Post 26: Annotated Poster

I decided to annotate the film posters to films of the same drama genre. Therefore I choose Titanic and The Help as both have similar story lines. Titanic showing the romance and The Help showing the social issues, although both in different settings and time eras, they both however, share the same conventions as our film, Dead End.

Post 25: What makes a good film poster?

http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2011/02/7-elements-of-a-great-movie-poster-design/

Post 24: Posters Specific To My Genre - Drama

I conducted some research into film posters of the same genre as our film, drama, through the website IMDb.
http://www.imdb.com/genre/drama
It gave me a number of ideas to a way of creating a film poster for our film.

I found that the drama genre's film posters often contain a lot of dark colours and are made to look quite intense and dark. From this research I found that the posters all contain the main character(s) and or the supporting character(s). The posters don't give too much away about the film and only suggests the drama. Straight away we know that these posters are for drama films because of the codes and conventions that they carry such as the dark and bold colours and emotion that the images of the characters are showing.

Post 23: Poster Research

I created a Pinterest account and then pinned a range of different film posters from different types of genres from different time periods that show the differences they now have and the influence of the modern technology that allow them to seem more sophisticated. I decided to use Pinterest because it was a way of keeping all my ideas together and be able to look at them in overview while comparing them. This was a way of influencing my idea for a film poster as i took a more modern approach to poster design.

Post 22: Film Marketing for a Short Film

i found this website useful when researching for short film marketing.

Post 21: Short Film Distribution

when researching film distribution i found this website useful that explained how studios distribute their films.

However, I looked into how a short film with a smaller budget would have their film distributed.

i found a website that gives information on a number of different short film festivals.

Post 2c: Film Language in Own Film - Editing

We decided in our film it was best to have two montages, each giving a different perspective on how his life would turn out if he took either option - a. being with Amy or b. continuing with the gang. The montages would show the relationships between the characters and allow the audience to relate to them further.
Mollie and Fiona decided that it would be best to practice editing together a montage of previous footage that we had shot together.



By doing this, it therefore sped up the process when we later came to edit and we was able to create the final montages quicker and allowed us to save some time. When editing the real montages we decided that we needed the editing to be a little bit quicker than the actual storyline so that they seemed 'dream like' and didn't drag on for too long.

Post 20a: Language in Own Film - Sound

When filming and editing our short film, sound will play an important role in telling the story. There are two different types of sound that can be used, non-diegetic and diegetic sound.

Non-diegetic sound is sounds, such as music, soundtrack or a narrators voice that comes from outside the space of narrative.
Diegetic sound is sound whose source is visible on the screen or whose source is implied to be present the the action of the film.


During our film we will have both types of sound. For non-diegetic we will have music that will help show the emotions of the characters in the scene, i did some research into the type of music we would use and found this song on soundcloud that fits in with the type of music that a young, rebelling teen would listen to in his room.

Post 20: Film Language in Own Film - Lighting

Our group went into a dark room and used a torch on a skull to show the different effects of lighting and how changing positions of the light can change the effect that it gives. By doing this I was able to learn more about how light can effect how we see things. Therefore, when filming I will take this into account.

When researching lighting I found that there were two types of lighting that can be used, natural and artificial.

Artificial lighting is the deliberate use of light to achieve a practical or aesthetic effect. Sources such as lamps or natural daylight.
Natural lighting is a portion of the electromagnetic radiation given off by the Sun, in particular infrared, visible and ultraviolet light.

When filming, it would be best that we use natural lighting but also a combination of artificial lighting to. As we're filming a lot of scenes outside it would be quite dark as we're filming during the winter months. However, this can allow the film to have a dark and gloomy effect which is similar to the plot of the film, creating a pathetic fallacy. Also, we would use artificial lighting whilst filming inside otherwise the rooms will be too dark and it would look good on camera.

Post 19e: Pre Production

Risk Assessment

Post 19d: Pre Production

Location Reece

Post 19c: Pre Production

Shot List

Post 19b: Pre Production

Storyboard

Post 19a: Pre Production

Mise-en-scene

Post 19: Pre Production

Shooting Schedule

Post 18: Finished Script

Post 17: Script Feedback

We sent off our script to a professional script writer Dudi Appleton who checked over our first draft of script for us and gave us a number of useful changes to make that would help improve our script and allow it to seem more realistic in the time that we was given. 

Fiona also spoke to Dudi over skpye in which he gave us some extra feedback that we were also able to incorporate into our final script. 

*insert soundcloud here*

Post 16 - Representation of Women

Post 15 - Representation of men

Post 14: Audience Positioning

techniques
point of view shots
camera adopts the position of a character within the film
this can 'over-the-shoulder' looking at whatever the character is looking at or a shot from the point-of-view character

useful?
puts viewer in position of character. when they experience strong emotions the viewer is more likely ti feel it when taking that person's point of view

reactions shot
camera moves to an extreme close-up of a characters face to show their reaction to something that's happened.

insert shots
gives the viewer extra or priviledge info that one or more characters may not know
like a split screen, with two characters into two different places

shot reverse shot
camera alternates between two characters to show their building relationship
normally when they're talking face to face
very common in drama where the relationship between characters is very important
camera acts as a third 'character'

Post 13: BBFC - Film Rating

The BBFC watch through films and award a age classification based on what they feel would be acceptable. The BBFC look at if the film and classify them in a way that protects the public from harm, a film that is staying within the law and that they’re allowing artistic freedom. They look at issues such as discrimination, drugs, horror, dangerous and easily imitable behaviour, language, nudity, sex, and violence when making decisions. Therefore when deciding on a rating for my film I will make sure I follow the guidelines of the BBFC.

Taking into account the BBFC’s guidelines I would argue that our film we are producing would be a 12A which would allow children under the age of 12 to view the film as long as they’re with a parent or guardian over the age of 18. I decided this due to the use of weapons and violence that may not be appropriate for all to view. Also the use of gangs and rebelling in school could bring in the effects theory as children may start to copy some of the actions that the characters take. Although it may seem that the film shouldn’t be seen by anyone under that age of twelve due to some scenes. However, the use of violence is not brutal and is only implied the audience don’t actually see any violence that may harm them or their child watching but the advanced warning would allow the parents to decide whether or not to take their child to see this film.

Moreover, the film doesn’t glamorise the theme of violence and anti-social behaviour but however creates a moral to participating in them and establishes the consequences of these actions. If the film was immoral and causing harm to the audience then the BBFC would rate it higher for example a 15 or just a 12. That would be if the violence was shown more brutally and possibly due to explicit language that could be used by the characters.  

Post 12: Audiences

Audience

What is an audience?

·         A collective group of people who consume media text such as by watching films.

·         The most important question when writing a script is ‘does it have an audience?’

Types of audiences 

·         Mass audience – ‘broadcast audience’ who consume mainstream or popular texts such as soaps. Target a large group of peoples

·         Niche – much smaller but influential – small select group of people with a unique interest

Why are audiences important?

·         Without them there would be no media. They create media to make profit and without them there would be no profit.

·         The mass media is becoming more competitive and are increasingly fighting over audiences

Katz and Blumler 

·         1. Information – finding out about events, satisfying curiosity and giving a sense of security through knowledge

·         Personal identity – reinforcement for personal values, finding model behaviour. Insight into oneself

·         Integration and social interaction – insight into circumstances of others, identifying with others and giving a sense of belonging. 

Impact of new technology on Audiences

·         Old media – (TV, print, radio) use to have high audience viewers, now has to work hard to gain

·         Digital technology – led to uncertainty over how to define ‘audience’ although they are agree to be ‘fragmented’

Fragmented audiences

·         Audience into smaller groups due to variety of different media

·         Newspapers are struggling – online copies

·         DVD sales have dropped – pirated copies, online, downloads

·         Large institutions are losing profit

How do institutions still make money?

·         Free apps always have ads

·         Websites and search engines always have adverts targeting users especially when they’re free websites

·         Newspapers are printing less copies and are switching to online distribution – can lower distribution costs

Audience categories

·         Can be divided into categories based on social class/grade

Audience research

·         Major part of any media company.

·         Questionnaires, focus groups, pre-film screening and spending time and money finding out who would be interested in their product.

Demographics

·         Media products interested in

·         Income/status

·         Age

·         Gender

·         Race

·         Location of potential audience. When they know this they can start to shape their media text to a group with known viewing habits

Psychographics

·         Create a text that targets a particular audience – interests, hobbies, tastes, etc.

·         Their product has to appeal to a certain audience so the advertisers pay to promote their product

·         Most can define their typical audience member often with a psychographic profile

Audience categories

Group A

·         Lawyers

·         Doctors

·         Scientists

·         Well paid professionals

Group B

·         Teachers

·         Middle management

·         Fairly well paid pros

Group C1

·         Junior management

·         Bank clerks

·         Nurses

·         ‘white collar’ pros

Group C2

·         Electricians

·         Plumbers

·         Carpenters

·         ‘blue collar’ pros

Group D

·         Manual workers such as

·         Drivers

·         Post sorters

Group E

·         Students

·         Unemployed

·         Pensioner

Stuart Hall – theorist

·         Views audiences as both the producers and consumers of texts. Analysing the initial meaning of the text. His approach is that the consumer actively negotiates the meaning.

New Media

·         New tool to get instant access to people

·         Facebook and other social network sites – ‘likes’

·         Online forums

·         Twitter trends

·         Views on YouTube & Google +1

Research

·         Quantitative research

·         E.g. questionnaires

·         Number based

·         Closed questions to generate exact answers

·         Very factual

·         Qualitative research

·         E.g. interviews and focus groups

·         Analysis of existing products

·         Open questions to generate answers open to interpretation

·         Individual preferences

Audience engagement

·         Describes how an audience interacts with a media text. Different people react in different ways

Audience expectations

·         The ideas the audience have in advance of seeing the media text. Particularly applies to genre.  Producers continually play with audiences expectations

Audience foreknowledge

·         Definitive information that audiences bring to a media product

Audience identification

·         The way an audience feel themselves connected to a particular media text – they feel it directly expresses their attitude or lifestyle.

Audience placement

·         Range of strategies media producers use to directly target a particular audience and make them feel the text is ‘particularly for them’ 

Audience research

·         Measuring an audience is important to all media institutions research is done at all stages and once produced audience will be continually monitored

Post 11: Script Draft

Here is the first draft for our script. It is a rough outline/idea of where our script is going to go. We gave the script to teachers and to students in the class and they gave us feed back which we will apply in our further drafts

here is a copy of the script with comments and feedback on that we will take into account when writing our final drafts