Film Distribution

A film distributor is an independent or subsidiary company,and maybe sometimes  an individual, which acts as the final link between the film production company and the film exhibitor to ensure the placement of the producer’s film on the exhibitor’s screen. In Film, the term “distribution” refers to the marketing and circulation of movies in cinemas and for home viewing such as on DVD , TV and download

Films from the 1950’s:

Godzilla (1954)

The film made originally in japan grossed $2.25 million on its Japanese release, When released out into north America it received a further $412,520. It was well received in the cinema gained a lot of money for the time. While successful and  became Japan’s most famous films. A sequel was rushed into production. In America, the film was picked up and called Godzilla King of the Monsters. In America, it was also more successful than anticipated.

Godzilla both the American and Japanese Version can be found on VHS has also been transferred on to DVD, and is also avaliable for download.

Films from the 1960’s:

Batman (1966)

The film was in released on VHS in 1985 by playhouse video  and in 1994 by fox video. On August 21, 2001 this film was released on DVD; it was re-released July 1, 2008 on DVD and on Blu-ray for the 42nd anniversary of the film’s release and to take advantage of The Dark Knight’s release on July 18. The Blu-ray added several features in addition to those found on the original DVD, however the 2008 DVD is identical to the 2001 release (except for the disk artwork) with no additional special features.

Film’s In the 1980’s:

Dirty Dancing 1987

The film grossed $213,954,274

Many magazine wrote reviews such as “it’s tired and relentlessly predictable story of love between kids from different backgrounds.” Despite the criticism from the media, many audiences flocked to see the film and said it was a film they would definatley watch again.Within seven months of release, it had brought in $63 million, and boosted attendance in dance classes across America. It was one of the highest-grossing films of 1987, earning $170 million worldwide.It was the number one video rental of 1988, and became the first film to sell a million copies on video. When the film was re-released in 1997, ten years after its original release.and videos were still selling at the rate of over 40,000 per month. And in 2005, it was selling a million DVDs per year, with over 10 million copies sold as of 2007.

The film can also be found on the internet on sites such as I tunes and alo can be found on illegal sites for download.

• (won) Academy Award for Best Original Song, 1987

• Golden Globe Awards, 1988^[27]
  • (won) Best Original Song^[28]
  • (nominated) Best Motion Picture – Comedy/Musical
  • (nominated) Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Comedy/Musical
  • (nominated) Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Comedy/Musical

• Grammy Awards, 1988
  • (won) Best Pop Performance by a Duo^[29]
  • (nominated) Best Song written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media^[28]

• Three installments of the American Film Institute’s AFI 100 Years… series:
  • 2002, AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Passions, #93
  • 2004, AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Songs, #86 with the Academy Award-winning song “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life”
  • 2005, AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Movie Quotes, #98 for Johnny’s famous line “Nobody puts Baby in a corner”

Films in the 1990’s:

Toy Story (1995)

It earned $361,958,736 in the box office. The film placed first in the weekend’s box office with $29,140,617.

The film was greatly received by Both Children and Adults everywhere , and gained many successful reviews from film critics everywhere.

It received many awards and award nominations the academy and BAFTA awards.

Presenting Potential ideas 24/9/09

Once Elliott had created the presentation we had to present it to the class in order to gain feed back , to see how successful the class thought our ideas would be.

• A woman is in a dull area of London, she stares down into some water, the camera pans down and as it pans back up a cross fade allows us to change location to the countryside where the woman is free and she spins round in happiness. A voice over plays that says, ‘release yourself’

This idea was not popular because it looked like the type of thing that should be filmed in spring time , when the sun is shining and the trees have all their leaves , however as we have to film during the autumn/winter we would not be able to create the effect that would be needed for this type of advert.

• A male  chases a girl through a meadow, he has stolen her perfume and as he teases her she chases him, he then disappears so she looks around for him, he then jumps out of no where and they fall to the ground playfully, there is then a caption screen of the perfume bottle

This idea did not recieve much attention, therefore we did not discuss it in depth and gain peoples views on the idea. Bearing this in mind we decided to discard this idea.

• A man and woman appear to be searching in London, this is shown through a series of parallel editing, they then find each other on a bridge and there is instant chemistry. This idea could potentially be filmed in black and white.

This idea seemed to be on of the favorites among the class, and our class mate even suggested that we could call the perfumes ‘lost’ and ‘found’ one for men and one for women. We thought that this suggestion was a positive one therefore we knew that this would be a definite possibility for our final decision.

• A man and woman are on a bed and appear to be engaging in a play fight, the woman then reaches out for a perfume bottle, this is either on the bed or in a draw she then sprays it on her chest which he smells in a sexual manner.

This idea also recived alot of attention, our class mates said as long as it was conducted tastfully , and we used actors of an appropriate age then it could be a successful advert. Despite this the group is torn between this idea myself and Amber do not think that it will be a good idea as it will be difficult to find actors of the right age and an appropriate location, whereas Kim and Elliott think it will be a good idea as they would be able to use a lot of creative camera angles, and convey a typical style perfume advert.

• In a light airy room with the window open and a netted curtain blowing in the breeze a woman sits at a mirror applying her make up and perfume, a man emerges from behind her and kisses her on the cheek . The name of this perfume would be Bisous as in french it means a kiss and it goes with the femine feel to the advert.

This idea was the biggest success with the class , they said it was simple and sophisitcated. Therefore we said that this would definatley be one of our final choices for the TV advert.

• A male comes out of the shower into a bedroom with just a towel on he goes to the mirror and applies the cologne a voice over then sounds- ‘Bare by Patteli, because you don’t need to wear anything else’.

The class said that this advert was also another good idea with a very catchy slogan, however someone did suggest that it was similar to a chocolate advert , and the group wanted to create something that wasn’t identical to another type of advert, so therefore we did not want to choose this option.

We knew that we wanted to go with the idea with the woman inside a light airy room , however we were torn between the man and woman running around London idea , and the man and woman inside the bedroom idea. We knew that the group would have to discuss the pro’s and con’s of each idea an then decide what one to choose from there.

We also discussed the idea of the web pop-up and the radio with them. We decided that we would do a competition style pop-up and we would also relate this to the radio advert where radio listeners could win a trip on behalf of the ‘Patelli’ brand

With this myself and Kim will begin to research into perfume adverts aimed at men and women over 21. We decided that we would look at three adverts each, looking at mise-en-scene, sound and lighting in each of the advert. To gain insight in to what these adverts contain and what conventions they follow. This will also allow us to obtain ideas of what we want to incorperate into our adverts.

Elliott is going to begin creating mock ups for his web pop up and begin research into methods of how to create a web pop up and this research can be found on;

www.elliottbasselliottbasselliottbass.wordpress.com

Amber will begin research into the radio advert , what the style of script is and how to sell a product with out any images and this can be found on;

ambermediaharlow.wordpress.com

Considering  that we may be  be filming in London Kim began to research into seeking permission from the Borough councils  she found  that it should be fine to film if we are only using hand held equipment and in a group smaller than 5 . However it also notified us that we may be asked to stop by the police, which could potentially interrupt our filming schedule and ultimatley delay the process of our coursework. therefore if we choose to film in London, we now know that  it would be best that we inform the council. 

Kim also found a website that tells us all the information we need to know for the rules of filming in london, included in this is a list of numbers and email address at which we can contact them to ask for permission.

http://www.filmlondon.org.uk/content.asp?CategoryID=1151#bfs

Street filming and public properties

The website states that:

“There are no laws to prevent anyone filming on public streets, however it is an offence to cause an obstruction or to place materials on the highway without an appropriate licence. In theory a small crew (5 people or fewer) using a handheld or tripod camera should be able to film on the street without obtaining permission, however legislation in this area is open to interpretation and if the Local Authority is not aware that you will be filming in the area there is a chance that you may be asked to stop.”

Reasearch- Potential Ideas

Before the summer break , my self and Kim had formed a group with Rosy O’donnell to begin our A2 advanced portfolio, however after the summer the dynamics of the group had to change. This was because after receiving her results , Rosy felt that she did not want to carry on with the subject anymore. Therefore myself and kim decided to join up with another coursework couple , Elliott and Amber whom which we could complete our advanced portfolio with. We believed that it would be a good idea to combine groups because we had worked with elliott before in our AS year , and felt that he would bring a lot of strengths to the group with his use of ICT skills ( for the web pop-up) and his experiance with Final cut pro. We also felt that Amber would make a good contribution to the group as last year she decided to choose the Print task  and therefore was quite experienced with Photoshop. In addition she also completed AS Film Studies , which meant she also has experience with using a camera working with sound and creating good lighting, which was one of our downfalls last year.

The change in our group meant that we also had to change the roles we had assigned to each person. Myself and Kim decided that it would be  good idea if we were in charge of the two TV adverts we have to film , this means that we will be in charge of researching items realted to TV adverts , and it also means that we will assign roles to everyone in the group  for pre production , production and post production. Amber will be in charge for the radio advert, therefore she will conduct the research for that and will again assign roles to everyone within the group. Elliott will also follow the same process , but instead for the web pop-up. This seemed to be the best idea , as it would save time  and allow the group to be in charge of one area of research , as well as being involved in each area of the coursework.

Before conducting our research we thought it would be good to start  thinking of potential creative ideas, so that we could conduct detailed research into the specific area we have chosen.We had already decided to name our perfume brand ‘Patelli’, simply by fluke, before the summer , when thinking of names for our perfume brand, Rosy decided to change my last name into a Perfume brand by adding an I  at the end , this sounded to us like a typical designer name , so we decided to stick to it.

We started with the TV advert first, we already had some  ideas on what we wanted it to include. The ideas we came up with were as following:

• A woman is in a dull area of london, she stares down into some water, the camera pans down and as it pans back up a cross fade allows us to change location to the countryside where the woman is free and she spins round in happiness. A voice over plays that says, ‘release yourself’
• A male  chases a girl through a meadow, he has stolen her perfume and as he teases her she chases him, he then disappears so she looks around for him, he then jumps out of no where and they fall to the ground playfully, there is then a caption screen of the perfume bottle
• A man and woman appear to be searching in London, this is shown through a series of parallel editing, they then find each other on a bridge and there is instant chemistry. This idea could potentially be filmed in black and white.
• A man and woman are on a bed and appear to be engaging in a play fight, the woman then reaches out for a perfume bottle, this is either on the bed or in a draw she then sprays it on her chest which he smells in a sexual manner.
• In a light airy room with the window open and a netted curtain blowing in the breeze a woman sits at a mirror applying her make up and perfume, a man emerges from behind her and kisses her on the cheek . The name of this perfume would be Bisous as in french it means a kiss and it goes with the femine feel to the advert
• A male comes out of the shower into a bedroom with just a towel on he goes to the mirror and applies the cologne a voice over then sounds- ‘Bare by Patteli, because you don’t need to wear anything else’.

We then proceeded on to the Radio Ad, this one was more restrictive as there aren’t as many radio adverts for perfume to take inspiration from, however we came up with a list of ideas:

• A real life story of a satisfied customer
• Music with a slogan
• A competition in association with Patteli (for a launch)
• A scripted commentary to the perfume

The web pop up proved even more difficult as we felt it needed to show some continuation from the tv advert, but we came up with the following:

• A high brightness
• Material background with the perfume bottle on it
• Related to the perfume tv advert, e.g sounds and materials
• A competition with Patteli
• Free sample
• A share option featured

Elliott then transfered these ideas into a power point that we could share with our peers next week so we can get feedback and a bit more direction into which idea will work the best.

http://docs.google.com/present/view?id=dhnxpm6q_19nfjjpsd9&autoStart=true&loop=true

Internet Timeline

1969

ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) goes online in December, connecting four major U.S. universities. Designed for research, education, and government organizations, it provides a communications network linking the country in the event that a military attack destroys conventional communications systems.

1972

Electronic mail is introduced by Ray Tomlinson, a Cambridge, Mass., computer scientist. He uses the @ to distinguish between the sender’s name and network name in the email address.

1973

Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) is designed and in 1983 it becomes the standard for communicating between computers over the Internet. One of these protocols, FTP (File Transfer Protocol), allows users to log onto a remote computer, list the files on that computer, and download files from that computer.

1976

Presidential candidate Jimmy Carter and running mate Walter Mondale use email to plan campaign events.

Queen Elizabeth sends her first email. She’s the first state leader to do so.

1982

The word “Internet” is used for the first time.

1984

Domain Name System (DNS) is established, with network addresses identified by extensions such as .com, .org, and .edu.

Writer William Gibson coins the term “cyberspace.”

1985

Quantum Computer Services, which later changes its name to America Online, debuts. It offers email, electronic bulletin boards, news, and other information.

1988

A virus called the Internet Worm temporarily shuts down about 10% of the world’s Internet servers.

1989

The World (world.std.com) debuts as the first provider of dial-up Internet access for consumers.

Tim Berners-Lee of CERN (European Laboratory for Particle Physics) develops a new technique for distributing information on the Internet. He calls it the World Wide Web. The Web is based on hypertext, which permits the user to connect from one document to another at different sites on the Internet via hyperlinks (specially programmed words, phrases, buttons, or graphics). Unlike other Internet protocols, such as FTP and email, the Web is accessible through a graphical user interface.

1990

The first effort to index the Internet is created by Peter Deutsch at McGill University in Montreal, who devises Archie, an archive of FTP sites.

1991

Gopher, which provides point-and-click navigation, is created at the University of Minnesota and named after the school mascot. Gopher becomes the most popular interface for several years.

Another indexing system, WAIS (Wide Area Information Server), is developed by Brewster Kahle of Thinking Machines Corp.

1993

Mosaic is developed by Marc Andreeson at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). It becomes the dominant navigating system for the World Wide Web, which at this time accounts for merely 1% of all Internet traffic.

1994

The White House launches its website, www.whitehouse.gov.

Initial commerce sites are established and mass marketing campaigns are launched via email, introducing the term “spamming” to the Internet vocabulary.

Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark start Netscape Communications. They introduce the Navigator browser.

1995

CompuServe, America Online, and Prodigy start providing dial-up Internet access.

Sun Microsystems releases the Internet programming language called Java.

The Vatican launches its own website, www.vatican.va.

1996

Approximately 45 million people are using the Internet, with roughly 30 million of those in North America (United States and Canada), 9 million in Europe, and 6 million in Asia/Pacific (Australia, Japan, etc.). 43.2 million (44%) U.S. households own a personal computer, and 14 million of them are online.

1997

On July 8, 1997, Internet traffic records are broken as the NASA website broadcasts images taken by Pathfinder on Mars. The broadcast generates 46 million hits in one day.

The term “weblog” is coined. It’s later shortened to “blog.”

1998

Google opens its first office, in California.

1999

College student Shawn Fanning invents Napster, a computer application that allows users to swap music over the Internet.
The number of Internet users worldwide reaches 150 million by the beginning of 1999. More than 50% are from the United States.
“E-commerce” becomes the new buzzword as Internet shopping rapidly spreads.

MySpace.com is launched.

2000

To the chagrin of the Internet population, deviant computer programmers begin designing and circulating viruses with greater frequency. “Love Bug” and “Stages” are two examples of self-replicating viruses that send themselves to people listed in a computer user’s email address book. The heavy volume of email messages being sent and received forces many infected companies to temporarily shut down their clogged networks.
The Internet bubble bursts, as the fountain of investment capital dries up and the Nasdaq stock index plunges, causing the initial public offering (IPO) window to slam shut and many dotcoms to close their doors.

America Online buys Time Warner for $16 billion. It’s the biggest merger of all time.

2001

Napster is dealt a potentially fatal blow when the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco rules that the company is violating copyright laws and orders it to stop distributing copyrighted music. The file-swapping company says it is developing a subscription-based service.
About 9.8 billion electronic messages are sent daily.

Wikipedia is created.

2002

As of January, 58.5% of the U.S. population (164.14 million people) uses the Internet. Worldwide there are 544.2 million users.
The death knell tolls for Napster after a bankruptcy judge ruled in September that German media giant Bertelsmann cannot buy the assets of troubled Napster Inc. The ruling prompts Konrad Hilbers, Napster CEO, to resign and lay off his staff.

2003

It’s estimated that Internet users illegally download about 2.6 billion music files each month.
Spam, unsolicited email, becomes a server-clogging menace. It accounts for about half of all emails. In December, President Bush signs the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003 (CAN-SPAM Act), which is intended to help individuals and businesses control the amount of unsolicited email they receive.
Apple Computer introduces Apple iTunes Music Store, which allows people to download songs for 99 cents each.

Spam, unsolicited email, becomes a server-clogging menace. It accounts for about half of all emails.

Apple Computer introduces Apple iTunes Music Store, which allows people to download songs for 99 cents each.

2004

Internet Worm, called MyDoom or Novarg, spreads through Internet servers. About 1 in 12 email messages are infected.

Online spending reaches a record high—$117 billion in 2004, a 26% increase over 2003.

2005

YouTube.com is launched.

2006

There are more than 92 million websites online.

2007

Legal online music downloads triple to 6.7 million downloads per week.

Colorado Rockies’ computer system crashes when it receives 8.5 million hits within the first 90 minutes of World Series ticket sales.

The online game, World of Warcraft, hits a milestone when it surpasses 9 million subscribers worldwide in July.

2008

In a move to challenge Google’s dominance of search and advertising on the Internet, software giant Microsoft offers to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion.

In a San Fransisco federal district court, Judge Jeffrey S. White orders the disabling of Wikileaks.org, a Web site that discloses confidential information. The case was brought by Julius Baer Bank and Trust, located in the Cayman Islands, after a disgruntled ex-employee allegedly provided Wikileaks with stolen documents that implicate the bank in asset hiding, money laundering, and tax evasion. Many web communities, who see the ruling as unconstitutional, publicized alternate addresses for the site and distributed bank documents through their own networks. In response, Judge White issues another order to stop the distribution of bank documents.

Microsoft is fined $1.3 billion by the European Commission for further abusing its dominant market position, and failing to comply to their 2004 judgment, which ordered Microsoft to give competitors information necessary to operate with Windows. Since 2004, Microsoft has been fined a total of $2.5 billion by the Commission for not adhering to their ruling.

Research And Deadlines

In response to the deadlines we came up with as a class, we thought that it would be a good idea to create a list  ( that we could add to as more jobs came up) that each task involved at each stage, therefore we could assign people within the group to each aspect.

Summer–> 27th October 09- RESEARCH

TV Advert

• Theorists
• Analyse  perfume adverts (mise-en-scene, lighting, sound, camera, editing, representation, location)
• Perfume bottles
• Audiences and the market (?)
• Methods of creation/stages of creation
• What forms need filling in
• Research into potential locations (France)

Radio Advert:

• Research into a radio station/recording studio
• Listen to perfume adverts and note the techniques used and style they are presented
• Representation
• Audience
• Method of creation (equipment needed etc.)
• Advert length
• What forms need filling in

Web Pop-up:

• Method of creation (codes and programmes to use)
• Audience
• Where Pop-ups are found (history of pop-ups?)
• Background/Basic knowledge
• If forms need filling in
• Research into the different types of pop-up

27th october–>10th November- PRE-PRODUCTION:

TV Advert:

• Creation of perfume (bottle, slogan,type of image we want to portray)
• Story boards
• Scripts
• Location scouting + scene shots
• Casting actors/models
• Mock up scenes
• Booking location (if abroad- tickets)
• Booking equipment (camera, mics, lights etc)
• Book actors/models
• Finding music
• Filling in: personnal release, location release, risk assessment forms etc
• Pre-visual/ rehearsal

Radio Advert:

• Transcript
• Casting (if needed)
• Creation of narrative
• Book location to record in
• Book equipment (mic etc)
• Draft/ rehersal of recording
• Trip to radio station/recording studio?

Web Pop-up:

• Equipment/program
• Mock up- drawings
• Slogan/Wording creation
• Draft Pop-up
• Scheduling time to create

10th November –> 9th February 2009- PRODUCTION:

TV Advert:

• Film two TV adverts
• Camera Shot lists
• Someone needs to be in charge of: filming, lighting, sound, mise-en scene, continuity, caring for the actors and responsible for the equipment

Radio Advert:

• Record a Radio advert

Web Pop-up:

• Create a Web Pop-up

9th February –>9 March 2009- POST PRODUCTION

TV Advert:

• Editing the footage
• Adding sound tracks/Voice overs
• Taking stills
• Post production forms (editing list)
• Publishing work (YouTube)
• Feedback from peers

Radio Advert:

• Editing
• Post production forms (?)
• Publish work
• Feedback

Web Pop-up:

• Test the pop-up
• Publish work
• Feedback

9th March –> 23 March 2009- EVALUATION:

All Items:

• Evaluate each product (can relate to synergy)

The next step was to assign roles to each member of the group, it has already been decided that Rosy is in charge of the TV adverts, therefore she will research them, i am in charge of the radio advert, so i will conduct  research into that aspect   and that kim is  in charge of the Pop-up so she will research that.

Research and Planning

11/6/09

To Complete our A2 media coursework we were given thirteen creative briefs that we could choose from, (which can be found on this site http://reniermedia.wordpress.com/?s=ocr+a2 .) We were then told that it would be a wise idea to work in a group as each task involved a lot of work with aspects of multi media that would be too much for one person to complete by themselves. In response to this we quickly formed another group, so i chose to work with Kimberley Grant as in AS we worked successfully together in our preliminary and and Main tasks. We then decided that it would be a good idea to add someone to the group who had experience on photoshop, unlike Kim and Myself whom only had experince with Final Cut Pro ( Video editing software). With this in mind we asked Rosy O’donnell if she wanted to join our group and she agreed, as she chose the magazine task in AS. We understood with our experience of photoshop and final cut pro combined would benefit our coursework and that we could create a successful piece of coursework.

we found three ideas which were of interest to us, these were:

• An advertising package for a new product or service, to include two TV advertisements, together with two of the following three options:
  •
  a radio advertisement;
  •
  a TV programme sponsorship sequence;
  •
  a web pop-up.
  Or..
• A promotion package for a new soap opera, to include a TV trailer, together with two of the following three options:
  •
  a listings magazine front cover featuring the new soap;
  •
  two hyperlinked webpages (with video extract) for the soap’s website;
  •
  a poster for the soap.
  Or..
• An extract from a new documentary TV programme, lasting approximately five minutes, together with two of the following three options:
  •
  a radio trailer for the documentary;
  •
  a double-page spread from a listings magazine focused on the documentary;
  •
  a newspaper advertisement for the documentary

The reason these ideas appealed us were due to the potential creative ideas each idea held. They all enabled us to conjure up some creative ideas, however the idea of creating an advertisement, radio advertisement and web pop-up seemed to attract us the most. To add to this Rosy and Kim also studied adverts and the theories behind adverts in their English Language Lessons, so we knew that this could help us greatly with our coursework and more importantly allow us to conduct more in-depth research than we would have done. Although the other ideas caught our attention we knew that we had more creative ideas for the advert one, therefore we decided to discard the other ideas so we could spend more time researching, planning and creating ideas for our chosen brief.

Knowing that we had our mind set on our brief we decided to come out with more potential ideas for our choice. We thought the best idea was to create a perfume advert, one for a female and one for a male, this way we could explore different target audiences and our advert would be aimed at both sexes. We also knew that we wanted to create a web pop and and radio advertisement , rather than a TV sponsorship sequence. An idea we had for the web pop-up was to have a sound of a perfume spritzing, having a picture of the perfume with the words ‘Free Sample” written underneath. As of yet we have not thought of any specific ideas for the radio advertisement because we have not discussed that idea fully.

We also discussed who would do what jobs. We decided that Kim would be production manager as she already gained experience of that in the AS Media coursework tasks and that she would also scout for locations.We then decided that Rosy would be in charge of the creation of the product, and finally i would be in charge of esearching into different aspects of the TV adverts. In addition we also said that it would be a good idea for all of us to complete some basic research in the conventions of adverts and our target audience and other such things as that.

We thought it would be best to discuss the theories that Kim and Rosy had  learnt in english about the effect of adverts and how they are successful, in order to understand how to create an advert that will convince our target to buy our product. Firstly  it was Charles O’neill who said that “adverts feed on weaknesses and vulnerabilities and materialism”, e.g  they make you believe that you will become ugly if you do no purchase their products,  they also display that ’society always expects the media norm and people who do not conform to this image aren’t ’normal’. This idea also plays on a topic that i had learnt in psychology that the more that people will conform to the norms due to the pressure in society, the media and the pressure from friends who have also conformed to ideas that they have picked up from the media. In addition to this point adverts are used to define beauty, this is what makes them powerful, people who view the advert will want to look like the model used therefore they buy the product.

For an advert to work Norman Fairclough said that the “text producer should create relations which their text reciever, through this the institution will come through as one person addressing the audience”  known as a synthetic personality  and this makes the advert more personal and persuasive .  In addition it suggests that “aproducer should understand the cultural and cognative knowledge the audience already have about that product”

555-Representation task G233

We will be looking at representation of: Age,Sexuality,Ethnicity,Class and status,Physical Appearence,Regional Identity and Disability in 3 different clips of british dramas.

Skins-  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge8hXEfuqp0&feature=related

Age

We first recognise the age of the two characters through mis-en-scene. It is clear to identify that they are teenagers, we can see that they dress in quite young and up to date fashion, with bright colours such as yellow, green and red, this demonstrates their free spirited, vibrant , and youthful outlook on life. The scene begins with Chris and Jal entering the house , chris confesses that it is not is house , which suggests the idea that he is too young to own a house of his own. Within the room we can see many items which can give us insight in to their mental age , rather than physical age. This is demonstrated by the rainbow rug , and the miniature play house, that illustrates their inner child. The first bit of speech the two share , Jal replies by holding up a piece of paper saying ‘Yes’ which shows her immature approach to the situation. This theme is then reinforced by Chris’s storyboard of emotions. He then  shows Jal pictures that he has drawn illustrating his life. This goes from a ‘happy family’ situation to a ‘lonely and isolated’ situation. The first few ‘happy’ drawings are in vibrant colours, which demonstrates his contented emotions. As the drawings progress to the sadder situations we can see that their is no longer the use of colour and the drawings are in black. The use of the story board shows that he has not got the intellectual ability to convey his emotions through simple communication such as talking, which is what those of an older age would most likley do. 

Dialouge is the main use of sound in regards to their age. Once chris has expressed his emotions through the use of the drawings, Jal takes on the situation with a more mature approach, and talks bluntly, she also appears more clued up on life and states ‘ you think you are the only one with problems’. This demonstrates how she understands that his problems , and both her problems are not the only problems in the world. In addition her range of emotional expression such as crying , talking and ripping up the paper. This again shows her maturity as she can express her emotions in more diverse ways. Once chris hears this , he again takes on another immature response saying things to lighten up the situation such as ‘ Kick grannies in the tits’. He knows this will make her laugh, and help her to forgive him , which she does almost instantaneously. This demonstrates how naive they both are, and how they don’t totally understand the seriousness and gravity of love. In the final moments on the scene we also hear the non-diagetic sound of ‘lala’, this is quite repetitive and shows how one problem leads on to another.

Sexuality 

The shot involves a male and a female. Through their costumes, their sexes are stereotypically represented  Jal , like a typical girly girl is wearing a dress with a bow, and Chris is wearing a suit. However during the scene , the mental roles are reversed. He is the one who opens up his emotions first , whereas typically it is known for the women to open up and want to discuss her emotions. In addition, Jal shows more masculine characteristics  in the beginning of the scene, in which she comes across blunt , however this is juxtaposed with her tears, of which is a typical female characteristic, to cry. Again chris begins to open up his emotions even more, he does this by getting down on one knee in an almost proposing situation, however this also demonstrates how he is bringing himself down to her level and her level of vulnerability. In addition it shows how caring it is , which again does not fit into the conventions of a stereotypical man, they are usual seen as hard-faced and emotionless. We can also see a wide shot in which we see Jal sitting and Chris standing. This uses the typical conventions to show power, the man is standing therefore he is more physically powerful whereas Jal is sitting showing that she is weaker. However analyzing the dialogue it is apparant that chris is in fact the weaker one , whereas Jal appears to be the more stronger one within the situation, although they are both vulnerable. 

Ethnicity 

This scene does not really focus on the racial aspect , it concentrates more on the relationship and the situation.However it does highlight the aspect of interacial relationships and this ethnic divide is shown through a close up of Chris and Jal looking as they are about to kiss.   Usually in a drama or film it is the person of the ethnic background that is known to make the mistakes, whereas this time its Chris, a white male that has made the mistakes. In addition its stating that this type of interracial relationship is socially acceptable , as the camera regularly shows them on the same level. There is also the aspect of the sound bridge with the ethnic music , when this plays it focuses on Jal , to signify how the next scene or situation is going to focus on her.

Class and Status 

We immediately hear that both characters use standard english, however given the scene , we are not given insight into their social economic backgrounds. Although we are aware that the house is not actually is it looks as though it would belong to someone from a working or middle class background , which implies that he is acquainted  with people of this sort of social class. Furthermore through the drawings chris has made , show that he was part of a typical nuclear family, which was his ideal situation, however towards the end of the drawings we can see that he is now apart of a lone parent family , and therefore his social status is not as high anymore.

Physical Appearance

Representation -503

http://blackpoolmedia.wordpress.com/category/representation/

Age:

Skins trailer 

The skins trailer shows a group of sixth form students in the middle of a wild party. This represents teenagers as rebellious beings with loose morals , as the trailer discusses issues such as sex , drug taking and underage drinking. The trailer makes use of Non-digetic music, the music plays in with the wild party theme. The trailer follows a trend of Long shots to highlight the overall action going on within the party , and then to close-ups to show what each individual or group of friends are getting up to. A close-up shot shows  the character Sid has the word ‘virgin’ written on his head which demonstrates the pressure teenagers are under to have sex , and partake in the general typical teenage pressures such as drug taking and drinking just to fit in with the crowd and impress friends. However it also shows the power of teenage friendship, in another shots two characters ‘Tony’ and ‘Chris’ , embrace in a friendly hug. This illustrates a high teenage priority of which is friendship. We also see a couple having an argument , whilst a vase is broken in the process. Not only does it highlight , another pressure of teenage realtionships , but the breaking of the vase also highlights the maddness of the party.

Gender:

The oc Clip

Evaluation

When introduced to the task we were told that we had to create the opening sequence of a film, including titles and it also had to be a maximum of two minutes. Kim , Elliott , Rosie and I decided that we wanted to stick in the same group as we knew we worked well together, and we all worked hard in the previous task we had to complete , therefore we understood that we would each be able to take on individual tasks to complete the film. As we where already aware of what we had to do for the main task, after being told about when being introduced to the preliminary task, we already had a few ideas in mind of what we wanted to do. After learning from the previous mistakes we had made with the preliminary task we knew that we did not want many extras and we wanted to use a simple idea in which we could use to create tension. 

Before putting our ideas down we had to do some research into film opening sequences , there were not many that were on Youtube, however i managed to find one of a film called ‘Momentum’. This was helpful in allowing us to identify in not what to put in to our opening sequence, and the basic aspect was not to give too much away and also take advantage of enigma code.

Here are the ideas we came up with:

 

1) ‘When trolleys go bad’: This film would have been about trolleys that turn violent and attack local citizens. We thought this idea would bring in the genre of horror however there would be a comical aspect to this, furthermore we would not have to use many actors. However although there we some good points to make this film , it would have required us to talk to a supermarket to gain permission to use their trolleys. As a result we decided against this idea as it was illogical and difficult to take to seriously.

2) ‘Drugs Situation’ : This idea would have involved a party where a lot of drug taking occurs , due to this someone has overdosed and unfortunetley dies. As suspiscion around the nature of his death arises and police investigation follows , where all is not as it seems.

We also dismissed this idea as it would have required an ambulance , a house setting and ultimately lots of extras, which as i have said previously we did not want to use.

3) ‘Mind Games‘: This idea would have involved the opening scene taking place in a dark room with a mentally ill person who is having crazed fits , we would have then used a jump cut to take us to an ordinary day. We thought this idea would be an interesting concept and allow us to take advantage by using lots of enigma code.

4) ‘I.M’: This name would stand for instant messenger as well as instant murder. This idea involves the serious idea of online predators. We decided that we would pan upwards to look through the window of a girl and her friend giggling over the attractive male that they are speaking to online to give the idea that she is being watch. We would then use a jump cut to move into the girls room , where we would see the instant messaging conversation taking place with the words ‘ would you like to meet up?’ on the screen. We would then flash forward in time where the girl is being chased through the dark streets of her town. We would then flash back to her chatting on the computer, as the conversation progresses. We believed that this would show the audience what might happen, and also leave them slightly confused therefore using enigma code

Between ‘I.M’ and ‘Mind Games’ we had a tough decision with what to choose as they both seemed like interesting concepts to explore, as we had the oppourtunity to confuse the audience and create a gripping film. After some disscussion we decided to choose ‘I.M’ as we had a more in depth idea of the story line , the camera angles, and the titles we wanted to use. Furthermore we would be addressing and everyday situation that internet users could probably relate to.  For this type of movie we suggested that our target audience should be 15+ this is becuase would contain violence , murder and strong language , considering the horrer/ thriller type of genre. I looked at other films of this genre such as ‘The departed’ and also saw that they were rated 15+ also , on that basis we decided to stick with our choice. We also thought that it would be more interesting to those of a higher age as they would understand the concept of the film. Furthermore we decided on the 15+ target audience based the the guidelines given by the BBFC for 15+ films, as we thought , if we were to continue making the film there would be violence and strong language. 

Furthermore in the previous task , no one in the group had a specific role which may have contributed to the unorganised style of our film, and also contributed to us almost running out of time. Consequently this time we created specific roles for each member of the group to take on. Here are the roles we decided on:

Production Manager: Kim

This would mean that Kim is in charge of organising auditions, equipment , shoots, costumes and in charge of the film as a whole.

Editing Director/Cameraman:Elliott

This would mean that Elliot has to make sure that all scenes are shot in the intended way , mis-en-scene is taken into account , actors take specific directions and desired camera angles are adheared to.

Editing and Continuity manager: Rosie

This would mean that Rosie has to edit the final film as well as make sure that no continuity errors are made. For example she must make sure that throughout the scene the girl is wearing a tie, rather than wearing a tie in the first half of the scene and not wearing one in the second half of the scene.

Sound Manager: Christina

This would mean that i am also in charge of making sure that sound is high quality , unlike the first film we created , in which it was quite difficult to hear one of the main characters.

I thought that deciding on what roles we would take on , made it much clearer and easier to decide what jobs to assign to what member of the group , this made the process a lot quicker , which meant that we could film and edit quicker. This also meant that we would be able to finish to the deadline , without worrying about completing our work.

After decided ideas and roles , we knew that we would have to presents to the class our ideas, despite the fact that we had already decided on an idea , we thought that it would still be an additional help to see what our peers thought of our ideas as it was the type of age group we were aiming at , and to also see what one they prefered in comparison to our choice. Elliot then went about making a presentation and a questionnaire , and then we were ready to present. However we also had to wait for the other peers in our class which meant our presentation date kept getting post-poned. To overcome this we decided to create our storyboard, script and scout our locations. This was so that we did not waste time waiting around to present. This both had its advantages and disadvantages it meant that by beggining to create our storyboards we could concentrate souley on one idea, developing it to the best of our ability. However it meant that we could not change our idea, if it received a very bad response from our peers. Despite this we carried on creating the items needed for our film, so that we did not fall behind. 

We held a group meeting to discuss what sort of shots and scenes we wanted in our film, how we were going to characterise the two girls in our film, what we wanted our characters to say and what locations we were going to film at. As production manager and Director , Elliott and Kim created the storyboard and decided on the scenes and camera angles needed, whilst myself and Rosie created the script. Both our original script and and story board can be found in Production Log 2. Once deciding this we needed to search for locations for the film. I suggested that for the computer scene we could use my house as it had the type of window we needed , which looked directly on to the computer. For the park scene we wanted to find a place with rusty swings that was surrounded with trees, Elliott said he knew the perfect place so we decided to use that.

Because the film was based around the concept of the dangers of social networking sites such as ‘facebook’. We had to create to Facebook accounts therefore we could make the characters talk to each other. We used two email account created profiles for both the ‘Danny’ character and the ‘Ruby’ character. We created typical characterisations for the two girls, such as pictures with them posing and status’s with them bragging about how much they love there friend. We wanted to do this to imply that they are like everyday teenage girls to illustrate how anyone can fall into the trap of a predator. 

For ‘Danny’ we found a picture of a man that we knew many people would add , purely based on his looks. We also wanted to ensure that the man we used in our film looked completely different to the picture we used on the profile. To show that obviously predators are not who they say they are.  

Once we had completed this we knew we had to prepare for our Auditions, to do this i went on photoshop and created a ‘facebook’ themed audition poster . to tie in with the style of the movie. Which we then posted up around the college. 

Kim the producer had to book all the equipment we needed so we could use it to film our auditions. Once the equipment was booked , we went to collect it on the day of the audition. However we encountered a problem as the media technician allowed us to book the equipment during his lunch break, this meant when we went to collect it , he was not there. In turn this meant that we could not film our auditions, therefore we had to cancel them. To overcome this problem we collected the camera’s once he had finished his lunch break, and filmed the auditions with myself , rosie and Kim auditioning for the part of Ruby and Emily. We decided that Kim and Rosie where to play the two girls as i personally preferred to be behind the camera. On reflection this experience worked out in our favour, as it meant that we could use our selves, therefore we wouldn’t have to rely on actors and work around their schedule, this way we could work around our own schedule and complete the film quicker.

At this point we had come very far in our planning , however we still had to present to the class, despite the fact that we would not have been able to go with the idea they liked, unless it was mind games. We presented to the class and handed out questionnaires that we had also made for them to give their opinions about our ideas on. We found that ‘When Trolleys go bad’ was a popular favourite amongst our peers with 5 out of 12 suggesting that we go with this idea. However luckily for us 6 out of 12 suggested that we go with the ‘I.M’ concept. This was a productive process as it allowed us to understands what our peers wanted to see , and the fact that they had chosen the idea that we were filming made us feel more confident about it, because we knew it would get a good response from them. 

We arranged another group meeting to discuss filming dates, how to get the to the location and who was going to bring the costumes in. We thought it would be the best idea to go during the media lesson as it meant not disrupting and missing any of our other lessons. We understood that the most logical idea was for Kim and Rosie to bring in their old school uniforms to use, although they were different it did not matter , because it could suggest that they go to different schools. After this discussion Kim again had to book the equipment , after some trouble we decided not to get the cameras from the media technician again , but to get the cameras from the library. This was a positive choice as the cameras from the library were much better quality. This was also good , as the previous film we created had very bad picture quality , so this way we could improve on the mistakes we made in our preliminary task.

When it came to the day of filming, we collected the equipment and set off on the bus journey to my dad’s house. We were determined to make this film better than the one we had created for the preliminary task, so we got to filming straight away , wasting no time. The first scene we wanted to shoot was the one of the window looking in on the girls. We found this very difficult as we tried not to get the image of our reflection in  the window , however we over came this by blocking out the light with a coat. We then went on to film the conversation scene between the two girls. We had to do several takes of this because we either needed to make alterations to the script or we didnt get the correct shot. However full details of this filming day can be found it Production Log 5. When looking over the footage , we were not to best pleased, this was because we didn’t feel that it was gripping enough. We also thought that the footage looked as if we had put no effort in as somethings we did looked quite careless. We assumed that with editing we could try and overcome this problem, However, we thought that it would look very silly to use lots of editing techniques and would show that we were unsure of what we were doing . Furthermore we knew we would have also had to film the scenes in the park , but would have to wait until it was dark , if we stuck to the same story board. In addition we knew that this would waste time. Looking at they many points we had come up with against what we had filmed, we disgarded the footage and re-draw the storyboard and make use of more close up and point of view shots . The full details of this can also be found in Production Log 5. 

With our knew story board in hand, we had to find someone to play the predator, and we thought our class mate James would be the ideal person for the part, we asked him and he agreed. 

We then had to organise another filming day, and again we decided to go during a media lesson. With the new storyboard we did not have to use the inside of the house , however we wanted to use the outside setting which had quite a picturesque setting , this way we could use juxtaposition. As something beautiful is contrasted with a sinister atmosphere. The full extent to which we filmed can be found on Production Log 5. After this filming day , i felt much more confident about the outcome for the film , seeing as this time round we had a better storyboard to follow and this time we were more motivated , so that we did not make the same mistake again ( obtaining footage we couldn’t really use).

After obtaining all our footage , we had to edit. We had a few problems with uploading the footage on to the computer as the software was not very compatible. However after spending almost an entire media session trying to upload the footage, Myself and Kim managed to edit the  beginning scene of our opening sequence, and i also found some music for the sequence. Seeing as it was the last lesson we had before the easter holidays, we knew that we would have to come in during our holidays to finish off editing the film. When we came in during the holidays we began editing, and had pratically by around 3pm however as the software we were using had an unexpected error, we had lost all the work that we had not saved. ( The full information on the editing process can be found in Production Log 6) 

After this experience i felt quite dishearted , although we had re-edited and made the film as close as possible to how we had it before, we knew that it was not as good as we had it before. However there was not enough time to go back and redo anything as the coursework deadline was approaching us. So we carried on and burnt it onto a DVD.

We then distributed our film on sites such as Youtube and Facebook so that we could show it to our friends and family and get there opinion on it. Kim also created a survey on the website survey monkey , so that once our friends had watched it youtube or facebook , they could then go onto survey monkey and fill out our survey.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=DfvCoTd3mW1YBXdY_2fhpN4w_3d_3d

 

In the survey we asked our peers to answer these questions

1.Rate it out of 10 (being the best) on how good you thought it was as a whole

All the responses we received where between 7 and 9. I think this is good as our peers believe that it is above average , and i did not expect anyone to rate it as a 10 as it is far from perfect. 

2. What do you think of the choice of music?

75% said the choice of music was good and 25% said it was Excellent. This was also a positive response as i feel that the music does play a big part in the film , in creating tension and a dark atmosphere. 

3. How did the music make you feel throughout the sequence?

Here are the responses given 

 

1)It is increases the anticipation           2)A bit nervous 3)the music made me feel in suspence as to what would happen next. 4)like something bad would happen to them I appreciated these responses as it made me feel that the audience understood the atmosphere we were trying to create.

 

 

4. Is there anything you would have changes about the music?

 

All responses said no apart from one who said it goes quiet at one point , however i think that this is when the pieces of music change.

5. How would you rate the camera work throughout?

75% said good and 25% said average. Honestly i expected a worse response than this as the camera work is very slanted. So saying that , i was quite pleased with the response we received.

6. Can you spot any problems with the camera work?

2 people said they could not see anything wrong with the camera work. However another two people said it reminded them of the blair witch project , which reinforces the idea that it looks hand held and a home made movie. 

 

7. Which shots can you see that were used?(pick as many as you want)

Close up     75%

Point of View   50%

Medium shot    75%

Long shot    75%

Over the shoulder shot   100% 

Wide shot  25%

 

8. What do you think of the location in regards to the storyline?

75% said good 

25% said excellent 

9. Do you get any connotations from the location we chose, if so what…?

Many said that they would not expect this type of crime to occur in this type of area , which is the impression we wanted to give off , so this was a positive feedback.

10. Can you spot any continuity* errors throughout the film,

Everyone surveyed said no , this was not quite surprising as there were not a lot of continuity errors , apart from the time , which is a very difficult thing to spot.

Looking over what our peers have said i think the answers they have given are very valid and i would agree with what they have said , however i would disagree with those that have said they could not see any continuity errors. Overall i believe that we have received a very positive response from our audience, also it is positive because we wanted to target the film at the age group of us and our peers. 

The way in which we tried to attract our target audience was to use a topic that they were familiar with and could relate too. We did this buy using the Facebook website. We also understood that teenagers are constantly being warned about the dangers of the internet , and are always told not to talk to people they don’t know. So knowing this we decided to develop a concept that our audience would understand. 

 

Personally analysing the film i can see so many errors. The first error i can see is the time we see on the computer when the predator is on ‘Ruby’s’ profile. The time says 12.53pm, however the scene outside is one of the girls walking home from school , a normal time to finish school is around 3pm. However we suggested that we could work this into the film,  the girls could have been coming home for lunch. Despite this we knew it was not a major error and there were more important ones that we had made in our film. The next error i have noticed is that when Kim’s name appears on the screen there is a very quick edit which makes the shot appear very jumpy , we tried to remove during editing, however we found it difficult and as we were running out of time we knew that we would have to keep it in. Furthermore at that same time we have a still of Kim , but no camera click. Again we also tried to include this but it made the rest of our music out of sync so we could not include this. Another point of the film that i do not like is that i think the scene where James is walking, i think that its too long and the audience may begin to loose interest at this point, also at this point there is water on the camera, which we did not realize until we had uploaded the footage, however that was the only walking sequence we had filmed. Finally the thing that i dislike the most is the steadiness of the camera , it is very crooked , which gives it a very hand-held , home movie kind of feel.   However compared to our previous film , i do prefer this , there are a lot less silly mistakes, and the mistakes that have been made with the filming of this film , we are actually aware of . Therefore we can take that into account and take responsibility of it. I also prefer the overall storyline for this film as tension is built up quite successfully , with the help of the music as it adds and create a dark and sinister atmosphere. I think our film successfully represents different social groups. The predator is portrayed as an everyday man, who appears to be getting on with his daily life like the average citizen. However contrary to this he is harboring a dark secret , which implies that we don’t really know people , no matter how they appear. I think that dressing him in the long black coat also gave him that sinister look , however to the public he may just appear quite business like. 

We also portrayed the school girls quite well also. They too , were also typical school girls , who were interested in there friends and the internet. I think dressing them in their school uniforms highlighted how young and naive they really are.

I think with our film we stayed true to the conventions to a thriller , as much as we could , seeing as we could only produce and opening sequence. We were not able to use lots of tension building techniques and nervous situations , however we tried to do this as much as possible , through music and mis-en-scene. We decided that we wanted to stay true to these conventions , rather than challenge them because it may confuse the audience as to what genre it is , and as to what we are trying to achieve. 

With the type of film we created, we had to understand what producer and what type of institution would distribute our film. Researching producers , we found that Jerry Bruckheimer would be the ideal producer has over his career as he has produced many successful thrillers such as ‘Defiance’ , ‘Thief’ and ‘Dangerous minds’. Furthermore i think that the type of institution would be 20th century fox , as they too have distributed successful thriller films such as ‘Taken’ and ‘The league of extraordinary gentlemen’. We decided that we would use 20th century fox , rather than something like Universal as they produce more Comedic films.    

I think i learnt quite a lot from this process again.I learnt that we should film to our best potential the first day we decide to film , and realise that we don’t really have a lot of time in which to complete everything. In the previous task i did not have much time to work with the camera or editing. This time round i gained more knowledge into the technologies we had to use to construct our product. More about how to use the camera , and this time i actually learnt how to use the editing software , final cut pro , and with the help of Kim i edited part of the film.I also learnt the importance of saving your work as we go along.

2/4/09-Editing

After obtaining all our footage , we had to gather it all and edit. We knew that we had to pay a lot of attention to editing , because we were relying mainly on this to create tension and a sinister atmosphere. 

We had to connect the camera to the computer in order to edit the footage. However we had a lot of trouble with this, the camera and computer where not very compatible so it took us almost the whole session to upload the footage , which was obviously a great loss of valuable editing time. At this point we knew we would definitely have to come into college during the holidays to finish editing. Whilst waiting for the footage to load , being in charge of sound, i looked for suitable copyright free music that would fit in with particular scenes withing the opening sequence. I first began looking for music for the first few shots where we are in ‘Dannys’ house. I knew the music had to be sinister and creepy. I started by searching royalty free sites on google, where i found the perfect site for the type of music that i was looking for.

http://incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/

I found 6 pieces of music that were compatible with what we needed. I then had to go on to find music for the scene in which the two school girls are walking home, we knew that this had to be quite upbeat to demonstrate how oblivious ignorant and naive the two girls are. This proved to be a harder task for me because i could’t find the right piece of music that fitted in with what we were looking for. So i decided i would have a more in depth look when i was at home , where i would have more time to look. When researching more i could not fine the right sort of upbeat music , so i then discussed with Kim and we decided we could use some more sinister music , that would evoke sympathy for the girls rather than imply naiivety. 

Once the footage had fully loaded two members of our team ( Elliott and Rosie)  had to leave to attended and take part i a charity event. However the two that had to leave where those who were in charge of editing. This left myself and Kim who were not experienced using the editing software ‘Final cut pro’. In addition we knew that we wanted to make a start on editing, to overcome this problem Andreas gave us a quick tutorial on the basics of ‘final cut pro’ , this way we could begin to make simple edits to our film and then get the two editors Elliot and Rosie to make improvements to it when coming in during the holidays. 

Sticking to the storyboard we began to edit the first few scenes. This is where ‘Danny’ picks up his his camera puts it in his bag and then looks at ‘Ruby’s’ facebook profile on the computer. This is all we got up to as it was time to leave college.

8/4/09 

Myself , and the rest of the group came in today , during the easter holidays, To finish editing our film. I continued to search for more music , however after a while i reliased the 6 tunes that i had found in our previous session where perfect for both the scenes inside the house as well as the scenes outside the house.Elliott and Rosie edited the film and Kim and i gave our opinions to what they were doing, bearing in mind what type of music we were working with . We followed the story boards and tried not to use too many transitions or stills, however the stills where necessary in order to make it appear that Danny was taking photos of the girls. Up until lunch time we had saved our work, after lunch we then worked for another 2 hours having practically finished our film , until the software we were using , final cut pro, had an error. This unfortunately meant all our work was lost. Feeling quite disheartened at this point we struggled to get the film exactly how we had edited it before, however after some time we got it relitavly similar to what it was before. 

 

We then uploaded it to YouTube and it can be found at this link :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBpDUPBXQkI&feature=channel_page

 

9/4/09

Myself and Kim came in again to burn our film on to the disc. The film looked and sounded exactly how we wanted it to be , when editing it in final cut pro , however once burning it onto the disc and looking at the film on a bigger screen. The sound became almost too loud and one or two shots were slightly blurry. However we knew that that was out of our control and we would have time to fix it , burn it on to disc and evaluate all in time for the deadline. 

In addition  analysing the film , a lot of the filming is quite wonky and unsteady , however being in charge of the music , i did not have much control over the filming. I also noticed that at some points there is water on the camera lense , as we track james through the street , but again i did not know this was an issue until we watched over the footage and began editing.

However i did enjoy taking part in editing this film , it gave us the chance to experiment with new fades and dissolves such as when james is walking , we used and additive dissolve and this gave the impression that the atmosphere is confused , disjointed and eerie. I also liked experimenting with the music ,for the first scene inside the house, we added in a peice of music however it did not create as much tension as we liked because it seemed very on dimensional, i suggested that we add another piece of music as well as the one we already had , this idea proved to be a good decision as it created the kind of atmosphere we desired. This was the same with the outside scene , so again we used two pieces of music instead of one , therefore again creating the atmosphere we desired.

Here are some print screens of our editing process:

This was the shot we experienced most troubles with when editing, we decided to use it for titles, to show Kim’s name as I stop at the bridge, however it was tricky to get it to look smooth. To overcome this situation we added in a transition and a freeze frame , in which kim’s name appeared across the screen. However this did not entirley solve the problem as it looked quite jumpy, so we decided to work it into the story line as it could be said he is taking two photos of the girl. Furthermore we wanted to add another camera click to show that he is taking a photo , however by doing this it made the rest of the music out of sync, so we decided to leave out the sound effect for that reason.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

These are the final two shots , of ‘Danny’ walking around to get closer to the girls , and him standing and watching the girls. I personally think the walking sequence is too long, however to break it up we added in an Additive dissolve which makes the scene look hazy and confused and gives it a sinister feel, which i liked because it implies connotations of danger and bad intentions. As well as him walking we also decided to add in a shot of his feet , walking off the curb and here we decided to include some digetic sound to add to the atmosphere. 

The second shot is an over the shoulder shot , i like the shot because the music that plays over the scene becomes more intense as he is standing there,  which , again , creates a dangerous atmosphere and suggests that things are going to get worse.