Final Film Opening

Evaluation 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?

I feel we have learnt a lot since the creation of our preliminary project and the progression between up until our now finished final film opening project.

This first screen grab shows a close up of Abby in our final project (on the left) and Lydia (on the right) in the preliminary task. As you can see the general quality of the shot is far better in our film opening. This is because we were able to use a higher quality camera and an efficient tripod. The picture on the right is much less balanced and is blurry compared to the one on the left.

We learnt from our preliminary task that using a close up shot is very effective in showing emotions, however the background in the right picture is messy, whereas on the left the picture is clearly only focussing on Abby. We also learnt that this was a good shot when in a conversation with another character as it shows the reaction to what they have just said and displaying their expression on their face.

As a second screen grab we have used a medium close up. In our preliminary this wasn’t as effective as our final piece as the shot was slightly angled and was too far away. We improved this in our final project mainly by using a HD camera and a tripod. With the two preliminary shots you have seen so far, our use of the 180° degree rule is demonstrated. The 180° rule is a basic guideline that states that two characters in the same scene should always have the same left/right relationship to each other and we obeyed this rule in both our preliminary exercise and our final film opening so as not to confuse the audience. In both conversations we used shot/reverse shot. Shot reverse shot is a film technique where one character is shown looking at another character and then the other character is shown looking back at the first character. Since the characters are shown facing in opposite directions, the viewer assumes that they are looking at each other.

We found this effective in the preliminary task as it made it more obvious what was going on. The eye contact between the characters also established a relationship between them. This was particularly highlighted in our final film opening since the focus was very close up on the face and the facial expressions demonstrated their personal feelings in general, and towards each other.

Here a long shot is typically used to establish a setting which is shown through Abby and Ella walking through a door and Lydia walking through a room. This made the audience feel more involved with the action. We made sure in our final project that this first establishing shot was realistic and natural and did not contain any distractions; this allows the audience to relate to the setting.

Above is a screen grab of both Abby and Lydia walking through a panning shot. Using this in the preliminary task of Lydia walking through a room was effective so we elaborated this idea as we thought that a panning shot of Abby walking to school is as though the audience are moving along with the character. This attracts and engages our audience and also established the characters surroundings.

The screen grabs above demonstrates a two shot in which involved a conversation. This conveyed the body language and expressions in the preliminary task allowing the audience to relate to the characters. This worked effectively and so we implemented this in our final project as portraying Abby and Ella’s friendship was a key part of the storyline.

The shot above Nancy throwing paper is of Lydia pushing open a door to enter a room; an example of match on action. These two consecutive shots depict accurate continuity, an aspect of film production which we learnt to be very important. Whilst editing it became clear that without precise continuity, the shots didn't flow and looked very unnatural. From this, it was clear that we would have to edit extremely precisely during post production of our final film opening so to make it look as professional as possible and as though it is completely real. The only problem with the two sequential shots above are that they are very similar and therefore seem a bit pointless; it would have been better for us to vary the angle and composition of the two shots so as to make it more interesting for the audience and to allow them more exposure of the situation. We took this into account when filming and editing our film opening. The two shots below in chronological order are another accurate example of match on action. We made sure to vary the shots and as you can see they are very different in terms of angles and distance. When watching the film opening you will also notice sound continuity, something we learnt post preliminary exercise and a technique that became very useful and effective throughout the film opening.

Evaluation 6 - What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

For the editing of our film we used Georgia's macbook laptop, we also used her laptop for doing some research into our film and our films genre. The operating system of the laptop made it very easy and efficient for us to use which was very helpful. Also, because it was a laptop we could edit the film wherever and whenever we possibly could, which was mainly in our media lessons at school. We were all familiar with iMovie on macbooks before and it is a fairly simple programme to use so there wasn't a lot for us all to learn. Something that we learnt from using iMovie was how to detach a sound from each clip so we would be able have good sound continuity and no gaps in the editing. From using iMovie quite a lot we have realised that there are some things that may be able to be done better using a different programme, we were thinking that next time we could maybe use Final Cut Express as this would give us more opportunities for better effects in our film. We also think that it would be more appropriate and give our film a more professional feel as Final Cut is designed for more professional films whereas iMovie can be used by anyone.


We also used Georgia's Nikon D5100 to shoot our film opening. We used this camera as it was the highest quality camera that we were able to get hold of. I think that it was a really good choice to use this camera as it gave our film opening really high quality. It also was very easy to use and none of us had any problems with using the camera, it also fitted the tripod well.

During the filming of our opening we needed to keep our shots steady and stable. To do this we hired a tripod from school. It was very helpful during the filming as we could film everything without the worry of having shaky shots. It was also good as it helped us get a range of shots and angles as the tripods height was variable. We learnt how to change the length of the expendable legs and changed it to the angle that we wanted to use. When we wanted to create a low angle, we would make the back leg on the tripod smaller than the other two which made us able to keep the camera stable but as low to the ground as we possibly could. It did take us quite a while to get the mechanism of the tripod working properly but we soon got the hang of it and were able to construct as many angles as we liked.  As you can see in the shots above, we were using the tripod in nearly all of our shots, the only time that the tripod was not used was when we wanted to use a tracking shot of Abby, we decided to use a handheld shot which gave the feel that we were walking with her. By not using the tripod it allowed a steady grip on the camera and was easier to film the shot whilst walking in front of Georgia.

We created our production logo on a programme called 'LiveType' on Georgia's macbook. We used this to give the text an effect so that it would have motion when inserted into the beginning of our film. We decided to use a text effect called 'Barrel Jump', it is a simple effect but made our logo much more interesting and more professional. This was the first time we have used LiveType so it took a while for us to get the hang of using it but in the end we managed to create the text transition.

Evaluation 5 - How did you attract/address your audience?

This is an interview that I did with my friend Jess. Jess is currently studying at St Johns school also. She is 18 years old and is the typical member of our target audience. I asked Jess a number of questions about our film, what she enjoyed about it and what she said that we should improve on if we had the chance. Jess is the perfect member of our target audience as she fits our audience profile very well and her favourite genre of film is Drama.

Above is a screenshot of the basic demographics of our audience based on it's youtube views. We are very pleased with this result since it the demographic that the film opening is most popular with is our target audience; young people and primarily females. As you can see in the screenshot, the video is most popular demographic is females in between the age of 13-17. This conveys that a lot of the people who have watched it are either people of the same age that were able to relate to it or younger people who possibly aspire to be like the characters or use it as a warning as to what older teenage life is like. Looking at the map, you can see that the only country that the video has been viewed in is England which was expected as all the elements including cast, location and storyline were very British based and so we would expect it to appeal more to British people.

Evaluation 4 - Who would be the audience for your media product?

It was very easy for our group to decide who our target audience was going to be, we knew that primarily female teenagers would be the perfect audience as they can relate to our film and the things that happen in the film.
This is Georgie Thatcher, she is 16 years old and currently attends St Johns sixth form. As any other teenager she enjoys going out and spending time with her friends, shopping and partying. When she is not out with her friends she enjoys spending time with her family, her dog Katie and her boyfriend. As another other girl she loves chocolate, her favourite food is Resses Cupcakes. She enjoys listening to relaxed music such as Fat Freddies Drop and Little Dragon and in the summer she has seen them live at festivals which is another thing she loves to do in her spare summer days. She loves shopping and her favourite shops are H&M and Urban Outfitters. 
Georgie has a number of favourite TV programmes, mainly The Big Bang Theory but also Desperate Housewives and The Inbetweeners, she says she "loves comedy but I also love a bit of drama in a TV programme to make things more interesting".
Her favourite genre of film is a mix between Drama and Romance which makes her the perfect member of our target audience. Her favourite film is either The Notebook or Juno. She says that she loves drama and romance because "you can relate to the people in the film, you feel as if you learn things like how to approach a situation that comes up in the film! It just helps you work out your own life problems! And obviously because they are funny and entertaining but can be really sad so they can suit you whichever mood your in!"
Georgie is the perfect style model for our target audience, she fits our audience profile very well, she is over the age of the certificate which is ideal, all of her likes are the same of those of our audience profile and this is the same with her dislikes, she doesn't enjoy horror films, social cliques or bullying! 

Evaluation 3 - What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

What does a production company do?
A production company are the people that fund and produce the films for the film makers. They sell the makers films to a filming studio. The first logo that we created 'Wired Productions', was for our production company, we created it using livetype which is an application on Mac computers. It allowed us to create the font and the buzzing sound effect. We decided on the name 'Wired Productions' as Georgia already had a picture of barbed wire on her computer and the name fitted with the picture so we decided to play around with some effects and fonts and that's how we came up with 'Wired Productions'. 

The other production logo we created was 'Deluxe Studios', we created this using iMovie using a preset theme. We wanted to create a logo that was quite different to 'Wired Productions', we wanted 'Wired Productions' to be more edgy and quirky and we wanted 'Deluxe Studios' to be more professional which is how we came up with the name, Deluxe Studios. We decided to create two production companies as we are a small, independent, low-budget production we didn't think that we would need any more.

A film distributor is a company that is responsible for releasing films to the public. There are many ways in which this can be done and the distribution company has to decide the best way in which to do this to gain the right target audience. There are many ways in which they can do this, through the cinema, DVDs, television, the internet, downloads and more.

Because our film is a small and independent film with a low budget, it is not very likely that a big distribution company would be interested in distributing our film. It is more likely that small distribution companies that have more experience distributing low-budget, small, independent films. A company such as PlanetIndie which is an independent film directory, they distribute films from all types of genres, but they specialise in Indie films. Although this company would be good for distributing our films to an audience that we wouldn't usually aim for, it wouldn't be as successful as if we were to use a large film distribution company. Using a large distribution company would be more successful for getting our film distributed to a wider audience, I also think that because our film isn't typically 'Indie' it would be a problem getting PlanetIndie to distribute our film. Whereas, because teen drama is such a popular genre, a distribution company such as 20th Century Fox may be more interested in distributing our film as it appeals to such a wide audience. The film would most likely have to be funded by the BFI or the UK Film Council, as it is a small independent film it's unlikely that there would be sufficient funds to finance the film.

The credits for our film were shown at the beginning of the film but not in the first scene, they were shown in the scene in which Abby is walking to school. We decided to put them here as this scene is quite long and as it is after the dream scene it is where the audience are most likely to be watching. The credits came in order of importance with the main protagonist Charlotte Farrow first, followed by Harry Shakeshaft, Alice Moore and Ellie de Carle. The names of us are then shown, the director (Lydia de Blangy), producer (Beth Knights) and screenplay (Georgia Daly). There is no importance to these names and the titles that they are associated with as each of us in the group worked together on each part of the film. We decided not to include that many titles as the scene of Abby walking to school isn't that long and as our target audience is teenagers we wanted to show the most important titles to ensure that they were paying attention. The title of the film is then shown at the end of the credits, in a different colour to signify its importance.

Evaluation 2 - How does your media product represent particular social groups?

When planning our film we decided that our main protagonist would be a female, we decided this as girls seem to have more problems than in comparison to young men and we found it hard to base our story around a male teenager. We found when doing research into our film that Abby is a very similar character to 'Sam Montgomery' from the film A Cinderella Story. Both of the characters are very shy and easily intimidated, as well as this both of the characters have a keen love interest but both are too scared to tell their love interests this.


As you can see from the pictures above, both of the characters are portrayed as shy and introverted. We wanted Abby to be like the character Sam, although we were unaware of the character Sam in the film until we did some research into teen drama films. Abby and Sam are very similar, although they are both shy characters they are both very pretty but both have very low self-esteem and don't believe that they could be liked by their love interests, as both of them are very modest.


Although the characters have quite a few things in common they are also quite different. Abby is an English character in an English film going to a sixth form, whereas Sam is an American character in an American film going to college. As well as this, the two characters are quite different in the way that they view life, Abby and Sam are both very ambitious but Abby has a clear view on where she wants to go in life whereas Sam wants to go to a specific university but can't imagine this to be possible.

As well as the similarities between the characters of Abby and Sam, the character Ella is very similar to the character 'Lily Moscovitz' from the film The Princess Diaries. When planning our film we wanted Abby to have a character who would be seen as her best friend. We wanted this character to be extremely outgoing and a fun character and this is how we came up with Ella, who is very similar to Lily Moscovitz. Both characters are very confident and are both the best friend of the main character in the story.


As you can see in the above pictures, both of the characters have very similar facial expressions whilst they are conversing with their best friends. Both characters are very excitable and keen to speak to their best friend. This is shown by the enthusiastic smiles on their faces which are shown throughout both films. As well as their personalities, both characters are similar in age as they both attend school. They are both very chatty and sometimes tend to forget about the feelings of their best friends, un-purposely of course but this can tend to cause some friction in their relationships.              
                      
Again, although the characters are very similar they are both quite different, The Princess Diaries is an American film with American actresses and actors whereas Beyond Closed Eyes is a British film with British actresses and actors. As well as this, although they both attend school Lily attends a private school and has to wear a uniform whereas Ella goes to a public sixth form and doesn't have to wear uniform.

Evaluation 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Evaluation 1

View more presentations from BethanyyK.

Bloopers

Directors Commentary

Beyond Closed Eyes - Trailer

Questionnaire

In order to gain feedback on how our target audience found our film, we decided to give out a questionnaire to 10 teenage students. These are the questions we asked:

Questionnaire for ‘Beyond Closed Eyes’

Answer the following questions on a scale of 1-10:

1. How effective was our cast selection?
2. How did you find the editing and continuity?
3. How well suited was the music and other sound effects to the sequence?
4. How appropriate were the location used?
5. How appropriate were the titles used?
6. How much did you enjoy watching the film opening?

Tick the appropriate answer:

7) Our film opening was:

• Dull
• Average
• Interesting

8) Would you watch the rest of the film?

• Definitely not
• Probably not
• Maybe
• Probably
• Definitely

Answer:

9) Do you think we could improve it? If so, how?

• Yes
• No

10) What was your favourite aspect of the film opening?

Results:

Here are the average results we received for the first 6 questions:

1) 8

2) 9

3) 8

4) 9

5) 7

6) 9

- Our most disappointing outcome was for question 5 about the titles used. When I asked the ones that gave lower results why they gave them, they replied that they didn't notice the titles which suggests that we should have made them more bold. I believe it is important to credit everyone who helped the production of our film opening.

- For question number 7, all of our target audience replied with the answer 'interesting' which we were pleased with.

- For question number 8, 4 people said 'definitely', 4 people said 'probably' and 2 people said 'maybe'. The 2 that said maybe were boys which suggest that our film opening is more for a female audience.

- The only ideas that our target audience gave to improve it was to have more action at the beginning to draw the audience in more

- For most people, their favourite aspect of the film opening was the dream as it added some mystery to the film opening straight away and opened up many potential story lines.

Poster

This is another poster that we created for our film, for this poster we didn't use the Juno poster as a style model as we wanted this poster to be different. This poster uses pictures of the actors and actresses so that the audience can relate to them. Again we used the colour red for the tagline as we wanted there to be an element of romance, which hints the storyline. As with the other poster, we decided to use the blue background again as it gives a dream like feel.

Poster Design

For the advertising of our film we wanted to create a poster or billboard. We decided that we needed a theme for our film, for example for the film Juno the theme is stripes, from Juno's top. We decided to use the film poster for 'Juno' as a style model as it has the same theme and also both of our films have similar characters.  

We decided that clouds would be an appropriate theme for our film as it connotes 'daydreaming', we thought that this would be good considering as our film is about dreams. We also decided to use clouds as the light blue colour of the sky matches our title. 

As some other films do, we decided to create a tagline, to give the audience a feel of what the film is like but not to give too much of an insight into what was going to happen. We also wanted this to make our target audience watch the film. We decided that red would be a good colour as it constrasts well with the background and is quite eyecatching. Red also symbolises romance and this hits the storyline to our audience.

We decided that we should put the names of our actors on the poster as this is a key way in which distributrors promote their films because if the characters are well known the audience will be more likely to watch the film. But, we did also think that because our film is an independent film it is more likely that we would not have any famous actors in our film and therefore the people who would see the poster may not be attracted by this.

Equipment Used

During the filming of our film opening, we used the following equipment:

We used Georgia's Nikon D5100 to film our opening sequence, it is a high quality camera which was easy to use and fitted the tripod well.

To keep our shots steady we used a tripod hired from our school, it was very good for our desired camera shots and angles and worked well with the Nikon D5100.

We used Georgia's Apple MacBook to edit our film and to do some research for our film opening. This was very helpful as we could do the editing either at school or at home. We used the programme iMovie on the MacBook to edit our film, although we are familiar and have experience with Final Cut Pro, we thought that iMovie would be the most sensible editing software to use as the film opening task isn't too complex and iMovie has all the features needed to create a successful film opening which fits the brief.

Use of Sound Effects

We used numerous sound effects in our film opening for a number of reasons. Mainly to create more realistic settings and to make the dream scene seem more 'dreamy'. The effects that we used worked well.

Creating the Music

When creating our film, we had to think of a song which would convey a young protaginist well but would also appeal to a teenage audience and would be something which a teenager would listen to. At first we wanted to use the song 'Lego House' by Ed Sheeran, but we later found that without permission this would not be possible. Instead we decided to create our own music using the programme GarageBand and also by using a composition of guitar by Georgia Daly. We used three different guitar tunes, pre-set drums and the composition to create the music.

Above is a picutre of Georgia creating the music by recording the composition onto her macbook. We got Georgia to compose a tune and then played it over the drums. We used three different guitar tunes and overlaid them over each other to create a solid and interesting piece of music. We all think it worked out quite well and after gaining feedback, it was confirmed that our target audience approved of it.

Audience Profile

 

Age: 12+ (certificate rating of film is a 12)

Gender: Primarily female, also males who can relate to characters

Residence: England

Occupation: Student, trainee, part-time job

Class: Middle (so can understand plot)

Lifestyle: Film enthusiasts, general student life of watching films that relate to them

Education: Moderate

Likes: Young protagonist genre, romance, relationships, acoustic contemporary music, iPod, school, relating to characters

Dislikes: Horror, action/adventure, social cliques, bullying

Creating the Logo Transition

When creating our logo we wanted it to look professional and interesting. We created our moving logo 'Wired Productions' using a programme called LiveType. Using this programme enabled use to use moving words to make our logo more interesting and memorable. The effect that we used was called 'Barrel Jump'. 

Final Draft of Script

We decided that because our script from before we filmed our film opening was so different to what was actually said in the real film opening that we would create a final draft of our script.

Film opens with an establishing shot of central protagonist, Abby’s house. All lights are off except for her bedroom, which is giving out a dim glow. It then cuts to a medium shot of Abby in bed, asleep however it is clear by her muttering of words such as “stop” and “please” that she is having a dream. The shot then dissolves into her dream where a point of view shot follows the vision she is enduring. In the dream, she is in the school common room and her rivalry Nancy are bullying and throwing things at her and her friend. She then storms out the common room in an attempt to get away from this nightmare however on the way out her love interest Chris trips into her, a picture of Chris falls out of Abby’s pocket. Abby then wakes up and a medium shot portrays her sudden awakening.

Abby: (In a confused tone) Woah

Music begins to play over a montage of Abby walking to school. At this point, music is still playing and the titles are on screen. As Abbey arrives at school, she takes her earphones out to greet her best friend, Ella.

Abby: Hey

Ella: Heya you alright?

Abby: Yeah you?

Ella: Yeah, stayed up until midnight finishing the English essay, you done it?

Abby: (In a glum tone) Oh damn, no I haven’t

Ella: You alright?

Abby: Yeah just, just annoyed I didn’t do the essay

Ella: Abby, you wouldn’t get upset about a stupid essay, I know you, what’s the matter?

Abby: It’s just… I had a really weird dream last night. It…it felt so real

School bell rings

Ella: There’s the bell, we’ve both got a free shall we go to the common room?

Abby: Okay

Walking into the common room where her dreams start to become reality

Nancy: Did you see her Facebook status last night? So lame. Oh, there’s the sket (starts to throw things at her)

Ella: What’s going on?

Abby: I… I’ve seen this before

Ella: What?

Abby: Let’s just get out

(Chris bumps into Abby on her way out of the common room. A picture of him falls out of Abby’s pocket.)

Chris: Sorry, sorry. What the hell is this?]

Abby: Um

Chris: What’s going on? You creep!

Abby stands there speechless.

Our Production Logos

We wanted our film to have a professional feel to it, so we created two film production logos to make it look more realistic and professional. The first was 'Wired Productions', there was no specific reason as to why we chose to use this picture or call it wired productions but we thought that together they both work well and it conveys a young, edgy film production company that works well with our films genre of a young protaginist.

The second logo that we created was 'Deluxe Studios', again there was no particular reason as to why we chose this but we thought that it gives the film a very sleek and professional feel and also isn't as eye catching as the other logo so it works well.

Film Logos

For our film logo we wanted to do some research into some popular and well-known film logos. Here are some of the logos that we found and used for inspiration.

Institutional Research/Film Industry

Juno

Production:

·         Director: Jason Reitman

·         Film producer: Mason Novick

·         Written by: Diablo Cody

·         Production companies: Fox Searchlight Pictures, Mandate Pictures and Mr. Mudd
·         Was shot on a budget of $6.5 million

       ·         Juno was filmed in and around Vancouver, British Columbia

·         Juno opening sequence was filmed over 7-8 months by a small design studio, Shadowplay Studio, based in      Los Angeles

·         Filming took place over only 30 days

·         Ellen Page played the lead role

Distribution and Marketing:

·         Multiple distributors: Fox Searchlight Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Alfa Films, Bazuca Films, Fox-Warner, Golden Village Entertainment, Group Power, Mirovision, Odeon, Paris Films, Pyramid, Viva International Pictures, National Broadcasting Company and RTL Entertainment

·         Film won the Academy A

·         Award for Best Original Screenplay and earned three other Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actress for Page

·         Juno earned back its initial budget of $6.5 million in twenty days

·         Fox Searchlight sent hamburger phones styled similarly to that used by Juno in the film to journalists and critics to entice them to review the film

Exhibition:

·         Film was released to theatres on September 1, 2007 (007-09-01)

       ·         Film was released on DVD and Blu-ray disc on April 15, 2008

·         The film went on to earn $231 million

After First Day of Filming

This is our film so far, we decided to edit the section of the film that we have filmed first, rather than filming all of the opening and then editing afterwards. We filmed this during our media studies lesson at school. The scenes in this show Abby walking to school and having a conversation with her friend Ella. The filming for this scene took quite a while as we wanted to get as many camera angles and shots as possible so we could chose the best ones for our final draft. 

We still have a lot of filming to do from this point, the scene of Abby in her bedroom and waking up still needs to be filmed and also a scene where Abby and Ella go to the common room together.

We edited the film using iMovie on Georgia's Mac computer. This is a very rough draft and there is still a lot of tweaking that needs to be done.