My Chosen Brief

For A2 media we were given the option of 13 pieces of coursework. The skills on these pieces of coursework stemmed from Website creation to photoshop usage to filming and animation design. I have chosen brief number 2.

This is

2. A promotion package for a new film, to include a teaser trailer, together with the following two:
•
a website homepage for the film;
•
a poster for the film.

This means i will be creating a teaser trailer, a website homepage and a poster for the film.

I have a few ideas about the film genre and storyline. Obviously i will be piecing together bits for the trailer but i hope to make a short film so the objective isnt just to go out and record a teaser trailer. The only reason for that is it could seem very scripted and not come across as bite sized chunks of a full feature film.

I will have to do my research before i start filming but i hope to be filming by 1st August. This is realistic because i can use my time effectively to do the planning before hand.

The Task

Please create a category called G322 on your blog, copy the following list onto a new post. Then choose 3 tv drama clips from iplayer, youtube, five/demandfive, post the urls on your blog and discuss for each clip the representation of:

Age
Sexuality
Ethnicity
Class and status
Physical Appearence
Regional Identity
Disability

in detail:

Camera Shots, Angle, Movement and Composition
• Shots: establishing shot,
master shot,
close-up,
mid-shot,
long shot,
wide shot,
two-shot,
aerial shot,
point of view shot,
over the shoulder shot, and variations of these.
• Angle: high angle,
low angle,
canted/dutch angle.
• Movement: pan,
tilt,
track,
dolly,
crane,
steadicam,
hand-held,
zoom,
reverse zoom.
• Composition:
framing,
rule of thirds,
depth of field –
deep and shallow focus,
focus pulls.

Editing
Includes transition of image and sound – continuity and non-continuity systems.
• Cutting: shot/reverse shot,
eyeline match,
graphic match,
action match,
jump cut,
crosscutting,
parallel editing,
cutaway;
insert.
• Other transitions,
dissolve,
fade-in,
fade-out,
wipe,
superimposition,
long take,
short take,
slow motion,
ellipsis and expansion of time,
post-production,
visual effects.

Sound
• Diegetic and non-diegetic sound; synchronous/asynchronous sound;
sound effects;
sound motif,
sound bridge,
dialogue,
voiceover,
mode of address/direct address,
sound mixing,
sound perspective.
• Soundtrack: score,
incidental music,
themes and stings,
ambient sound.

Mise-en-Scène
• Production design:
location,
studio,
set design,
costume and make-up,
properties.
• Lighting;
colour design.

16/03/09 Monday morning. Emergency Location Scouting.

After recieveing a phone call from Andy Pearson (Red & NCP group) he explained we cannot film in the carpark after all because he felt we could use the portayal of this short film in a negative light. So this evening we decided to look for a new location, on private property, where there wasnt any complications like this.
I telephoned Raymond Chan and he agreed to meet with me. As elliot would not give either myself or Raymond his telephone number, the only meathod of contact was his media blog. (www.elliotr.wordpress.com) I posted a comment telling him where we was meeting and invited him to attent if he wished. I doubt he will access this comment as he isn’t as motivated as myself or Raymond at the present time.

Representation.

Representation of masculinity in disney films.

Disney Films have been seen to encourage a particular brand of traditional-style masculinity; males must be big, strong and willing to fight. On the other hand, Sanjay Newton argues that the emphasis on these qualities to the exclusion of other values perhaps more in tune with that of ‘new men’ (sensitivity, compassion etc) could lead to an alienating effect on many young males.

Main Media Task EVALUATION

For the main task of my AS media, I had already chosen to work on the film pathway instead of the magazine or print pathway. I was happy with my choice so i did not change from film to print. The video clip had its restrictions on the preliminary task but this time it didnt. All the specification said was it wanted me to make an opening to a film and it had to be around the 2 minute mark. I decided to go with the challenge of video the first time around because I thought that it would be more fun, interesting and i could really get working with ideas. This time round there was less strss evolved even though i had to put more effort in. I kind of knew what i was getting into so i felt better. I worked in a group of three again with the same people. I believe this time the way the examiner will assess us is on the use of camera angles, editing skills, continuity, production documents, research and much more this time rather than the basics in the preliminary like last time. Like in the preliminary we had to do a presentation to our class at the beginning of this task. We had created three initial ideas. The purpose of this was so we could receive feedback from our peers that could be used productively to enhance our production. The end product was to leave the session with an idea on which of the ideas were the most popular and which were the least popular. The three ideas are in a previous production log on a power point slide. That presentation was the one we gave to the class. The rough ideas are specified below.

1. Idea one was based on a group of workers at a building site, rushing to get to a room on the top floor of a high rise building. This idea is based on the group trying to find the right room where ‘thieves’ are seen stealing money. Once the workers reach the room, they realise they are in the wrong room much to their annoyance.

2. The second idea was based on a group of robbers entering restaurant (brasserie). There will be hostages and the pair of robbers will bicker to add humor on who gets to say what to the hostages.

3. Two Over weight security guards chase a Olympic 200m sprinter through the street and surprisingly catch him. They then realise who he is and apologize for the inconvenience and he walks away. (Whilst this occurs there is a voice over of the sprinter, he talks about the day everything went wrong and the day the world went mad!)

The idea that we decided to continue with this time was 2 but we made it more of a personal task so we decided not to include most things we origionaly planned to.

We came up with a new assignment breif:-

Collin, a young business man, dressed in business attire will leave a industrial sized building late at night with a brief case in his hand. Once he leaves the building and is on his way, walking through a secluded car park, he rings Caroline, his fiance to let her know he is on his way home. During a short conversation, with his car in sight, he presses the electronic key for his car and suddenly has a bag thrown over his head. He drops his briefcase and phone with Caroline still on the phone. Two dark clothed people swiftly drag him into an alley, whilst he shouts and kicks for survival. Thats the last we see of Collin. He then cuts to a low angle shot showing the phone and the briefcase. You can hear Caroline shouting in confusion and suspense, calling Collin’s name. A mysterious man in a suit then approaches the briefcase and takes it. As he walks into the distance with the briefcase you can hear Caroline frantically calling Collin’s name.

On the day we adapted this quite alot to make it something very impromtue and something which we could show had a certain sort of creativity. I came up with the concept of the breifcase on the day and our ideas really came from there.The first thing we did was to create a storyboard of our video. This can be seen in the hard paper copies. Raymond did the draewing of the story board whilst i made some phone calls to make sure we was allowed to use the area we had planned for filming. Once i had done this raymond had some rough copies we looked through. I then went and completed my research. For this i analysed the film ‘Bad Boys’ (will smith & martin lawrence 1995) opening to see how a action packed style opened. I did this so we could shoot the video much easier and quicker as we could just follow that as a guide for an opening. The stry board did the same thing with The camera man knowing what he wanted it to look like and after agreeing what would happen where. After we had created the storyboard we went around the whole college to search for a room that would be suitable for our film. We wanted a retangular room this time but that was big enough to shoot from distances. The room we finally decided on was a medium sized room which could hold about 15 students. It was perfect for what we wanted.

I believe the final and finished product was a success that the video was well shot and it was well edited. One of the few problems we encountered was Elliots commitment. We all chipped in and helped to edit and he was in charge of finding ths sounds. I told him exactly what sounds we wanted and he didnt find any. I had to fiond the gunshot and in the end we didnt have enough time to get backing music for our film like we wanted. We also wanted a tension breaker ’screech’ sprt of sound when David turns around and i am standing there right before the headbutt. I was unabe to find this and i gave up in the end as it was one of elliot’s specified jobs and he didnt even bother to try and help me find it. Apart from that there were no real big problems in the group. The target audience that we aimed at were 16-25 year olds. It did not contain any scenes that would be unsuitable for kids, but there was still a gun shot and only a slightly older audience would be considered acceptable to show our video to. With the music it would have added a spine tingling effect to it but as the sound man didnt find this sound the video has to be submitted as it is. This video clip was meant to look serious but since we didn’t have the mixture of the right team to do this and make  every shot and sound perfect, some of the clips have made it look slightly humorous. We decided that even though this was not intended it was a plus to the filming and it gave our production a funny edge. There was a few out take scenes where things went wrong but we didnt add these as its a start of a film and we felt this wasnt appropriate. For example the shot of myslef being shot we did do takes where i fell to the ground and these were humorous at first but they did start to look good. A funny addition to this was i accidently threw the case and it hit David as he layed on the floor and knocked the gun out of his hand. We nearly decided to use this as we thought it could be a procarious ending. He was supposed to look imn a powerful position with a gun but after shooting me he got hurt himself. The shot of his reaction had made the video clip seem funny. During filming this we had made a lot of adjustments and improvements to how we would film it. I didnt want to make it too flashy with effects so we only put a few fade ins and outs and i added a disolve on the title at the end and a blur to the first person drag scene. All of the shot angles will be on rays web blog as he was the camera man. I beliebe this looked good and was enough to make the examiner see we can use the effects on Final Cut Pro. Using final cut pro was easier than last time as we have more experience of it. We decided the andles and use of steady and still shots make it look more proffessional

Throughout constructing this video I have learnt and added to my basic skills on Final Cut Pro and Adobe Photoshop CS3. My crew and I have also learnt how to use the camera and other equipment used to film properly and safely. Overall I believe we did quite well and hope the examiner’s feelings reflect this view. If i was to do anything different next time it sadly would be to do a different genre and with a different group. My group was good with some points but we are all very opinionated and some of the group couldnt take on eachothers views where of some of the group could. My experience filming was very enjoyable once we got through the ideas stage. If i was to change anything that we had on the film it would be to make the sounds better myself instead of putting the responcability on someone who clearly wasnt able to find the resources or even tell us until the deadline day he couldnt find the resources.

Production Log 16/04/09

Last time i posted, we were filming for the second time. Since then we have editied our work. The 2nd take on filming went really well. We captured alot of good footage and once we uploaded it to the mac we saw we had alot of story lines we could portray. On the day of filming, we filmed ion a room in college and in a wooded area near the college. We had elliot this time so he covered the sound which made it easier for me nd raymond to focus more on our areas. We had an external actor, one of our friends called David Ennifer. He played a big part in the acting so that when it came to myself acting having to pull it out of the bag, i knew what i wanted myself to do and i believe i achieved this.

The equptment was a HD camera which took DV tapes. The DV tapes deleted a few seconds off of some of our clips but as we waited into each take before the acting started we managed to salvage most of the clips we origionally planned to use. On the 16th April (today) we started to edit our film. Unfortianetly Elliot was ill so me and raymond had to do it alone once again. We finished editing though and elliot was happy when he saw the finished product. My next step will be my Evaluation. This will be done in my next lesson in a wereks time. On this date the coursework is due in too so i will be submitting the work on the day. We also decided in todays lesson that thename of our film will be ‘Hunt’ and that the font for this will be in lucidia console and coloured red.This will be surrounded by a blank black canvas behind it.

Production Log 26/03/09

Last week (19th) we filmed all of our production. It took from around 5 hours and we filmed from 5:30pm to 10:30pm.

One problem we encountered today was the lighting, even the lights we brought and head lights from the car didnt give the effect we wanted to use. The HD camera was okay but we could see it trying to focus in the dark and it wasnt doing very well. Elliot did not turn up to filming either which made it harder for me and raymond to work froim every angle. After watching it back  today, we discovered that our thoughts were correct and the lighting wasnt acceptable and so we have to re film. We have altered the location again and are planning to film next week (2nd april) and it will be in the day light (12pm until 6pm)

My next production log will be summarising they days events and thoughts and feelings after filming.

The Parts of a newspaper & The parts of a magazine

Parts of a Newspaper Layout, typical features and technical terms Some or all of these may be found on the front pages of newspapers or magazines.

- Box-out – A small part of the page, shaded in a different colour.

- By-line – the name of the reporter, if they are important is often included at the beginning of the feature, rather than at the end, or not at all.

- Caption – typed text under photographs explaining the image.

- Credits – the author of a feature may be given credit in the form of a beeline. Photographs may have the name of the person who took them or the agency that supplied them alongside them.

- Crosshead – this is a subheading that appears in the body of the text and is centred above the column of text. If it is se to one side then it is called a side-head.

- Exclusive – this means that newspaper and no one else solely cover the story. The paper will pay their interviewees, buying the story so it cannot be used by another paper.

- Feature – not necessarily a ‘news’ item (current affairs), but usually with a human-interest angle presented as a spread.

- Headline – this is the main statement, usually in the largest and boldest font, describing the main story. A banner headline spans the full width of the page.

- Kicker – this is a story designed to stand out from the rest of the page by the use of a different font (typeface) and layout.

- Lead Story – the main story on the front page, usually a splash. ! Lure – a word or phrase directing the reader to look inside the paper at a particular story or feature.

- Masthead – the masthead is the title block or logo identifying the newspaper at the top of the front-page. Sometimes an emblem or a motto is also placed within the masthead. The masthead is often set into a block of black or red print or boxed with a border; the ‘Red-tops’ (The Sun, The Mirror, The News of the World) are categorised by style and the use of a red background in the masthead.

- Menu – the list of contents inside the paper.

- Pugs – these are at the top left and right-hand corners of the paper and are known as the ‘ears’ of the page. The prices of the paper, the logo or a promotion are positioned there. They are well placed to catch the reader’s eye.

- Secondary Lead – this is usually only a picture and headline, it gives a sneak preview of a story that you might find inside the paper.

- Sidebar – when a main feature has an additional box or tinted panel along side of it.

- Splash – the splash is the main story on the front of the paper. The largest headline will accompany this, along with a photograph.

- Spread – a story that covers more than one page. ! Standfirst – this is an introductory paragraph before the start of the feature. Sometimes it may be in bold.

- Strapline – this is an introductory headline below the headline.

- Tag – a word or phrase used to engage a reader’s interest in a story by categorising it e.g. ‘Exclusive’, ‘Sensational’.

Production Log 12/03/09

Today i decided that i should get on with our script creation of the new idea and explain what the new idea is. Myself and Raymond went and spoke to Brendan (the media specialist and the person we rent equipment from) and we booked our equiptment. This consists of:

1x HD Video Camera
1x HD Video Camera Tripod
1x Boom Microphone

Brendan also told me i am allowed to use the equipment over night so i can take it out on thursday and bring it back on friday.

Our New Story Line
As i have previously noted, we required 8 actors for story line 1, but as we changed our story completely we only need 3. As I’m quite tall and i wanted a small part to be played in a certain way, we all decided that i would best fit the role. Our peers Sukvir Gill and David Ennifer have agreed to work on the production with us as the other two actors.
The script and story will follow:

Collin, a young business man, dressed in business attire will leave a industrial sized building late at night with a brief case in his hand. Once he leaves the building and is on his way, walking through a secluded car park, he rings Caroline, his fiance to let her know he is on his way home. During a short conversation, with his car in sight, he presses the electronic key for his car and suddenly has a bag thrown over his head. He drops his briefcase and phone with Caroline still on the phone. Two dark clothed people swiftly drag him into an alley, whilst he shouts and kicks for survival. Thats the last we see of Collin. He then cuts to a low angle shot showing the phone and the briefcase. You can hear Caroline shouting in confusion and suspense, calling Collin’s name. A mysterious man in a suit then approaches the briefcase and takes it. As he walks into the distance with the briefcase you can hear Caroline frantically calling Collin’s name.

Script

Collin: Night Mate (to security guard)
Security Guard Nods
Caroline Rings Colin
Colin Answers: Hey Caroline
Caroline says: Hi honey, where are you?
Collin: I’m on my way home…(short pause)… How was your day? (gets interrupted when says ‘day’)
DARKLY DRESSED MEN APPEAR – BAG GOES OVER HIS HEAD – PULLED INTO ALLEY – SCREAMS & SHOUTS
Caroline on phone: Collin? COLLIN?!?!

Production Log 5/3/09

Today we did a presentation in front of our class mates. This power point presentation is located on this blog under a previous post.

Here is the link to the post: http://dom2192.wordpress.com/2009/01/29/production-log-3-2/

The presentation went well and we decided to go ahead with story one. The overall feed back from the class was that they wanted to hear more about the story. They did say that its a hard task to pull off as we knew, but if we did finish it and finalize it we believe that it could be a very good production and we could succeed with it. Next week we will be deciding on actors as we have around 4 actors already we need to find a few others to make out total 8. We will also be allocating specific roles next week.