Full bloopers/Behind the scenes

This is a video that we created which contains all the blooper, behind the scenes and also some deleted scenes from our film.

Evaluation question 7:

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



20. PRELIM - Shahed, Rusne, Safia, Paige, Arber from 283goswell on Vimeo.

PRELIM

 FINAL PRODUCT

 
16 - Rusne Indrasiunaite, Safia Hanou, Paige-Gabrielle Griffith, Abu Shahed Miah from 283goswell on Vimeo.





 This whole process has been a great experience and i have learnt alot, such as embedding presentations, converting videos, using a camera, editing etc. I think the key to our successful product was that my group got on really well i can not recall any of us arguing once. This has boosted my team work skills and built my confidence with workign with new software's as i found they got easier the more i used them. I got in to the routine of blogging regularly and checking it, it was like my new twitter it will be sad not using it anymore. However this has made me more organised and aware of different types of media platforms. Looking at our film opening i am very proud that i could achieve this with my group. Overall this has definitely been a beneficial learning curve.

Evaluation question 6:

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

Evaluation question 5:

Q5: How did you attract/address your audience? 
 

 

This is our Facebook page updating fans on any sort of news related to the actors/film. Also the fans can leave comments and interact which makes them feel part of the experience.

This is a poster I put together with snaps from the opening and the big bold red title so people will remember it. I also left a question at the bottom ' who will make it?' to get the audience thinking.

Evaluation question 4:

Who would be the audience for your media product?

In general teen movies attract teens and young adults however it could also attract adults as they could relate as they've been there and done it or young teens aspiring to be like the characters and seeing them as a role model. Different teens will be intrigued by different genres such as love, friendship, sports, fun etc. Many teens watch teen films because they can relate to the issues that are being shown and they have a real understanding of teen life as they are experiencing it now.

 Here is a Facebook page of 'Amy  Lynch' who is a 17 year old from Essex who is great lover of horror films as you can see. This is the kind of teenager that would be interested in watch our film 'Jack'.

A more specific audience to our sub genre would be 15+ who are interested in horror films and teen adventures. Films like 'The cabins in the woods' and 'The Blair witch project' really inspired us because they were both about teenagers, they both involved an adventure and they were both horror. Which is similar to our film because a group 4 different individuals get together to go camping in the woods. However like these two films its not as straight forward as that, they will face obstacles through out their stay in the woods.

Even though many teen films are relatable only a certain social group can relate due to the content of the film for example if the film was about teens playing basketball only people that liked basketball would watch it. However with 'Jack' our USP is that we have 4 main characters that many social groups could relate to at least one (the Princess, Jock, Nerd and the weirdo). It shows the difference between the four of them and how different they all are and how they deal with the terror that's been thrown at them. Although our specific audience would be teens that enjoy watching horror films.

Evaluation question 3:

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

This our Idents at the start of our film opening.

Evaluation question 2:

Q2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

JACK

Evaluation question 1:

Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop forms and conventions of real media products?

As a group we decided to film an interview with our character Katie (the nerd) talking about the conventions in our film. Also i have inserted a presentation going in to more depth of the forms and conventions that we have used and challenged.

 

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?



PRELIM

20. PRELIM - Shahed, Rusne, Safia, Paige, Arber from 283goswell on Vimeo.





FINAL FILM

16 - Rusne Indrasiunaite, Safia Hanou, Paige-Gabrielle Griffith, Abu Shahed Miah from 283goswell on Vimeo.

Evaluation question 6:

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

Evaluation question 5:

How did you attract/address your audience?

The four stereotypical characters in our film are represented as 'the princess', 'the nerd', 'the jock' and 'the weirdo' or in this case he is the killer. All these are conventional social groups seen in most teen films. This is one way to attract our audience who are teenagers and they can relate with at least one of the 4 characters. Also our story line attracts the audience this is because most teenagers around 13-18 go camping and they want to see that experience played by someone else especially in an horror. When we uploaded our rough cut, there were some improvement that we needed to do from our audience response. We needed to make the title sequence follow the conventions of a teen film and also we needed to make the story line more clear for the audience to understand.



Jack poster:

This is a poster that I crated using footage from our films. You can see that there is blood and eyeballs in a glass. This would represent death and foreshadow what might happen in the movie later on. The one liner for the film is "...you're next" and I have chosen this because it suits in with our story line of the weirdo killing everyone one by one. We have used posters such as this to advertise our film. We would place these posters on buses, train stations, schools and colleges. This would attract a wide variety of our audience. Putting the posters up on buses and schools will attract from ages 15 and over because most teenagers travel to school by bus and will notice our posters or banners.. Also placing it in college and train stations will get the older teenagers that are aged 17 to 22. The posters on the train station will attract any young adults that maybe go to work or on their way to college.

Another way we have addressed our audience about our film is through social networks such a Facebook. This is where we release the trailers of our film and let the audience know when it will be released to keep them updated.

Evaluation question 4:

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Evaluation question 3:

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

Evaluation question 2:

How does your media product represent social groups?

to represent something is to describe or depict it, to call it up in the mind by its description or portrayal. To represent also means to stand for, symbolize or be a substitute for e.g the representation of the color black is to symbolize death, darkness or evil. Representations is the way that people ideas, and events are presented to us. The media will always represent people, places and situations to us. For example in most teen films the character representations are based on how they dress. The pretty and popular girl will dress really princess like and wear pink and the jock will always wear some type of a sport jacket to represent that he is fit and strong which makes him stand out from the others. The media rely on audience understanding these representations and accepting them. In most teen film there is also the representation of different social groups such as "the nerds", "the popular kids" and "the unpopular/weird kids". In our opening we have introduced these social groups. In the beginning scene you can see the nerd packing. The next scene shows the jock and the princess(the popular kids) talking on the phone. It then shows someone packing a knife to represent that he is the killer. The killer also represents the unpopular and weird kid that used to always get bullied. Even though our film represents all different types of social groups, it is still represented in a positive way because it shows how the different social groups are interacting with each other. the nerd and the two popular kids are friends that are going on the camping trip and the weird kid is a friend of the nerd but the popular kids don't know him very well. In the real media the nerds and the weird kids are looked  down at and claimed to be unpopular where as in our film although different social groups are present, they are still a mixture of friends from different social groups.

The Nerd:

The Jock:

The Princess:

The Weird kid:

Below is a an audience response after watching our short opening at the cinema's

Evaluation question 1:

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

The conventions of film openings is what is stereo-typically common in most film openings. Some of the most common genre conventions in a typical teen film are love and comedy for example '10 Things I hate about you'  and '17 Again' . In most conventional teen films there is a conflict between teens vs authority. One example of where this is shown in is 'The Bling Ring' which we have studied in our media class because it represents the way how teenagers go against authority. Our teen film opening followed some of the conventions of a teen film. One of the way was through social network and how the four characters in our film used messaging as a way to meet each other up. For our title sequence we have also followed the conventions and put the titles in order of an conventional film starting off with our production ident followed by our distribution ident. Our ident's then would show up again in the title sequence because they are the most important part of the film as they are the ones that produced it and will distribute it. They are also important in beneficial ways because they would give you the money to make the film and without them there would be no film. We then followed the strict order of the title sequence putting the names of 2 actors followed by the movie title. This was on our media classroom wall so that we never forgot the order of the titles.


As a group we decided to interview one of the actor, Katie (the nerd) from the film.

Beginning of the film, the location starts of with the nerds room which follows most teen film openings because most films shows the teenagers packing in their room getting ready to school. Since our film genre was a teen horror, Katie "the nerd" is packing to go camping with her friends. The place that they will go camping is in the woods and this is similar to another film 'Cabin in the woods'  "Five friends go for a break at a remote cabin in the woods, where they get more than they bargained for"(IMDb). Our characters also follow the conventions of a teen film because the movie opening starts off with "the nerd" then goes to "the athlete" followed up by "the princess" and our last character is "the weird kid" that no one likes or in a conventional horror, he is "the killer".The athlete is wearing a baseball jacket to represent that he is into sports and he is fit and strong but also like conventional teen films the jock is likely to be stupid. The princess is wearing a dress to make her role look more believable but her dress isn't pink like a princess instead it is black to foreshadow what will happen later on in the film. Black represents death so it  foreshadows just like in a conventional horror film, the pretty is always the first one to die.

Evaluation question 7:

For question 7 I have decided to create a video comparing the skills that we had when creating our Prelim clip and the skills we have now. I used the programme Camtasia to edit this video. 

 Here is a prezi about what I have learnt by working as a group to create our film. 

Evaluation question 6:

Evaluation question 5:

As part of question 5 I decided to film an interview with a member of our target audience asking them questions about our film. This is an interview with a girl who is 16 years old and this is what she thinks about our film.

Promotional Pack:

Poster:

 

This is a poster that I have created. This poster would be hung up in schools and colleges all over the UK because these pupils are the age of our target audience. This poster will attract teenagers because the pictures on the photos look quiet creepy and this will mean that the audience will want to go and watch the movie so that they can see what it is about. 

Teaser trailer:

I thought that creating a teaser trailer will be something different for the viewers. By watching this they will know what to expect from the real movie. It is only 30 seconds long which will leave the audience with a lot of questions and because of this they will then want to see the actual movie. 

Newspaper review:

This is a newspaper review about the movie JACK. This would appeal more to the older audience,by this I mean young adults from the ages of 17 to 22. This would appeal more to the older audience because the older audience are the ones that read newspaper. This is just a very short review but it would encourage the readers to go watch the film.

Evaluation question 4:

Evaluation question 3:

Evaluation question 3 for media from Rusne Indrasiunaite

Evaluation question 2:

Evalutation question 1:

As a group we decided to record an interview with a cast member as we thought that this would be a good way to discuss the conventions of film openings,how we followed them and the conventions of title sequences. What I forgot to say during the interview is that we did challenge one of the main conventions of teen movies which is that they are mostly Hollywood. Whereas our film is a British production for a British audience.

We followed a conventional order for our titles,this it the order in which all teen film titles appear as. I have created a video of our title sequence.



Intertextual characters: 

On the left is Safia who plays the character of Chloe. Chloe is represented as being the princess in the film. while watching the film you are able to undertand that she is the princess because she is dressed inappropritely for camping,she's wearing a dress and she has brang a suitcase whereas everyone else brang bags with them. Her character was inspired by Dana from the movie The Cabin in the woods. The character of Chloe is very similar to Dana because in the movie The Cabin in the woods Dana is seen as the princess in the group. 

 On the left is Shahed who plays the character of Aaron. Aaron is represented as being the Jock in the group. Aaron is the guy in school who everyone wants to be like and all of the girls are jealous that his bestfriend is Chloe. Even Jack is jealous of their friendship. The character of Aaron was inspired by the character of Steve from the movie Scream. Steve is also represented as being the jock and because of this he is killed during the film. 

On the left is myself(Rusne) and I play the character of Katie in the film. Katie is represented as being the geek in the group. She is the girl in school who always gets the best grades and everyone is jealous of that. She's been friends with Chloe and Aaron for a while but she still has a very close friendship with Jack. My character was inspired by Sara from The Roommate. Sara is very similar to Katie as they are both the type of people who study because they want to get far in life. But what they never expect to happen is for one of their bestfriends to turn against them.

On the left is Tho who plays the character of Jack. jack is represented as being the creepy guy out of the group. He's had some bad argurments with Chloe and Aaron which has only left him with one real friend and that is Katie. But even their friendship won't stop his plan. The character of Jack was inspired by the character of Rebecca from the movie The Roommate. Rebecca is the new girl on campus and she soon becomes best friends with her roommate but then she becomes very jealous and ends up wanting to kill everyone who even talks to her best friend. Both of these characters are very similar because the reason they both decide to commit murder is because of jealously. 

Today's Lesson

In today's lesson we got the opportunity to show our films to the rest of the class so that we can get some feedback from students and our teachers. We recorded a vlog of what they said.

Q7. Looking back at, your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

There were certain things we had not yet learnt about and due to this our preliminary film was not the probably the worst piece of editing work that we had put together. However, after doing this we began to learn a lot more about filming, editing and the amount of planning that is needed to go into filming.

In the prelim there is no continuity editing what so ever, the shots are all too short and they jumped from one to the next, not allowing the pace to flow from scene to scene. As you can also see in of the images below, we had not learnt about the rule of thirds and so there is too much head space in particular shots in the scene. Although we had also been given a tripod to work with, we were unsure on how to use it in the correct way and therefore some shots have come out shaky and unclear. We have made some terrible filming mistakes, and in one show (in the second image below) the camera man's reflection can be seen in the window of the kitchen door.

Q6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Q5. How did you attract/address your audience?

As a part of  question 5, I decided to do a small interview with a member of our target audience. She had just watched our opening two minutes of 'Jack' and she gave us some feedback on what she thought was successful and not so. Although it isn't very clear, Elizabeth 17, told us that she thought the  use of mobile phones as a way of communication between the group of friends played a key part in the opening sequence. I believe this is due to the fact that at one point in the opening, each of the four characters: Chloe (the princess), Katie (the nerd), Aaron (the jock) and Jack (the outsider), are seen using their mobile at least once, making the idea that this specific group of friends are just like any others. She told us that the sub genre of horror appealed to her as the ideas of death and murder are ones which she has particular interests in. She also told us that she thought our four main characters would appeal to our target audience (13-25 years old) as the characters were young themselves. 

Q4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

The general target audience age range is probably from 13 and over, this is due to the fact that they can relate to most people whether they are a teen or are now older, but can relate to when they were teens. Our film 'Jack' is aimed at a younger audience with the main age range being from 13 to 25. This is because our film is a horror based around a group of friends going camping, and this age groups are the ones that tend to go to festivals or take long weekends with their friends for stuff like camping trips. This could be also our unique selling point as many teenagers are fans of horror's and there are not as many British based horrors as there are Hollywood. This I believe would entice a British and a European audience in even more. 

This is a Facebook account that I have created that belongs to a typical member of our film's target audience. 

Q3. What kind of media institution might distribution your media product and why?

Q2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Q1. In what ways does your media product use. develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

As a group we had decided to put together a quick interview between me (the "Host") and one of our films main actress's Rusne who plays Katie (the stereotypical nerd). The interview was used to discuss "How successfully our film followed the key conventions of a teen movie?"; "What are the 'stereotypical characters' used in teen films and who are they in our film?" and finally "What are the conventions of title sequences? And why are they set up in this particular way?".

Our film "Jack", I believe has successfully followed the conventions of a teen movie, we chose to use the four stereotypical characters, who you would find in most, if not all teen films. The most popular conventions that are portrayed in teen films generally are binary oppositions between characters, such as Good vs. Bad, Rich vs. Poor, Popular vs. Outcasts, Pretty vs. Ugly, Love vs. Hate and Rebellion vs. Authority. Our opening scenes set up several of these themes for the rest of the film. For example, the character's Chloe and Aaron (the princess and the jock) seem to have a closer relationship to each other as opposed to Chloe and Jack (the outcast). Which might give an indication to the audience to who is to die first, as typically in horrors, it is always one of the pretty or popular kids who are first to die, for example in Scream, Casey and Steve are the first to die, the typical good looking and strong American Footballer and his pretty blonde girlfriend.

We also tried to stick to the idea of travelling in the first few scenes of the film, which seems to be a common theme in most teen films. The cameras follow them as they make their way into school, college or in our case to meet their friends. We show several modes of transportation, including, walking and public transportation.

As a way for our four characters to communicate throughout the beginning scenes, we show as least one shot of each of them using their mobile phones or social media (such as What's App) to contact one another. This is a realistic and common way for most teens to get in touch with someone fast and is apart of most teenagers daily life.


When thinking about each of our plot line and characters we had come up with several as a basis of each. We tried to relate our plot to "Cabin in the Woods" and "The Blair Witch Project", both are also classed as 'teen horrors' and are set in a woodland or forest surroundings, for when the killing sprees begin.

What did i learn?

Throughout the whole process of making our film opening 'Jack' i have learnt a lot.

• I have developed great teamwork skills and can communicate better in a team. I think communication has been the key to how successful we have been. We  created a group conversation on whats app and discussed  any issues we had and to arrange meeting up to film.

   

• While blogging i had to use different types of media to show my work on such as:   

 

• To be organized in order for things to go to plan and to meet deadlines.

•  I was given the opportunity to learn how to use certain programs and equipment that i wouldn't have access to if i wasn't studying media. Also i became aware of all the different camera angles and shots to make a scene look for effective.

• Most importantly i learnt how to use blogger and got in to the routine of blogging regularly.

Feedback from students

When we finished making our film we decided to show it to other students to get feedback from them. Some students said that our storyline is very clear and it is easy to understand the four different characters in the opening. Other students commented on our title sequence saying that it is very plain and simple but it fits with the genre of our film. After talking to some students we felt very proud of what we have accomplished and felt happy that people enjoyed our film.

Bloopers of our own film

Today we had a 3 hour lesson and because we finished our film during the first 2 hours we decided to make a bloopers video. For the bloopers video we messed around with music so that it fits with the footage. Below I have included our actual bloopers. 

Finished movie

Today we had 3 hours during our lesson to finish our film and we have now finished. What we had to do today was just to add the titles and we done that pretty quickly once we were shown how too. We are very proud of our film and now we are very happy that we are finished.

Highgate Wood leaflet

When we showed our rough cut to our teacher,the feedback that we got from her was to create a leaflet for camping in Highgate Wood  so that the audience can understand where the four characters are going. Then when the leaflet is created to re-film the scene of Katie. When we film we will start off with a close up of this leaflet so that it shows where the characters are going and what they are doing there.

Rough cut

Today we showed our rough cut to our teacher and some other students. The feedback that we got was that we need to change the order of the titles and that the movie of the title can not come last. Our teacher also told us that it is not clear how all of the characters are connected and that they are all going camping together. So we have now decided to re-film the scene of Katie. This is because we plan to use more props and we plan for her to have a leaflet for Highgate woods camping when she is packing. This will then make it clear that all of the characters are going camping together. We plan to re-film this scene on Wednesday morning. 

Editing process

The programme that we used to edit our film is Final Cut Pro on the iMac's. To create the ident's at the start of the film we used motion. What we first done was that we moved all of our recorded footage from the memory cards onto our hard drive just to make sure that we can move our footage onto Final Cut Pro. We then opened a new project on Final Cut Pro and moved all of our footage onto there. What we then had to do was to order our scenes so that it all makes sense,some scenes we had to shorten whereas some scenes we had to speed up. The scene of where Katie is texting Aaron, was sped up whereas the scene of Chloe walking was shortened. We then researched music and found the two songs that we wanted to use through Thesecession's YouTube page. We first searched on Creative Commons but we only found one song that we liked but it did not have a download button,so we then researched further and found the original track on YouTube. The owner's of the music allowed us to use their songs as long as we do no monteize. We found other songs that also suited our movie and we downloaded two songs. We made sure that they were in the right format so that we could transfer them into Final Cut Pro. We then added the music into Final Cut Pro and matched it up with our footage. After this we had to create the idents and then create the title sequence. Which we done over motion.
Below I have included a slideshow of some pictures we took to prove our editing process.

Editing process - slideshow

Ident research

In lesson today we were told we had to make an ident for the beginning of our film, so i done some research on what it was and examples of some. 

Reflection Post

Recently I have fallen behind with all areas of my college work particularly blogging as 6 weeks ago I broke my arm and was in hospital for several days as I had an operation. I have realized the importance of blogging, catching up with my work and asking for help when I need to. At the beginning of using this blog I underestimated the amount of time that would need to go into it, however I do enjoy it and will be trying to get up to date in the next week or so.