Robins Evaluation

1)Our media piece develops and challenges forms and conventions of real media products in many different ways. For example the comedy aspects that we have used in our piece are mostly adaptions of existing pieces of comedy. We also have included an element of stupidity in our piece and this is also an adaption on the type of stupidity used in teen comedies .A good example of the kind of stupidity that i am talking about would be FOGUL/Mclovin from 'superbad',below I have a clip which shows him entering the room and saying a short line,this clip immediately shows the audience what type of character fogul is,and his voice is particularly interesting as we modelled Jack's character in our piece on this type of voice as it appears entertaining/funny to our target audience.

We also tried to incorporate the kidnapping scene from movies such as 'The Hangover' as we felt we could play on the funny side of friends kidnapping another friend for fun. We then decided to change this and show some hostility towards FOGUL from Harry, we modelled this on the obvious tension there is between Seth and Mclovin in 'superbad'.
We found it very difficult to incorporate lots of comedy into two minutes of film as the current genre of teen comedy usually has lots of comedy spread out across the whole film. Much of our opening was based on setting up the rest of film as we felt this genre requires a good storyline to develop at the start to set up the opportunities for comedy in a piece.
The main development and challenges we made to existing media was probably they way we used and manipulated our music track 'Mysterious Girl'. This track didn't have any particular relevance to the piece but we thought we could use it whilst Fogul was walking to add a comical twist to our piece that isn't usually used in most media concepts and genres. We decided after adding the track to further our development into the teen comedy genre by trying to play the track throughout the whole two minutes. This is not a common feature in current media productions but we felt that by trying this it would challenge current media and develop our piece. After trying to play it throughout the whole piece we decided it was too distracting so we would experiment with fading the music out to a lower volume whilst talking was happening then fading it in to a higher volume whilst Jack/FOGUL was walking. Below if you look at the two pictures you will see a small yellow line heading from left to right this is the original sound/talking and you can see that it goes up and down in places and this is where we have changed the volume. Below the first picture you will see a second picture which shows the soundtrack 'Mysterious Girl'. If you look again down to the yellow line you will notice diagonal changes which show it fading in and out, this was the only way we could challenge other pieces of media by playing continuous music as it was important to make it quieter at certain points so that it did not distract. I felt that during the planning stage we were able to learn a lot from pieces of existing media such as superbad,the type of comedy and characters in this film had a great deal of influence on our piece. The films we took inspiration from were all massively successful so we definitely created a challenge for ourselves here.

2) Our media product represents a certain type of social group,our piece is based on a group of friends that are not massively popular but are not of the massively geeky,i guess you could say they are the misfits or inbetweeners.I think we tried to portray them as outsiders trying to worm there way into popularity.I guess its kind of funny that you have two friends who don't get along well,but haven't got many other choices when it comes to friends.This social group that we have chosen is very common,in fact there are a few existing products such as 'the inbetweeners'.Below i have included a video clip that expands on this, this clip from the movie 'role models' shows a couple of friends,this is a clip from the opening scene and establishes 'wheeler' as a kind dominant figure in the friendship and this shows him to be arrogant as he is kind of joking around and being disgusting towards his friend.This is the kind of friendship we based our characters on,inbetweeners i guess you could say wasters.So basically all in all our media product definitely represents a certain type of group of friends you can find in most social areas such as schools,workplaces ect.If we had more time i think we could look into sexual and ethnic diversity within our peice as we did not think of this during planning

3) I think our type of project could fit into many institutions that could want to produce it.I think a major factor in this would be money/actors.I mean with these type of teen comedy most of the story lines are along the same type of lines.I think there is only a small difference between weather a production in this genre is picked up by a big time company like FOX or even a small time company like the Apatow company which is a small company owned by the director of superbad Judd Apatow. As these types of films are common i would say another major factor is if there are any well known actors appearing in your piece. Many of these teen comedy's are usually started by smaller company's then as popularity and interested goes picked up by the bigger company's such as fox and paramount.I know it may not be a comedy but a good example of this would be paranormal activity which was a low budget film which was original posted on the Internet then picked up by a bigger company and produced into a big cinema hit.So i definitely think if we was to continue on with our piece it would have to involve looking for small time investment and then promoting it and drumming up interest until a larger company came along.

4)I think the audience for our project would definitely have to be teens aged 12-18,maybe even expanding into the early 20s. The type of comedy involved in these type of films is definitely not everybodys cup of tea and it is definitely best suited to the age group of the actors starring in the piece as the audience can usually relate to the storyline and type of comedy used in the piece. I think in choosing the target audience of teens is a bold choice as it isn't a massively wide genre and you have to be careful and selective with which type of comedy and material you use.

Our target audience is based on the average teen like the ones in the picture below,they wear average clothes,are sporty,and are probably at school or college.Fortunately for us most teens fit into this bracket,but the two guys below are a good example of our target audience. I think there could be a possibility of expanding our target audience into the younger adult bracket but this would definitely be dependant on what type of comedy we included

5) We did many things to attract our audience such as costumes,voices,music, and lines.With regards to costumes i would have to say Jacks was definitely the most appealing to our target audience which is how we planned it to be his glasses make him look geeky,but his clothes made him look as if he was trying to dress 'cool'.Another attraction would have to be the music.One of the main reasons we decided to play it from the start was to immediately capture our audiences attention.As it is a bright joy full piece of music it immediately captures the audience and set the tone. A way we address the audience is by using specific types of dialogue and accents as influenced by the fogul/mclovin character in superbad which i think is a genius character,so we decided to use this genius and adapt it into which is definitely appealing to our target audience.Making Jack the first character to appear was also a desision we made as he is suppose to be the funny 'geek' character and this was the first thing we wanted the audience to see. W e desperately tried to make Jacks character funny as this would be a way to grip the audience and make them intriuged.We choose to add the section at the end where fogul says 'harry ill get my revenge' this nicely sets up the rest of the film and leaves you numerous possibilitys,it was also intended to hook the audience and make them intrigued to watch the rest of the film.

6) I have learnt a great deal about a vast variety of technological processes throughout this project. I would have to saying the biggest learning curve for me was loading our film into the computer,this took a great deal of our time up as we encountered numerous system and program errors.Errors such as low memory and not having the correct codex installed interfered with our timeplan and prevented us from progressing,however we overcame this by spending lots of our own time and working with the school technicians.This thought me a great deal about the program 'adobe premier elements' and will have improved my ability to use this program in the future. I felt during this project i also started to get to grips with the camera properly and found that i was able to hold a much steadier shot than in my preliminary task,and i also found that i had come to grips with using the zoom feature.Another technological aspect of using the camera was my ability to frame a shot and include everything i wanted to be in it.
We found that when filming on our first attempt we commited many continuity errors.We found that the film will be very difficult to edit with so many errors so we learnt that it was better to re-film.I also found that due to this i had developed an understanding of just how much time,effort,and work goes into the planning and production of a film. The editing process taught me quite a lot of things regarding file types and using the tools in premier elements succesfully.I learnt that certain programs will only open certain file types.This was one of the problems we encountered in premier elements as it would not import our file types and we had to convert them to .wmv files.I also had to do this with clips and videos to get them uploaded to blogger.With the pictures i was originally tring to upload bitmap images or .bmp,i then realised this file type was not supported by blogger and to correct this i decided to load the images up into paint then save them as a jpeg or .jpg,with the videos files i had to covert them from flv files to avi files as avi is a supported format by blogger.Below i included some screenshoted images to show how i converted the files.This image shows me saving the file of a picture as a jpeg.The picture below that shows me using the file converting software that i downloaded to convert video files.

I also learnt lots of technological aspects of using a peice of music such as learning when to use it what types and how to import it. During the diting process i had to cut the music up into different pieces, move it up and down the timeline, play with the volume and i also learnt how to succesfully fade music in and out.
The editing process took a long time as we had to make sure the titles and effects were in exactly the right place,and at some times this is even meant placing it a t the correct 10th of a second.The fact that our film took so long to produce and edit made me realie exactly why other films take months and in some cases years to produce,i fugure this si down to partly the amount of technology such as editing,sound effects,and special effects as these things take time to plan and execute succesfully.


7) This is a very intresting question.I have learnt so much during this project. I think that due to the sheer duration of time we had to complete it i had a lot of time to perfect things and learn lots of media related information and skills.
Since the preliminary task i have developed many skills especially with the camera, ibelieve that my camera knowledge and ability to use is a lot better than it was in the preliminary task.
I also believe that my preperation work is a lot better than in the preliminary task as i planned and reasearched into the work of existing directors and there respected films.
I have found that i also learnt during this task how to correctly incorperate a vast variety of camera angles into my piece,i found this difficult during the preliminary task but definitely think i have improved a lot on camera angles.
I also learnt how to plan and film a peice correctly and effectively to avoid numerous continiuty errors,i learnt you can doing this by planning and using information such as the weather to your advantage,i also learnt that even a simple thing such as booking out a filming location can help to avoid these errors,this was osmething i didnt do in the preliminary task but did do in the main task.
I have also learnt how to effectively use credits and how to posisition them correctly on the screen,in the preliminary task i didnt use credits and i also didnt use text on the screen effectively,but i feel that i developed skills during the editing process that enabled us to succesfully place credits and display them on the screen and also how to space and time there appearance on the screen.
I also think that my knowledge of scripting and writing of films has improved.As we didnt have a lot of time in the preliminary task there wasnt a lot of time to edit,create and develop my work.During the main task we numerously edit and re-wrote parts of our opening and i think this combined with my reasearch helped to broaden my knowledge on how to succesfully develop a film. Below is a clip from the film 'the hangover' this is a clip that i feel is a very well fimed and put together peice,and i also feel watching films like this broadened my knowledge on how to make a film or opening.This also shows how to peice clips from different locations and how to incorperate credits in to your peice, this piece also broadened my knowledge and massively helped me in improving my media work form the preliminary task.

Robin

Harry's Evaluation

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

Our media product defintely uses, develops and challenges forms of real media products. Throughout the process , we took inspiration from other media products for our piece. This helped a lot in developing our overall piece because we could look at the individual characters and the overall storyline and take small tips from voices, movements and the overall storyline.


One media product that we took a lot of inspiration in particular from the films 'The Hangover' and 'Superbad'. The inspiration for the character of Fogul came from McLovin. The name of the character was extremely similiar and helped with trying to think of a character name for our main character. For the character McLovin, we matched his mannerims as he acts like he is really cool and popular but in reality he really isn't and other people in the film do not like him secretly and we took inspiration from all of this for the character of Fogul. From the clip from Superbad above, it shows the introduction of the character of Fogul. His first line of 'Hey wass'up guys' is a line that we incorporated into our piece as we felt that that particular line resembled the character and would work especially well for our piece and we hoped that it would have the same effect on our audience as it did for Superbad's.

The kidnapping scene that we had in our piece was from watching 'The Hangover' as Doug was kidnapped in that movie and from watching that scene it helped us to film our kidnapping scene. The certain points in scenes that we watch make us think more about what we do in certain scenes. The 'evil' character that kidnapped Doug in 'The Hangover' was related to Harry in our piece when he kidnapped Fogul and trapped him in the toilets in the community lounge. Also in the kidnapping scene we got the motivation from the tension that was building between Seth and McLovin in 'Superbad'.

Another media product that has inspired us throughout the process is 'The Inbetweeners' which relates to our piece quite well. Their cast is mostly teenage and involves the geek with the cooler people which also relates to our piece. So throughout we have looked at different media products and took inspiration into what we have created for our own media product. It is really important for us to do this because so many different ideas can be generated from other media products.

In terms of already successful media products, I think that we have challenged them because even though we have took inspiration from several comedy pieces, we have added our own comedy values and ideas into the film as well as what inspired us from other comedy films like 'Superbad' and 'The Hangover'. So the comedy that we try to create is attempted to be better or at least challenge the comedy products that are already in the market and have been successful.

Developing our ideas over other media products was always going to be a huge challenge to fulfil as the films that we took inspiration from were very successful. One idea that we took into filming was the music that we chose and the effect that it would have on our audience. We chose 'Mysterious Girl' by Peter Andre and we decided to have this track as background music throughout the whole of the introduction. We thought that this would be effective because we felt that it would represent the main character of Fogul well and it also didnt really make too much sense which would add to the comedy value. Also normally the music would start at openings of a lot of media products, but would stop before the end in order for the characters to say their dialogue. There were certain parts where we made the music quieter so that dialogue could be spoken and it would still be effective hearing it quietly in the background rather than completely remove it, then start playing it again after the dialogue.

2.How does your media product represent particular social groups?

I think that social groups are an extremely significant part of our product. One social group that we include in our piece that also is in many successful media products is the 'geek' and 'cool' social groups. Throughout many media products, this becomes their evident social group. In our media piece, Fogul tries to represent one social group (cool) but really is the other (geek). This sort of transition between the two social groups creates a very comedic piece, especially for that character because he can act both of them and that creates humour. We took inspiration from other media products for inspiration on social groups like Role Models with Wheeler relating a cooler character and the kid that Danny works with would represent more of a geek. The relationship between the characters of cool and geek is what we wanted, but we wanted it to be a very negative relationship.

The character of Harry in our piece represents the social group of a bully. When he is first introduced to the audience, he is immediately seen as an aggressive, upsetting character who has an extremely short temper. He immediately snaps when Fogul turns up late and he immediately storms out and takes his frustration out on Fogul. I think the character of Harry displayed the anger and emotion well to make sure that the audience realised the social group that he belonged to. I think that the point where he does get kidnapped, the social group of the bully is realised fully.

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

As our media product was inspired by many comedy films like Superbad and The Hangover, I think that our type of product would be quite appealing to many media institutions. The downside for us in particular is that it we are not experienced and many media institutions would see it as a gamble to distribute our media product. An audience may not be completely interested in our piece because we are not well known and i think that a smaller institution would be more likely to distribute our media product. I think this because a bigger company would not want to take a gamble and if it fails for them then they could stand to lose a lot of money. I think that it would be more of an advantage for a smaller company because if it turns out to be a success then that would suit them well. Then if a bigger company sees the success that our film has generated, a bigger company would feel more comfortable about distributing our product and making it more of a success.

Also if it does not generate success, the smaller company would not be hugely affected as they would not be a big world-wide company and wouldnt stand to lose too much money. That is why I do not think a bigger company would distribute this as they would be condemned and other inexperienced media products would feel that they should have the same chance as we have.

4.Who would be the audience for your media product?

I think that the audience for our media product would be teenagers and adults who appreciate comedy films and find this type of comedy funny. We chose to do a comedy film and it needed to be appealing for people to want to watch on further. So it is important that we made the most of our characters with their voices and movement in such a short introduction so that people would be interested in watching on and see what happens after. I think that we would have quite a wide range of audience because it is clean humour and would probably appeal to teenagers and adults.

I think that our piece is quite limited in terms of the range of people that it would relate to as it is a very certain type of humour and some people will probably not find it that funny. We thought that our audience would have to be very specific and that the specific audience we have chosen would enjoy our media product more than others would. If we chose a wider range of audience, then a lot of older and younger people around the bracket that we have already chosen will possibly not enjoy it.

5.How did you attract/address your audience?

We knew that during the two minute introduction we have to want to make people watch on further and because of this, we tried to insert as much humour into the piece as possible so that they would want to do that. If our target audience is not wowed and impressed by the first two minutes of our media product, they will not want to watch any more. We made sure that we have managed to introduce the main character straight away and that we have introduced the storyline straight away so that the audience can immediately relate to what is happening. We have also attracted our audience by saying what inspired us to do this film. Our target audience would also like Superbad and The Hangover so saying that we have got big inspiration mainly from these two films would hopefully persuade people to watch our film in the hope that we challenge their media products. We also made a cliffhanger at the end of our film in order for people to want to watch on; because if we left it at a stand still then people wouldn't have the motivation to continue watching. Our last scene consisted of Fogul being released by Leeroy and saying that he will get his revenge. This is effective because people will want to know what Fogul will actually do to Leeroy further on in the film.
The costumes (especially for Fogul Nocklewodge) was extremely important for us to attract our audience. This added to our comedy value as the costume that Fogul wore was effective as it resembled the sort of character that we wanted to create. We wanted him to be like the character of Fogul from Superbad and act out the geeky character and his clothes matched that with big glasses and a striped shirt to also make him look like he attempted to look cool and that is the effect that we were trying to create for his character from the start.

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

Throughout this process I have learnt many different things about the technologies that we have used through constructing our media product. When we transferred the film from the camera to Premier Elements to edit, it was an extremely long process. We knew that certain scenes needed editing out and changing but we needed to be extremely intricate and careful with what we edited because if we couldnt edit or found problems it wouldn't look very good and there would be the prospect of having to re-film. Through the editing process, we also had to decide where to add in music, titles and special effects to add to the comedy in our piece. We had to carefully watch through the piece and decide where it would be most effective.
I also learnt that through the long amount of time that we edited our piece, it was actually no more than two minutes. Other films can go on for two and three hours and I know now why films take so many months and even years to complete to a high standard.
Another thing that I have learnt throughout this process is how vitally imporant the right camera angles are to a media piece. Often the use of angles makes the piece a lot better than the actual acting in the film. There also needs to be a big variety of camera angles used so that each scene can be used to its maximum effect through the camera angles that are used.
Finally, I have learnt that when filming, you have to be extremely careful with the situation of props and equipment so that there are no continuity errors. Often somebody would forget and maybe move an object and this would cause a problem because if the angle has changed and then it goes back to the previous angle, it would look different and would not make any sense whatsoever. Then we might have to try and edit it out but that might cause the scene to look very disjointed. The amount of care that is took in films is important because the slighest mistake that is not noticed will be fatal.

7. I have definitely learnt a lot from doing the main task from the preliminary task. I think that one of the major points that I learnt from the preliminary task was just taking more time and being more thorough with preparing the task. I also made sure that I spent more time on the lead up to filming as I discovered through the preliminary task that it was a very important part of the process and that I need to show what I wrote, what I researched and what I discovered through preparing my piece. Also in the preliminary task I didn't really research enough into other media products and this was one of the downfalls for a mainly unsuccessful preliminary task. I made sure that in my main task that I researched into a variety of media products and that I looked closely at the introduction to see what they did to make it have an effect on the audience so that unlike in my preliminary task, I took inspiration from films and tried to incorporate them into our film opening.

I also learnt a lot from my preliminary task about how a variety of camera angles is important to a media piece and that you need to be able to take plenty of shots of a scene to see which angle has the biggest effect and works the best on the audience. This was important because you want to be able to understand and feel emotionally attached to the story and if the angle that is chosen does not create that effect then the angle isnt right. In my preliminary task, I did not really take enough consideration in terms of varietising the angles and doing different angles as we thought immediately that the angles we have chosen were good. But after doing the main task, looking back at my preliminary task and looking at other successful media products, I believe that there were other angles that would have been more effective and would have got me a higher mark than what I actually got.

I also learnt from the process from starting my preliminary task that continuity errors are a major problem and a huge amount of care needs to be taken between scenes so that no problems occur throughout. In my preliminary task, I found some continuity errors after editing it on Premier Elements and by the time that this was discovered, there wasnt enough time for the group to go back and solve these mistakes as we left filming too late into the process. However in the main task we were a lot sharper and quicker with our targets without rushing them to be able to film earlier and when we edited our piece we were quite unhappy and disappointed because there were numerous continuity errors. The difference from the preliminary task to the main task which I learnt was that there was enough time to re-film and make our piece a lot better overall and eliminate all continuity errors. In a lot of cases, continity errors are not very noticeable and throughout editing our task, we had to look very closely at the location to make sure that everything was the same so that between scenes there was nothing that 'magically' changed.

Something that we added in the main task that we didnt in the preliminary task was music and that it could have a great effect on the piece if the music was correct and worked well within what was happening and what dialogue was spoken throughout the piece. For our main task we chose the track 'Mysterious Girl' by Peter Andre because our piece was a comedy and we thought that the randomness of the music would add to the comedy element and that the audience would find the difference between the actual film and the music that was played throughout it humorous. In our preliminary task, we did not think about music and when I look back at my preliminary task, I thought that a certain type of music would end up being effective and heightening my grade further. Another lesson that I have learnt is the volume and length at which the music should be played to make it effective. An example of this in my main task was when Fogul entered the community centre and dialogue was about to be spoken. The music up to this point was quite loud and was used to introduce the character to our target audience. Then because we wanted to hear dialogue between the characters, we died the music down to a lower volume so that it would still be heard, but the focus was on the characters instead of the music. Then after the dialogue was spoken, the volume of the music was turned back up.

There was a lot of deliberation in the group for when to add titles and how we should incorporate them. Because the opening of our piece was our main character walking towards the community centre, we felt that it would be most suitable for us to filter in the credits and we felt that the music would also make it effective and that adding credits in now was a usual ploy used in many media products.

Jack's Evaluation

1. Our media product uses many types of real meadia products, it also develops peices. We used many different media products to develop into our own general idea. Our product involves pieces of media that has been used in other films, just with our own adaption to it.

We used the film Superbad as a guidline for characters, for example the character Fogul follows the character McLovin in the film Superbad as he thinks he is really cool, but most people actually think he isn't and find him really annoying. He trys his best to impress people by acting nothing bothers him, but they do. This is exactly like our character Fogul in our piece. He annoys Harry, which turns out to be a bad idea as Harry gets hold of Fogul and keeps him taped up in the community lounge toilets.

Another piece of media we have used is The Inbetweeners, because it involves a group of 16-17 year old boys who think they are cool when they actually are not anywhere near being cool. The character Will Mckenzie is a good character because he is a geek hanging round with a group of Inbetweeners.

In a way we have developed the story of Superbad, because it is a story about someone who is abit of a geek who trys to impress his mates. But ours is a different story line. Fogul try's to impress Harry, but turns up late which doesn't impress Harry at all but luckily for Fogul, Leeroy saves the day.

We also developed a scene from The Hangover. When they think Doug has been captured and put in a bag by a so called bad guy Lesley Chow. We developed this by having Fogul captured by Harry and taken and taped up to a chair in the commuinty centre toilets.We thought this would be a good idea because it adds a twist to the story.

Our piece challenges other media pieces that are comedy because our piece is a comedy. This is why we have taken ideas from Superbad and The Hangover, so our piece challenges them on the comedy factor. We hope to make our audience laugh as much or even more than other comedy films.

2. Our media piece represents different sorts of social groups. One of these groups is the geeks. This is because Fogul is abit of a geek, who trys to fit in with another social group which is the cool kids. This is Harry, he thinks Fogul is a total nerd but likes Leeroy who is a inbetween social group. He isn't cool but he isn't a geek, he is one of Foguls best mates, but also is good mates with Harry.

Another type of social group is bullys, this is because in a way Harry bullys Fogul as soon as he walks into the community centre. But he also gets Fogul on his way home from the community centre takes him back in there and tapes him to a chair leaving him there.

3. The sort of media institution that might produce my media product would be people like Columbia Pictures. This is because they are the distributors of Superbad which was a very successful comedy film, so if we had them to distribute it we would know it would be done successfully. Another media institution that might distribute our piece would be Universal Pictures. This would be because they are the distributors of the American Pie films. Which are probably the most successful series of comedies ever.

4. The audience for our media product would be people who appreciate a good comedy opening to a film, because if it was boring it wouldn't catch the audiences attention from the start. If people come to watch a comedy film they wont it to be funny from the start. Our film fullfills this by having a funny first two minutes to catch the audience's attention.

5. The audience who see's the opening 2minutes of a film and it bores them, they pretty much loose intrest straight away. So we attracted our audience by having our 2minute opening as action pacted as possible, so that the audience is attracted to the film straight away keeping them engaged in the film. We adressed the audience by introducing the main character straight away by filming him walking down steps and walking towards the community centre where he meets Leeroy and Harry. This introduces the characters of the piece within the first 30seconds of the piece. We also adress what sort of person the chartacter is by the way he acts and talks. This shpws the audience most things within the opening scene of the piece which keeps them wanting to watch more to find more out about the characters.

6. I have learnt many different technologies from doing this piece, i have learnt that camera angles are a major part of any film no matter how long or short the piece is. It is good to have a good variety of camera angles in the piece so that the audience gets a different view on the character that is being filmed. Also camera angles can make the audience think all sorts of things, for example if the person is running away from someone else the camera will shake, this shows the audience that the person that is running away is also holding the camera.


Another thing i have learnt about technologies is that even a 2minute piece takes a long to edit, so a 2hour film must take a huge amount of editing. Also with the editing process you can put in titles, sub-titles and effects to help make the piece better. For example at the end of our piece we have the title of the piece at the end. Also we have the music of Peter Andre Mysterious Girl played at the beginning to introduce the character. This is a familiar song to most people and they will recognise it, which will automatically catch their attention.


I have learnt that technologies in films are a major part, from production to distribution. Without technology films wouldn't be possibel as to film it you need to use a camera and a computer for the editing. I have learnt that the editing process for a average length film will be a long and hard process especially to make sure there is no continuity errors. For example in our piece we thought we had a continuity error where Harry takes Fogul into the toilets he has his glasses on, but when he takes the bad off his head they are not on, this is not a continuity error because Harry takes the glasses off Fogul while taking the bag off his head aswell.

To get rid of continuity errors themselve takes distributors a long amount of time. I have learnt that creating a film even with technologies takes a long amount of time and a long hard process.

7. I have learnt alot from the progression from my preliminary to the main one. In my preliminary task i had a lot of continuity errors, so when i filmed my main task i made sure that i didnt make any continuity errors at all.

Another thing i have learnt is that in my preliminary task i didn't really use many camera angles, but in my main task i have used a lot more. Doing this adds an extra effect to the piece, because if your actor is talking to someone, you want to do an over the shoulder shot to look more effective, instead of just filming the two people talking head on.

In the progression to the full product i have learnt many different things that can change and make a media product better. Camera angles, effects and making sure there is no continuity errors in the piece. This is all important to making the piece better, it engages the audience from the start, which is important for an opening of a film like this because it is only 2minutes long. So it is vital to catch their attention straight away. I have learnt alot to do with filming my piece through out this process and i think it is a massive improvement from my preliminary task.

Adding effects to my piece is another thing i have learnt. Like in our piece putting a familiar song to introduce the character will get the audiences attention. Where as if you just introduced him with no music it would not catch the audiences attention as much. This is something i have put into my main piece that i didnt do with my preliminary.



This is the clip we watched to get the idea of Mclovin out of Superbad. We used the line he uses 'Gangsters wass'up guyss?!' because we thought it was another way of adding comedy to our piece. It also introduces the character to the audience and the piece.

New Script

Title: FOGUL The rise of Nocklewodge

Brief Summary:

A young student (Fogul Nocklewodge) is out to prove to the world that he is cool (when actually he is a complete idiot.) He struts down to meet up with he friends and after exchanging a short piece of dialogue, he is challenged to prove that he is cool by turning up to a party(which he would usally be invited to).

Main Piece:
Jack: Fogul Nocklewodge
Harry: Leeroy
Robin: Harry Bow

‘Opening titles start with music
(Peter Andre: Mysterious Girl) Fogul walks down towards the centre walking and acting cool.’

'Fogul is walking down the street on the way to meeting his friends.’

Fogul then walks into the community centre to see leeroy and harry sitting down.

Harry: Fogul you’re always late!

‘Harry hits some drink cans at Fogul and storms to the door’

Harry: I hate you!

‘Harry then walks out in anger’

Fogul: What was that all about?
Leeroy: I don’t know (Said again in his weird voice)
Leeroy: There’s a party at the weekend, you wanna come?
Fogul: Yeah… I’m a PARTY ANIMAL!

‘Fogul then walks out of the community centre to go home, He is listening to his music when he is jumped by Harry, who puts a bag over his head and takes him to the community centre toilets. Here Harry tapes Fogul to a toilet and leaves him there. This is all caught on CCTV. Fogul then screams for help.

Fogul: HELP! HELP!
Leeroy: What happened? Who did this?
Fogul: Harry!
Fogul: Thanks Leeroy!

‘Fogul is then set free by Leeory, he picks up his glasses and says to the CCTV camera....’

Fogul: Harry won’t get away with this! I will get my revenge!!



The end


Jack

How we split the workload during filming

Jack filmed these Point of view shots and some of the talking scenes






Harry filmed the kidnapping scene:
















I filmed jack walking to the centre and Leeroy untying Fogul in the toilets



Robin

Update

Today we started editing,here we encountered numerous problems and continuity errors.
We immediately decided to refilm certain parts of our film so that it flowed better, it could be understood more and that we took more care with the environment so that there were no continuity errors throughout.

We are also kind of dissapointed with the quality of our film as it just doesnt seem right.I think this may be because we had to cut so much to get our film under two minutes.

Editing Session 1

When we put the film onto Premier Elements, we encountered many continuity problems which were very obvious to the eye. These definitely created a problem straight away because there was an object on the chairs in one scene and in the next one it wasn't there any more. So we decided after this to re-film certain parts of the film to improve this and make the piece more understandable at the same time.

We decided to incorporate the music of 'Mysterious Girl' when Fogul left the community centre and put his earphones in to listen to his Ipod. We decided to put it in here because it would be like he is actually listening to the song and he does a cheesy action which matched the song.

The start of the film where Fogul introduced himself to the audience and walked down to the community centre was edited well and flowed very well. We didnt encounter any serious problems at this stage. The first major problem arose when Fogul entered the community centre and because of the camera angle that we used, it can be seen straight away that there are keys on the chair. After we had filmed this particular scene, the keys were moved without thought because they fell out of somebody's pocket. This then caused the continiuty error as they were not there when he was sat down. We then tried to solve this problem by cutting from as soon as he walks through to the door to where he sits down and says his first line, but we could not solve the error from this. This was a big reason for us re-filming this part.

In the kidnapping scene, we showed both Fogul and Harry in the shot, but stopped the filming of this too early and it was over way too quickly. We filmed Harry capturing Fogul but it only showed about two seconds before he was being forced into the toilets. We decided we would re-film this scene as well because we wanted to show Fogul struggle a bit and show that Harry had managed to get control of Fogul.

A big error that we noticed when editing was when Harry tied Fogul up with rope and left him. The problem was that it wasn't very strong and didn't tie up properly. This was evident from watching it as well as Fogul saying it was pretty loose after filming it. We decided it would definitely be more efficient to use tape instead of rope as it would definitely be more secure and would be more effective.

Construction Activity-ICT aspects used in piece

Sound effects

For our piece we researched different sound effects that would enhance our piece. We used the internet to discover different effects and we managed to acquire plenty of effects which would make the introduction to our piece better. ADD IN EFFECTS USED AFTER EDITING

Premier Elements

We decided from the start that the best way to download and edit our piece on would be Premier Elements because of the different features and elements that it includes. As well as putting the film from the camera on to Premier Elements and editing what we want from it, we can add and take away different features like effects we can add like sounds, titles etc.

Survey Monkey

We used survey monkey for our questionarirres which we sent out to everybody to see what they thought of our introduction. We thought that this was the best way to do our questionairre because it is easy to move about the page and commplete it. It gives a series of different options for types of questions, how you want your questions to be set out

Excel

We used this to create our first questionnaire,we used formulas and functions such as data validation to create drop down boxes

Harry

Filming

We have completed our filming after school last week, we are just waiting to edit it and get the final bit done hopefully by the end of this week.

Jack, Harry and Robin

Filming session 2

Filming session 2:
In this session we shot most of the scenes,such as the short dialogue in the centre,and all of the kidnapping of Fogul.

This took place after school in and around the 6th form centre, but only the kidnapping and the very start where Fogul runs towards the centre is outside of the sixth form block.

We started off filming in the centre,we had set everything up to find that another group was also planning on filming and their piece involved music, so upon hearing this we decide that maybe we were best to start by filming the kidnapping scene, which was outside and there were to be no distractions around the sixth form block. The filming of the scene went to plan and we managed to complete it in only three takes, the three takes were only because we had problems with actually managing to properly get the bag on his head. Another reason was that the cameraman turned the camera off too early.

The next scene we filmed was the dialogue inside,the filming of this scene also went quite well.It did take slightly longer than anticipated as we had to tweak a few lines and camera shots. We also needed quite a few takes as at point lines were forgotten or not said properly and also had a couple of accent problems, but these were cleared up quickly and once we decided on our certain lines and accents, we continued without any further problems.

The final scene we filmed was fogul being led to the toilets and then being tied up,In this scene we encountered quite a few problems as there wasn't a lot of space and it was difficult to find an angle that would be effective for this particular scene. We then decided to film an angle from a CCTV camera position. We thought this would be extremely effective because we would be clearly able to see the action and because of the limited space, this was the best angle available.

Altogether the filming was a success and it was achieved well as there were various things that needed sorted and arranging so that the filming would be a success.

Robin

Decisions we made before and during filming

We made multiple decisions before we started filming and this post will explain all of them in detail.

Firstly before we filmed we had to choose a date that was suitable for all of us,we encountered problems doing this as on days that we were all free our extra Lloyd was not. We decided that as we had a time limit for when the project had to be completed and we were running behind schedule to do our filming without Lloyd. We thought that if we were clever in how we incorporated the acting and use of camera angles that it would work if I took Lloyd's place and either Jack or Harry filmed whilst I acted the parts originally written for Lloyd.

Another decision we had to make was weather. On our chosen day of filming we had to cut our filming into two sessions in the morning and after school.This was a decision we made as a group as the weather forecast for our chosen day of filming was rain at lunchtime and then snow showers the following day. Upon seeing this forecast we decided it would be best to film the outside scenes earlier in the morning before the rain and then all indoor filming after school based on the fact that the common room seating area would be free. We decided to get it all filmed in one day as the forecast was for snow the next day which may have caused us numerous problems and continuity errors. Another weather decision we had to take into account was if the natural lighting was correct as we couldn't film in sunlight and then film later when there was no natural sunlight as this would be a huge continuity error.

We made many other mis-en-scene related desions before and during filming such as lighting, props and actor positions.

We decided prop wise we would not bother with making our labels as we could just direct the cans and sweets in a direction so that the brand could not be seen. Another prop decision was the string we used to tie up Fogul, we used this so that only a little bit could be seen around his torso and put his hands behind his back to give the effect that his hands were tied.

During filming actor positions were crutial as we could only have two actors on screen at one time, this meant that during filming we had to move actors into appropriate positions. Another related decision to this was before filming when we had to decide which camera shots/angles we would use. As we were having trouble deciding which angles would be best we undertook a practice filming session and multiple practice run-throughs of our opening.

We decided during filming to change the location of the seen where Fogul is tied up as the area we were going to use became unavailable, so we switched from behind the stage to the 6th form toilets as we could not at short notice think of any other suitable places.

We did during filming also decide to make some small script edits as some lines didnt sound as we had planned and we also made script edits during the kidnapping.

Another decision we made during filming was to add in a mini scene showing Fogul being led into the toilets by Harry, as at the time we felt that we needed another scene because the it shows the location to the audience where Fogul is being led into.

Robin

Planning Stage

We were very thorough in our planning for the piece so that our target audience knew what was happening and without the necessary props in our piece we would struggle to get the message that we wanted to create to the audience.

The props that we used included cans that we all drank in the community centre, rope to tie Fogul up when he got kidnapped, sweets that Harry Bow ate all of the time, a bin bag for when Harry kidnapped Fogul, glasses for Fogul to wear and headphones for when Fogul was listening to his Ipod. Robin brought in sweets, rope and a bin bag; while Jack organised the glasses and the headphones.

When we first fully devised our script, we decided that we would need to bring in an extra to help us complete our piece. The other person decided that he would help us complete our piece but was unavailable for the day that we decided filming. Because of this we decided to edit our script slightly so that we would not need this other actor and that we could switch people using the camera. We could then still incorporate all the characters that we first decided we would use at the start.

Location was extremely difficult to decide on leading up to filming. At the start we were wary of other people filming and their locations and we wanted to make sure that we would not be interrupted and have the resources around us that were suitable to our film. We strongly considered filming out of school and thought of various different locations that would work for us. But in the end we decided to keep all of our filming in school. We decided to film around the sixth form block and inside the sixth form block after school. We finally decided to film in these particular places because all other students in the school would have gone home and there would not be hundreds of children walking past and making us stop. Also we could get straight on with our filming as it was straight after school and there was no excuses for me, Jack or Robin not coming to film.

We devised an original storyboard that we made incorporated our first storyline which we didn't pursue with. The characters stayed the same from the very start and we just slightly edited the stotryline so we kept the same base for the story board and just changed different sections of it to make it work. A slight problem that we encountered was that only two people were allowed in a scene because of the pull-out of our extra, so we had to make sure that every scene contained only two of the three characters.

Harry and Robin

Filming Session 1

Filming Session 1:
This filming session took place on the morning of our chosen day of filming.

In this filming session we completed Fogul approaching and entering the community centre.

This filming sesion went very smoothly and didnt take to long to complete as we had planned all locations, timing, scripting and angles thoroughly so we could immediately start with filming in lesson.

We started off with the close up of Fogul staring at the camera and decided that as we had plenty of time to play around with it and film it a couple of times from different perspectives. We then went on to filming the next part which was Fogul trying to outrun the camera, this section was easy as it just involved simple angles that we had already planned and Fogul running. The next part we filmed was Fogul entering the centre, here we did have to film the scene a couple of times over as we made a few mistakes such as dropping the swipe card and getting our approach angles wrong.

This was only a small filming session as we decide we were best to film the bulk after school when all filming areas were free and clear. We also only had a limited amount of time anyway so it was sensible thinking to just generate ideas and decide on a definite way forward for filming after school.

Jack

Practice filming for our peice

We decided as we had a bit of time left after one lesson to complete some practice run throughs and camera practice for our main task. We also used this practice session to decide on which camera angles we would use in our piece.
We decided to complete some quick run-throughs and tweak which camera angles we would use.We all had a quick go with the camera

Video upload


Harry, Jack, and Robin

Camera Angles by robin

Firstly we researched what camera shots and angles there are:

High angle: A high angle shot is usually when the camera is located above the eyeline






Low angle: A low-angle shot, is a s from a camera positioned low on the vertical axis, anywhere below the eyeline, looking up.







Dutch angle:Dutch tilt, Dutch angle, oblique angle, German angle, canted angle, or Batman Angle are terms used for a cinematic tactic often used to portray the psychological uneasiness or tension in the subject being filmed








Birds-eye angle:A Bird's eye shot refers to a shot looking directly down on the subject











Long shot:A long shot typically shows the entire object or human figure and is usually intended to place it in some relation to its surroundings







Medium shot: A medium shot is a camera shot from a medium distance.








Close-up:A close-up tightly frames a person or an object






Over the Shoulder shot:Is a shot of someone or something taken over the shoulder of another person





Point of view shot: Shows directly what the character is looking at






Reverse shot:Is defined as a 180-degree camera turn to the preceding image, common in point of view and over the shoulder (in the latter, care must be applied to avoid a continuity error by violating the 180 degree rule









Two shot: This is where two people are in the picture







Establishing shot:This is established by given a broad overview of the entire scene





Angles in our piece:

We then decide on which angles we would use in our peice

These are the camera angles we will use in our main piece, we decided on most of these whilst doing our practice filming.

Here is a detailed list with pictures of which angles we will use:

Low angle shot-Opening scene approaching centre

High angle shot-Kidnapping scene

Reverse shot and over the shoulder -During the dialogue between friends

Close up-Opening scene when Fogul notices the camera

The two shot- While Harry and Leeroy are talking

Over the shoulder shot- Whilst Fogul is leaving the centre

Establishing shot-During the kidnapping and when entering the community centre

Medium shot- Whilst he is entering through the door

Point of view shot- Through the gate watching Fogul as he walks

By Robin

Character Profiles

Character Profiles

Fogul Nocklewodge (Jack)
---------------------------
Age: 17
Gender: Male
Occupation: Student
Likes: Peter Andre
Dislikes: Katie Price
Hometown: West Milferry

Fogul is the main character and he is a young student. He wants to prove to his friends that he is cool but they dont believe that he is. His best friend is Leeroy and he is always seen with him. People always think of him as an idiot and througout the introduction, this is very obvious to see.

Leeroy Farmingchester (Harry)
---------------------------------
Age: 17
Gender: Male
Occupation: Student
Likes: Katie Price
Dislikes: Peter Andre
Hometown: East Milferry

Leeroy is friends with Fogul and is know for being a person that definitely isnt the cleverest around. He has a traditional silly laugh which annoys everybody around him. He is often seen as the one who just follows the crowd.

Harry Bow (Robin)
-------------------
Age: 17
Gender: Male
Occupation: Student
Likes: Sweets
Dislikes: Fogul
Hometown: Beaver Willow

He is good friends with Leeroy but hates the sight of Fogul. He is very clever (the complete opposite to Fogul and Leeroy) who is addicted to the taste of Haribo sweets. It seems that these are all he eats. He is the leader of the group and wants to humiliate Fogul at any opportunity. Altogether he is perceived as quite normal compared to Leeroy and Fogul.

Harry and Jack

Synopsis

A young student called Fogul Nocklewodge is walking down to the local youth centre to meet up with with his mates Leeroy and Harry, whilst he is walking towards the centre singing and dancing to the song 'Mysterious Girl'. He walks up the stairs then down the ramp towards the centre door which he enters using his key card.

Once in the youth centre he walks across to talk with his friends who are sitting on the chairs and having a drink. Fogul walks across to them and exchanges a few lines of dialogue and then leaves.

While he is walking away from the centre his friends jump out and kidnap him as a joke and after he squeals for a bit the pill they have slipped him takes effect.

We then see Fogul tied up in a darkish room tied to a chair, we then see him start to wake up and he makes it obvious that he knows it is his friends playing a joke. He then pleads that he needs the toilet and before he knows it he has had an acident.

We then have the titles appear.
Jack

feedback questionaire

This is our feedback questionaire:

Below are the results

This image is very small,it you click on it you can zoom in

link to survey:
Click here to take survey

RESULTS

Q1. How would you rate our piece on a scale of 1-10(1 being terrible, 10 being amazing).

On this question 50% of the people we asked gave our piece a 7 out of 10 which menas they rated our film at very good.

Q2. Did you like our choice of music?

The majority of the people who took our questionnaire liked the music used, and the others were not sure on the music used.

Q3. Are you a fan of comedy after watching this film introduction?

100% of the audience agree with being a fan of comedy after watching this.

Q4. Do you like the characters?

The audience agreed with liking the characters, no one said they didnt like them.

Q5. Did you find the comedy in this amusing?

Again 100% of the people who took the questionnaire found this amusing.

Q6.Do you think we used a good variety of camera angles?

The audience showed that they thought all the camera angles were of a good variety because no one said no to not using a good variety of camera angles.

Q7. Would you be intrested in watching the rest of this film?

The majority of the feed back was positive, only a few people said they were not sure on watching the rest of this film.

Q8. Do you think it was edited together well?

100% of the feedback was positive as they thought it was edited togther well.

Q9. Do you think we made good use of props?

Thee feedback on this was negative because the audience thought we didnt use a good use of props in our piece.

Q10. Do you like the title of our piece?

Thee feedback for this was 100% positive.

Robin and Jack

Storyboard Edited 2 by Jack

Updated Script

Friday, 15 December 2009
First Script(Non-Edited)

Title: FOGUL The rise of Nocklewodge

Brief Summary:

A young student (Fogul Nocklewodge) is out to prove to the world that he is cool (when actually he is a complete idiot.) He struts down to meet up with he friends and after exchanging a short piece of dialogue, he is challenged to prove that he is cool by turning up to a party(which he would usally be invited to).

Main Piece:
Jack: Fogul Nocklewodge
Harry: Leeroy
Robin: Harry Bow

Opening titles start with music
(Peter Andre: Mysterious Girl) Fogul walks down towards the centre dancing and acting cool.




'Fogul is walking down the street on the way to meeting his friends.He gets suspicious and notices the camera and gets spooked and starts to run'

Fogul: Gangsters wass'up guys?!?!?!?!?
Leeroy: Yeh wass'up gangsters! What's crackalackin?

Extra: Hey Fogul I heard you were drunk at the weekend?!
Fogul: When am I not drunk? (Leeroy chuckles)
Extra: Oh I see, you're a party animal are ya Fogul?
Leeroy: Too right he is gangsters! We need a party for the weekend! Oioioioioioi!
Extra: Ok then, there is a party at Emma's Saturday night, come along and show us how much of a party animal you are!
Fogul: Ok then we'll be there or be square! Peace out homies!

Fogul then walks off,and is suprised as he is kidnapped(we film him squeling inside a white sheet that the kidnappers have thrown over him)

We then see fogul tied up to a chair,he has acidentally had an accident in his pants

Fogul:Guyyyys comon this isnt funny homies, let me go gangsters

End credits Start.We all appear individually with our names
Then in big letters Fogul:the rise of nocklewodge appears,then fogul rises up into the title

Script edit

We changed our script by making it shorter and we also added in the music and picture idea.
We also made the desision to name our opening which is: 'FOGUL: The Rise of Nocklewodge'

Song in our piece

We have decided to use music in our piece. But the songs are protected by copyright, So I emailed the record label for permission to use this song.





Jack

Costumes and Props

Here we will add pictures of costumes and props that we will use:
Beer cans or bottles with our own labels- Same use as Haribo Sweets.
Costumes- for characters to wear to show the audience their type of character.(especially Fogul).
Music- Used at the start when Fogul is being introduced and walking down towards the centre.
Haribo Sweets- Used as a material to create theme of a community centre.
Chairs- Sitting down and dialogue between the characters. Used for where Fogul is tied to a chair in toilets. Also used to create 'CCTV' type angle for the toilet scene.
Table- Used in the middle of the chairs and held the cans and haribo sweets on it.
Bin Bag- Used when Harry kidnaps Fogul after he leaves.
Tape- Used to tie up Fogul with to stop him from escaping the toilets.



Harry, Robin , and Jack

locations by Robin

We will film mostly on school property using outdoor and inner areas,the photos at the end will also be in school.
Our locations will be:The entrance to the sixth form area and the 6 form centre,the 6th form centre toilet,and a gated area just down from the centre

This is a shot of google maps that shows our location.Using paint i have drawn a line on the map to indicate where we will be filming

This is the up the stairs view of the 6form entrance,this is where fogul will approach the centre to the tune 'mysterious girl' by peter andre.












This is a shot of down the stairs that fogul will use to walk up on his way to the centre.











This is the part of the piece where fogul walks down towards the door of the centre.












This is the seating area of the common room where fogul enters to meet his friends
























This is the small stairs where we will film a high angle shot.















This is behind the gates near the sixth form block. This is the scene where the character Harry hides to kidnap Fogul as he walks past.











This is at the gates near the sixth form block. This image shows the view through Fogul's eyes when he is about to get kidnapped.

This is the area leading up to where Fogul gets kidnapped



















BY ROBIN