Premiere of Another Day!

After looking at our film our teacher felt that we could edit it better and wanted us to go back and look at whether we could cut it down. He wanted the editing to show clean cuts and continuity, so as a group we went through it and looked at what we could edit.

And so! Here is the final film of Another Day!
Hope you all enjoy :)

Evaluation: Question 7

Evaluation Question 7

Evaluation: Question 6

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT ABOUT TECHNOLOGIES FROM THE PROCESS OF CONSTRUCTING THIS PRODUCT?

Mac

We used the mac in order to do everything regarding our project. We used it to research, editing and store our final project. 

From using a Mac I found it very annoying as its more advanced than a standard computer. However, it was very fun to use and has a range of different programs which are ideal for editing and music.

Camera

We used a Canon E05 in order to shoot all our work. We also used it to take a few pictures of us on the set of scenes. All in all this was the main part of our project.  

I learnt how to fully control and use this camera successfully and really enjoyed using it.

Tripod

We used a tripod in order to keep the camera steady for example with a panning shot. We did not always use the tripod but it was always around when we was shooting just in case.

I did not really like using the tripod as it was hard to close and open which was very irritating.

Pag lights

We used pag lights to hel[p with lighting. they had different filters aswell so we were able to create different effects for the surroundings. This came in handy when we did our front room scene in the house as it added to the idea of the TV being on.

The pag lights were interesting to use and were aw piece of equipment I've never used before or seen up close.

Blogger

Blogger was used throughout my whole project in order to update our blogs with what we have done in our group.

I found using blogger really fun and enjoyed creating my blog as it was a really cool and simple way to archive your work.

YouTube

Our group used YouTube to help us research other films like our own by looking at opening scenes credits.

Im used to using YouTube but discovered how to embed videos into blogger.

Google

Google was our primary source for research as we used it to find out information about other films similar to ours and to find our genre convetions.

iMovie

iMovie was used to edit our film. We used it to edit and upload our footage regularly. 

I enjoyed using iMovie and found it an easy way to edit footage. 

dafont

We used a site called dafont.com to find fonts for our film credits.As our film is a TeenRomCom we wanted something that would reflect that and appeal to our audience.

I've used dafont.com before and found it really helpful when finding fonts to use for our film.

Evaluation: Question 5

HOW DID YOU ATTRACT/ADDRESS YOUR AUDIENCE?

Blog question 5

We subverted the traditional convention of a RomCom by having two brothers who's roles reverse; Ned becoming a ladies man and Rick's popularity failing. This subverts traditional Teen RomCom's as the ladies man usually bullies the nerd whereas in this case they are brothers. Also, the fact that it is two guys trying to find love also subverts the traditional RomCom as it is usually women who care about love and being in a relationship which is unusual for a male.

Evaluation: Question 4

WHAT WOULD BE THE AUDIENCE FOR YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT?

Teenagers aged 12-24 would want to see our film as they would be able to relate to it as it is set around teenagers the same age and in the same position. As it starts with the aftermath of a party, teenagers who are 'popular' in school can identify with this as they will go to parties and drink and have fun. However, teenagers who are not very popular or brainy can relate to the character Ned as they will identify with his passion to work.

Evaluation: Question 3

WHAT KIND OF INSTUTUTION MIGHT DISTRIBUTE YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT AND WHY?

Our film is an independent Teen RomCom, which has been influenced by films such as 'Step Brothers', 'John Tucker Must Die' and 'Juno' which are American style. As we were influenced by a range of different genre's, we think that our film would be better distributed by an Independent film company as they would help to appeal to the audience we want.

IndiePix is an internet based film distribution company that makes use of todays technologies to provide film fans with independent films from qualified filmmakers. They focus on non-fiction and fiction feature length films. IndiePix sign on average 12 new films each month which shows that they confidently help independent film company succeed in the industry. Another film distribution company that we think would be good to distribute our film are Film4.  Film4 is a British distribution company and are operated and owned by Channel 4 which is a very popular channel that many teenagers watch and enjoy with such shows as 'The Simpsons' and 'Hollyoaks'. Film4 every so often do themed nights where they show the same genre of films which I think will appeal to our audience as they will enjoy the themed nights as they like a variety of genre's.

Evaluation: Question 2

HOW DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT REPRESENT PARTICULAR SOCIAL GROUPS?

Napoleon Dynamite vs Ned Flame

I would compare our main character Ned Flames to Napoleon Dynamite as in appearance he is really dorky with the glasses and shirt which highlights their character. This reflects the comedy element of our film as this goes with the conventions of a typical nerdy character. The audience would make fun of these characters for the way that they look as they are not within the social circle or popular in their school. However, the two characters clearly do not care about their looks and are fully focused on their school work and getting good grades which is reflected in both characters. Both characters wear light coloured clothing which connotes the fact that they are pure and not so 'in your face'

Evaluation: Question 1

9 Frame Analysis 

 IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP AND CHALLENGE FORMS AND COVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

The title of the film:
The title of our film is 'Another Day' The title appears at the end of the film as at the beginning everything needs to be explained which is done by the main characters voice over.

Setting/Location:
For our opening scene, we took various shots to create the idea of 'morning after' which links into our title of 'Another Day.' Our film is based around a party which was held on the previous day by one of our main characters. We begin the film by showing people tapping their oysters and rush hour with a busy train. We also have shots of the surroundings such as the park, the town hall and houses around the area. By doing this gives the impression that it's the beginning of a new day highlighting the start of a new week. We felt that it was good to show the new week starting as it shows that as our main characters our recovering from a crazy party, other  people are going to work, going to school etc

 Costume and Props:
Many of the props we used were for our house scene. We needed it to look like the morning after a party so we had cups, bottles and decorations lying around the house to show this. As for costume, for our 'nerd' character Ned Flames he is made to wear braces, glasses and a shirt to show his dorky character. There are also various books around him to highlight his character and show his brainy/nerdy nature. This juxtaposes the messy surroundings with his preppy look (glasses and notepad/pen) showing he is not interested in the party the night before and just his school work.

Camerawork/Editing:
We took a range of different shots and edited to reflect our genre. This consisted of slow pan shots, shot reverse shots, and over the shoulder. As our genre is RomCom by using a slow pan shot it reflects the pace and atmosphere of the film as it is supposed to be romantic and slow allowing the audience to 'bask in the moment'. The program we used to edit was iMovie. It allowed us to use many different transitions to cut to the next shot helping the continuity of our film. It was very easy to use and allowed us to edit smoothly and effectively.

Title font and style:
The title font we decided to choose is 'American typewriter.' This is done purposely to show that it is an american style theme done in a British way. Teen/RomComs are normally based around American culture which is what we wanted to subvert and put a British twist on. This is also done to help portray our genre 'Teen Rom Com' which appeals to our target audience as they are young and quirky.

Story and how the opening sets it up: 
The opening starts with a range of different shots of the morning that links to the storyline which is about the aftermath of a party the night before. The opening suggests this as the slow transitions between each shot reflect the Rom Com genre showing that it is meant to be romantic and happy. 

Genre & how the opening suggests it:
Our genre being a 'Teen Rom Com'.  The opening suggests this since as the audience are introduced to a house after a party the night before. The transition from establishing shots to the feet appearing at the top of the stairs helps to imply the character has just left the bedroom after having sex as we then see her kissing our main character on the cheek.

How characters are introduced:
Their are 3 key characters in our opening scene. The first character we are introduced to is the girl who we see walking down the stairs. As she is walking down she kisses our main character on the cheek Rick Flame. From this we get the impression that they are a couple but as the clip continues we realise that she was just a fling from the party. We are then introduced to second main character 'Ned Flames' using a transition to a new scene and a panning shot. At first we do not see the character but hear 'moaning and groaning' which implies that the character is having sex but as the pan continues we she that he is purely watching TV. By doing this the audience then get an understanding of his character and the type of person he is.

Special effects:
As special effects we used fade out transitions to show the different shots changing smoothly. As our genre is a  Rom Com the transitions couldn't have been cut harshly as it wouldn't reflect our genre. Many Rom Coms transitions flow effectively to highlight the idea of love and happiness. Also, the fade out transitions help to set the mood of the establishing shots as they highlight the new day. However, we did discover some problems when using certain transitions. Some of the transitions didn't work very well with some of the clips that we had because they were too jarring and clunky and this didn't reflect our Rom Com genre. They would more likely fit a gangster film for example.

Our opening scene!

Here is our opening scene of our film, Another Day! After a lot of blood, sweat and tears it is finally here. Enjoy!

Editing our film UPDATE

We then began to edit our film. We used a program called iMovie in order to edit our shots.

Most of the footage was not enough and our teacher felt that we needed to get more establishing shots. Over half term, Andrew got more morning shots to help add more time and build up a story for our film. However, some of Andrew's shots were not steady or great angles and we therefore had to go and re-shoot some scenes.

Complications and changing of the film name

Apologies for the lack of blog updates. My group experienced some problems with footage and editing which led to less updates and posts on my blog.

After a very successful saturday filming of our house scene, we uploaded the footage in order to start editing. We used a software called iMovie in order to edit. However, whilst editing our teacher over our work and felt that in some way it was not enough. This meant that we had to go back and do more shooting as he suggested we set the scene better by a better opening, more morning shots of people going to work; implying the "morning after". This also lead to our title change of "Cant take the Heat" to "Another Day" which the morning shots would help to show. The voiceover we also will include will help to tie the film together and give the audience a better understanding.

Saturday filming

On Saturday we filmed our house scene which went really well. I think overall we got some really cool shots and it was a lot of fun with the actors.

Director broke the camera and was trying to fix it (i joke)

Filming the stair scene with ladies man Rick played by Micha and the girl Beth

One of the crew members (me) passed out during filming, with Ruth casually working the lights.

House scene filming

This is what we have planned for the 4th of Feb filming of our house shoot. Each of us has to bring in some of the props. We discussed who will bring in and what we think the actors are required to wear. Hopefully it will be a very productive day.

ANOTHER opening credits idea

Whilst looking at title credits, we came across the opening sequence of Napoleon Dynamite. This really fit the character in our film Ned Flame and as the film is based around him this would be a good idea for an opening. We plan to used books instead of food to highlight Ned's "dorky" character. We may also use men's mag's to show Rick Flame's character but personally i feel that they are too graphic, but this is just an option.

This is another possible title sequence opening. If we feel that it doesn't work out then we will go back to our first idea of establishing shots.

Problems...

One of our main problems we have is when we will be filming our house scene. We all have to work around when the actors they are able to do it, which is causing a lot of problems between the group. As we all finish at different times, its hard to know when to shoot.

 Also, one of our actors was excluded which meant that we had to find out when he was going to be available as he wasn't going to be in school. However, despite all this, we should be filming our house scene on Wednesday.

Establishing shot filming

Today we did a bit of establishing shot filming for our opening scene. It went rather well and we were able to get enough footage which is good!

Looking at fonts for credits

Today we started looking at various different fonts for our title sequence. We used a website called 'dafont.com' which allows you to download various different fonts.

This is the font we plan to use for our Titles.

5 days of filming

We have updated our film schedule as we still have more shooting to do. We hadn't decided where we was going to shoot our house scene, but now that we have we have planned filming for saturday to do more scenes.

First day of filming!

Today we began filming our classroom scene where Ned Flames reminisces on the days he was a nerd. We had to get everyone in our form group to converse, throw paper but have Ned mainly in the middle doing work. It was fun getting everyone to help us and everyone got really stuck in when shooting.

We had a few problems with our main characters turning up late, but we was able to work together and quickly so that we could get a few shots for our scene.

On saturday we plan to film the rest of our film. Even though most of us do not want to give up our free time, we're going to have to...

Kevin (who is at the front wearing the glasses) was first used when shooting this scene before our main actor Massimo arrived.

This is our actor who will play Ned Flame (now in glasses), Massimo

Just a little update, our first Vlog

Shot list

Here are a few shots and possible transitions when editing we are thinking about using in our film

Production schedule

This is our production schedule for our film. We begin most of our filming this week.

FINISHED script

This is our FINALISED script. We had to edit quite a bit of it because we changed our minds about the ending of the film. Our teacher also wanted us to edit the script overall so me and Andrew looked through it and changed this.

More film influences: Juno credits

Another opening credits that we looked at was Juno. Andrew had the idea of making them "cartoony" adding to the theme of our film. In Juno everything looks drawn which is really comical and adds to what potentially will happen in the film. Whether we would be able to make something similar possible for our film, we will have to see.

Possible opening credits music

As possible opening credits music, we looked at Jamie Lidell - Another day. As our film in a Rom/Com this song is very upbeat and will help add to the start of our film for our credits. It would be nice if this ran while the first establishing shots were running.

Looking over the script

After consulting our teacher about our script he suggested that we needed to add something to the end as we do not see our main character in the present, as all of our script is set in the past. We also had much of the format wrong so we had to change this.

"Cant Take The Heat..." Storyboard

"CAN'T TAKE THE HEAT..." Storyline

Here is our storyboard for our film "Can't Take The Heat..."

 As we are going against the typical "girl finding love stereotype", our story is about 2 brothers, one who is really geeky - into his books and education and the other a ladies man - someone all the girls love. Usually in Rom/Com's a girl is trying to find love but in our case a male is searching for love.

NED FLAME (the nerdy brother) used to be really geeky before he caught the attention of one of the hottest girls in school, who he was helping pass Maths through tutoring. While on the other hand his brother RICK FLAME (the ladies man) has always secretly been after her. In a strange twist of events Ned manages to win the heart of the hot girl, not knowing this is crushing his brothers ego. Soon Ned becomes the talk of the school, while Rick is ignored and forgotten about by his once admirers.

Starting to plan our movie.

Today we finished off writing our script. We used a program called "Celtx" which helped us to easily script our idea all at the click of a button. 

Me and Andrew (our groups director) came up with the basic storyline.

Film influence

As one of our influences, we looked at the opening of Step Brothers. The film is about 2 brothers who are very dependant on their parents. We looked at this film because this relates to our same idea of 2 brothers but it is not the same genre of Rom/Com.

We also looked at this film for the opening credits. They are a white font on a black background which is very simple, but the font is very childish relating to the characters in the film.

Public Survey

We did a survey in order to decide what genre we wanted to do. From our group, Ruth went around people in our year group and asked people "Which genre do you prefer?" out of the options Action, thriller, romance, Rom/Com, drama, horror, sci-fi, western, crime, comedy.

She also asked "How often do you watch TV in a week?" with the options 0-5 hours, 6-10 hours, 11-15 hours, 16-20 hours.

The results for our survey are below.

From the results we can see that Action, Rom/Com, and Comedy came out on top for what pupils in our year group liked the best. This helped us to come to what genre we wanted to do.

We decided to go with the genre Rom/Com, after a lesson we had looking at film openings. I thought it would be a good idea to conform the normal stereotype of a girl finding love, with a boy finding love. This is how our idea came about.

Initial genre ideas

Some of the initial ideas that we came up with for our film were:

• Comedy
• Action
• Horror
• Romance
• Crime

The beginning of our 2 minute movie task

As part of our coursework, we are required to create a 2 minute film opening. This means that we were left to create everything, from the story to filming. My class was split into groups and i was chosen to work with Andrew, Ruth and Mica. First, we had to come up with a genre that we wanted to work with...

Preliminary Task Evaluation PART 2

How would your rate your teamwork out of 10? Justify your answer

I thought that my team worked really well together and would give us overall a 7/10. As i was the director i sometimes got frustrated at the fact that my teammates were taking to long to get things done, such as finalising shots and getting them perfect.

How would you rate your personal contribution out of 10? Justify your answer

Personally, i would rate my contribution to our film as 8/10. I would give myself this as i was the main person in the team and it was down to me to get everything organised and prepared. As a director i think i carried this out very well and was able to cater to everyone ideas and needs.

What will you do better next time?

In terms of our film, i think that we could have worked on our camera shots better. Near the end of filming we began to rush and were under pressure to finish, and as a result it lead to some of our shots being wrong. Also, we could have been more organised and on time as one of my team members turned up late when we was shooting which set us back with time. 

What will you keep doing next time?

I think next time we will continue to work well and communicate and cater to what each other has to say. We had a few problems with miss communication which led to starting late when filming.

Evaluate your success with:

1) The 180 degree rule

This was one of our difficult shots in our film. Once editing we felt that we had broken the 180 degree rule and consulted our teacher to see what he thought. He advised use to re-shoot which meant we was behind. We had to re-shoot our interview scene doing it from the right side so that it didn't look as though we was breaking it. However, after watching the film back several times I realised that we did break it in one shot, and over the shoulder shot where it should have been on the other side.

2) Shot reverse shot
I think that our shot reverse shot was really successful and we was able to successfully master it. We used a shot reverse shot when doing our confrontation scene. By doing this you are able to see the reaction between both characters.

3) Match on action/continuity

I think that the continuity worked really well and in editing managed to make it flow well, helping to tell the story. When editing we didn't use transitions in order to help the continuity as our film was an interrogation. By adding transitions it would reflect what we was trying to show so we used clean cuts to show the match on action.

Preliminary Task Evaluation PART 1

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


As the preliminary task was our first time filming on our own, it was our way of being able to make our own decisions and learn how to use the equipment. Through the preliminary task i have learnt to expand my knowledge on the equipment as well as camera shots and rules.

Planning


Before hand we drew our storyboard of an initial plan for an idea. In my group our idea was an interrogation of a suspect by an interviewer who wanted answers. We had to plan how we wanted the lighting and the room to look. We also had to make a plan of when we would film each scene.

*insert plan pic*

Preliminary Task: Final film

This is the final film to my preliminary task.

Over a period of 2 hours, my group filmed our preliminary task which was a scene with 2 people in a room facing each other. I think that it went really well and my group worked well together. We had a difficulty with the 180 rule which resulted in us having to re-shoot some shots. This is our final piece.