Main Task: Final Product

Hello! Welcome to my blog. Attached below is my final product of my AS media studies, titled Aeon. Enjoy!

Evaluation Answers: Question 1 - Podcast

Here is my answer to question 1 of the evaluation questions. It is a podcast talking about the research I did and the forms and conventions recognised.

Evaluation Answers: Question 2 - Interview

 

Here is my answer to question 2 of the evaluation questions. It is an interview talking about how my media product represents a particular social group.

Evaluation Answers: Question 3 - Power Point with Audio Explanation

Power Point - http://www.scribd.com/doc/138948316/what-kind-of-media-institutions-might-distribute-our

Audio Explanation -

Evaluation Answers: Question 4 - Behind the Scenes

This is my answer to question 4 from the media evaluation questions. It is a 'behind the scenes' of the film answering who the audience is.

Evaluation Answers: Question 5 - Interviews after watching the Media Product

                                        


This is my answer to question 5. It is interviews with people after watching the media product talking about who they think our audience is then me discussing if what we attempted worked.

Evaluation Answers: Question 6 - Podcast

Here is my answer to question 6 of the evaluation questions. It is a podcast talking about what technologies I have learnt about in the process of constructing my product.

Evaluation Answers: Question 7 - Comparison

Here is my preliminary task:

And here is my final product for my main task: 

           

Here is what I feel I have learnt in the progression from the preliminary task to the full product:

                                    

Rough Cut Title Sequence

Here is an extremely rough cut of the beggining of our opening title sequence, have a watch and see what you think.

BBFC Research

The BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) are who decide what age a film should be classed as. They don't actually have any power over what age the film is actually aged as but most films are classed at the age that the  BBFC suggests due to their reputation and brilliant accuracy.

Here is a link to the official BBFC website, have a look then have a look at what I have said below: http://www.bbfc.co.uk/

When we are making our opening title sequence we will need to take into mind what aged target audience we will be aiming our film at, then incorporating that into our title sequence. In doing this we will have to look at what makes a film classed to a certain age, in our case we will wanted to be a 12 to fit our target audience, and so we will need to look at what makes a film a 12 rated film.



Final Storyboard

Here is our final storyboard for our opening title sequence for Aeon.

Here they are: http://www.scribd.com/doc/138922183/Final-Storyboard

What do you think of them?

Target Audience Research and Research Into Where the Media Product Would be Shown

We have designed a questionnaire for people to fill out. This will help us decide where to try and distribute our media product to our target audience and see how they would expect to view it.

 Here is the questionnaire: http://www.scribd.com/doc/138704746/Target-Audience-Distribution-Questionnaire-1

Synopsis/ Brief

Following on from the resent production meeting we have recently come up with a synopsis/brief for our film that we will be filming the opening sequence for. Here it is:

'Happy/feel good with comedy elements which tells a story about the hardship of working class life but also the good times, such as family/friends, valuing the little things and the music in the main character's life.'

Here is a questionnaire, take a look at it then fill it out and send it back to me with your answers to help us out with our opening title sequence, then come back and watch the clip of 'Little Miss Sunshine' that we think is a good examples of what we want to do, taking the idea of a depressing subjuect but showing happyness and laughter over powering it.
Questionnaire: http://www.scribd.com/doc/127811641/Questionnaire

                                              

Remember, send me your links to the answered questions so we can see what you thought!

Production Meeting

6th December 2012

Present: Sam, Ben, Lauren and Izzy.

Focus/Agenda: Work out a synopsis/brief.

Ideas:
Feel good/comedy type film that shows the everyday life of a young, unemployed character living near oxford.

The opening title sequence could be following the main character on their way to the city from their home to busk, which is what they do ever day of their life at the present time. Also, whilst this is happening, things will be happening around the character that show things about them. There could also be titles that appear on things around the character, such as walls, signs and maybe clouds.

Inspiration:

• 'Juno'   http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/juno/
  
• 'This Is England'/
   

• 'Shuan of the Dead'
Tasks:

• Everyone: Watch as much films as possible to be inspired by.
• Sam: Think of props to use within the scene.

If anyone has any thought or ideas for use to help us with our opening title sequence we would appreciate it very much! Watch the clips shown then comment about your opinions on the type of film we are planning to film and the common occurrences in this genre.

Product Research

Here is the music video to Breezeblocks by Alt-J. Have a watch then come back and read what I thought about it and what I noticed.

Alt J 'Breezeblocks':

The Video is all shown backwards, cousing many questions to be asked about what has happened to lead to this point as you have already seen what happens at the end, at the begining!

There is also a good use of colour in this video, the colour has been very toned down so they are all quite dark which reflects the overall mood of the video which is very doomy/gloomy. This darkening of the clolours makes me, as a view feel that there is a feeling of doom lingering over the whole video and that there is a sense of being stuck in this doom with no way of getting out. This is also helped by the video being played backwards.

There is also a sense of regret made by the backwards video. Its almost as if its what the man is thinking, what's going through his brain reminising what has gone wrong and what he coukd have done to have stopped the situation from getting to where it is.

I like this idea of showing a scene backwards and think it could be possible to use in our opening title sequence. This would mean people see what it is that the character does for money to start with then see what their life consists of through the journey they have taken, but seen backwards, finally bringing them to where they always start. This would help show the repetition of the character's life and help show the circle that their days consist off.

Product Research

Having seen and studied a few different films now, we decided to see how they all have used their titles, seeing if they have an effect on the sequence, and if so, then how they do this. Here are a few opening title sequences we looked at:

The Orphanage:

This used an odd, scary font to re-enforce the genre of the film, being horror, and had children's hands interacting with the titles to show that the film would have a lot to do with children which are the main element of the horror in the film.

Forest Gump:

The titles in this film used very simple, easy to read titles, making it seem quite formal but also they represent the main character, Forest Gump, who is rather simple minded and easy to read.

Catch Me If You Can:

'Catch Me If You Can' used their titles very well within opening title sequence by having the animations fit in with the titles as if they were part of the scene, sometimes being being buildings or planes.

From these examples, we decided that we wanted to take the idea of our titles fitting in with the scene, seeming they were naturally part of the world. We thought that we could try and put titles on signs and on newspapers and perhaps on tshirts people were wearing around the main character. This would help give the idea of things happening around the characters life every day on a daily bases but she is never distracted form her goal as she never notices them.

Organisation of Actors, Location, Costumes and Props

We finally chose our location of where to shoot our film.

WOODSTOCK
Woodstock is a small historic town local to us, near Oxford. We felt that it was urban enough for what we wanted but not to rural that it felt to disconnected with the city feel. Here are a few images to show you what its like:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/137411176/woodstock-pictures

Take a look at these images and see if you think it is a good location for shooting.

Product Research

In 'Dark Shadows', a 2012 American horror comedy film, uses a scene where you don't see the characters face until the end of the scene. You do, however, see glimpses of the character but never the face, so that you are never truly sure of who, or what, is in the scene. Unfortunately I cannot find the clip of this scene but if anyone can then i would be very appreciative if you could tell me where to find it!
In our opening title sequence sequence we want to a scene like the one in 'Dark Shadows'. We will start with a scene where we don't fully see the character's face until she stands up and reveals here appearance to the audience. This will get the audience wanting to see who it is and will create a sense of mystery to

                                                                

Movie trailer:

Behind the scenes of 'Dark Shadows'

Reviews on 'Dark Shadows' http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/reviews/article-2142675/Dark-Shadows-movie-review-Johnny-Depp-colour-batty-vampire-tale.html    http://www.totalfilm.com/reviews/cinema/dark-shadows

Production Meeting

15th February 2012

Present: Sam, Lauren, Izzy and Ben

Focus/Agenda: Film Planning

Ideas:

Interior of Lauren's house. In the kitchen, bedroom and stairs on the way out the door. Here are a few pictures to show what we are thinking off:


Bedroom


Kitchen: Except the characters face isn't revealed in our scene.


Leaving the house: our scene will have the character walking down the stairs then leaving the house, having picked up the guitar.

Look out for a preview of our filming soon!

Product Research

The Tree Of Life
I watched 'The Tree of Life', an American drama film with experimental elements, written and directed by Terrence Malick. I was very interested in the way it was filmed with the experimental elements. I noticed that there is no real order to the shots used, it is almost like a bunch of home movie clips stuck together. Yet, it still had a fluency to it. I thought this was a very clever way to film this movie because it really showed the life of the characters as if it was them who had filmed it, giving the feeling of actually being there. Then, at certain points in the film the shots change to clips of what I think was the universe and space mixed in with clips of nature such as blood vessels. However, I was unsure exactly whether they were definitely space or if they were natural things on earth. These changes in the film made me question the meaning of life and where it originated from, whereas the 'home movie' bits of the film made me think of the good and bad things of life and also that there is a definite reason for life and that every thing has a reason, so the two different parts are a contrast to each other and almost contradict each other.

I would love to take inspiration from this film and use the same idea of adding clips of things relevant to the context of what is going on in the scene, being small clips of the character possibly playing guitar (as that is what we want to show as her main love in her life), these clips would only last for about a second though, and would seem like they were done by someone as a home video or possibly the character filming themselves as if for a Youtube video.

Info on 'The Tree of Life': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tree_of_Life_(film)

Director and Writer, Terrence Malick: http://movies.nytimes.com/person/100893/Terrence-Malick

Interview with Terrence Malick: http://www.lavideofilmmaker.com/filmmakers/terrence-malick-interview-rome-film-festival.html

'The Tree of Life' was nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director and Best Cinematography.


                                                     
                                                             Terrence Malick