Evaluation of Final Draft

We made a video using pictures with a voice-over to complete our evaluation. We did this as it made us feel more comfortable talking for a length of time, and also meant that we got to experiment with different technologies and softwares. These are the questions we answered:

1.    In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? 
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, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Final Draft

Here is our final draft of our AS Media Studies Film Opening for our fictional film 'What About Kasey?'.

Altercations for Final Draft

In our final draft of our film opening, we changed several things to make it more appropriate and to improve it's continuity and effects. Many of these changes simply include lengthening scenes. However, in a few cases, we had to add in different shots; in response to the feedback we received, we particularly made sure to emphasise the interaction between the characters of Kasey and Callum. The significance of the moment is now far more apparent.

In addition, we emphasised more of the diagetic sounds of the opening sequence, in order to make it less like a music video. Another technical change we made was changing the opening credits background from black to white, which made it seem more professional. The non-diagetic background music has also been moved in order to fit the shots more appropriately.

Finally, we included our company ident at the beginning of the film opening, which gave it a more professional feel to it.

Target Audience

 The reason why I have chosen a picture of Summit Entertainment is because I think people who enjoy films Distributed by Summit Entertainment would enjoy our film. This is partially due to the fact that Summit have distributed films such as 'The Perks of Being a Wallflower'

We believe that audiences who enjoyed Perks would also enjoy 'What About Kasey' as they both focus on dysfunctional families, and the issues teenagers may face during their adolescent years, whilst still having a romantic side-story. Perks was produced by Mr. Mudd, a film company founded by Lianne Halfon, John Malkovitch, and Russell Smith. Mr. Mudd have produced three well known teenage films: 'The Perks of Being a Wallflower', 'Ghost World', and 'Juno'. As all of these films are quite similar style of cinema to 'What About Kasey' it is likely that fans of Mr. Mudd productions would enjoy our product.

 

The reason why I have chosen a picture of a group of teenages, is because our target age group would be teenagers, and young adults. This is partially because the way that we have filmed the opening of our movie is quite similar to many other Young Aduly movies. In addition, we would have our film classified as a 15.

Therefore people wanting to watch our film would have to be fifteen or over, due to the content of the entire film.

 

Draft of Film Opening

Teachers Feedback:

1)Well done- lots of good continuity editing throughout- those that I showed it to thought it was in no way confusing, and that it held the viewer's attention.

2) You cut to the beat of your soundtrack effectively most of the time. There are one or two places where this could be even sharper- for example, when the guy leaves the house and throws his coat over his shoulder.

3)Some shots need to be held for a second or two longer. For example, both Blenheim shots, and the first shot near the end of the guy holding his foot on the railings.

4) Some people I showed this to thought it would work well to show what he is looking at on his phone when he wakes- they felt it would give us more of a clue to his character, his motivation, what he was planning for his day- for example, if it was a plan to go somewhere with friends, or a date, or some arrangement, seeing Kasey might set up a situation when the Equilibrium (of his life prior to meeting Kasey) is unsettled/ disturbed. Could this work? Add anything? Or do you want to make a case for purposefully not showing the audience?

5) Nice framing- with Blenheim at start and end, but almost everyone felt they needed to be held for seconds longer.

6) Great font and choice of soundtrack. Were you intending voiceover? It works without.

7) Does the moment that they meet need to be more dramatic? Close-up of his face, and hers looking in other direction. It just feels like a bit of an anticlimactic moment with the series of long and mid distance shots you are using at the moment.

Soundtrack

For our opening, we decided to play a background song for the majority of the film opening, instead of diagetic sounds. The song we chose to use was 'Lovely Cup' by Grouplove.

We thought this song was appropriate, as it is upbeat but has a very "teenage" feel to it - it's the sort of song that is quite hard to actively dislike. However, in order to obtain permission to use the song in our video, we had to email Atlantic Records, and explain that we wanted to use the song, and why we wanted to use it. Luckily they were very accommodating, and granted us permission to use the song in our film opening.

Editing

We started editing the footage before we shot the morning sequence of 'Callum'. As a group, none of us were particularly familiar with Macs and their software, but we used iMovie to edit our film opening and managed to pick up the basics relatively quickly. We had a general idea of what we wanted it to look like from our story board, so we used that to put the clips together in the order we thought looked best. Once they were together it became obvious that some needed to be shorter, longer or got rid of completely. We put together the Blenheim shots and Kasey's morning shots with the song Lovely Cup by Grouplove. We made a note of where we wanted to put in footage of Callum's morning for when we had finished our filming.

Once we had our shots of Callum in the morning, the film opening started to look how we initially imagined it to. We put in the shots in the middle of what we originally had. Switching between the two characters showed that they were getting ready at the same time, this is a bit of background for when they cross paths in Blenheim. After we had successfully got the basic frame of the film opening, we could start to change specifics such as the transaction between shots and the diagetic sound we wanted to use, this included the door slam and water when Kasey is washing her face.

We then started to plan our credits, we came up with the fonts and colours we wanted to use and then input a few credits. We still need to work on improving our credits. We can do this by watching some film openings from the same genre and taking note of how they appear on the screen and the timings.

Storyboard and Filming

Here is the storyboard for our film opening:

For our film opening, we filmed in Oxford and Woodstock, particularly using Grace's house, Ella's house, and Blenheim Palace. We used Grace's house for the house belonging to the boy, due to the fact that it was easier for us to set it up to look more masculine. We used Ella's house to film the sequence showing the girl, and decorated her room to emphasise Kasey's feminine side in the opening of the film. Blenheim Palace is situated very near Ella's house, and we went there to shoot all of the exterior shots. Although the weather was quite dull, it was easy to get some very beautiful shots of the Palace and the lake, as the situation is stunning. It also has a public footpath, which seemed appropriate for the two characters chance meeting; it seemed reasonable enough that two people would cross paths in such a place, making the film opening more believable.

Originally we were going to film in South Parks, in Oxford. However, Blenheim was easier to access, and had more beautiful scenery, and we thought it would look nicer in the film, and worked better with the storyline. On the first day of filming, we completed all of the exterior shooting, in order to have continuity for the weather, and because it was a good opportunity for us to get to know the actors better.

Later that week, we met up again in order to film the shots of Laura (playing 'Kasey') getting ready in the morning. We dressed our set to make it reflect Kasey's character traits a bit better. We ensured Laura wore the same clothes and had her hair the same way, for continuity. We filmed many different short and long shots of Laura, testing out different angles ra to see what would work best.

The next week we filmed all of Joe's parts in Oxford. As Joe is playing Callum, and was meant to be represented as a typical teenage boy, we thought it would be most appropriate to use Grace's half brother's room. We dressed the set to make it seem like it was a 17 year old boy's room, and because we had already filmed Kasey's morning shots, we had a better idea of what footage we wanted. We knew we wanted to switch between the two characters as they were getting ready to show it was happening at the same time, so we ensured we filmed relatively similar shots. Like we did with Laura, we asked Joe to wear the same clothes so we could make it look as if they were on the same day.

Casting

When coming up with our characters, we originally decided we wanted our friends Kasey Butler and Callum Morris to play our two main characters, which was how we named the characters. This was due to the fact that their image fit our expectations how we imagined the two characters to look.

However, when it came down to actually filming, it proved very difficult to get both Kasey and Callum together at the same time as they both had very busy schedules. In order to still continue with out project, we had to recast our characters. Although not our original choice of actors, Laura Hanley and Joe Portway were chosen to play the parts of Kasey and Callum.

We decided to keep Kasey Butler and Callum Morris as our character names. This was because we knew they were normal teenage names and also it ended up creating an identity for the characters, rather than the actors and the characters being the same. In addition, it makes our appear more professional as it is extremely rare that the character has the same name as the actor.