Showing posts with label Olivia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Olivia. Show all posts
Friday, 16 April 2010
Evaluation Task Six
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Evaluation Tasks
For the final 20 marks of the project, you must complete seven tasks on your blog, posting them in this order, with the question heading at the top of each task. You may do them as a pair/group, but must post individual copies on each blog. Make sure you answer each question as well as producing the visual elements. Try not to write more that 1500 words in total.
1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e. of film openings)
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups ?
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
5. How did you attract/address your audience?
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
7. Looking back at your preliminary task (the continuity editing task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?
EVALUATION ACTIVITY 1
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e. of film openings)
Remember when we looked at 9 frames from Art of the title sequence? Well now it's your turn to do the same with nine of your frames.
You should go through the final version of the project and select nine distinct frames which you screengrab and drop into a photoshop in the same style as the website. You will be using these to write about how typical or not of opening sequences your particular design is, so choose them carefully.
Once you have the nine frames neatly in Photoshop, screengrab the whole thing and post to your blog, then write an analysis of how you have used such conventions.
The aspects we would like you to consider across your nine frames are:
The title of the film
Setting/location
Costumes and props
Camerawork and editing
Title font and style
Story and how the opening sets it up
Genre and how the opening suggests it
How characters are introduced
Special effects
EVALUATION ACTIVITY 2
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Pick a key character from your opening. Take a screengrab of a reasonable sized image of them. Think of one or more characters from other films with some similarity to them (but maybe some differences too!), find an image on the web of that/those characters and grab it as well. Drop the two into photoshop, as a split screen. Export this splitscreen image as a jpeg then drop onto your blog and write about the similarities and differences in terms of appearance, costume, role in film etc.
So for example if you have a lone cop type character, look for other lone cops to compare him with...
EVALUATION ACTIVITY 3
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
For this question, you are going to do a 'director's commentary' style voiceover explaining some of the key features of your opening
You will need to script the voiceover which deals with institutional issues to include:
discussion of your production company name and logo and the role of such companies
What does a production company do? start here
the idea of a distributor and who that might be and why. start here
where the money might have come from for a film such as yours here
why the various people are named in the titles
which jobs appear in titles and in what order and how have you reflected this?
what your film is similar to 'institutionally' (name some films which would be released in a similar way)
You need to refer to actual company names and processes so you will need to go back to the early posts on film companies and maybe do a bit more research
When you have scripted, record the voiceover using Final Cut on a new audio timeline, then export to quicktime and embed on blog.
EVALUATION ACTIVITY 4
Who would be the audience for your media product?
You should have a drawing of your target audience member and an explanation of what kinds of taste they might have- where they would shop, what music they would listen to, what their favourite Tv programme would be, etc.
make sure you have taken a phot of it, post it on the blog and write a few notes on why they would watch your film.
EVALUATION ACTIVITY 5
How did you attract/address your audience?
You will use YOUTUBE's annotation tools to add NOTES, SPEECHBUBBLES, and LINKS to your video:
http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=92710
These annotations will highlight the ways in which your Film Opening links to other similiar films in order to attract the particular Audience you have previously identified.
Your annotations will refer to genre conventions, use of music, similiarities with other movies and what you have identified as the Unique Selling Point of your imaginary film.
EVALUATION ACTIVITY 6
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
In pairs, take a picture of each other holding the kit you have used. This might just be the camera and tripod, and your Macbook but there may be other things you want in the shot.
Drop the image onto your blog and annotate it, adding all the programs and other technology you have used as screengrabs and what you learnt about it/from using it. Your written text need only be minimal. You could include reference to all the online and computer programs you have used such as youtube, flickr, blogger, final cut,photoshop,vimeo garageband, etc.
EVALUATION ACTIVITY 7
Looking back at your preliminary task (the continuity editing task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?
Concentrate on editing and camerawork.
Grab some frames from both tasks and put them on the blog and show what you know about shot types, edit terms and techniques.
Make sure you mention the 180 degree rule, match on action and shot/reverse shot
1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e. of film openings)
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups ?
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
5. How did you attract/address your audience?
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
7. Looking back at your preliminary task (the continuity editing task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?
EVALUATION ACTIVITY 1
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e. of film openings)
Remember when we looked at 9 frames from Art of the title sequence? Well now it's your turn to do the same with nine of your frames.
You should go through the final version of the project and select nine distinct frames which you screengrab and drop into a photoshop in the same style as the website. You will be using these to write about how typical or not of opening sequences your particular design is, so choose them carefully.
Once you have the nine frames neatly in Photoshop, screengrab the whole thing and post to your blog, then write an analysis of how you have used such conventions.
The aspects we would like you to consider across your nine frames are:
The title of the film
Setting/location
Costumes and props
Camerawork and editing
Title font and style
Story and how the opening sets it up
Genre and how the opening suggests it
How characters are introduced
Special effects
EVALUATION ACTIVITY 2
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Pick a key character from your opening. Take a screengrab of a reasonable sized image of them. Think of one or more characters from other films with some similarity to them (but maybe some differences too!), find an image on the web of that/those characters and grab it as well. Drop the two into photoshop, as a split screen. Export this splitscreen image as a jpeg then drop onto your blog and write about the similarities and differences in terms of appearance, costume, role in film etc.
So for example if you have a lone cop type character, look for other lone cops to compare him with...
EVALUATION ACTIVITY 3
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
For this question, you are going to do a 'director's commentary' style voiceover explaining some of the key features of your opening
You will need to script the voiceover which deals with institutional issues to include:
discussion of your production company name and logo and the role of such companies
What does a production company do? start here
the idea of a distributor and who that might be and why. start here
where the money might have come from for a film such as yours here
why the various people are named in the titles
which jobs appear in titles and in what order and how have you reflected this?
what your film is similar to 'institutionally' (name some films which would be released in a similar way)
You need to refer to actual company names and processes so you will need to go back to the early posts on film companies and maybe do a bit more research
When you have scripted, record the voiceover using Final Cut on a new audio timeline, then export to quicktime and embed on blog.
EVALUATION ACTIVITY 4
Who would be the audience for your media product?
You should have a drawing of your target audience member and an explanation of what kinds of taste they might have- where they would shop, what music they would listen to, what their favourite Tv programme would be, etc.
make sure you have taken a phot of it, post it on the blog and write a few notes on why they would watch your film.
EVALUATION ACTIVITY 5
How did you attract/address your audience?
You will use YOUTUBE's annotation tools to add NOTES, SPEECHBUBBLES, and LINKS to your video:
http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=92710
These annotations will highlight the ways in which your Film Opening links to other similiar films in order to attract the particular Audience you have previously identified.
Your annotations will refer to genre conventions, use of music, similiarities with other movies and what you have identified as the Unique Selling Point of your imaginary film.
EVALUATION ACTIVITY 6
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
In pairs, take a picture of each other holding the kit you have used. This might just be the camera and tripod, and your Macbook but there may be other things you want in the shot.
Drop the image onto your blog and annotate it, adding all the programs and other technology you have used as screengrabs and what you learnt about it/from using it. Your written text need only be minimal. You could include reference to all the online and computer programs you have used such as youtube, flickr, blogger, final cut,photoshop,vimeo garageband, etc.
EVALUATION ACTIVITY 7
Looking back at your preliminary task (the continuity editing task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?
Concentrate on editing and camerawork.
Grab some frames from both tasks and put them on the blog and show what you know about shot types, edit terms and techniques.
Make sure you mention the 180 degree rule, match on action and shot/reverse shot
Sunday, 7 February 2010
Characters
After deep deliberation Victoria and I decided on using are friend Jessica Hutchingson to play the role of the ‘unpopular’ girl and Bethan Kench to play the ‘popular’ girl. There are various reasons why we selected these two individuals to play are leading ladies. A distinguishing feature we picked up on when watching a range of romantic comedies was that the female acting the ‘popular’ character always had blonde hair, this hair colour connotes a confident, fun loving, ditsy character. This is the persona we are trying to perceive thus are ‘popular’ girl must have blonde hair. We went around school trying to find suitable candidates for this character and took pictures so we could critically compare each of them and weigh up the pro’s and con’s of each individual. Here are some of the possibilities for both the popular and unpopular girl:
We selected Jessica firstly because of her willingness to act this role. Jessica is also tall and very slim, we believe by the style of her clothing and the use of her body language we can make her seem like a lanky uncoordinated female. However we are posed with a problem in that Jessica possesses beautiful facial features and we need to make her look not so easy on the eye, we plan to do this by scraping her brown hair back and making it look messy. In addition to this we will not apply any make up to her face to make her look plain.
Also Bethan and Jess are some of mine and Victoria’s close friends and we feel comfortable letting them into our homes and we know they are reliable and will put all there effort into acting there roles to the best of there ability.
We eventually decided on Bethan for the 'popular' girl, her main feature being her blonde hair, she is also a slender young lady so the tight fitted girly clothes will fit and look spectacular on her, she has big blue eyes and straight white teeth, these are all typical traits a character like hers possesses, she has also had basic acting training appearing in local pantomime’s so being in front of a camera will not faze her.
We selected Jessica firstly because of her willingness to act this role. Jessica is also tall and very slim, we believe by the style of her clothing and the use of her body language we can make her seem like a lanky uncoordinated female. However we are posed with a problem in that Jessica possesses beautiful facial features and we need to make her look not so easy on the eye, we plan to do this by scraping her brown hair back and making it look messy. In addition to this we will not apply any make up to her face to make her look plain.
Also Bethan and Jess are some of mine and Victoria’s close friends and we feel comfortable letting them into our homes and we know they are reliable and will put all there effort into acting there roles to the best of there ability.
Costume Ideas
We want the 'popular' girl to sport clothes that are sophisticated, high fashion, bright and girly this will hopefully convey to the audience the type of character she is without her even having to speak. Emphasis on the costume element of mise on scene is going to be pivotal in our 2 minute opening sequence as we want to evoke certain emotions for the characters in a short space of time, and we believe by getting the costume perfect we can achieve this.
The sophisticated and high fashion feel will connote wealth, a good sense in style and the fact that she takes pride in her appearance, by placing her in bright clothes it will tell the audience that she oozes self confidence and loves to be seen. By dressing her girly, the viewers will be under the illusion that she gets a lot of male attention and is the girl everyone else wants to be with and around. These are a few of the attributes we are hoping to gain through the use of costume.
I would define the look we are going for, for the popular girl as ‘preppy’. This consists of a mixture of designers such as Abercormbie, Jack Will, Lacoste and Ralph Lauren. Below are a few examples I found of attire that would be appropriate for the popular girl:
Below is a mood board I created with a selection of items from clothing to jewellery to bags and much more just to give you a feel for what we are considering. We could pick any of these pieces and put them together to construct the perfect costume. We will obviously trail and test a variety of costumes on are actresses before filming, to see what compliments her, the character we are creating and the settings.
The sophisticated and high fashion feel will connote wealth, a good sense in style and the fact that she takes pride in her appearance, by placing her in bright clothes it will tell the audience that she oozes self confidence and loves to be seen. By dressing her girly, the viewers will be under the illusion that she gets a lot of male attention and is the girl everyone else wants to be with and around. These are a few of the attributes we are hoping to gain through the use of costume.
I would define the look we are going for, for the popular girl as ‘preppy’. This consists of a mixture of designers such as Abercormbie, Jack Will, Lacoste and Ralph Lauren. Below are a few examples I found of attire that would be appropriate for the popular girl:
Below is a mood board I created with a selection of items from clothing to jewellery to bags and much more just to give you a feel for what we are considering. We could pick any of these pieces and put them together to construct the perfect costume. We will obviously trail and test a variety of costumes on are actresses before filming, to see what compliments her, the character we are creating and the settings.
Friday, 5 February 2010
Mood Boards
I generated a mood board for each of the binary opposite characters we are trying to create in our opening sequence, I did this so I could get a deeper knowledge and understanding of the characters, I did this by thinking about what they would wear, what activities they would enjoy, who there friends would be, what music they would listen to etc and hopefully by gaining this depth and information I can portray this to the audience also through mise en scene.
Wednesday, 3 February 2010
25 word pitch
We were asked to produce a piece of writing, consisting of 25 words that would sum up our entire film and enable the audience to understand the plot fully. This is what we came up with:
“A romantic comedy aimed at teenagers, which revolves around two female binary opposites and how their high school cliques operate.”
“A romantic comedy aimed at teenagers, which revolves around two female binary opposites and how their high school cliques operate.”
Pitch Feedback
Our whole class agreed that our film should fall under the genre of Romantic Comedy and that it should be aimed mainly at a female audience, however there was some deliberation over what age the target audience should be and underneath I have created a pie chart to illustrate the outcomes. As you can see the over riding vote lies with the ages of 13-19, this is the exact age we were planning on aiming our film at and our class affirmed this idea for us.
This feedback proved extremely useful, we are going to take all of these positives and potential problems and reassess some of our ideas so that non of the issues raised above will be solved.
Positives
Well thought out characters
Would attract a large audience as many people enjoy the genre/type of film
Well planned out pitch
Very easy to understand and will be very easy to watch, this will attract many people
Love the location choices and think there realistic but at the same time totally contrasting
Been influenced by many different shows and characters (intertexuality) this shows it has been well thought about
Potential Problems
It will be hard to use cross cut editing
Continuity may be an issue, for example the weather will need to be consistent
Could be made more original as there is already a lot of films out that are similar to this
Having to change location constantly may be hard due to weather and it will take up a lot of time
The editing will have to be very slick for it to have its desired effect
You will have to make it overly clear the difference between characters as the audience may get confused easily.
Well thought out characters
Would attract a large audience as many people enjoy the genre/type of film
Well planned out pitch
Very easy to understand and will be very easy to watch, this will attract many people
Love the location choices and think there realistic but at the same time totally contrasting
Been influenced by many different shows and characters (intertexuality) this shows it has been well thought about
Potential Problems
It will be hard to use cross cut editing
Continuity may be an issue, for example the weather will need to be consistent
Could be made more original as there is already a lot of films out that are similar to this
Having to change location constantly may be hard due to weather and it will take up a lot of time
The editing will have to be very slick for it to have its desired effect
You will have to make it overly clear the difference between characters as the audience may get confused easily.
This feedback proved extremely useful, we are going to take all of these positives and potential problems and reassess some of our ideas so that non of the issues raised above will be solved.
Sunday, 24 January 2010
Research - Binary opposite character ideas.
The characters Betty and Amanda in the american hit drama 'Ugly Betty' are prime examples of binary opposite characters.
Typical Clothes Betty Wears:
Typical Clothes Amanda wears:
Amanda's Attributes
In the series of Ugly Betty it is evident that Betty and Amanda are binary opposite characters. The film opening that Olivia and I are going to produce could possibily benefit from the similar characters. To produce the best possible film opening Olivia and I shall research Ugly Betty and analysis the characters in greater depth.
BETTY
Typical Clothes Betty Wears:
Intelligent
AMANDA
Typical Clothes Amanda wears:
Amanda's Attributes
Un – caring
Selfish
Lazy
Bitter
Sexual
Popular
Perfect vision
Perfect teeth
Styled hair
Styled hair
Fashionable clothing
Heavy, perfectly done make – up
Shaped, plucked eyebrows
Heavy, perfectly done make – up
Shaped, plucked eyebrows
Dumb
Here is a short clip of Amanda and Betty which shows all the above character research:
In the series of Ugly Betty it is evident that Betty and Amanda are binary opposite characters. The film opening that Olivia and I are going to produce could possibily benefit from the similar characters. To produce the best possible film opening Olivia and I shall research Ugly Betty and analysis the characters in greater depth.
Favourite Romantic Comedy's
I wrote down and watched a few of my all time favourite Romantic Comedy films for inspiration and ideas, I will later compare and analyze a select few of there opening sequences for guidance as to what works and what doesn’t and then apply this information when thinking about our own project . 
Genre
The genre we have selected for our opening sequence is ‘Romantic Comedy’, we opted for this as it is a genre that we both thoroughly enjoy and think would be fun but challenging to tackle. Romantic Comedy consists of light-hearted, humorous plotlines, centered on romantic ideals.
The basic plot of a romantic comedy is that two protagonists, usually a man and a woman, meet, part ways due to an argument or obstacle, then ultimately reunite. Sometimes the two protagonists meet and become involved initially, then must confront challenges to their union. Sometimes the two protagonists are hesitant to become romantically involved because they believe that they do not like each other, because one of them already has a partner, or because of social pressures. However, the screenwriters leave clues that suggest that the characters are; in fact, attracted to each other and that they would be a good love match. The protagonists often separate or seek time apart to sort out their feelings or deal with the external issues that come with being together. However there is always a grand gesture where love is declared and the film ends happily.
We are obviously not going to use a plot line as in depth as the one featured above as we are only creating a short film opening, however another element of romantic comedy that was brought to my attention when researching is that of opposites, in every Romantic Comedy there is consistently characters that possess opposite attributes, this is also known as a binary opposite. Strauss believed that the world was split into a series of binary opposites. Meaning that essentially one thing can only be defined in relation to something it isn't. An example of this would be that a fat person is only fat because there is a thin option. I have noticed that this idea runs through almost every Romantic Comedy, there are never two characters that are in the slightest bit similar, they are always over the top opposite caricatures. I decided to research this further:
The basic plot of a romantic comedy is that two protagonists, usually a man and a woman, meet, part ways due to an argument or obstacle, then ultimately reunite. Sometimes the two protagonists meet and become involved initially, then must confront challenges to their union. Sometimes the two protagonists are hesitant to become romantically involved because they believe that they do not like each other, because one of them already has a partner, or because of social pressures. However, the screenwriters leave clues that suggest that the characters are; in fact, attracted to each other and that they would be a good love match. The protagonists often separate or seek time apart to sort out their feelings or deal with the external issues that come with being together. However there is always a grand gesture where love is declared and the film ends happily.
We are obviously not going to use a plot line as in depth as the one featured above as we are only creating a short film opening, however another element of romantic comedy that was brought to my attention when researching is that of opposites, in every Romantic Comedy there is consistently characters that possess opposite attributes, this is also known as a binary opposite. Strauss believed that the world was split into a series of binary opposites. Meaning that essentially one thing can only be defined in relation to something it isn't. An example of this would be that a fat person is only fat because there is a thin option. I have noticed that this idea runs through almost every Romantic Comedy, there are never two characters that are in the slightest bit similar, they are always over the top opposite caricatures. I decided to research this further:
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Mean Girls- Unpopular and Popular
Legally Blonde- Smart and Dumb
17 Again- Young and Old
Freaky Friday-Insensibe and Sensible
Pride and Prejudice-Poor and Rich
Did you Met The Morgans?- Country Folk and City Slickers
The Proposal- Laid Back and Uptight
Shallow Hal- Fat and Thin
John Tucker Must Die- Beautiful and Ugly
From the evidence above we have decided to base are opening around two binary opposites.
From the evidence above we have decided to base are opening around two binary opposites.
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