This document summarizes a short film created by three students for a school project. They originally began filming based on one script but had to change to another due to issues with locations. Their target audience was 12-20 year olds and it was influenced by the TV show Skins. They learned new camera and editing skills making the film. It followed a lonely college student and used various shots to draw in the audience. Overall it was a collaborative effort but they faced challenges changing scripts mid-production.

1. Lottery choice (Happiness Comes at a Price) By Emma Bennett, Hannah Kelly and Kym Tran

2. Introduction... This film was combination of two of our films We originally started Kym’s film but because of lack of resources and problems with locations we had to make most of the film to do with Hannah’s script.

3. Target Audience/Research/ forms and conventions of media products... Our target audience were people ranging from the ages of 12 to 20 We wanted to take inspiration from ‘Skins’ as it has fresh story lines every week. We think this is important. Our film looks a lot more like a trailer than a short opening to a film, but it is merely a taster of what could be achieved if we were able to make a longer film or series. Our film was similar to the programme skins as it is all about teenagers, however ours is developed as it is not just about what happens to teens day to day, we wanted to put another angle on it.

4. Our film... This is our film, we hope you enjoy it. We have a questionnaire for all of you to complete at the end of our presentation (don’t worry its very short)

5. Distribution/ forms and conventions of media products... The channel ‘Skins’ in broadcast on is ‘E4’, a channel that does a lot of teen dramas and comedies. If our product were to be distributed it would be to somewhere like ‘E4’ or possibly ‘BBC Switch’. This is a programme on ‘BBC 2’ on a Saturday, it too also does a lot of short teen drama series.

6. What did we learn from our technology... We developed newer skills using the cameras, prior to our preliminary task, things such as smooth panning shots for example. We learnt to edit on movie maker, we had only briefly used this in the past We learnt to fade and blend music

7. Representation of social... Our films was about teens, using teens. We wanted our main character to appear lonely, we did this by using only two friends of the main character in the film. Our character did not really belong in a particular social group, she was more just the average college girl with some normal problems, but not so normal luck

8. Drawing the audience in/ camera work... We drew the audience in by using a cliff-hanger right at the end of the film, we hoped that this would make the audience want to know and see more of the film. We used a range of shots to make the film more captivating We used fast panning and tracking shots when the film was supposed to be more fast paced. We used slow moving panning when it was supposed to show a more relaxed/ settled enviroment.

9. ICT/Editing... We used Windows Movie Maker to edit our film. We blended music and used transitions such as fade ins and colour brighteners to make the shots and scene run more smoothly one after the other. We had lots of minutes worth of rush shots, so it was difficult to get the story and film down to 2 and a half minutes.

10. What have we learnt since our preliminary... We learnt that varied camera shots and fade ins help to keep the movie looking as actively paced as we wished. We learnt to work as a team efficiently *high five* We learnt the significance of establishing shots really make it easier to help the audience understand what time of day it is...for example, our opening establishing shot is a panning of some trees and there is non diegetic sound of birds singing. We think this will make the audience associate it with early morning

11. Evaluation...how everybody contributed. Lots of our work had to be divided up because there were problems with all being able to meet up and complete things such as shots and scripts together.

12. Emma... Emma was in charge of health and safety Contributed to filming Helped edit the script/ storyboard In charge of completing editing the final shooting script

13. Hannah... Did a lot of the shooting as her friend played the main character and lived near by to her house Original story idea was used as part of final movie shooting script Helped edit the script Found our actors/actresses

14. Kym Part of original story idea was used in the final movie shooting script Contributed to filming In charge and completed editing and sound Helped edit the script

15. Improvements... If we had the chance to improve or start our film again we would: Be more organised Try to make more time to be able to work together Keep in contact over filming Try to stick to the original story idea and not improvise so much

16. Problems with our film... We originally started filming Kym's story idea, but because of problems with locations we had to change more to Hannah's. This was a group decision and paid off in the end. The positive thing about this, was that we got plenty of rushes and actually used some of the shots we got from Kym's film into the final film.

17. Thanks for listening... 