Evaluation Question 1

Forms and Conventions


Forms and Conventions of Teen Film Openings

- Music is used in teen film openings to set the mood of the film for example as our film is a teen film we used popular music that teens love to listen to currently.

- Travelling and arriving is used in our teen opening as our main character walks to high school as she doesn't live that far away.

- Streotypes are very important for our teen opening as we had to show that our main character is an american popular teen so we've used a voice over to show her accent and we have made her sound very big headed to show her personality and the way she acts with other.

-Titles and sequences are used in teen film opening so that you know the name of the film and sequences are used so that you know the names of the people involved in the production of the film

- Idents are very important for a teen film too as they show who has produced and distributed the film so they also get publicity. We went with a major company to produce our film.

Evaluation Question 2

jessica peralvo's Slidely by Slidely Slideshow

in the opening we dont show the charcters as steotypical people as the popular girl is pregnant and can no longer dress really girly and must wear loose clothes such as tracksuits as they are stretchy. we have also used the highschool as the rest of the film would have been in the highschol to show her awkward situations. our teen film includes a few streotypes especially with the characters and locations as we have gotten ideas from other teen films. we've included a typical popular girl that has a boyfriend and ends up getting pregnant, to make the characters stand out they have a certain costume which is wearing girly clothing for the girls and sporty/althetic clothing for the popular boys as they are in different athletic teams and the nerdy boys and girls wear nerdy cothes for example checkered shirts with chinos and they would have props to also show that they are nerd such as glasses, books and a chess board game We've also used popular music that teenagers love and differnt sound effects you would hear in a highschool based film which is a bell, footsteps and gossip.The locations used are the highschool and the popular girls house. our characters are shown as posative and negative even though the popular girl loses most of her friends and her boyfriend at the end she makes good friends with the nerds and her only 3 other friends that stick by her till the end. We have included different technical aspects such as the mise en scene we show her high heels and her 50 shades of grey book as things that would represent her and the way she is which is a typical girly girl and when she is admirering herself in the mirror before she leaves the house and a long establishing shot of the school to show the location that will be used through out. the voice over also gives away the fact that she is an american selfcentred girl who cares about herself and her looks. we have 2 girls gossing about her to show the main reaction that she will get from other students at her college.

Evaluation Question 3

Evaluation Question 4

Evaluation Question 5

Evalutation Question 6

Evaluation Question 7

i definitely learnt a lot from the preliminary task as there are many different aspect you need to look at so you know what to add into the film and also you need to know the technical side as well such s the editing which is very important as well

EVALUATION QUESTION 7:

25. PRELIM - Athena Lewis, Osob Roble, Fahmida Nehar, Mert Topuz from 283goswell on Vimeo.

our preliminary video was really bad, we lacked the use of different shot types as we were new to media and did not know a lot about the use of different shot types. we focused on doing a match cut as this is quite a hard shot to we thought we would try and perfect it. we did not use a tripod or a fig-rig whilst making this video and as a result it caused our footage to come out really shaky and of bad quality. our editing was also off even though we focused on the match cut it still didn't come out perfect and our shots didn't run smoothly witch means our editing was way off. we did not stick to the rule of thirds wich makes the overall footage look unprofessional.




however when we did our final opening scene you can see that we have improved a lot. we used the rule of thirds in our shots highlighting the main character in each scene. we used a variety of different shot types for example:

• match-cut
• close up
• pan
• still shot

our editing was of a much better quality as our footage ran really smoothly making the whole scene look much more natural.we made sure the mise-en-scene was better as we sorted out a location to go to instead of just going to a random room we used my bedroom making it much more realistic. the control of the camera was much better also as we made sure to use tripods and fig-rigs.

EVALUATION QUESTION 6:

How to use creative commons from _fahmida_n

EVALUATION QUESTION 5:

EVALUATION QUESTION 4:

or target audience would have to be young teenage girls from the age range of 15-18, this is because we believe that the film is much more relatable for them as our film is based around someone of similar age that goes to school and that deals with a lot of the same issues.

'Rachel' would have a range of likes and dislikes which are:
Likes:

• artists-Demi Lovato, Bridget Mendler, Katy Perry etc. 
• likes Pop music
• TV shows: Pretty Little Liars, Twisted, The Lying Game etc. 
• Movies/Films: Juno, Clueless, Mean Girls, Warm Bodies, The Hunger Games etc. 

Dislikes:

• waking up early 
• school
• homework                                                                            https://www.facebook.com/rachedryden
• people not liking her

 i made a Facebook account for our 'Rachel' the 'perfect' person that i believe our film Starting Off Awkward is directed towards. young female teenager that can relate with being the same age as the main character in our film. however because teen pregnancy is a very common thing in this day and age although the people we direct the film towards may not be pregnant themselves they are likely to know someone of about the same age range who is pregnant.

i would say that Starting Off Awkward is definitely a mainstream film, even though we have a target audience which in this case would be teenage girls like 'Rachel', the film may appeal to a wider audience for example as this is a Romantic Comedy it would also interest males and even people who are older. this film may be appealing to older women that are mothers especially as it may remind them of when they were pregnant as our main character is, or maybe it just reminds them of when they were younger. another example of our wider audience could be males as the comedy side can please their tastes.

EVALUATION QUESTION 3:

Production company for evaluation from osobroble

EVALUATION QUESTION 2:

EVALUATION QUESTION 1:

evaluation 1

forms and conventions of teen films:

• music is a big convention in teen films as it sets the scene of the movie- straight away you will be able to tell what type of film it is, however the music might be a decoy and the film might be about something totally different. but usually in teen films the music is up beat which is because this is what teens like in their music like in our film we use a remix of the very popular song 'Happy' by Pharrell
• travelling is a in our film as our main character walks to school
• as we wanted to make a 'typical' teen movie stereotypes where very important to use as this is what is normally used in movies like ours. the stereotype in our film is added in the voice over when she speaks, what she says and how she says it shows that she is the typical 'popular girl'.
• the title of the film is used in order for the viewer to know the name of the film 'Starting off Awkward' is the name of ours.
• idents are used to advertise the production company and the film in general as we went with a major production company so that we would gain more publicity ourselves.

EVALUATION QUESTION 7:

EVALUATION QUESTION 6:

How to use creative commons from _fahmida_n

EVALUATION QUESTION 5:

EVALUATION QUESTION 4:

Question 4 : who would be the audience for your media product? Teen films is a film genre which is mainly targeted at teenagers and young adults. The plot of teen films is usually based on themes relative to teenagers, such as coming of age, first love, rebellion, conflict with parents, teen angst or alienation. These themes which are considered to be very important and serious matters in reality, are presented in a stereotyped, sugar coated and trivialized way. Films within this genre are often set in high school or contain characters that are of a high school age. Sexual themes are also common in the form of humour. Teen films are mainly targeted at pre teens, teenagers and young adults. The reason being that most teen films usually contain content which are often linked to the everyday situations pree teens, teenagers and young adults face. For our film ‘starting off awkward’ we mainly targeted a young female audience between the ages of 16 – 24. We decided to target specifically females because the themes our film contains mainly appeals to females for example, friendship, love,betrayal etc. Also, the genre of our teen film was romance and comedy which were two genres which mainly appeal to females. We decided to target our film at females at the ages of 16-24 because it is typically within this age group that people watch films which have a genre of romance and comedy. Most of the audience we targeted usually like teen films which are very conventional and are based typically in high school and have the conventional structure of status in high school. Also, the reason we decided to target this type of audience is because we were aiming for mainstream audience as oppose to a niche audience. The audience targeted have a high level of media consumption and therefore we figured that our film would be a success if we targeted it at an audience with high levels of media consumption and would also fulfil our desire to appeal to a mainstream audience. We also decided to target mainly teenagers who were geographically located in Britain. This is due to the fact that most British teenagers are usually very fond of other american films which have America actors and are set in high school. For example’ she’s all that’ and ‘ 10 things I hate about you’ which went on to be huge successes in america and Britain. Below is an example of our ideal target audience. The Facebook account below is useful in showing what movies a typical teenage girl is interested in watching. The account shows how a teenage girl is most likely to like and watch a film which has a genre of romance and comedy. These are two genres which are commonly used in teen films.

EVALUATION QUESTION 3:

Production company for evaluation from osobroble

EVALUATION QUESTION 2:

EVALUATION QUESTION 1:

evaluation question 7

25. PRELIM - Athena Lewis, Osob Roble, Fahmida Nehar, Mert Topuz from 283goswell on Vimeo.

  Unlike with our final product we didn't have a storyboard to follow for task, however we did have a script of exactly what was said in the scene. With our final product we used a storyboard to plan the events of our opening so it made sure we were well prepared for the filming of our product; in other words I learned that having a storyboard makes a very big difference in our filming as we actually knew what we were doing.

 With our final product we also did various forms of research where we got to actually plan out the mise - en -scene to actually create a character that fit it's role which we were unable to do in our preliminary so the characters wore what we actually wore to school that day as we didn't know what roles our groups would have. With our final product we got to use the costume of the characters to add effect to the function of the character - such as layers for a pregnant character. Regarding
mise - en - scene I learned that the clothing of the character is very important to the representation of said character.

 Also with our preliminary we didn't have planned settings so we used what we could which in this case was the small staff room. However, with our final we were able to use scenes which were commonly used in teen films. From the use of scenes I learned that the choices are very important because they help connect the audience with the scene by making it more relatable.

 So overall I learned that planning and research can help to improve the quality of a film opening.

SOME TECHNIQUES WE USED FOR THE PREP OF OUR FINAL PRODUCT: we planned, researched previous comedies and created a visual storyboard

25 - Athena Lewis, Fahmida Nehar, Jessica Peralvo, Osob Roble from 283goswell on Vimeo.

evaluation question 6

START OF OUR PROJECT:

 At the beginning of our project we first started some research using Google and YouTube where we looked at the kind of conventions utilized in teen films; so here I learned how to gather relevant information and also how to present them using programs like Slide share and Prezi. Using Slide share I learned how to first add my information onto a PowerPoint, then I created a Slide share account where I uploaded the PowerPoint then embedded it into the Blogger blog. I also displayed some of my research on Prezi where I learned how to edit the transitions between slides and also position them so that they go in a order that makes sense.

Planning our film:

 When we started to plan our filming we used time toast to present and organize them - here I learned how to change the dates on the time toast to effectively place our planning in a correct order that would keep us on track with our filming deadline.

After filming:

 We then looked at our sound options for music and looked at the Creative Commons website where I discovered that the music that we download in connection to this site would escape the whole copyright law so it would be better to use for our film. Through this site we used Soundcloud to download our song choices; from this I learned that you can't download the exact song because the majority of the songs on it are other people's remixes. To edit the our footage we used the Final Cut Pro program on apple mac to put together the clips in an order that utilized match cuts and other editing techniques. From using this program I learned how to speed up scenes, shorten the length of scenes and even add sound onto a scene to fit the motion.

 

 

evaluation question 5

The images above are some promotional ad's distributed by our distribution company MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer)

 We gained our audiences attention using promotional posters and billboards distributed by MGM; the posters were placed in major cities like New York and London where they would be seen by a larger population meaning they would get more publicity for the movie.

 

evaluation question 4

evaluation question 3

evaluation question 2

evaluation question 1

conventions in our film

Convention: The way things are normally done; a set pattern.

 With our film we have used more conventions than challenging them. We follow the format of the popular girl being the mean girl who looks at people as mere 'associates' however we also challenge and develop the mean and popular girl persona with the fact that we made her pregnant and we done graded her clothing choices to what film conventions would deem as 'the outcast' or 'misfit' (instead of bright, pastel colours or even skirts, shorts or crop tops we put her layers; a hoodie, jacket, jeans and sneakers pieces of mise-en-scene that isn't commonly associated with the popular girl). Also with our movie we followed the convetion of having a age range of 16 - 18 which is the common target audience of teen films.

 Regarding the sound that we used we decided to stick to the convention of using popular and well known music because we found that having our movie going mainstream ment that it had to connect with our audience in more ways than just mise-en-scene and setting - having a well known song means that more groups of teens can find our movie relatable.

What I learnt

From doing this whole project I've learned a lot of things such as what themes feature teen movies - sports, romance... I have also got to experience what kind of shots are used a lot since filming. We've used a lot of close ups; an establishing shot to show the outside of the school; and even a POV shot for when our character was in the hallway of the school. Also from choosing sound I've learned that it isn't very easy to match movement such as walking with a sound because they might have different timings.

What I've learned

Ive picked up of lots of editing skills that will help me next year too.

ive learned how to adjust the brightness and contrast and change the colour balance which i didnt know how before especially because ive only used final cut pro twice in secondary school and i didnt like it so i used iMovie which is much easier to use in my opinion.

it was great learning how to use final cut pro as i learnt how to be independent and it is easy to use aswell. i learnt how to render sound and footage when there was a red line. i also learnt what the different tools do on final cut pro some i havent mastered yet but hopefully ill keep learning as i progress.

i also learnt how to add a title on final cut pro but it doesnt have any movement so its better using motion which comes with templates which was easy to make a title on it. but i also learnt how to add the credits on the footage whilst it plays which worked well.

i learnt most of theses skills by looking it up online or i would just play around with the settings and tools to see what they do. which is how i learnt to adjust the speed of the footage

sound used

What i learnt overall

over the past couple of months whilst we have been researching , filming and blogging i think we have learnt a  lot about or group. collectively as a group i think we have learnt to be able to be patient and that the first time we film, our footage isn't going to end up the way we want it to as we have found out the harsh way......

but i think this made our final footage what we wanted it to be, it helped us understand what we wanted and what we didn't , it even made us question weather or not comedy was the right genre for us. finally we did come up with a great way to add comedy into the film. overall i think we are all really proud of out film .

personally i have learnt how to work with different people as everyone in my group has a very different personality. i found it really easy to get along with everyone in the group which was a very big bonus which meant that if we did something wrong we could just pick up really quickly and just get our heads down and do it instead of sit around and argue about it .
 i have also learnt how to use the equipment for example the camera, i filmed a lot of the footage which meant that i got to learn how to use the camera very well, which was something i did not know how to do before. putting in our non-diagetic sound was also a first for me, as i got to learn how to put it in our film.
overall this whole experience was at times very chaotic but most of it was very enjoyable and im very pleased with the out come which makes me sad its over :(( !!

Edting Footage

Editing

blog reflection

personally i feel as though our blog has come a long way from when we started, we have started putting more effort into it, however i feel as though we should have used more platforms to blog on for example making vlog posts, we have used others such as slide share and prezzie but the majority of our posts are written which may not have been the best idea. another thing i feel we could have done better on is putting more research into the blog.

Blog reflection:

Personally, I think we have come a long way and really stepped up our post game. I think as a group we have all helped one another. I think so far our blog's have been good. However, if I had to improve anything I would say we should blog more about our research into teen films.

editing

There were alot of things that were tricky for us to edit right such as getting ever shot to come together seamlessly since some transitions were a little off; however to fix it we speed up a few scenes and cut some out. At the very beginning of our opening we got the paramount and mgm sequence in for our production and distribution company's so we had to download them and add our sound onto it because those were the company's we sekected to be apart of our movie seeing as they helped with the movies that inspired us - mean girls for the voice over,  juno for costumes - we also took our music and added it over the sequence to match the pace of the company sequences.

WE HAVE FINISHED!!!!!

we have finally finished hooray!!!!!!!!!

blog reflection

Looking at our blog I personally think it looks really good however, there are still some things that can be improved such as the use of mediums - like maybe a vlog post seeing as the majority of our posts are written.

our background music

 We chose this song because we thought it fit the opening the best and worked well with scenes out of all our options.

12/3/14

today my group and I are finishing off editing and putting up our idents in place and putting in our non diagetic sound. after this lesson we are going finally to be done with our film!! YAAAAY!!!!

what we did today

Today me(Jessica) and Athena looked at different sound effects we could possibly use for our project. We found some different sounds on soundtrack pro and music on sound cloud.

I used sound track pro to put the voice over together and add some sound effects such as scratching turntable. As i've used soundtrack pro it was easy to put all the sound together nicely as the voice over is clear and sounds like a sentance which flows as we recorded the sound seperately. I will add the music and sound on to the finished film opening. i finished putting all the clips together and removing the sound so that i can put the music and voice over on top, i made sure it is less than two minutes long and with enough room for the rest of the title sequence.

reflection on blog:

In comparison to how our blog looked and the kind of posts on it (say around 4 weeks ago) I would say it has improved a lot, there are still somethings missing like an upload of a new storyboard for our opening and screen shots of the editing process for documentation. Overall our blog has improved greatly.

What we did in lesson today

Today we split up in two super groups because we were missing some footage - but we still needed to edit. Me (Athena ) and osob went to quickly film the scenes around the school such as an establishing shot of the school so location is taken care of. Jessica and Fahmida stayed behind in the editing suit to finish our titles and add the sound to the first part of our sequence.

What I did today

Today I edited the new footage that we filmed on tuesday. I just put all the footage together and brightened up the dark footage i also cut down the time of the video as it was too long and it didnt fit the 2 minute criteria. All that is left to do is:

- Add music

- Add a voice over

- Brighten up some of the footage that is left to brighten up 

Rough cut

As a group we decided we didn't like the footage that we had for many reasons for example:
- We didn't like what we filmed as the shots are too wobbly
- The scenes are too long and they don't serve a specific purpose
- The opening is too long and it needs to be 2 minutes long and its 3 minutes long
- We broke the 180 degree rule whilst filming

We will reshoot some of the scenes as they don't make sense but we will still use most of what we have already filmed because it will waste time.

What we did today

Today we focused on re-filming some of our scenes so that we could have better lighting and angles; also we started the editing process with our first couple of scenes so we could see what needed to be cut.

FILMING

                                   
REFILMING SOME SCENES -

•  the main character needs to be moved up in the screen because it does not fit the rule of thirds 

•  some scenes are to dark - we tried to lighten the dark scenes but it doesn't work

changes in our schedule

we had to make quite a few changes to our schedule as our film is based inside a school so we found that we could not film during the holidays, however we are planning to film as soon as we get back to college as all the shots are based in classrooms.

on Monday the 24th we plan to film some shots and also overview our shots that we already have to make sure that they are good enough and to see what other shots we need to film. and so that we can start our editing process.

on Tuesday the 25th we all have a free school timetable so that gives us a lot more time to focus on filming and getting on with our editing.

idents idents idents

now a days idents are much more creative and fun, this is so that the viewer is engaged to what they are advertising which is their company this is also so that the viewer is not forced to sit through boring idents which will probably discourage them to want to watch a movie made by those specific companies if they have to watch so many at one go. here are some interesting and fin idents:
TV idents:

 FILM idents:

what are idents??

an ident is a moving image or logo to represent a brand that is shown before a show or a movie:

they usually last for up to 30 seconds.

Order of titles

films use titles so that the viewer knows the different people involved in making the movie and the different companies involved. the film companies use their idents to advertise they company and make their stamp on the movies.
the opening credits are the most important actors names and also the main characters of the film itself, the person who gets paid the most and is most likely to be the most well known, their name will be shown last. the opening sequence shows the main people whereas the final sequence shows an overview of everyone that worked on the film.

Sound ideas for our final project:

SOUND IDEAS FOR OUR FINAL PROJECT

As we have filmed most of our final project we now have to add in the sound.We have given a lot of thought to what genre of background music we want to use and the sound effects. We decided to use instrumentals of hip hop and R&B songs. We did this because it goes well with our sequence and is well suited to our character in our opening.

some of the songs we chose:

•  Chris Brown - Show me ~ This song is very upbeat and emphasises the whole mood of the beginning of our film opening

• Wale ft Miguel - Lotus flower bomb ~ This is one of our options because we liked how the sound at the beginning of the song is very calm we thought this would be good as it is suited to the beginning of our opening where our character is shown sleeping it also creates a very calm, relaxed vibe until of course the beat drops. The beat also drops when our character gets out of bed. This is good as the music matches the actions of the character.

• Ja Rule ft Ashanti - Always on time ~ This is also another option that we considered using for the same reason as the above song. However this song is more upbeat and is better suited to our character.

choosing our sound - BACKGROUND MUSIC OPTIONS

How it went filming 18/02/14

Filming today was a big success! Compared to the last filming session we had we definitely had a more productive and enjoyable time filming this time round! We re- filmed most of the footage we had shot in our first filming session. We did not get frustrated with one another this time because we had set out a clear plan of what we had to do in order to get the right footage. Also, we made sure we shot several shots to ensure we get the best footage for our final project.

Props used for filming on 18/02/14

Pictures from filming session on 18/02/14!

How it went filming 18/02/14

In my opinion i think filming went extremely good! Compared to the last filming session we had we definitely enjoyed it a lot more and got a lot more done. we didn't get frustrated at one another and we listened to each others ideas and worked through them in order to somehow incorporate all our ideas to create the opening to  all our likings. 

Group 25 now on twitter!

GROUP 25 ARE NOW ON TWITTER!

                                                               
                                                                *credits to Osob*

why we made a twitter account!!

we made a twitter account as twitter is a very popular website in this day and age ! evryone has it and we figured that if we want people to look at our blog and keep up with what we were doing twitter would be an amazing way to do that as it gives us all the resources we need in order to do that!

there are millions of people on twitter and it is one of the fastest growing social media sites which we thought we could also take advantage of!

Problems faced whilst filming:

Although we had fun whilst filming we also faced a few problems.

Some of the problems we faced was:

• Not collecting all the equipment we needed. This caused delays in filming as we had to go back to college and collect the equipment needed. To avoid this we could create a check-list of all the equipment we need beforehand this will ensure we don't forget any of the equipment necessary. 
• Dialogue. Watching over some of our footage we noticed the dialogue was not heard as much as it should be. To avoid this problem we will make sure we film in a place where it is more quiet and there is less background noise.
• Coordination. Whilst filming we all got frustrated at one point. This was due to the lack of coordination between us. This caused delays in filming as we were all confused and were not clear on what parts we were filming. To avoid this we will communicate more and talk about things in a calm and rational manner. 

How it went filming:

We had our first filming session for our final project on the 12th Feb. In my opinion, I think it went well although we all had our moments due to the frustration of trying to get several shots and make sure each one was up to our standards. We had a lot of fun and all made contributions as to what shots we should use and what we could do to make our final project better. We will continue filming and hopefully create a outstanding final project!

how it went filming: 12/2/14

It was actually pretty fun but we had our moments where we all got a tad bit grumpy seeing as sometimes we got confused on how to go about certain scenes. We started off really well recording parts of both Plan A and Plan B (just incase we can't fix the lighting for the summer scene) so we also have more to work with. There are still some scenes that need filming and hopefully we can do them quickly tomorrow, so we'll have enough shots to edit to make our sequence.

Binary oppositions

Pictures from filming session on 12/02/14!