Evaluation Q1

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

Convention: The widely recognised way of doing something, which includes content, style

Conventions

In our opening, we used various means of mise en scene and cinematography in order to present and develop our storyline. In terms of editing, we used rapid frames (no longer than four seconds) in order to create an energetic atmosphere when Hadi is playing football. In addition to this, we added slow motion to some shots to emphasise the gracefulness of Hadi's movement and skill. This is a common aspect in many films with a sub genre of sport as it dramatises certain moments, hence it being used to show last minute goals in the films She's The Man and Goal. We also chose to include various conventions in our film such as young inner city teens being involved in crime. This convention was taken from one of the films that inspired us: Kidulthood. We utilised this convention as it allowed us to establish binary oppositions of good and evil between the hoodlums and Hadi, which therefore allowed us to challenge this convention, as it shows that young teens are capable of being both promising and hopeless. Finally, the sound that we used in our film opening is conventional considering the genre and plot.

Intertextuality

We also took some aspects from the two films that inspired us' Goal and Kidulthood, and incorporated into our own production in order to help develop our storyline. We took the location of a football pitch from Goal to emphasise Hadi's considerable footballing talent. It also allowed us to establish binary oppositions of good and evil between him and the two muggers when we filmed on a residential road in the second scene. This location also introduced a sense of danger to the scene as it is dark and had a low amount of passersby. In addition to this, our characters were also inspired by both Goal and Kidulthood. Our protagonist, who was played by Hadi, was based on Goal's protagonist, Santiago. We done this because we were influenced by his journey from an amateur to a professional; the same journey that we intended for our protagonist to embark on.

Evaluation Q2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

This was made using slide-es. I discuss which social groups my film is representing and in what ways we were able to show that.

Evaluation Q3

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

Although our production company has produced blockbusters like Slumdog Millionaire and The Inbetweeners Movie, it is still relatively small when compared to others such as DreamWorks, Warner Brothers and 20th Century Fox. This is because Film 4's productions are more suited for the British public as opposed to globally, which makes it a good choice for our film. Our distribution company is an even smaller independent company who also specialise in films catered to the British public, and because of this, they will be useful in helping us to get the attention of our own target audience.

We chose Film 4 as our production company as they have a distinguished history of producing successful British films, which have had low budgets and yet resulted in major profit. These include films like: Shaun of the Dead, East is East, Trainspotting and The Inbetweeners Movie, which were all hits with the British public. Another reason that we chose them to be our production company is because they have sufficient funds to produce our film, as it doesn't contain any CGI or big stars. In addition to this, the fact that they are also a television broadcasting company means that we may be able to advertise our film on their channels or websites, which will give it more attention and increase our potential audience. Moving on, we chose Revolver entertainment as our distribution company because they have distributed successful independent British films with similar audiences to ours such as: Shank, Ill Manners and Kidulthood, one of the films that inspired us. This would result in our film attracting the same kind of audience too. In addition to this, we opted for an independent company as opposed to a major one because we do not require a large amount of resources to get attention for our film. This due to the fact that our target audience is confined to the British public rather than a global audience. Instead of massive billboards, we could use social networking sites on the internet like: Facebook, Twitter and Youtube to get attention from our target audience. We could also put up posters of our film in places that we would expect people from our target audience to visit. For example, near football pitches in urban areas.

Evaluation Q4

Who would be the audience for your media product?


This was created using Powtoons. I discuss the audience's prespective and who would be interested in watching our media product.

Evaluation Q5

How did you attract/address your audience?

One way we attracted/addressed our audience is the amount of teenagers who are in the film. This appeals to other teenagers as they can relate to the lives played in the film. 

Another way we attracted our audience is football lovers as the film itself is football based

So far, we have reached our audience via Youtube, Vimeo and a cinema preview. We used social networking sites to address our audience because they are popular in youth culture today, which makes it easier for us to spread word of our film and broadens the range of our audience. In our cinema preview, we showed our film opening to many other media students and a few adults. We then interviewed certain members of the audience, specifically the ones that matched our target audience, to see what they thought of our film.

The two video's are interviews that we conducted to receive feed back from our opening teen film. thankfully, we heard loads of positive things. Both seemed to meet the criteria of our target audience as they are interested in football and are at the youth age (16-19). This helped me realise also that although it has the football element,  target audience can still be addressed because of that youthful element to the film.

Target Audience.

Within our opening, the protagonist gets mugged shortly after he leaves his house. This is a common occurrence London, so many of our target audience can relate to the situation and therefore empathise with our protagonist. Also, the protagonist is played by a young actor who's age is similar to that of our target audience, which allows our audience to further relate to him and entices them to watch the film.The sound in terms of a song that we utilised in our opening also appeals to our target audience. This is because young males from London may know who Wiley is and respect him. This form of celebrity endorsement may encourage our target audience to watch our film or even broaden the spectrum of people that will be attracted.

Rough Cut

Though not many changes were made after our feed back from the rough cut, we did discover that we needed to change a few things in order for it to be presentable to the audience. One thing we changed was the pace of the film, the general feeling was that it was to slow for the audience. as a result, we needed to shorten each clip to roughly four seconds so that the pace goes much faster. The rough cut was a good idea as it helped us understand what the audience enjoy or dislike.

Evaluation Q6

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

Evaluation Q7

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

Research

Preliminary: I learnt the basics to filming such as shot types, camera angles and movements. However, I did not carry out any more research for the prelim, so my skills were not developed. In addition to this, I had a limited knowledge on aspects like the genre and conventions of films.

Final: By the time that we had to make our final production, I had learnt many aspects of film openings. This includes things like: sound, convention, representation, genre and titles. All of this information contributed to us being able to make a high quality film opening when it came down to production.

Development: My research skills have increased dramatically from when I first started this course. At the time of my prelim, my research skills were restricted to a few shot types and camera movements. However, now I understand all of the factors of both mise en scene and cinematography.

Pre-production planning

Preliminary: At the time of the prelim, my planning skills were strained as we only had to follow the script that was provided for us instead of acting independently. The only things that we were required to do is select costumes to capture the image of our characters and chose an appropriate location to film. we found this quite difficult because the access to location and props were limited.

Final: When it came to our final production, we had to act independently and plan for ourselves. And I was able to cope with this because of the experience that I gained from completing all of the other filming tasks prior to it. Because of this, I understood what I needed to do in pre-production to ensure that the rest of the production went smoothly. 

Development: My planning skills have improved greatly since when I was working on my prelim. For example, we were able to give real thought to our filming locations, costumes and actors, which enabled our film to have more substance to it. I also learnt how to utilise websites like Blogger to store my plans for ease of access and safety. In addition to this, it also helped our group to communicate more and share our ideas.

Filming

Preliminary: In terms of filming, when we were doing our prelim we only had knowledge on how to work the camera and a few shot types. This resulted in our prelim having a good range of shots and angles, however the lighting was not so good. This is because we didn't turn the filter on whilst filming facing a window and when we were inside a brightly-coloured room. In addition to this, our lack of knowledge on framing resulted in us breaking the thirds rule; our characters were mainly in the middle of the shots.

Final: In our final production, the quality of our film improved significantly as we had better shots and camera movement. We also didn't break the thirds rule so our film had good framing. However, in our haste to finish filming, we broke the 180 degree rule, which resulted in us having to go back and film the scene again. I also experienced another light related problem as the lighting was too dark in this film. This was a result of us not filming close enough to a source of light at night.

Development: Despite the fact that I still had some filming errors in my final film, my skills in this field have improved vastly since the time of my prelim. The various filming tasks that I have taken part in have increased my knowledge and skill of filming bit by bit and has led to me contributing to a high quality product. The group activities also enabled me to accumulate knowledge of the subject from a diversity of different people, which in turn aided my progress.

Editing

Preliminary: At the time of my prelim, I had no experience in editing and we only were knowledgeable on certain aspects such as cutting certain shots. Because of our lack of knowledge, we had no added sound effects or titles and our film was not enjoyable to watch as it did not have a good flow to it.

Final: When the time came to edit our final product, previous tasks had enabled us to incorporate aspects such as sound effects to it. They also provided us with the skills to edit our film so that the 180 degree rule was not broken and the resources to make our dark scenes lighter. We also had a smooth match cut and continuity editing.

Development: During the course of time from my prelim to my final product, I have gone from having no knowledge in editing to having the required skills to make a presentable film opening. These skills also helped me make my technology timeline using Camtasia.

GROUP 45- PODCAST

A podcast that we done via Skype reflecting on our experiences in media so far.

Editing (Final evaluation)

Once we completed our rough cut, we then went on to our final cut. This was the toughest problem we faced during our project. However it is now completed which is a real positive and relief!

To complete our final cut we had to consider and put in place various of things:

1. Place the music in the correct place so that it compliments the action taking place in the film. e.g.(before Hadi got attacked a gloomy 'danger' like music gets played to signify Hadi is in danger from something) Also we had to add sound effects and Foley sound especially when Hadi is playing football and when he gets attacked.
2. Make sure the credits were in the right position. This was a stumbling block for us because at one point during our editng process we had some credit tittles on the clip and some on black screen.. so we had to in the end put all tittle credits on black screen which made the film longer and more than 2 minutes at one point.
3. Shorten and edit clips from the rough cut to ensure there is continuity in our film and so that it flows. 
4. Add Distribution and Production company motions as it is an significant part of the credits as they mostly promoted and funded the film. We made ours ourselves which was a good accomplishment

When editing our film we would always get feedback from the teacher which was mostly positive with some faults being noted in which we fixed to improve the film. We are happy with what we filmed and edited and our looking forward to seeing it on the big screen. 

Blog update

Making of idents

We had to make a distribution and production ident in to make our film seem more realistic. In order to do this, we had to use a software called Motion 4. 

Motion 4's starting page.

In our first attempt, we created our rough production and distribution idents, however we thought that they were too basic and time consuming to create. So to overcome this, we decided to use two of the professionally designed templates that were available to use. This both saved us time and provided us with a presentable title.

We decided to use the swarm template for our distribution company because we thought it reflected the nature of our group.

We opted for the skyline template for our production company because it highlights our roots; the city.

Ident& editing: Group Update.

idea for the ident…..

media terminolgy

Teen film update (rough cut feedback)

This is an update on the progres of our film opening. In it our director, Hadi, discusses some of the difficulties that we have experienced whilst in the production stage and states how we overcame them.

ROUGH CUT

Editing (pictures+Evaluation of progress so far)

When editing 'Revival', we firstly had to make a rough cut of the film. This basically means placing each clip in the correct sequence with different shot angles. This gave us an idea of what we were dealing with in terms of the footage we filmed and where different shot angles would be placed. Our progress so far is beyond the rough cut and have now put camera shots in the correct place and edited part of the music. So overall it has been a good steady progress.

In this image Tyler is  using Motion 4 to create the distribution and production idents. 

Filming session 2 - photo evidence and comments

Filming session 2

On the second day of our filming, we filmed the scene where Hadi gets mugged by too thugs. We filmed this on a road near Leyton station in the evening. We began by filming long shots and mid shots of Hadi exiting his house, this set the scene for the drama that was about to occur. We then filmed close ups of Hadi's face in response to seeing the two thugs, this conveys his feelings of anxiety to the audience and gives the scene a tense atmosphere. Next, we moved to the other side of the road and filmed from the two criminal's perspectives. We used the tripod to make a tracking shot when they approach Hadi to give the scene a sense of action and to add to our variation of shots. Finally, we put the camera in the fig rig and Hadi lied down on the floor with it to film the low shot for the last part of the scene, which emphasised his lack of power and inability to defend himself from the two criminals.

Hadi filming the scene where he gets attacked. He used the fig rig to hold the camera at a low angle; showing that the attackers are at a more power in the circumstances. 

Raekwon hiding his face from the camera.

Tyler demonstrating how not to hold a camera.

What Went Well: We finished our filming and used a variety of shots. We got to film in an appropriate location for our idea. The acting was good and convincing.


Even Better If: We filmed in an area with more light. The weather wasn't so bad. We chose a more secluded location. We met up on time.

Filming session 1 - photo evidence and comments

Filming day 1

On our first day of filming, we filmed the scenes where Hadi is young and when he is a teenager playing football. We filmed at Score in Leyton and used four actors. We began by filming the scout (Tyron) observing Hadi playing football. We used a variety of shots to show him doing this such as long shots, low angle shots and close ups in order to ensure that the scene isn't boring. After that, we filmed Hadi dribbling past another player (Morshed) and doing skills. We used the fig rig to do this as it allowed us to film Hadi running and also enabled us to film low shots while he was traveling at speed. This array of shots ensures that the scene is entertaining to watch. We also took advantage of the match that was taking place while we were there by filming them play for extra footage, which we went on to use in our final project. Next, we found a young boy (young Hadi) and filmed him dribbling with the ball by using the fig rig and stepping backwards whilst filming him running toward the camera. We then recreated this shot using Hadi in order to show his growth and progression as a player. We then filmed Hadi doing kick ups and then scoring to showcase his footballing prowess. Finally we filmed the conversation between Hadi and the scout by using the tripod and an abundance of shot/reverse shots.

This is Hadi recording the scout(Tyron), when he is observing Hadi playing football, at a low angle which shows that he has a higher status. 

This image shows one of our actors, Hadi, putting the camera on the fig rig in preparation for the scenes in which someone plays football. The fig rig also provided with the ability to film a variety of shots. For example, the low shots that show Hadi playing football. 

Hadi, Morshed and Tyron in the scene where Hadi dribbles past another player.

What Went Well: We finished filming the football scene. We managed to film a young boy to represent Hadi when he was younger. We used an array of different shots.


Even Better If: There wasn't a football match taking place so we could have more space to film. We didn't waste time playing football instead of filming.

Response to feedback