The document summarizes the pre-production, production, and post-production process for a student film project titled "Music Lessons from Hell." It describes establishing the genre as light comedy, introducing antagonistic main characters, filming with a Blackmagic Cinema camera, editing in Adobe Premiere Pro, and feedback from test audiences indicating the film successfully conveyed humor through contrasts between the characters. The filmmakers aimed to distribute on TV and YouTube with a low budget.

1. Main task evaluation
Ada Dzamic
AS Media Studies

2. The brief
 Our brief was to create an opening sequence of a film, which includes introducing
the audience to the genre of the film, establishing the setting, indicating the
mood and visual aspects of the film, amongst other elements. We wanted to set up
the scene, as well as the main conflict between the characters, stemming from
their distinct and antagonistic personalities. We wanted to draw the viewer into
the story as quickly as possible, as well as use the preparation scenes for the
lesson, as the characterization device.
 We have decided to name our film Music Lessons from hell, as it tells a story about
a mild music teacher and a wild girl, who is forced to have classical music lessons,
which she despises.
 The sub-genre of our opening sequence could be creatively described as ‘personal
war’ between the teacher and the student, using their personalities to create
comedy. In that sense, the sub-genre of the opening sequence could be ‘the
comedy of situations’ with elements of farce, music comedy and even ‘buddy
movies.’ We feel that the main genre would be ‘light comedy’.

3. Intended audience
 The intended audience of our opening sequence is people who like light
comedy and music, independent of the age, gender, and ethnicity. Our
prediction is that the film would be particularly interesting to more urban
audiences, as well as teenagers, because of the main characters and the
typical situations presented in the film.
 Audience pre-production research involved sharing the script with friends and
relatives, who are the typical representatives of the film, as well as observing
and listening to their reactions and feedback.
 We wanted to see whether the script is going to engage them or even make
them chuckle- which luckily happened a few times. This gave us confidence
to proceed with the project. Given the audiences reactions to more
stereotypical characterization, we have decided to give it a shot and make it
an obvious, popular comedy.

4. Distribution
 As far as distribution goes, we were largely aiming for one TV station,
followed by the film’s availability on YouTube. Given the competitiveness of
the modern film industry and the very low budget nature of our film, we
didn’t think it credible to count on proper professional film distribution.
 We think that the music institution might distribute our film, since the main
essence of our film is music.
 We also predict that companies such as Sony Pictures Classics might want to
consider distributing our film, as our film includes a conflict between a music
student and a music teacher, which is the same case in one of their films,
‘Whiplash’.

5. How it represents social groups
 As usual with light comedy, there is a deliberate use of archetypes and
stereotypes. In our case, these were a stereotypical, nerdy music teacher and
a stereotypical, unruly teenager.
 These are stereotypes, easily identifiable to a wide, modern audience. Our
opening scene would resonate with our audiences, because many of them are
familiar with those situations: dreading a meeting or a chore or working with
difficult people or being forced to do things they don’t like.
 The behavior of the characters also reflect some of the typical behaviors by
the audiences: having to mentally prepare for an unpleasant task, feeling fed
up with something, the wild and unruly behavior of young people, but also the
desire to find a solution for the challenge. Sometimes, in unexpected ways,
by trying to better understand the other side.

6. Myth and Ideology
 We have decided to deliberately play on stereotypes to represent a nerdy
music teacher, dreading a music lesson with an unruly teenager, with whom
she would have challenging encounters during the film, until they become
friends.
 From the mythological and archetypal point of view, we set it up as a very old
structure of a conflict between 2 people as antagonists, in this case in several
ways: an old person trying to teach an unruly, young person, teenage
rebellion, the challenges of everyday life situations and the old, mythical
story of gaining knowledge through hard and sometimes unpleasant effort.
 In Propp’s terms, the ‘narratemes’ we used were hero and villain in direct
combat and characters face a difficult task. In other archetypal storytelling
terms, we have shown how the plot represents a displacement situation from
their regular lives (music lesson as a testing and difficult adventure).

7. Text analysis
 Establishing the plot: we’ve used alternative cuts between the music teacher’s
preparations for the lesson and the behavior of the student, to create the meaning
of an ongoing and coming confrontation. Plot wise, we focused on the teacher to
suggest that she is dreading lessons with the student and needs special, mental
preparations for that, which again sets up a sense of conflict. It also indicates to
the viewer that this has been going on for a while in the past. The last scene,
when she chooses a completely unexpected piece of music to work on, opens
expectations that things may finally turn around.
 Genre: we used many genre conventions to indicate its light comedy: slightly
exaggerated emotional states, direct confrontation of mood states of both
characters to set up the conflict, the very plot construction that shows the need
for special, mental preparations for the lesson by the teacher, and over-the-top
reactions of the girl. Extremely different styles of music were accentuating the
comedic effect.

8.  In order to further convey the personalities of the 2 characters, and to
provide a good quality viewing experience for the audience, we have decided
to use several compositional, as well as technical elements.
 In order to portray the music teacher’s personality, the camera was mainly
static, in order to focus on her features of meditating throughout the
sequence, showing her special, mental preparations before the lesson,
conveying the tension. We also focused on using mainly classical music, to
show what type of a teacher she is, however, at one point, there is a contrast
to heavy metal music when the teacher is picking out the CD.
 In order to reveal the student’s wild, eccentric personality, we used more
camera movement, such as hand-held shots and tracking shots, as well as
using contrasting music (heavy metal).

9. Did we reach the target audience?
 Based on pre-production reactions, we believe that we managed to reach our
target audiences as far as interest is concerned. The distribution would decide
how many of them we would be able to physically reach.
 During the pre-production, and because of Covid-19, we had to move the
production into one of our family apartments, instead of the school. We believe
that a more natural everyday environment and behaviors of both characters in
their homes, may increase the sense of conflict and comedic effect.
 According to the audience feedback, we have successfully made the camera work,
style and editing suitable for the film genre. ‘The comedy effect was quite
pronounced through the opposites of the 2 characters. They are nicely shaded,
and the music really supports the contrast’.
 After analyzing the audience's reaction, we have concluded that we could have
made the meaning of the extract clearer, by bringing the wild girl’s character even
more to the fore, using some of her statements. The acting in the last scene also
could have been more expressive.

10. Technologies
 At the pre-production stage, we first planned to use a Huawei P20 phone to
film, because of the bright image and vivid colors, however, when it came to
the production stage, we decided to use a Blackmagic Cinema camera
instead, since it is more professional to use. We came across this decision,
because we thought that the camera would produce excellent video quality.
We wanted to provide a pleasurable visual experience for the audience. It
was also much smoother and simpler to use for certain types of movements,
such as the pan and tilt.
 For the post-production stage, we have concluded that a computer would be
the easiest option for editing, as we already had a software downloaded.

11. Editing
 The editing software that we used was the older version of Adobe premier pro,
since I had an older laptop.
 The first step we did, was import the files into the project window. Next, the
music files were downloaded using Y2mate.com, a YouTube downloader that
converts YouTube videos into only audio files. We positioned all the files on a video
1 timeline in the order of appearance, as well as the music files below that, also
in order of appearance. The video 2 timeline was used to create the opening and
closing credits, using the File > New title. The background for the title is the first
frame from the first scene of the opening sequence. From the title font options,
we picked the font to use for the opening and closing credits and decided to use
the fade in/fade out fonts. To end on a strong dramatic effect, we have decided
to use the abrupt music stop at the end of the opening sequence. We used a
similar effect at 0:59 during the cut between the bathroom scene and the
teacher’s living room scene. Finally, we went to File > Export to render the film as
a single file that could be shared and shown on various devices. We have decided
to use the mp4 format at 720p the same one as the raw files.

14. Preliminary task
 Overall, when it came to analyzing our preliminary task, The mysterious
package, we have identified several aspects that turned out to be quite
successful during this stage.
 We spent a short amount of time filming it, only a few hours, there was
excellent video quality, since we decided to use a Huawei P20 phone, which
has a sharp and vivid image. We also managed to produce a very creative
storyline, to provide something contrasting for the audience, as well as
include excellent music which matches the genre of our extract.
 Where we could have improved it was to give more clarity via sound effects
that the girl in the room is speaking to her mother (‘mother’s’ voice was
muffled) and to shoot and edit the scenes for additional clarity about the
forthcoming strange events.