1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e of film openings)

The aspects we would like you to consider are:

The title of the film
Setting/location
Costumes and props
Camerawork and editing
Write about how typical or not of opening sequences your particular design is.
Title font and style
Story and how the opening sets it up
Genre and how the opening suggests it
How characters are introduced
Special effects

How does your opening sequence develop or challenge the conventions of an opening sequence?

Does your use of conventions indicate that other opening sequences have influenced your work?
If so, then be specific with examples.

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

What are the social groups represented in terms of gender, age, class, race, etc?

Pick a key character from your opening. Think of one or more characters from other films with some similarity to them (but maybe some differences too!). Write about the similarities and differences in terms of appearance, costume, role in film etc.

So for example if you have a lone cop type character, look for other lone cops to compare him with...

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

Would this be something that could be produced by a major Hollywood studio, if yes then why? Is it similar to existing products?

Would it be a TV movie?

Would it be an arthouse film?

Would it be an internet only release?

Why would it be released? Does it offer opportunities for franchises and/or merchandising?

Where might the money come from for a film such as yours?

What films are similar 'institutionally'?
(Name some films which would be released in a similar way.)

Link your conclusions to a discussion of the mise-en-scene (visual style) of your opening sequence.

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

Consider the age and gender of your target audience.
(Link this to the narrative and style of your film.)

What kinds of taste might your target audience have : Where would they shop? What music would they listen to? What would their favourite TV programmes be? etc.

What other films are similar to yours? Who do they appeal to?

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

Are there particular points in your film that would appeal to a certain age or gender? If yes then explain them in detail.

You should refer to genre conventions, use of music, similarities with other movies and what you have identified as the Unique Selling Point of your imaginary film.

Link this into your audience profile (I.e. what age and gender they are)

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

Talk about the filming process. Were there problems you faced? How did you resolve these issues?

Did you get to use new equipment that enhances your opening sequence? I.e. the dolly.

Editing software - Final Cut Express. What have you learnt about editing?

Photoshop - What have you learnt about using the software?

Garageband - was it a useful programme for creating a soundtrack? What challenges did you face during this process?

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

Concentrate on editing and camerawork.

Show what you know about shot types, edit terms and techniques.

Discuss the planning stage, storyboarding, and explain how this helped you to produce your opening sequence.

Make sure you mention the 180 degree rule, match on action and shot/reverse shot

Has your use of specific shot types improved? I.e. match on action, point of view?

Do you feel more confident with the equipment?

How successful do you feel your end product is as fulfilling the task?

Location shots.

Plot of the film

We came up with the plot of our film when we were planning, we decided that the plot we be about a little girl, who liked to cook, but she was terrible at it, and as the film goes on she gets better at it, we didn't really thing to much about the plot as we were only thinking about the beginning.
The that we chose to base our film on is comedy as everything loves watching funny movies especially children.

We didnt have a script for our film, as we were just going to use music, but the only piece of voice that we have, is our teams voices saying, 'Mr teams alex productions presents'

Editing- day 3

This is our last day working on the project and we still had to add the finishing touches, for example we needed to finish off everything, making sure everything fitted properly, also adding the music we made on garage band and adding the voice over.

The music for the clip is very suitable for a childrens film, its very cheerful and happy. The voice over doesnt sound like a teenagers voice, as on garage band we made it a helium effect so it sounds childish.

Editing- day 2

On the second day of editing, we finished off editing our film on final cut.
Louka started making the music for the film, he used the programme garage band.
In some of our film we need a voice over so we decided to use loukas voice to play with the film, we recorded his voice on a voice recorder and uploaded it into final cut. we had to make sure that the voice went with the film and that was quite difficult.

Editing- day 1

On the first day of editing we uploaded our footage on to the computer and opened final cut to edit our film.
First of all we selected the parts that we wanted and got rid of the parts we didn't want, then we had to put everything in the rite order. One of the hardest parts of the editing was getting everything to flow correctly and look good.
We used techniques such as fading in and out, also zooming in and out.
On this day we all worked on the editing the film, as we felt it was important to work together, as we all wanted to make important contributions.

3rd day of filming

On the third the of filming we wernt really organized as we had just come back from half term, but we had to get all the filming finished.
Me and Louka had a bowl of alphabet spag, and for most of the lesson, we were trying to find the letters to spell out the names of the directors and producers, it was quite difficult to find the letters without breaking them, and it was very messy. While we were doing this kizzy and gabi brought in bath letters and they were filming gabi write out the names of the cast with the letters, it looked very good as the letters were on a black background and the letters were colourful.
we had the idea that we would speed it up so it looked better. The only thing that we forgot to film was the title but we decided we would do that on photoshop.

2nd day of filming.

The second day of filming i feel we were all more organized and got alot more done.
We all brought in food the reason we did this is because the title of our childrens film is called ' A piece of cake' so we decided to base our filming on the little girl cooking.
we brought in food such as ketchup, flour, and pepper and also brought in a recipe book.
Kizzy typed up a recipe to stick in the recipe book, so it looked more childish, and so the audience could see what was written better.
We then filmed Gabi following the recipe and putting everything in the bowl, and ticking it off when she had done it. We filmed this from multiple angles, so we had plenty to choose from when editing, and also so it looked good.
At the bottom of the recipe book we had the film company's name, which is 'A fish in the shoe film'
and after Gabi has ticked off the ingredients we film her ticking off the film company's name.
This took us quite a while as we filmed it quite a few times as we wanted to make it look good.

First day of filming

We had a list of all the things we needed to film, and we brought in all our props.
We started off by making a black board out of A3 black card, and used white chalk to decorate it so it looked like a childrens black board, we drew things like stick men, hearts and stars. We then stuck it up on the wall, and when looking through the camera it actually looked like a black board.
We filmed Gabi writting, 'Mr Team Alex Productions Presents'. It tooks us quite a few takes to get it perfect.
Also on the first day of filming we prepared for the second day, we drew out the wordsearch, and a few pictures, the reason we did the wordsearch was to add in another title, the title of the word search was 'Music by' and in the letters we wrote the name John davis.
When filming it we had gabi circleling the name and then zooming in.

Planning.

16/10/09

Over the last few days we have worked really hard with planning our childrens film opening.
We went shopping for some props, we were looking for alphabet letters, little girls rings and bracelets.
We also looked at more props that we could use to spell out more of the credits.
Gabby and Kizzy started drawing the storyboard and planning the shots.
We started to think of possible names for our opening, such as 'ready steady cook', ' little cook', ' Lillys kitchen nightmares'. We haven't decided on one just yet, as we are still coming up with names.
We decided to give each person in our group a task for that lesson, so we were all getting on with something different and getting involved, for example, Louka is working on the music on garage band, Im working on the blog.
We also decided on what props everyone in the group has to bring in next lesson.
We have attached out story board to this post.

14/10/09

Today we carried on with our planning, we decided which order we wanted to put the credits in and how we could present them.
We decided on the type of font we wanted to use for some of the opening credits, we found this font on word, its called ' Apple casual '. The reason we chose to use this font is because it remided us of childrens writting.
We also started to think about where we could film the childrens film openning, we need a kitchen set up, with a fridge and cupboards and space where people wont interupt us.
Also we started to think about where we could buy are props to use and as a group we came up with Poundland, as we could buy things such as fridge magnets from there.
Gabi and kizzy went to ask to kitchen staff wether we could use some of their equipment, but they were not available, so we will try another time.
We went onto garageband to start thinking about the music for the clip, as we cant use already produced music.x

13/10/19
We started planning our childrens film today , we started to think of different types of songs we could use to create atmosphere, for example. My boy lollipop , and i got love in my tummy.
We then started to think about how our opening would look and decided on a cartoonized effect such as spolarize or pastorize. we also learned how to use keyframe, on finalcut.

Welcome