Monday 17 March 2014

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?

Please read the bullet points below before clicking on the link.
 
 
  • When watching the film please pause the clip where you feel necessary in order to read longer portions of text.
  • Where you feel the clip is going on for too long please feel free to fast forward to the next slide.
  • The instrumental used in the background was an instrumental I composed with my friend called Matthew.
  • The instrumental has a very British urban feel to it.
  • I used black and red background colours to go with the crime drama theme of my film.

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?


Below are twitter and facebook profiles of the types of people who would potentially be inclined to watch our film.



A teen is a film genre targeted at young adults and teens. The plot is usually specialised in the interests of teenagerssuch as rebellion, first love conflict with parents and alienation. However some films such as Juno have adult themes such as pregnancy. For our teen fim we wanted to direct our film towards an audience of mature teens and young adults living in the urban parts of London such as Hackney and Clapton. Our film's USP is that it has a song from an original artist and showcases the gritty side of London such as drugs, prostitution etc. The specific audience would be our friends and family as well as those living in the borough of hackney and Islington.

 
Question 4 Part 1 by Antonia on GoAnimate

Evaluation Question 5

How did you attract/address your audience?




I have reached my audience by showing our film at a cinema called screen on the green. We have shared our film on websites such as vimeo. Our rough cut feedback included things such as making our shot time duration shorter and lowering the volume of our sound as well as matching cutting. This definitely helped me personally as I was editing so I was able to make all these adjustments. I also asked some of my peers to watch the rough cut and they said it needed to be shorter and that was how I cut our film down from 2mins and 50secs to 1min and 50secs

Evaluation Question 6

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





I have showed my ability to be able to use differently technologies such as blogger, powtown, prezi etc. For our production and distribution icons a motion system. To edit our film we used final cut pro. And we used the voice recorder app on my phone to record foley sounds of footsteps to put in Sammi's scene. I have found that the technologies that I have used have been very useful as they allow information to be viewed in different ways capturing people's interests. Not only have I used the media tools given to me by my teachers but I have also showed again that I can work indepently by finding other media tools online by myself such as Voki.


  • We used flip cameras to film interviews of both our director and for feedback.
  • We used blogger to showcase all our media work
  • I used logic to create the sound in my film.

I

Question 1

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










007's Skyfall Opening Credits (sang by Adele) from Ana Miguel Mendes on Vimeo.

Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?
ROAD TO RUIN

Question 3

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

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?

Question 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?






My Target audience interview by Sarah Mohamed 2 on GoAnimate




















Question 5

How did you attract/address your audience?






                                     I took these photos on my i phone when i was in the cinema.

                             Made this poster using rollip and added a street and grime looking text.











Wordle: FILM OPENING Wordle: ROAD TO RUIN using wordle

Question 6

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






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Question 7

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



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?

Question 2

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?

https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=66571F3092E30E8D!105&authkey=!AJ2tcNhA2KR9yHM&ithint=file%2c.pptx


Was made on powerpoint, could not embed on to the page and therefore you must click the link. Thanks.

Evaluation Question 5

How did you attract/address your audience?


This was made from Camtasia, using different views from different people. Mostly we had positive feedback on the sound which was made from Antonia, however whilst watching the projector was not working and therefore our video darkened and it was already dark but it was not our fault and the people watching could not view what we had in our video properly. Our feedback was given from a class discussion in which we can see two people's views of the movie in the clip above.
It did not appeal to a few students, this may have been because it was not executed to it's full potential or maybe just because they didn't feel they would be interested in the genre that we created this movie for and they were not the correct target audience however they did fit the age criteria we set the film for which is 16 up to young adults.

Evaluation Question 6

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


I edited this using Final Cut Pro, in which I got feedback from Antonia who played the main role of editing. This video talks about the different type of technologies we used from making our final product and we talk about how we used them to establish our final product.



I created a poster for our movie.

Evaluation Question 7








35. Antonia Enemuwe, Sarah Mohamed, Sameenah Mulla from 283goswell on Vimeo.




33. PRELIM - Kaay, Gizem, Sophie, Sammy from 283goswell on Vimeo.

These are both movies, the original and the preliminary. From here you can see the difference between the two films such as the details such as the sound, the mise en scene, the camera shots the editing.
We can see the lighting of both films have changed significantly. From the prelim you can not see the characters properly but in our film we tried using natural lighting and made sure that each character was clearly seen.
Overall there is a massive difference between both films and I am very happy with our final product.

Friday 14 March 2014

Tattoo designs

Just like the director of The bling ring (Soffia Coppola) who payed attention to detail, I also tried to do the same when researching sket characters in other films to study how they acted as well as how they looked. I noticed that a number of them had tattoos on them. I also wanted a tattoo for my character however I don't have any tattoos and had no intention of getting a real one!

I remembered watching one of my favourite TV shows 'Prison Break' with the main character Wentworth Miller all tatted up. Originally he has tattoos but not as many as his character does. So I did some research into what the Prison Break set do to ensure he looks like this and discovered that they call in a proffessional fake tattoo artist to use a special ink and the ink can then be washed off using a special liquid. Unfortunately hiring the tattoo artist would have cost a whopping £150! Money I certainly don't have.

I then went online and came across these designs which were very pretty however I realised from reviews of the product that they were stick on tattoos which didn't look very real.



In the end I spent so much time researching about tattoos and trying to find someone who could help me out, I wasn't focusing on other aspects of my character and soon realised I was wasting time. Then I rememebered Soffia Coppola (the director of the bling ring) and how she chose to use 5 people to represent the bling ring which originally consisted of 7 members. Her directing taught me that although it's good to pay attention to detail, you musn't forget the whole point of the film and character. As long as you reach your objective which is to convince your audience that the film is real and the characters are too, you've done the job well.

Last Vegas Film review

Last Vegas is a comedy film relaesed on 22nd August 2013
It follows a crew of golden oldies who gather for a crazy weekend in Sin City. To celebrate the marriage of their last single friend, a group of pensioners who have been lifelong friends head to Vegas for a wild stag party. Determined not to act their age and to 'party like it's 1959', the pensioners seek out as much booze, gambling and girls as they can handle! The film stars Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman and Michael Douglas. It was directed by Jon Turteltaub.

Dallas Buyers Club Review

The Dallas Buyers Club is a biographical drama film. The film was released on August 22nd. The film follows the story of Ron Woodroof who is diagnosed as HIV positive and he is only given 30 days to live by the doctors however he bypasses the establishment and sources alternative drug treatments to help fight the disease. It's not long before he sets up the titular club, which allows other HIV and AIDS positive members to access the smuggled medical supplies. The film was directed by Jean-Marc Vallee. The film stars Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner. The film had a budget of $5 million and the box office figures are $32,607,000. Dallas Buyers Club received six nominations at the 86th Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, Best Actor for McConaughey. The film received two Screen Actors Guild Awards, for Best Actor (McConaughey) and Best Supporting Actor Leto. It was also nominated for Best Cast. At the 71st Golden Globe Awards McConaughey and Leto again won Best Actor, Motion Picture Drama and Best Supporting Actor. The film was also nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the Writers Guild of America Awards. However the film contains strong language, sex, sex references and drug use.

A New York Winter's Tale film review

American Hustle review

American Hustle is a comedy drama and crime film. It was directed by David Russell. The film is based on the FBI absam operation the story follows a conman forced to assist the feds in catching corrupt public officials. The film stars Jennifer Lawrence,Jeremy Renner,Robert De Niro and Bradley Cooper. The film has received seven Golden Globe Award nominations. It received 10 Academy Award nominations, but did not win in any category. The film also took top honors at the 20th Screen Actors Guild Awards, winning for Outstanding Cast in a Motion Picture. The film was also nominated for 10 British Academy Film Awards, with Jennifer Lawrence winning for Actress in a Supporting Role, and David O. Russell and Eric Warren Singer winning for Best Original Screenplay. Th film had a budget of $40 million and the box office figures are $249,485,000.

Gravity film review

Gravity is a science fiction thriller and drama film. It was released on August 22nd. The film follows the story of two astronauts who are stranded outside their spacecraft after a mid - orbit destruction and their attempt to return to earth safely. However their links to earth are all severed and they must rely on each other and their combined experience to save themselves. However another problem avials: their oxygen and hope is running out. Gravity was directed by ALfonso Cuaron. The actors starring in this film are George Clooney and Sandra Bullocks, they play as the two astronauts. The film has recieved numerous awards and nominations. Gravity received ten nominations at the 86th Academy Awards. The film won 7 Academy Awards for Best Directing, Best Cinematography, Best Visual Effects, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score, Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing. Alfonso Cuarón won the Golden Globe Award for Best Director, and the film was also nominated for Best Motion Picture—Drama. Gravity received eleven nominations at the 67th British Academy. Despite not winning Best Film, Gravity won six awards. Although the film is really good it contains strong language, distrubing images etc.


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12 years a slave film review

Cinema

I went to the  Odeon cinema with a group of friends we bought a big box of popcorn each and some drinks. We had the choice between 12 years a slave and Gravity
Some of us wanted to go and watch 12 years a slave but some of us wanted to watch gravity therefore we had a vote and most of us chose to watch gravity
Here are the trailers of the films that were available for us to watch.



Finally I enjoyed the night out and we all loved the film in the end and we had a great time.

Finished at last

At last thank God we have finished 3pm right on the clock and have saved our film opening in our Group 35 hard drive.
This is us ticking the finished box and celebrating.

Editing session 3 last evidence.

This was the last editing session for us we came to school just before nine to guarantee us a place in the editing suite some of us had to sacrifice our other subjects to get the editing done.
We stayed at break times, lunch times and after school until late.
We worked really hard to get our editing finished on the deadline of 3pm. These are some pictures of us editing and blogging about it.

Editing session 2 evidence.

This is the picture we have taken of Antonia and Sami editing and  blogging during the process.


Antonia's shots




These shots were taken using different effects on an iPhone 5 during filming. This shot in the scene is really strong and bold as there is a reflection of her in the mirror. We also used a black and white effect which we think makes the picture look bold.
Here this shot shows her doing her belt which suggests she is dressing up and could portray her as a whore.



In this image Antonia is looking
straight at the camera with her
hands on her belt.

 
 


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
In this picture Antonia is posing which could also suggest vanity and narcissism.


 

This image is a wide shot and a long shot which shows her to be a whore with the black skinny jeans and her top pulled up to show her belly.



Thursday 13 March 2014

Reflective post

I would say that over the course of making our film and blogging I've proved to be a good team worker as well as leader. When we first started off I offered up my home as one of the locations to film in. And even when we felt that my house wasn't the perfect location for our film I phoned up one of my good friends and arranged to film both my scene and his scene at his house. I even persuaded him to miss a day of college to enable us to use his house (Don't worry I took him to nandos afterwards).


I also missed several of my lessons to ensure the editing of our film was as best as it could possibly be and had to sacrifice my lunchtimes and breaktimes too. Overall I'm very pleased with the film. I am also very happy with the progress that I have made. At the beginning of the term I have to admit I didn't take my work very seriously and came into every lesson late. But after parents evening I promised my teacher that I'd arrive on time and stuck to my word. Not only did I edit the entire film by myself but I also filmed the location shots used in our film as well as making the soundtrack behind our film showcasing my versatility and ability to work independently.


I have definitely learnt a lot from this experience. From time to time I found myself doing most of the work and lacking the cooperation of my group members which got me frustrated. However, after initiating a group meeting in the library where I voiced my concerns they started to pull their weight. I've learnt that when working in a group not everyone will be as hardworking and committed as you but you still have to make sure the work gets done or at the end of the day everyone will fail. I've also learnt that in a group your voice may be less likely to be heard so there's no room for shyness. If you have an opinion you have to make sure it is heard and considered by your group members so as to leave your mark on the overall product. Finally my creativity has definitely improved. I am a lot more aware of different types of technology including blogger itself where information can be presented in different ways in order to capture other people's attention. I will definitely be continuing media into the A2 year and plan to carry all the skills I have learnt with me.



Write up of bling ring


holiday task - Clueless

clueless

Clueless is an american comedy film. the film follows the story of a popular high school girl who finds her popularity fading when a new comer starts to becme popular after having a near death experience. This film follows the conventional teen film stereotypes of the popular girl, nerdy girl etc. In 2008, Entertainment Weekly selected Clueless as one of the "New Classics," and Clueless was ranked 42nd. In 2008 Entertainment Weekly named it the 19th best comedy of the past 25 years. The budget of the film was $20,000,000 and the box office figures for the film was $56,631,572.

shot by shot reamke editing (the breakfast club)

Well it was kind of hard editing our remake of The Breakfast Club at first because we just started using camtasia and Final Cut Pro. We didn't put the titles in order and left out most of them and we used the same distribution and production company as The Original Breakfast Club.

Sarah's vlog about the editing process


Wednesday 12 March 2014

Why we changed our distribution icon!

Too many people used the same effect and we wanted our film to be as original as possible, this is Antonia talking about why she changed it.

Why we had to change locations?

We first filmed the drug dealers scene in Antonia's living room however when we were filming we found that the boxes and the other many items annoying as they were in the shot and obscured the view. We also found the lighting insufficient as the lack of windows (natural light) meant that the scene was dark when we saw it on the computer. Therefore we decided to change the location. It was quite hard to find a flat with a proper chair and desk to film our scene however we found one at Antonia's friend's house. the location was in Arnos Grove and was really far in terms of were we were. therefore we decide to take the underground. We had to get off at Kings Cross Station to get on the Piccadilly line to the location.

Below is an image of the scene in Antonia's living room.


Sameenah's scene

In these pictures, we are filming Sameenah's scene from many different angles so that when it comes to editing we will have a variety of different shot angles and types to chose from. The filming location for this scene was in the borough of Camden in Hawley Road Estate.

Storyboard of props used.


Improving our Rough Cut

Improving our rough edit

We have made many changes from the rough cut including adding non-diegetic sound (gritty rap song)
We have  also added  diegetic foley sounds for example when Sameenah turns around there is a police siren  which compliments our urban drama and crime genre.
We have also added fade in and fade out transitions so that the transition from one shot to the other is seamless and fluid.
We have also added more shots and improved the ones that were in the rough cut.
We have put in most of the titles in our film opening however there is more left.
We also need to make sure they are title saved so that they do not come off the screen when screened in the cinema.

TIME MAJOR ISSUE
 
So far were doing good we arrived before 9am this morning to get a space in the editing suite and we had to miss some of our lessons to finish everything by the given deadline of 3pm.
 It is 12.38pm and our final edited film opening is due at 3pm and we still got the some of the titles to do, effects and improve some of the scenes and to render our film. Not enough time and we are starting to panic. We are mentally and physically exhausted. 

Interviewing Antonia on GoAnimate

Sarah interviewing Antonia by Sarah Mohamed on GoAnimate

Antonia being interviewed by Sarah by Sarah Mohamed on GoAnimate

I thought using the anime student characters wearing uniform and in a place that looks like a outdoor canteen and with one of the characters sitting on the table in the first video illustrated us really well as we are teenagers and students. In the second video however the characters are older and I have chosen to use the comedy background to try different backgrounds and practice. The second one however I felt the characters looked to old and mature which could give the interview a serious and solemn vibe. In both backgrounds their was a limited characters I can chose from. There was no black female character to illustrate Antonia and no female wearing a headscarf which could illustrate me. Therefore we had to improvise and chose two female characters that were totally different to us in appearance.

Why we didn't use sound for our production companies.

Unconventional; production and distribution with no sound
In our film opening we did not use any sound for our production or distribution company which is unconventional. We have chosen not to use any sound because our film genre is urban drama and crime we thought it would be more better to jump right in to the action. Another reason is because we had a good gritty rap sound that was recorded by Antonia which we felt should be played throughout from the beginning.

One examples of an unconventional film is Scary movie

This is an excellent example because the movie wanted to go straight in to the action which is exactly what we have done in our opening and although we have a different genre our intention is the same.

Names for our movie

Casting - Tom Dickinson
Costume- Rebecca Brians
Music Superviser - Holy Simons
Music by - Antonia
Edited by- Steven Styles
Production Designer - Alexa Black
Director of Photography - Jamie Daniels
Executive Producers - Mary Whitehead
Written By - Sharon Johnson
Director - Sarah

Extra names -
Clara Brown
Adam Smith
Craig Porteous
Jim Heartman


These are the names we may be using to put in our movie, because we have to use fake names.

Reflective post number 3

So far in media, we are on the verge of finishing our edit, so far it has not been so great because the edit is taking far long then it should have. This is because we do not have a lot of coverage and need to upload clips which we think are relevant in order to speed the time up.
Otherwise it is great, it is deadline day today and we are nearly finish our editing hopefully we will be finished a couple hours before the deadline if we speed up a little.

Editing session 1 evidence.


Today is Thursday and we have started editing in the editing suite.
These are the pictures I (Sarah) have taken of Antonia and Sami.
This is me (Sarah) editing with Antonia and blogging about the process after.



Tuesday 11 March 2014

Reflective post

Tomorrow is the deadline for our film opening. Sammi came up with the title names (written by, directed by etc), I edited whilst Sarah focused on completing the group posts. At this point I've finished editing but improvements can definitely be made. Although I already have a metal list of what I have left to do I thought it would be useful if I got it down in writing so as not to forget anything. Here below is a list I created using the notes app on my Ipad.



My make up

Mise en Scene Analysis
One of the key mis en scene aspects of the whole film besides costume is Make-up. Antonia's character's make-up carries a very significant meaning as it clearly portrays her to be a 'slut'. We went away and researched whores in other films and came across one factor they all had in common - red lips and a lot of makeup. So I decided my character would also have red lips and a lot of makeup in order to support the stereotype of everyday whores. I know how to apply make up but I'm no expert when it comes to lipstick so I went online to YouTube to look for tutorials on how to apply it correctly. I came across one woman called Carli Bybel however when I tried the techniques she suggested I struggled a bit.



They weren't necessarily hard to follow... I have fuller lips so I felt I'd benefit better from someone who had similar lips to mine. After continuing to browse for half an hour or so I came across a woman called ItsMyRayeRaye who I'm already subscribed to on YouTube. She gave the best advice and went through each step thoroughly.



On January the 29th I went popped into superdugs to purchase a Blood red lipstick and burgundy lipstick both by Barry M. I also bought some Cheryl Cole false eyelashes (which I ended up not using as they looked weird on camera). A week ago I ordered some false red nails via amazon for about £3. I wanted them to be long so as to over-exaggerate my character. When they came, they were a little brighter than I expected but overall I was happy with the purchase as buying it on the high street would have cost me triple the price.





After carefully following her instructions, this was my end result!

Film Opening song

Artist: Antonia Enemuwe
Duration: 1:50





Studio Life

Yesterday I booked out a studio room and went to record a potential backing track for our film opening. I arrived at 4pm and left at 9:20pm. It was exhausting going over lines and putting the track together but it was definitely worth it in the end. The night before I stayed up to write lyrics for my rap. When I got to the studio and started to record I realised that the rap was a bit heavy on its own so I decided to freestyle and sing a chorus. I particularly wanted to make a track for the film as many of the sounds I had come across on soundcloud and creative commons didn't fit the theme of our film and the ones that did weren't downloadable as they were copyright. Also hardly any other group created their own soundtrack themselves which made our film stand out amongst our peers. Before calling it a day, I called one of my close friends who is a producer to have a listen to the song his response was "Genius, how did you manage that in so little time?" Tomorrow I hope to have completed editing so I can move onto putting foley sounds into our film opening.




Monday 10 March 2014

Thursday 6 March 2014

Rough cut feedback and Changes we have made based on the feedback

After playing our rough copy to our teachers they gave us some advice on how to improve our film opening.

Below is the following advice

  • We need to add sound to the movie
  • Put all of our coverage up
  • Add foley sounds
  • Use more effects
  • Add transitions
  • Get rid of jerky coverage.

  • We added non - diegetic gritty rap song
  • We added diegetic Foley sounds e.g. police siren, steps etc.
  • We also put all shots up in order.
  • We used more effects e.g. fade, dissolve etc.
  • We also made the transition from one shot to the other smooth and seamless.
  • We also cut any jerky footage and improved the shots.
  • We also added all the titles in order.

Rough cut






This clip is a rough copy of our film. To get this clip we converted our work from Final cut pro into a quicktime movie.








Distribution Company

We also made a distribution company using Motion again. This time the name reflects that the film is a british national film. This one has a white plain background with a big bold font and a splash of paint in the side leaking onto the font. This style is simple whilst bold and eyecatching.
Below is a screenshot of our distribution logo (image).

Production Company!

We were thinking of a name for our production company that would reflect that it produces urban drama and crime films and I (Sarah) thought of the name urban revovlver which I thought reflects and compliments our film perfectly and my peers (Antonia and Sameenah)
We made a production company using the application 'Motion' in which the words come fade in then fade out.
We used a wallpaper found on google which has a picture of a high angle shot of urban london such as flats and highway roads and skyscrapers this links to our urban film.
Below is a screenshot of our production company logo (image).

Location - Rowley Way

 Rowley Way

We went to film in Rowley way which is situated in NW8, the reason why we chose to film one of scenes in this location is because we were inspired  by the british film Sket.
The place looked ideal and suited the nature of our film opening and therefore we travelled there and filmed our scene there.
These are some images I (Sarah) took of the estate using different effects done on her iPhone 5.
Although it was a really beautiful location that complimented our film. We found it quite difficult to film because it was an open public space and therefore many people walked up and down whilst we were filming and we constantly had to stop and start filming. Another problem was the distance and time it took for us to get to the location.



The black and white effect could be used to show that the scene is a flashback of Latifa and gives the picture a sense of being old. It could also remind us of the beginning of the film industry where films were all screened in black and white.
The kind of sepia effect can also give the picture an old and rough feeling to it which could also portray the nature of the area as being rough; a typical picture of London urban life.
There blueish effect gives the picture a feeling of almost belonging to another world which could reflect the adult audiences perspective of the film as being quite foreign from them however the teenage audience would feel almost part of the action and film because of the mixture of genres such as urban dram and crime.

Rough Cut