Wednesday 11 March 2015
Evaluation question 1.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Evaluation: Question 4
History of the Teen Genre:
The teen movie came of age in 50's America, not long after the concept of the teenager was born. The idea of an intermediate stage between childhood and adulthood, with its own peculiar characteristics. Therefore, teen movies are usually created for teenagers at the age between 15-18 because of the plots and twists based on a teenagers social interest. For example, both the sub-genres: Youth drama and High school drama focus on a teenagers lifestyle in different perspectives. This is also proven by the common stereotypes of teenagers being 'irresponsible' and 'brats' being conformed in each film. However, teen movies are also enjoyed by young adults who usually recollect events of the past.
The Gidget movies and Beach Party (1963) really developed and based with the mood of the 60s in mind, uniting music, comedy and romance with surf, Californian sun and skimpy bikinis. Much of the success of the teen movie lies in the fact that it intertwines fluidly with other genres. In the 70s, teens were subjected to horror such as the movie 'Carrie, 1976' , romance genre movie : 'Love Story, 1970', comedy 'National Lampoon's Animal House, 1978' and John Travolta musicals - 'Saturday Night Fever, 1977' and 'Grease, 1978'.
High-school comedies featuring the so-called Brat Pack were huge in the 80s - a prime example being The Breakfast Club (1985). These films introduced the conventional characters in a teen drama like the bitchy cheerleader, the uber-jock footballer and the bespectacled nerd.
Today, the teen movie remains in good health - considering the success of the High School Musical series and Superbad (2007); initially teen dramas were solely for teens only, as they could relate the most however as the genre has developed and become more popular it has gained a secondary audience of young adults and adults(people between 21-29) because they feel like they can reminisce about their teenage years when watching teen films.
EVALUATION: Question 2
...
Representation is how a mass media text choses to portray
someone or something.
Teen drama films can represent the same person in completely
different ways depending on the sub genre. Also the sub genres
specifically have certain groups they would usually represent. e.g high school dramas usually represent youths as free spirited and fun while youth dramas usually represent youths as hood rats and anti social.
The main social group we are representing in our title sequence is teenage/adolescent boys. We conform to the stereotype about black young teenage boys seen in teen dramas and wider media’s. They are costumed in tracksuits & hoods, one person is on a bike that some may assume to be stolen. This portrays a negative representation of young boys, although in the voice over Marcus says he just sees them as his group of ‘friends’ not a gang. Evaluation: Question 6
How to create sounds on Garage band
How to create titles in Motion
How to use Final Cut Pro 7
Evaluation question 7.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Friday 6 March 2015
Final product.
After receiving Dan's advice and one of the technicians, who also agreed that the title being towards the end of the film will be more conventional. We were debating against moving the title and were not willing to because of the specific soundtrack we had for it - which we all approved of. However, after thinking it through carefully we decided to move the title towards the time before Marcus meets his best friend Elijah. This was advised by Dan because he thought it helped emphasise on the title and films purpose. Whilst moving the title we had to adjust the credit names again and fix the transitions made until we were finally finished at 12:30 which was before the actual deadline at 4pm.
Overall, we think our footage is simple and matches the Youth Drama we were aiming for. With short timing we found audio to help the audience understand our footage more, and without it our footage wouldn't have been good enough.
Feedback on Final Product
Throughout the footage Eric made comments about how he the footage was really good. He mentioned the characters voice was deep and it sounded as if he was 'depressed' we took this as a positive feedback as we weren't aiming for the character to be joyous. Also, upon seeing the group of boys who looked like they were up to no good Eric said 'I would walk the other way' which again we took it positively - as we wanted to show Marcus's friends to be a bad influence on him. Overall, he didn't really have any negative feedback for our footage and really loved the title.
Dans Feedback - Final
Since Dan last saw our footage, we added narration and voice over. We showed Dan our footage one more time and he mentioned that there has been lots of improvement since the last time he saw it. We have our title at the front because its animation fits in really well with the music. However, he criticised the positioning of our title and said that it would be better if we moved it further down the title sequence, as having it nearer to the front is unconventional. But, Dan said it wasn't necessary for us to move the title and it was up to us.
Final lesson for footage.
For this lesson we added all the audio, which consisted of Marcus's mother shouting and Marcus's voice over about his lifestyle. Due to the audio being last minute, it was hard finding voices, and the the audio has background noise which makes it less clear. However, since it was last minute we think the audio is good enough for our footage and matches the Youth Drama style.
Also, we had a problem with our font 'impact label' disappearing from out footage, so we had to download it again and add it back to our footage. We had to make sure the titles were inside the image+wireframe so it would be visible for the cinema screening.
Lastly, we watched our video all over again when it was done and fixed some shots by either shortening it and added transitions to make the footage better.
Blogging health check 3.
Hi
Good blog at the moment – 16/A grade. Well done on getting feedback, identifying a problem and proposing a solution.
Main thing missing as far as I can see is discussion of edting skills developed. What have you learnt about editing so far? What skills have you developed? Can you explain your use of specific filters or transitions or any other technical skills – you can illustrate this with videos or screen grabs. Imagine you are explaining to me everything that you’ve learnt about editing so far. If you wish to do this as a group blog, the other members of the group blogging need to decide what they are doing – writing blogs on music? Disussing the editing in another part of the film etc.
Dan
Response to audience feedback
Another member of our class - Daniel looked at our rough cut 2 and said that he felt the shots were too long (which is also what dan said previously) so for our final piece we will shorten all the shots. he also said he felt it was slightly pointless, he didn't understand the point of Marcus walking around the location.
- we have decided to add a narration to our film to give it a sense of purpose and make the objective of Marcus obvious
On wednesday 4th Rebecca said she really liked our choice of font and thinks that it really fitted with the genre well, she thinks the music does the same and creates a sense of crime and movement with its fast pace.
Thursday 5 March 2015
Rebecca's lesson.
We downloaded the font 'impact label' and added it onto our titles, and reduced some titles as Dan mentioned we had too many. Also, we were sorting out whether we wanted our titles to be white or black but ended up opting for white as we believed it stood out the most. Also, we needed a sound effect of a door slamming to help reflect on the character Marcus's annoyance. So we went on YouTube and searched for door slamming effects until we found the perfect one that matched our footage.
Production Diary: Thursday 5th March
After receiving feedback during rough cut 2 where we were told to shorten footage due to excess material and prolonged scenes, we change the layout of the footage and cut extended footage from the clips and changed some of the music due to one being better than the other due to the sub-genre of the movie; this was the way we opted to apply the finishing touches to our footage.
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| Editing |
Response to rough cut feedback.
After receiving feedback from Dan on our rough cut, he made us understand our footage doesn't really have a purpose and only shows a boy walking without a clear introduction of him. After watching the footage again, I believe Dan has a point so therefore my group and I have decided to add our original idea back to the footage. Our original idea involves the character Marcus's mother shouting at him which causes him to leave the house in anger. Also, a new idea we have thought is a voice over of the character Marcus so it gives the audience an insight of his personality and lifestyle.
We also received feedback from Daniel (group 34) who mentioned our scenes are too long, I agree with this and suggested we cut of the cigarette scene. I've chosen this particular scene because the cigarette packet isn't really visible and you can't see the interaction between the shopkeeper and Marcus, also the shot was a bit shaky. Daniel also mentioned he didn't understand the relationship between the character Marcus and Elijah - this will be established through the voice over of Marcus.
Wednesday 4 March 2015
Blogging Health Check 3
Grade A = Mark: 17
53 posts at health check 3. Again, blog is looking great with lots of detail around what you've been doing in class. I can't find your reflection on the rough cut feedback that you got from Dan - I can see his video giving you the feedback but I need to see a post where you've reflected on this and then acknowledged what you are going to do to make the changes.
Aside from this - it's looking great. Well done.
53 posts at health check 3. Again, blog is looking great with lots of detail around what you've been doing in class. I can't find your reflection on the rough cut feedback that you got from Dan - I can see his video giving you the feedback but I need to see a post where you've reflected on this and then acknowledged what you are going to do to make the changes.
Aside from this - it's looking great. Well done.
Rebecca's Feedback to footage.
Rebecca watched our film and suggested that we move our titles into the wide frame as the credits would not be included on a cinema screen if they were positioned how they were. She also said that we should remove our names off the credits if it appears more than once and make sure we replace them with other names, which we can use from films like Kidulthood. This is to ensure that no names appear more than once as it looks unprofessional.
Also, there was a disagreement regarding the music choice for the title sequence and entire footage. So we decided to let Rebecca know about this, and after listening to both the musics she decided it was fine the way it was. This was because the music for the footage matches the Youth Drama film and suggests something will happen like a crime scene, whereas the title sequence music being played during the footage will not have the same effect. This helped us come to a decision and leave the music how it is.
Response to Rough Cut 2 Feedback
Dan said that our footage is meaningless as it does not make sense and is so long. We decided to follow up an idea that we initially thought of but didn't go along with - We are going to add a voice over of Marcus's mother telling him off so that viewers understand that Marcus left the house because he was annoyed with his mother.
We also want to add a voice narration while Marcus is walking so that the viewers get told a story of what they are watching about, as just watching a boy walking can be very tedious.
A member of our class, Daniel from Group 34 also gave feedback about our film - He too said that our footage drags on and to remove the scene where Marcus buys a cigarette as it is very ambiguous and the viewers can't really tell whats in his hand. He also said that he did not understand what was going on between Marcus and Elijah, therefore we decided to add on a narrative voice to dictate the story.
We also want to add a voice narration while Marcus is walking so that the viewers get told a story of what they are watching about, as just watching a boy walking can be very tedious.
A member of our class, Daniel from Group 34 also gave feedback about our film - He too said that our footage drags on and to remove the scene where Marcus buys a cigarette as it is very ambiguous and the viewers can't really tell whats in his hand. He also said that he did not understand what was going on between Marcus and Elijah, therefore we decided to add on a narrative voice to dictate the story.
Self Evaluation
I have contributed mostly to the filming process. We used the estate I live in as our location, which is Kingsmead estate in Hackney, I suggested this location as I know it well, it is very symmetrical and it has very liner mise en scene, so i thought this would be a good shot visually.
I felt like this is a strength in our title sequence as it fit our sub genre (which is youth drama) well as it is a stereotypical east London estate which is mainly populated by youths, and the set alone could create the sense of grimy council estate london.
I also contributed with the casting choice, my uncle is the actor who plays Marcus. I thought he was a good casting choice as he fits the stereotypical assumption of bad youths today.
i think the sound that is playing during the production companies should be played during the narrative instead of the production companies as it reflects the atmosphere of title sequence better than the current one we have playing over the narrative.
I felt like this is a strength in our title sequence as it fit our sub genre (which is youth drama) well as it is a stereotypical east London estate which is mainly populated by youths, and the set alone could create the sense of grimy council estate london.
I also contributed with the casting choice, my uncle is the actor who plays Marcus. I thought he was a good casting choice as he fits the stereotypical assumption of bad youths today.
i think the sound that is playing during the production companies should be played during the narrative instead of the production companies as it reflects the atmosphere of title sequence better than the current one we have playing over the narrative.
Contribution
My contributions to the group were mainly to do with the plan and the design of our final product and recording the beginning of our film. Although Zahed was the person who physically edited the titles and music during the editing lessons, I contributed to it by suggesting ideas and helping with the decisions of its music, fonts, positions and styles to help it adapt to the theme of our youth drama.
Monday 2 March 2015
Response to Rough Cut feedback
After being given feedback from Dan and a peer from our class (Daniel) on the rough cuts, my response to the feedback would be that I have to shorten some of the footage due to the cap of the footage having to be 2 minutes exactly. Furthermore, I have fixed footage that appeared not to be exactly in-line the way it was suppose to be, as well as the fixing the music after Dan said it was not consecutively put as there were gaps in-between.
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