Evaluation question 1.

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

Evaluation question 2.

How does your media product present particular social groups?

   

Evaluation question 3.

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 5.

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?

 

FINISHED

We completed our film today

                     

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

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.

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. 

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.

Rough cut 2 feedback.

Dan mentioned our footage doesn't really have a purpose and only shows a boy walking. So, we have decided to add audio of the character Marcus's mum shouting at him then. This goes with our footage because then we see Marcus putting on his headphones - blocking her out. Also, during the end when the two characters Marcus and Elijah meet there will be dialogue between the two characters instead of them spudding and walking away. 

We are also thinking about adding a voice over narration so the purpose and the characters are understood better in the film. 

Influence website screenshots.

We wanted the website to be simple and not too amateur. We added some screenshots from the footage such as the casting crew and scenery. Also, we made our own blog on the website which looks really similar to our actual blog. We added our twitter on it so it is easy for people to follow and look at our tweets. 

...

Feedback from class member.

Daniel from group 34:

He mentioned that the title of the film was really nice and the film was good overall. However, there were many improvements he suggested we do such as:

• Shorten some of the shots as they drag on too much
• Increase the pace of the editing so it looks better
• He wasn't sure why the last scene took place and doesn't understand what is going on between the two boys. 
• He didn't like the fact that the music wasn't playing. 

We have decided to cut off some scenes - the scene we have chosen is when the character goes inside the shop to buy a cigarette packet, this is because we don't think it's necessary and doesn't really go with the plot of the film. Also, we cut down the parts when he was walking as we thought it was too much. 

Also, the reason the music wasn't playing is because we're still working on it because of the feedback we got from Dan last time.