasks, and noted any significant methods and processed which we learnt when carrying it out. The first choice we made was that we didn't want our final piece to be quite to precise and perfect. As we wanted it to be a lot less Hollywood, and a lot more independent like the majority of British Films.
   Even though we couldn't relate to any planning which either of us carried out for either preliminarys, as neither of us did plan, so we did discover how incredibly important  planning was, and I thoroughly believe we did improve a lot from this stage!

Shooting
   When researching before we carried out our preliminary task, we looked at what camera angles and shot types we used in the film industry. When actually carrying out the task, my partner (Henry Wright) and myself decided that we wanted to keep it as simple as possible, this meaning we could focus on the actual task set, and try to get used to using different camera angles to give meaning and effect.
   When Beckiee and I decided on our shooting style, we decided not to make it overly proffesional. With it being a independent film (as mentioned earlier) we wanted it to be quite rough looking, this also mirrors our storyline and some of our characters. Even though we did choose to shoot in a completely different way, we still found our preliminary helpful as it enabled us to use camera angles to our full potential, and effectively, just like we did in the preliminary.

Editing
   Even though I was not new to the subject itself, I was completely new to the editing software which we were using (Adobe Premier Pro). Therefore, having to carry out a preliminary task, it enabled me to ensure I was able to reach the maximum potential which I was capable of when editing my final piece. This helped a lot when coming to edit the final thing, as we did encounter a small sound issue, which meant we would lose quite a few marks as not all audio was clear. However, we were able to overcome this due to having the preliminary task, as it enabled us to have a proper play around with the software and develop our knowledge and understanding.

Final Cut:

Update!

Today, we put our idents and our final piece together. We took our some film transitions that we didn't think fitted, and we are thoroughly happy with what we have created.

Update!

Today we made our own "company" idents. Our first ident was for the "studios it was made in":

Our second ident was for the "production company" used:

 

 

We created both idents using Adobe After Effects, this enabling us to make them not only move, but have effects on them - like the blur in the second ident.

Update!

Today we edited all of our scenes together with music fitting in perfectly. Over the next few lessons we are planning to add in transitions and we are hoping to create our own ident.

Update!

In todays lessons we were editing again. Trying to get the music that we've chosen to come in at exactly the right moments, and to make it look right. Also, we had to edit up our voice over sections, and ensure that they only overlap the specific areas which they are talking about.

Update!

In our double period of Media Studies today we were editing our final piece together, picking the shots that best showed our media ability. However, we did come across a problem - one of our shots was too dark, so you couldn't really see what was going on and didn't fit the emotion/mood that we were trying to portray.
Also, we came to the realisation that we did not clearly show the relation between the siblings and Candice. Therefore, we are going to take some more shots, and create a "photo frame" of the "family".

Weekend of Filming.

This weekend we have carried out all of the filming that we have needed! Everything appears to have gone to plan, with our actors acting with enthusiasm and professionalism, the weather staying constant, and the evening shots, where the dark was needed, falling into place.
We organised - for the party scene - to have our group of friends come over to my house, and pretend to party, but as they already knew each other, there was no problem with them relaxing and getting into the "party mood".

Storyboard

This is each little segment of our storyboard, including timings, lighting and shot type.

Character Costumes

Location 1: Alleyway:
    In this scene, our characters will be wearing casual clothing, like jeans and a coat, something you would just wear everyday.

Location 2: Living Room:
    Wearing causal indoor clothing - jeans, t-shirt, hoody.

Location 3: Doctors Surgery:
    *Similar to location 1*

Location 4: Bedroom:
    *Similar to location 2*

Location 5: House Party:
    Party clothing - Dresses/playsuits (girls) Jeans, t-shirt (boys)

Length of shots.

Beckiee and I have discussed that we dont want to have extremely long lengthed shots because this not only gets boring, but it doesnt achieve anything. The only time we have decided to use long lengthed shots is if we're to have estabishing shots etc.
  Our other shots are up to around 6 seconds long. The longer shots being used in conversation, or emotional moments, and the short shots being used in action areas, and hectic moments - like our party scene that we plan on having. Having these shorts shots enable us to give the impression of a really big, loud, atmospheric surrounding for our characters.

Music for our opening

At the beginning of our opening, we want to create a dark, tense and intimidating atmosphere to match Kacey's attitude towards Candice. Whilst searching through Youtube, we settled on this instrumental to this song as it creates the atmosphere we want to achieve:

Further on into our opening, we want to create a depressing scene as it dawns on Candice exactly what lengths she has to go to provide for her younger siblings as her mum is uncapable of doing so herself. We decided on the song below as it creates a very dramatic and emotional atmosphere, and causes the audience to feel pathos towards Candice and her situation:

At the end of our opening, we want to create a carefree atmosphere during the house party scene to show how so many other teenagers are oblivious to the struggles that others may have. We decided on this song as it has been played at several house parties that Courtney and I have previously been to and has created a light-hearted and untroubled atmosphere:

Lighting for our opening.

During our planning, we have taken into account the lighting that will be necessary in each scene. In areas where we will be outside, we will obviously be using natural lighting, this is because that is clearly the only lighting available to us - with this we also need to take into account our outdoor filming hours, as we still need to see our characters, and for the lighting to be consistent within each shot so it makes sense.

  However, when filming indoors, we are able to have much more of an effect on the lighting available. Therefore, we will be able to set moods and emotions within our scenes, as well as make the locations (events in the locations) more believable and realistic. Types of lighting we will be using indoors will be: artificial low key lighting, artificial high key lighting, and artificial medium lighting.