4. Jayesh Mohane
PRELIMINARY TASK
Link to ‘Final Grade’ Rough Cut
Link to ‘Final Grade’ Final Cut
Before we moved onto the Main Task, we
had to do a Preliminary Task which would
allow us to get started and give us an idea
into how we can make another opening
Scene for our Main Task
5. Jayesh Mohane
TIMELINE FOR PRELIMINARY TASK
Date What’s Happening?
Friday 2nd November, 2012 Synopsis posted to give the audience an
insight into our opening scene
Tuesday 6th November, 2012 Script posted to let the audience know
what the opening scene is about
Friday 16th November, 2012 Storyboard is up on the blog to give a
visual insight to ‘Final Grade’ to the
targeted audience
Friday 7th December, 2012 Rough Cut video posted
Wednesday 12th December, 2012 Get audience feedback on rough cut
Friday 14th December, 2012 Final Cut video Posted
6. Jayesh Mohane
MAIN TASK
-WHAT FILMS DOES OUR SEQUENCE RELATE TO?
Shaun of the Superbad
Dead
Anuvahood
21 Jump Street
7. Jayesh Mohane
WHAT FILMS DOES OUR SEQUENCE RELATE TO AND IT IS DIFFERENT BECAUSE…
Shaun of the Dead
Link to opening
scene
8. Jayesh Mohane
WHAT FILMS DOES OUR SEQUENCE RELATE TO AND IT IS DIFFERENT BECAUSE…
21 Jump Street
Link to opening
scene
9. Jayesh Mohane
WHAT FILMS DOES OUR SEQUENCE RELATE TO AND IT IS DIFFERENT BECAUSE…
Superbad
Link to opening
scene
10. Jayesh Mohane
CONVENTIONS OF TEEN COMEDY
Voice Overs/Narratives
Main Character
Soundtrack
Setting
Fast Paced Editing
11. Jayesh Mohane
CONVENTIONS CHALLENGE
Narrative/ Dialogues
This convention was challenged because we
thought that if we use narration or dialogues in
our scene, it would make it look boring and it
would not entertain the audience.
Challenged by using voice overs.
12. Jayesh Mohane
REPRESENTATION OF A PARTICULAR SOCIAL GROUP
Asians
‘Nerd’ and ‘clever’ Asian who gets an A
Black Ethnicity
Brandon who gets a F on his paper
Stereotype
Different Social Groups
13. Jayesh Mohane
REPRESENTATION OF A PARTICULAR SOCIAL GROUP
Positive Stereotype
Asian character is a positive stereotype because
the main character in our opening scene is an
Asian who is the only student in the class to get
an A in the paper while the others get a grade F
This meets the sociological stereotype of Asians
being smart
Negative Stereotype
Black student shown as a failure
14. Jayesh Mohane
SOCIAL GROUPS WE HAVE STUDIED
EASY A
Main character- Olive Prendergast
‘SlutOf School’
Horrible
18. Jayesh Mohane
INTERNATIONALLY OR NATIONALLY?
Internationally
DISTRIBUTING OUR PRODUCT?
Britain first; in cinema
Advertise using Internet
Copy of the film; no effects; less colourful; on
internet
19. Jayesh Mohane
AUDIENCE FOR MEDIA PRODUCT
15+
Bothgenders: Males and Females
Students who go college or Sixth form
People who have interest in comedy
movies
Love comedies and would laugh their heads off
21. Jayesh Mohane
Link to audience feedback
We also told our targeted audience to watch
our rough cut and give us feedback on what
they think.
We recorded two people’s reaction on the
rough cut
The audience video feedback suggests how
the audience all liked our opening scene as
they gave positive feedback
22. MISE-EN-SCENE TO ATTRACT AUDIENCE
Smart clothing
(formal)7
-shirt
-tie
School
bags
This shot from the opening sequence shows ‘students’ walking around
and standing around with each other. The mise-en-scene we used were
the school bags and smart clothes which are appealing to the target
audience because it shows that these are teenagers attending Sixth
Form or College. Furthermore, these mise-en-scenes straight away let
the audience know that the film is about teenagers because of the
23. MISE-EN-SCENE TO ATTRACT AUDIENCE
Tables
and
chairs
This is another sub-setting of the script. This classroom falls under mise-
en-scene. The use of mise-en-scene here like tables, chairs and students
who are on their phones and bored appeals to our target audience
because being teenagers they can put themselves into the shoes of any
of the students and think about their college life and reflect whether they
are represented in this scene or not.
24. MISE-EN-SCENE TO ATTRACT AUDIENCE
Hoodie
Headphones
and phone
Jeans
Leg on table
Hoodie, jeans, headphones and mobile phone is hand is another mise-en-
scene we have used in the opening sequence to make it appealing to our
audience. When they see the character wearing a hoodie and having
headphones and phone in their hand, they know that a typical teenager would
be represented in the same way. This should be appealing to our target
audience because they it would make them look at themselves in the same way
as the character in the scene because they would realize that most teenagers
25. WHAT DOES OUR AUDIENCE FEEDBACK SUGGEST?
As you can see this pie chart
shows that the survey was
filled out by Males and
Females which means that
we chose the right target
audience
26. WHAT DOES OUR AUDIENCE FEEDBACK SUGGEST?
This bar chart shows the answer to the second question from the audience
feedback. As you can see, overall the reaction to the opening scene was rated as
Excellent and Very Good. However, we did have one rating as Poor. We would
like to know why we got that rating, but the survey did not have an open ended
question therefore, we were unable to find the reason. Overall, this also shows
that we have produced the sequence successfully to attract our target audience
27. WHAT DOES OUR AUDIENCE FEEDBACK SUGGEST?
This question answered really proves whether we were successful or not. The feedback on
this question shows that the majority of the people answer chose the word ‘Funny’ as the
best word that describes the film. This shows that we were got the right comedy sequence
to the audience as they asked for it. We are considering our product as a success by
looking at the blue bar because it shows that more than half of the audience found it funny
which was our aim. Also, they found that the settings were interesting and it was
entertaining and exciting to watch. This shows that we produced something that would
28. Jayesh Mohane
TECHNOLOGIES USED, MY SKILLS AND WHAT I LEARNT?
Mac and iMovie
For editing purposes
Camera
To film our scenes
After Effects
Create bumpers, introductions and credits
Soundations
Create music
30. Jayesh Mohane
PRELIMINARY TASK
Synopsis
Quick outline of the scenes and dialogues
Script
Made it easy when it came to shooting
31. Jayesh Mohane
PLANNING AND PREPARATION WAS MADE EFFECTIVE
BY...
Shot List
Filming Schedule
Put in more commitment
Stuck to deadlines
32. Jayesh Mohane
IMPROVED QUALITY OF FOOTAGE AND EDITED PIECE BY…
Better tripod
Different angles
3 to 4 shots repeated
Filming same shot using different positions
Quite room
Timing of when to film
Music using Soundation
More features in iMovie
34. COMPARING THE POSTERS
Similarities
Big and bold font which easily
catches the audiences eye as it is
in red
Main character is on poster
Release date is also mentions
Same plain backgrounds
Differences
Superbad has three main
characters
Our poster has age rating shown
Yellow font used which doesn’t
attract the audience in
Superbad’s poster; we used black
and red font as it contrasts with
the background
As part of our AS Task, we had to create a media product that would appeal to our target audience which we chose as teenagersThe members of my group were Krishan, Mark and Shyam. We each had individual roles in the group for example, Krishan took on the role of being a director and the main editor of the clips, Mark had the role of creating the music, Shyam was the writer who would come up with the Script and type it up before we go out and film and my role in the team was to make sure I keep the blog up to date with posts and everything we do and I was one of the main actor for our opening scenes and helped Krishan edit the clips and create bumpers. I think that as a group we all put in effort and have worked hard to get the best outcome which I will tell you later.We had two tasks that we had to do. Firstly the preliminary task. In this, we had to create an opening scene for about 2 minutes to get started off with where we were told to have a close up shot of the character opening the door, a shot-reverse-shot and over the shoulder shot to meet the criteria given. Therefore, Shyam in the group along with Krishan came up with the script and we filmed it. In the Main Task, we had to create another opening scene to get better marks which meant we had to have a good script.
This is the timeline for our Wordpress blog that shows how we managed the blog and what we posted. We created the timeline but were unable to post it to the blog because we spent a lot of time editing the preliminary task final cut. Furthermore, because of this, we missed the deadline on Wednesday 12th December, 2012, where we had to get an audience feedback on the rough cut.
These are the four films that Me and my group members did research on since they are all Teen Comedies and we researched the films because they have the similar genre and it gave us an idea into what we could include in our opening scene.
our sequence relates to this film because our opening scene begins with music similarly like this film. Furthermore, our sequence followed the ways in which Shaun of the dead displays the credits and also, the psychedelic 60’s music that it starts of with is continuous and becomes faded into the background as the character talks. Similarly, in our opening scene we have the music that we start of with fade and play slowly in the background during the voice overOn the other hand, our opening scene is different to Shaun of the Dead because SOTD starts of by having a track shot to introduce different characters compared to my opening scene, which is different, because we start off with establishing shots of the surrounding suburban areas and use ‘ken burns’ which is an editing technique to zoom into them. Also, the main character is introduced with a tilt shot. However, in my opening scene, the main character is introduced with a long shot and the use of ‘ken burns’ editing to zoom into him. Voice over is used as he talks which is not used in SOTD since there is diegetic sound.
21 Jump Street also relates to our sequence because it begins of with hip-hop rap music and the credits. This relates to my sequence because it starts of with guitar beats and the credits. Another way in which our sequence relates to 21 Jump Street is because of the ‘school bell’. 21 Jump Street uses a school bell sound to alarm and inform the character; in our sequence the school bell sound is used to inform the character as well about break time. The opening scene to 21 Jump Streets introduces the two main characters to the film which my sequence does so as well by introducing the ‘nerd’ and the ‘badman’. 21 Jump Street scene ends with the two main characters sitting on different sides of the wall and look at each other and walk off after. Our sequence relates to this but in my scene the two main characters come into contact as the ‘badman’ shoulders him. Furthermore, the name of the film is shown after the main character is quickly introduced which in my sequence is related since the title comes after the introduction of the ‘nerd’.On the other hand, my opening scene is different to 21 Jump Street because my sequence starts of with the company name and the production name whereas 21 Jump Street starts of by introducing the main character as he walks towards the college then the credits are shown. My sequence uses a voice over which is not used in 21 Jump Street as they use diegetic sound like dialogues.
Superbad is another film that our sequence relates to. The character uses a mobile phone which is a convention of teen comedy. Similarly, in my sequence the characters in the classroom are using their phones. This meets the convention of a teenager comedy. It also starts of with music like our sequence does. There is background music that is played while the characters are talking which relates to my sequence. On the other hand, it is different to my sequence because the main character is introduced as driving a car and on the phone which is one popular convention or type of films that are usually associated with teenagers, is a sense of danger, and a less-caring approach to rules and regulations, something that using mobile phones while driving falls into. Whereas, my sequence introduces the main character with a voice over and him standing alone.
Some of the conventions that are associated with teen comedies that I have noticed in the films that related to m sequence are voice overs and narratives, main character, soundtrack, setting and fast paced editing. Me and my group decided to keep to the conventions because it makes our opening scene feel and behave similarly to the professional films. For example, the convention of a main character is seen usually as awkward (like in Superbad) or unpopular or not liked as much as others (like in 21 Jump Street). In our case, the main character is standing lonely as he waits for lesson to start while other people around him walk by and have group talks without noticing him.Furthermore, we have kept to the convention of the soundtrack because like 21 Jump Street, our scene begins of with rock sound such as guitar which is followed by drum beats. This makes our scene look like professional films such as Shaun of the Dead and 21 Jump Street. Another convention we have kept to is the Voice Overs and Narratives. This conventions makes my film behave like a teen film and meets the genre just like Superbad where dialogue narrative is used to introduce the characters which the audience realises in the first instance because of the language they use.
Voice overs allowed us to challenge the convention because it made the opening scene more entertaining and also, it made it look more of a comedy. we decided to use this because it is a very typical convention of teen movies and are seen a lot in the opening sequences instead of long, slow dialogues which is unattractive to a typical teen since they would get bored. Therefore, we have challenged this convention.
In our opening scene, we have chosen to represent different social groups as independent. In our particular opening scene, we have used represented different social groups in different ways. One social group we have decided to feature in our scene is females. Having females in our scene shows the mixed group of people in the sixth form. This representation of the social group was chosen because we wanted to have different ethnic people as our cast and not the typical ethnicities we would see.Another social group represented is ‘black ethnicity’. This social group is represented with a stereotype since there is only one black student in the class who gets a low grade. We chose to represent this social group as a stereotype because we wanted to potray the social representations of black ethnic groups. Another stereotypical representation of a social group is that we used an Asian character as the Main Character who is represented as the clever nerd in the scene.
After 3rd point...However, despites the main character, the other characters who are Asian do not get a good grade in the paper. This subverts the stereotype and shows that not all Asians are smart. We intentionally did this because one sociological stereotype is that female Asians achieve better grades then males. Therefore, we purposely did this because we want to use different stereotypes in our opening scene. Furthermore, using a wider range of social group would allow us to get a wider audience.A negative representation and stereotype used is the black ethnicity character who is shown as a failure. This representation is negative because it is a negative stereotype about black ethnic people who are seen as lazy and usually involved in violent things. Furthermore, the character is the only black student in the class which is another negative representation as it shows how others are mainly Asians but he is left out. But, we have portrayed this character in a stereotypical way which meets the stereotype of not caring because we have showed the character playing games on his phone and shrugging his shoulders after getting his paper and pushing it away.
OlivePendergast is a leading character in Easy A. We studied this social group of teenagers and how they are represented in films. What I learnt from the character of Olive is that she is represented in a negative way in this film as the girls think of her as a horrible person. She has gained bad reputation until the end where everyone realizes that she didn’t sleep with anyone and was lying. So the main character, Olive is represented by a negative stereotype. Similarly, in our opening scene, the main character is represented as having no friends and getting ‘bullied’ by others.
I think that one of the major independent distributors that would distribute our media product would be companies such as Universal and Columbia Pictures (a Sony Pictures Home Entertainment company)This is because these companies are big and Universal is one of UK’s top 5 distributor which means that our media product can be easily distributed to our targeted audience without having to fear about things like money because Universal will back up our production company since they are well-known. Furthermore, our sequence is to do with Comedy because it is our chosen genre which companies like Universal and Columbia Pictures like to show their audience. For Example, 21 Jump Street and Superbad, was distributed to its audience by Columbia Pictures. These two movies got a wide audience internationally because of the distributors who are known around the world and can easily distribute the film.I also think Universal can distribute my media product because, during my research into other teen comedies, I found out that Shaun of the Dead was distributed by Universal and had made a huge profit at box office, which, in my case means they can distribute my media product to the right audience.
Another route which we can take to get our media product distributed is to use YouTube. YouTube is an online site where people upload videos. It has a service where we can pay to get our film uploaded onto the site and they can distribute it to the audience and other users. The profit made is shared between the maker (us in our case) and YouTube. To get acknowledgment and recognition, we can take this route. Furthermore, an advantage of YouTube is that it is a popular site that is really well-known, therefore we can guarantee lots of views.Film 4 is another media institution which is a British Company that might also distribute our media product because it is a co-distributor of one of the famous film in my research, Shaun of the Dead, and also, they can show my sequence on TV to get it out to the target audience and they have distributed many films that were low on budget. These two are alternatives to Universal and Columbia Pictures, because for example, if our company is low on budget, then we know that one of these two might distribute our media product.
Why not Walt Disney Pictures?Well, we decided that Walk Disney Pictures might not distribute our media product or we may decide not to use this distributor because they mainly deal with animated films which they release. Furthermore, the targeted audience for Walt Disney Pictures if usually children's because films like toy Story 3 and Alice in the Wonderland have been distributed by Walt Disney which have been hits at box office, however, our film is not animated and the targeted audience is teenagers. Walt Disney have, however, distributed films like Pirates of the Caribbean and The Avengers, but we still do not intended to have them distribute it for us since we prefer the big companies who can back us up, if we fail to make profit.
I think that this film would be produced internationally because of the storyline which is quite broad and the representation of social groups and characters, despites that fact that the main character is Asian. It relates to an international audience because of the positive and negative stereotypes just shown in the opening scene.I think that our film will be released in Cinemas in Britain first. At the same time, I think that we would release on copy of the film which will have no colourful effects (reduce contrast) on the Internet to get it out to our audience internationally at the same time. This is beneficial as it would allow people and the targeted audience to get an insight into the film and also help prevent the issue of PIRACY which is a major concern for all media institutions.Advertising it using the Internet and social sites like Facebook is beneficial because Facebook is a social site where more than half of our target audience is and it is easy to promote and distribute our film online and get it to the audience.
15+ is the chosen age of our target audience because the since we are teenagers, we know what our target audience would want, therefore we decided and scripted the opening sequence. Therefore, we had an insight into what our target audience expected and what they would like to see in films. Furthermore, being a teen, I have friends who usually talk about comedy, so therefore, this film would relate to them.Since the chosen audience is the age of 15 or above, we have also targeted people who have a keen interest, especially in comedies because we want them to go home and think about the film after they have seen it and maybe watch it again in the future.For this age group of our audience, we wanted to make a comedy film because we as a group have seen many comedies like American Pie and Shaun of the dead and we have realized that these comedies do not show what our targeted audience would want to see and relate to like characters and the storyline that might relate to teens in todays generation. Therefore, we carried out a survey and went out to teenagers in Sixth Form and filmed them while asking questions. We also carried out an online survey which I will evident in the next slide.The demographic primary audience is just teenagers and not older people because the characters in the sequence are teenagers and old people are not the right audience for this as they can get bored and might not understand the storyline properly.
As I mentioned on the previous slide,Using SurveyMonkey, we created an online survey before starting the Main Task which simply had two questions. What is your age? And Do you prefer a Comedy film or Drama Film? We sent this survey out to the audience who we intended to target our opening sequence to and we ask them to fill the survey in and submit it. Therefore, as you can see on the board, the data collected by SurveyMonkey shows that our audience is aged above 15+, which is the audience we as a group intended to target and the pie chart shows that majority of our audience prefers a Comedy. Therefore, we decided to create a Teen Comedy and give the audience what they wanted and not what we want to give them. This is because it would allow us to know our audience more and if we give them what they want, then we are most likely to have a wider audience coming to see the film.To prove that the pie chart is not biased, you can see the print screen directly taken from the website and it has a watermark which means it was created on the website for us.
They also gave us improvements that we could have made. We took the improvements suggested into account and made them where necessary in the final cut to meet the need of the audience and give them what they want.
During the coursework, we used different range of technologies as a group to help us get the best opening sequence we could make. We used iMovie on an Apple MAC to help us edit and put the clips together. At the start of the course, I was not good at using Mac’s since I am used to a laptop and Windows computer. Therefore, using iMovie was a hard task and complicated. However, our main editor Krishan had experience with iMovie therefore, I learnt how to edit from him and watched him as he edited our Preliminary Task and Main Task videos. I used iMovie to put together the clips from the audience feedback and helped Krishan to edit. The advantage of using Mac and iMovie is that they are high tech which allowed us to edit our movie in a professional way. The down side which I think is that if you have no experience with the technology then it is hard to start editing.Another technology we used was a camera. I am good at using cameras because I have used them in my free time. However, during the course, I have learnt that working in front of the camera is a hard task because you have to make sure that you get the right shots done and for that, you have to film one shot few times. Also, because I was an actor, I didn’t use the camera much, however, I have learnt that using the camera is not as hard as it is. But then this is my opinion because the camera we had was a small handheld camera, but we had tripods to place them on. The advantage of the camera we had was it was easy and light weight which allowed us to carry it around and film the shots we needed. However, the camera was not a professional one so we couldn’t get any HD shots and it didn’t allow us to focus the camera on one object properly. Overall, my experience with the camera has been really good.After Effects. This is a software that I alone used in my group with the help of Krishan to make bumpers, intro and credits for our opening sequence. At the start of the course I did not use After Effects, however, when it came to the Main Task, we decided to move on from the same old simple animated text and credits to professional ones. Therefore, I used After Effects and used tutorials from YouTube to create bumpers for our sequence. At start it was not really simple to use but within a week, I learnt how to use it and I was able to create the right bumper with good effects which you can see in our opening scene. After Effects is hard to use if you do not have a clue where to start from, especially when it comes to adding the effects to your text because it takes a lot of time to get the right effect on the text and to make sure it plays correctly with other effects.Soundation is another technology online that I have used in my group. At the start of the course, I didn’t use this technology because this technology is to create free music online. Because we had to use our own music or copyright free music, I used Soundation to create a music piece for the sequence. I started off with adding in random guitar and drum beats and realizing after it didn’t sound right. So I took time to edit the pieces together and put them in place so they sounded right. This took me ages to get the right piece. The advantage to my group of using this software was that we were definite that we wouldn’t have any copyright problems since the music is created by us from scratch. I have learnt that Soundation is a good piece of technology that me and my group can always go back to for music, because it has built-in beats ready for us to put them in the right place with other beats.
When it came to the main task, we made a plan before the task started so that we knew what we were doing. Therefore, we created a Shot List which we didn’t have for our Preliminary Task. Have a shot list was really effective when it came to filming because it was easy for us to get the right shots done by following the shot list. Also, it gave us an insight into how to film properly. Compared to the preliminary task, we as a group put in more commitment into the Main Task so that we could get the filming done within the deadline, which we did. Despites the fact, that we had to change the script because of weather problems and other factors, we still managed to film and edit a rough cut and final cut before the deadline for the Main Task. Sticking to deadlines was also another factor that made shooting more effective for us because in our Preliminary Task, we messed around and were relaxed thinking we would get it done, but then we realized that we didn’t because we took a lot of time into editing and filming. Therefore, we stuck to deadlines by creating a shooting schedule as you can see on the board which meant that as a group, we had to stick to it so that we were ready with the audience feedback, final cut and rough cut before the deadline.
Compared to our Preliminary Task, we have improved the quality of our footage in the Main Task. To do this, we made sure that we used a better Tripod. So we got a tripod from the Media Room and the Tripod was in good condition. This improved the quality of our footage because it prevented unsteadiness of handheld camera and also the shots were still. We used a tripod when filming the time lapse. The use of tripod here improved the quality of footage because it allowed us to leave the tripod on its own with the camera with the main character in front of it as it films. This prevented it from shaking and made it steady. In this way, the quality was better. Another way we improved the quality of the footage was by using different angles and positions to film the same shots. This allowed us to get the best scene/shot when it came to editing. Furthermore, we filmed each shot like 3 times to make sure that we didn’t make any errors. To improve the quality of the footage we chose the right timing of when we were going to film. This allowed us to get the shots done without any other people walking in to the scene or creating noise.Another way in which improved the quality of the footage and the edited was by using better online technology and software to create the music for the sequence. Without music, the opening sequence would look boring and the audience might not watch it. Therefore, creating music on Soundation to prevent Copyright issues and to make the sequence look more exciting and interesting. We improved the edited piece by using more features within iMovie compared to the Preliminary Task. In Preliminary Task, we stuck to basic features of iMovie and made the sequence look simple. However, in the Main Task we used more features like audio and video effects to change the look of the atmosphere of the scene. We used audio effects to make the pitch of the voice over high so that the outcome at the end was better.
