Evaluation Questions

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 the product?

7. Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Rough Cut Deadline

As we had a week off college, the deadline has been moved to Monday 2nd of March. We feel in a confortable position to say that we can finish our roughcut by then. We finished filming on the 25th of February and have already got our sequence into place. All we need to do is cut down some of our sequence to make it fit to the requirements, which is two minutes long, and add our ident and place in where the titles are going to be.
We had problems with filming which means that we were worried about reaching th deadline for the rough cut, however, we now feel that we are going to be fine for the deadline and do our best to make the rough cut to a good standard.

Film Names

We are only just starting to discuss film names as it is getting to that time when we need to think of what the film title is going to be so we can include this is on our sequence.

Here is some names that we thought up:

• White Wednesday
• Sad Man
• Faze
• All Alone
• Oblivious

More Font Research

For our titles we decided to use a dull font, which has hardly any effects on it. A bold font which puts accross the conventions of a social realism. Here is just a few that i saw and thought would look good combined with our sequence.

We have not yet decided on any specific font, but we have decided to the charcateristics of the font, being bold and dull.

Shot List

We decided to change our shot list as there was problems with our planning of filming. As we filmed later then we should have, we had to shorten the sequence to fit it into the time we had to film. At first we were dissappointed that we had to shorten the sequence, however, thinking about it more and more, we realised this would be a benefit for our sequence. It would be more conventional to use this shortened sequence.

New shot list:

• Male character asleep on the floor with a blanket over him. Different shot types, side angles, eye level and aerial views. This is to show where the male is and the different angles of him.
• The male character is being waken by an alarm/phone call on his phone which is by his side, along with some needles and syringes. The eye level shot is used to show the male moving and doing what he does every morning.
• The male character lays back down and snoozes for a few minutes (still at eye level)
• The camera then moves to infront of the character and shows him putting on his t-shirt.
• Then the camera moves to the back of the character and watches him from behind as it is suggested that he injects himself with something, trying to make the spectator assume it is heroin.
• At the same angle, the character falls onto his bed slowly and we watch him as his face relaxes.
• We then see the male arise again and get ready to leave his home. We watch him dress and put his shoes on. The camera is watching him from the side.
• Then the camera is watching the male walk through his front door and down the path with him turning and the camera following.

This is then the end of the sequence which runs on for about 2 minutes and is dragged out to see the male wake and rise like a normal day which everybody goes through. The male was origionally going to be a lower class male, but we had problems with finding somewhere to film to portay this, so we thought about it and realised that social realism can be of any class representation. We decided to represent the working/middle class.

Film Fonts

Existing Film title fonts.

We have been researching what fonts to use for our titles in our sequence. We were lookin at media products that already exist and found the type of fonts they use in their sequence. we looked at 'This is England' and 'Sweet sixteen'.

Filming Problems

Unfortunately we could not film on the Monday, when we had initially planned to film as our group did not pick up the camera, therefore corrupting the time of filming. Due to this, we had to film the week we came back to college. This is was also a problem as there was only two members of the group available to film as the other two were absent from college. This was an inconvenience because it was harder to film and decide on things with only two of us. We had to shorten the film opening sequence as we did not have enough time to film the second half of the sequence.

Production Example

Here is an example of the call sheet that we need to start producing our film sequence. The call sheet tells us all the information we need to know about the production. For example, contact details of people, locations and maps, general things we need or should know, like where the nearest a&e is.

Lighting

We have decided to use naturalistic lighting as this is one of the main convention of a social realism film. These are some examples of natural lighting in existing films,




We will also be using natural lighting such as this.
we are using natural lighting because of the effect it gives, the clip seems like a documentary, very realistic and un-edited. We are using this as we want our scene to be portrayed as real life, natural lighting will give us this effect.

Titles

We come up with a few titles to go across the bottom of the screen whilst the sequence is running.

Karl Lambourne
Sam Perry
Pia Rolfe
Cassie Barker
Niall Folbigg
Rachel Chaplin

These are going to represent people who were involved in the making of the film. The titles will last about 1 minute, and then the opening sequence will last roughly another minute.

Contributor Release Form

We did a contributor release for for the actor (Sam) to give his consent of using his image in our sequence. Real film producers use these to getpermission of people starring in the film to stop anyone from causing distress about using their image. We are using these slips to make our production more professional and show that we are capable of planning in depth and thinking about every possiblity.

Call Sheet

We have decided to film at Cassie's House in Sawston. We will collect the camera from college on Wednesday 18th between 12 and 1.
Filming on Monday 23rd February at 1pm.
First location is Cassie's house, second location is in the street and the other locations is Boots in the local village.

Production contacts:
Camerawork: Karl
Actor: Sam
Directors: Cassie & Pia

We all have each others contact details.

This is the location of where we are going to film. Also on the map it shows where Addenbrooks hospital is.

Emergencies:
In an emergency we will contact the police. The nearest A&E is Addenbrooks in Cambridge, just across the road from long road.

Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Hills Road Cambridge

CB2 0QQ

Test Footage*

We went out and did some test footage to show what sort of filming we will do and how we will do it. We acted out some of the shots included in our sequence and filmed them to see what they would look like.

We then filtered the video to make this more effective in the sense of social realism.
We used the filter Image control; desaturate. This drains out the colour from our shots and makes it look more like a social realist drama.

Target Audience

The target audience depends on the way the film is constructed and the content. The genre of social realism has its own independence. Considering our opening is based on social realism our target audience is probably adults no younger than 17. Then content of our social realism would be too dull for a teenage audience. Also it might be suitable for older viewers but I don't think it would be a mainstream production.

Locations

We initially planned to film in the media studio but due to it being vandalised not too long ago, we are not allowed to use this for various health and safety reasons. Also, as we are doing a social realist, using a real bed and bedroom for the sequence would be a better option to use. This also means taking the camera and equipment out of college. We are just going to use somebodys ordinary bedroom.

Risk Assessment

Risks that could be avoided:

• Dropping of the camera. This could be avoided by using the equipment properly and making sure the group is handling the equipment with care.

• Tripping over. This could be unexpected but could be avoided by watching where one is walking.




• Being careful outside of college. Being aware of others around you and damaging the environment or disturbing natural causes.


• Being aware of traffic and pedestrians. Making sure that people are careful of roads etc.




• Making sure that our filming does not interupt anybody else or cause any harm.


• Damage of equipment. Equipment should be handled with care.

• Icy paths may be a hazard as somebody may slip over on it and hurt themselves. To avoid this, members of the group should be aware of the weather conditions and be prepared to look out for the icy paths or roads.
  

Dialogue And Sounds

We have decided not to have any dialogue in our sequence as we feel this would ruin the convention of a social realism drama. We thought that we would have just diagetic sounds and emphasis them to show people what sort of sounds they miss out on everyday. People tend to get on with life and do not notice any sounds that occur all the time around them. We feel that emphasizing these, would help the spectator to realize what sounds occur everyday.

Blog Feeddback

Positives:

• Lots of pictures for research e.g Props and locations.
  
• Lots of analysis
  
• Very descriptive
• Detailed mood board
• Good analysis of all the genres
• Original ident
• Good prop list
• Good analysis on different examples of their chosen genre.

Improvements:

• Pictures on costumes
• More connotations from images rather than actualy pictures i.e colours etc.
• Add test footage
• More information on the mood board

How will you respond to it?
We will respond to the feedback as soon as possible as it could improve our blog a lot. The feedback is helpful as it highlights the things that we have done wrong or could suggest. We will change the things that other people have thought we should add. This will include adding more pictures onto the posts to help others to get a proper view of how things are going to be. Costumes will be added shortly as this is the only thing we are missing, apart from test footage which is in the process of being added. The test footage is going to be updated onto the blog as soon as possible.

Why is it essential to get feedback?
Feedback is important in the process as it gives us the information we need to improve our performance and get the best possible marks. Feedback shows us what we are missing out and gives us the chance to add it to the blog. Feedback is helpful and also gives us criticisms so we can improve or find out what we are doing wrong.

How does your blog compare to the thriller blog?
Our blog is very similar to our thriller blog as we have included everything we need and have everything up to date. This blog has a lot more detail in it as this is our second time round and are expected to be better. Hopefully, being up to date will carry on throughout the project.

Costumes

We don't really have a theme for costumes, we thought we would just use casual, everyday clothing. As the genre is social realism we gave our characters a naturalistic look.
A casual look would be something along the lines of jeans a top and a jacket.

This is some shots of mise-en-scene and camerawork:

There is a variety of shots including eye level shots, aerial view shots and over the shoulder shots. These will all combine in our sequence toshow different views and angles of the main character.