Time Management: Updates

I have been adding the finishing touches to my blogs by adding things on such as the Costume/Prop table that is in that blog. At the moment, there is little we as a group can do until we begin filming. In today's lesson we are finishing off the Shot List for when we begin filming and currently casting roles.

Time Management: Updates

Today we made our storyboard animatic. We experienced several technical problems which delayed the process but it is now uploaded onto our blog. By the end of the week (Friday 17th December) we will upload our shotlist and finished actors and characters list as well.

Planning: Animatic

This is our storyboard animatic that we have produced. We added in the background music and various sound effects that we will use and also the duration of each scene is accurate too.

Time Management: Updates

In today's lesson, we spent it photographing pictures of our separate shots for the storyboard. We encountered some problems with the camera so it took longer than expected meaning we didn't get chance to make our storyboard into an animatic. However, I did upload the photo's that we took in today's lesson into a separate blog which will give us a head start tomorrow as we only need to import our photographs into Adobe Premiere to create our animatic as all the editing was done in this lesson.

Planning: Storyboard

These are the pictures of our storyboard before we made it into an animatic, in chronological order and with the duration of the shots underneath.

SHOT 1 Duration: 3 seconds

SHOT 2 Duration: 2 seconds

SHOT 3 Duration: 4 seconds

SHOT 4 Duration: 6 seconds

SHOT 5 Duration: 7 seconds

SHOT 6 Duration: 3 seconds

SHOT 7 Duration: 6 seconds

SHOT 8 Duration: 4 seconds

SHOT 9 Duration: 3 seconds

SHOT 10 Duration: 3 seconds

SHOT 11 Duration: 8 seconds

SHOT 12 Duration: 5 seconds

SHOT 13 Duration: 7 seconds

SHOT 14 Duration: 8 seconds

SHOT 15 Duration: 4 seconds

SHOT 16 Duration: 4 seconds

SHOT 17 Duration: 4 seconds

SHOT 18 Duration: 3 seconds

SHOT 19 Duration: 2 seconds

SHOT 20 Duration: 3 seconds

SHOT 21 Duration: 4 seconds

SHOT 22 Duration: 5 seconds

SHOT 23 Duration: 3 seconds

SHOT 24 Duration: 5 seconds

Organisation: Costume and Props

Fortunately, as our film is based in a College, the costume organisation won't be hard to do. The majority of people who will be cast will be wearing what they wear to college on a typical and everyday basis. The only person who will need a costume change will be the main character, as he will be a classic nerd we need to buy big and bold glasses which we will do over the weekend. Also, we need the main character to be wearing a shirt and tie with short trousers to dress him up as someone who clearly stands out. 
As for props, we just need to main character to be carrying a lot of books to make him appear nerd-like. The 'popular' person who is introduced first will be filmed entering College grounds on a moped, and when he is walking down the corridor he will be carrying his helmet.

Costumes:

• Typical teenage clothing for extras
• 'Popular' guy in nice clothing
• Main character in nerdy clothes: tie, shirt, short trousers - we will borrow this from old clothes we have ourselves so the cost goes down

Props:

• Use a moped and helmet that we are borrowing from a friend [Josh Deacon]
• Use books from the College library that we will ask to borrow
• Folders that we have ourselves
• Magnetic letters to use for our titles from 'Poundland' that will cost £1

Time Management: Updates

We are currently photographing our complete storyboard and are hoping to make it animated and upload it onto our blogs by the end of today's lesson.

Time Management: Updates

Today we took pictures of the location settings to upload onto our Location blog. We had a few complications with the setting not working after having a look around, but by slightly altering where we are planning the film and in what order, we found that it works better. Everything is running on target at the moment and we are hoping that our Storyboard will be photographed and in a blog by Monday 13th.

Organisation: Location

Today we organised where abouts we would film our opening sequence to our film around College.


We are hoping to use a large corridor in College for the opening sequence in our film. We are planning to film this as a closed set after college hours so that the setting will seem more realistic. So for this, we need to cast enough people to make the setting seem like it is a College. The lockers that we are going to use to introduce the titles on, are in the corridor will we be filming and also the toilets are part of this hallway too, however, we will only be seeing the door for the toilets. Also, we will need to use a classroom so we will have to ask for permission from teachers to ensure that we can do this. We decided to increase the screen time with the 'Popular' guy so we included the outside part to watch him approach the college.

These are the areas of location for our film:

This is the first shot of the outside so we can see the 'popular' guy walking into the Hall way

This is the Hall way where the popular guy will walk through after getting off his moped.

 This is where the popular guy starts to interact with other people within the set, it is also next to the toilets.

 This is the classroom that will be filmed at the very end of the opening sequence

This is the whiteboard within the classroom where the title for the film will appear

Time Management: Updates

We are on schedule to completing the filming deadline on time.
We are currently arranging who we are going to ask to be in our film, and they will be cast by the end of the week. Also, hopefully, our storyboarding and shot list will be completed by Monday 13th December at the latest.

Planning: Script

We decided to make a draft for what the voice over will say during our opening sequence.


Camera is following the 'popular' boy at this point who is walking down the corridor in a laid back manner. The camera makes it seem as if the voice over is the 'popular' boy speaking.


NERD VOICE OVER:
'I've guess you've seen the typical High School Nerd at some point in your life, you know, the one that doesn't get out much? [camera is following 'popular' boy]
Well, I'm your typical guy. I like to party, play football, look at pretty girls [camera cuts to the 'pretty' girls walking down corridor] and ...hang out with the fellas [camera switches to 'popular' boy's friends]. Of course, School isn't my type of fun. The teachers are complete asses who attempt to 'fit in' with their students by using slang and talking about drugs or alcohol. My Mum and Dad don't really care for what I do; I don't have a curfew and they don't mind how much I drink or smoke., which is pretty cool in my opinion..'


CUE CAR BRAKING SOUND


NERD VOICE OVER [continuing]:
(Sighs)
'...Yeah, that's me. The typical High School Nerd who doesn't get out much. I like to party... online, play football... video games, look at girls on porn sites and hang out with the fellas on xbox live. This is my life.'

Planning: Synopsis

The cast and crew names will be introduced throughout the opening sequence, they will appear as magnetic names inside lockers that various people will open to reveal to the camera. There will be non-diegetic music playing in the start. The camera follows a seemingly popular and good looking teenage boy throughout a High School corridor, there will also be a voice over giving exposition. The camera will see him casually high fiving his friends and wolf whistling at pretty girls by some lockers. The audience will be made to think that this is the character that the voice over is introducing, however, the popular boy that was introduced in the first few seconds bumps into a nerd which is when a non-diegetic car braking sound plays. When the popular boy and nerd bump into each other the nerd drops all of his books which is when the popular boy makes a remark aimed at him - "loser", this is when the music stops and everyone in the corridor starts laughing at him, the voice over now reveals that the nerd is the main character. When the main character walks into the classroom next to him, the title for the film is written on the whiteboard.

Genre Research Summary

In this blog, I will summarise all I have found out about genre from the researching my group and I have conducted.



 For our genre - a typical Teenage Romantic Comedy, it is often to see the opening titles in a very arty and three dimensional way. The titles ranging from 'Juno' to '10 Things I Hate About You' all had titles that were very similar to that of a teenagers drawing in a note pad or doodle book. This gave our group a lot of ideas for how we could present our titles in our opening sequence in a creative way. The titles were usually very large and colourful and also introduced at about the same time as the main character in the film. The titles also seemed to relate to their characters or the film - for teenage films the titles came on quickly and seemed to jerk around rather being still and neat compared to a serious romance genre.


The music used in openings to our genre, or very similar, usually have a deeper meaning to them and link in to the story line of the film itself or gives underlying information about the character. The songs are often well known and quite pop mainstream, the title songs are usually non-diegetic although in some openings they are used to be diegetic by the main character driving a car or listening to an iPod. Other types of diegetic sounds that are common to be found in teenage rom-coms are groups of people talking so it seems like a crowd very faint in the background - this is often used to represent they are at a High School full of people which emphasises that at times, the audience are the only people relating to characters.
Music that can be used as a background noise can be songs like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MrqkiHWCnM&feature=fvst or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QXOymwtQKU, for example.

The characters that are most likely to appear in our genre was very easy to decipher. Through my research of the two film openings it is common to come across someone who is an out cast from everybody else in the school, and generally is not liking High School and wants a big change to happen. The main characters are usually stereotypical 'Nerds' who don't appear to have many friends or a social life. Binary Opposition is usually used in teenage rom-coms as it shows the diversity between the 'Nerds' and the 'Popular people' who the nerds want to be. The main characters in the beginning always wear bland and unflattering clothes that don't make them stand out. For female lead characters they are often filmed without make up and their hair tied back, and for male lead characters they are seen with typical 'geek' glasses and an out of dated hair cut. In the openings to films, the camera always seems to film the characters from a long shot or a medium close up - representing that we don't know the character very well because the character themselves don't either. The angle is usually low, as the character is supposed to appear to be belittled by everybody else.


In a typical High School rom-com, it is very typical to see all the lockers throughout the corridor; showing exposition as to where they are for the setting - which is generally within a High School or College. The lighting is usually bright to show how big the High School is and how daunting it is the main character of the film sees it. Also, there are usually big 'sports' fans in the background of most shots and pretty girls applying make up. This could be to connote how much the main character stands out from everybody else at the school. It is also typical to see the classrooms and school books that the main character is carrying, again to see how they only focus on school work instead of concentrating on socialising. 


The narratives that are mainly used are the Enigma codes to show the difference from when everything is 'normal' and how it concludes after a lot of drama and action. The music generally is the media language that represents this, as at first the music is similar to who the character is as a person to begin with. So if the character is from Africa, the music at first would sound like it came from that culture. This is to show that everything is okay - stage 1. When stage 2 occurs, the music usually changes to fit in with the drama. So if a love interest comes into the screen, a love song will play so the music will be non-diegetic and quite slow. It is also often to see Binary Opposition between the main characters and the dominant people in the school. So if the main character is a 'Nerd', you will see 'Popular' people breaking in and out of the screen to connote that they hold the power, so cinematography generally helps this by making the main character appear small in comparison.


Cinematography is usually used to make the main character appear to be smaller compared to everybody else by the camera always looking down onto the main character to show they're isolated. Editing is also used to slow everything that the character does. Such as if they are walking past a crush - they slow down to show that how they are seeing them affects the main character. The camera also gets closer to the character as they appear to go through some drama or action, but then again starts to pull away as they make the wrong decisions. We also have a lot of point of view shots from the main character, so the audience tend to relate to the main character and favour them over everybody else within the film. There are also lots of close ups of the main character to identify the leading character in the movie, especially within openings.

Audience Research - Focus Group Meeting Analysis

After getting responses to our questions asked on our Focus Group page, we copied the comments and the questions.


From our research we found interesting things relating to the topics that teenagers between 16-19 years of age enjoy in a film. The most popular type of genre came out as 'Comedy', so our group was quite happy as the genre we want to make the opening sequence will be a Romantic Comedy. Also, because a few members of our focus group also said they like Rom-Coms too, also gave us many ideas as what we need to include within our opening such as the type of characters they expect to see. 


An interesting point that Sophie Wheeler made is that in a rom-com she expects to see two characters who hate each other, and further down the line end up falling in love. Our group took advantage on the point Sophie had made, so we decided to think of ways that we could make that happen within in introduction without giving away too much of the film that would be to follow.  Also, when she spoke about 'romance' as a genre, she noted that she expected to see something realistic as she enjoys the fact that it could happen to her.


We also took ideas from the comments Rosie-May Williams made about the genre of Comedy. Whereby she likes to see a sense of stupid but still slightly sophisticated humour. This gave our group ideas to make the sense of humour used within the 2 minute introduction a little drier but remaining at the same level of sophistication, instead of being a typical joke after joke comedy.


Within our focus group we had people who came from different backgrounds and different places from the UK. Surprisingly, all the genres that were chosen were about the same and the comments made about them were very similar too. But it is clear to see that people who watch 'Scary Movie' may enjoy a more stupid sense of humour in films rather than a more intelligent comedy for people who enjoy watching films like 'Love Actually'. This slightly altered the way our group thought after a deeper discussion, and we were thinking about the way we could present our humour within our opening.


Overall, we found our focus group to be helpful to us to see what we need to include in a romance and a comedy, and find a common ground between them both to appeal to our audience but also make our film genre work in the 2 minutes that we have.

Our Focus Group Research

As a result of our Focus Group we decided to slightly alter our ideas for the opening of our film:
1. We would change the main character and the love interest to be enemies and completely unaware of each other or their deeper feelings, instead of introducing them as being acquaintances.
2. We would make the 'future romance' seem realistic.
3. We would use comedy that was closer to sarcasm and 'teenage' wit instead of having a joke after a joke within the opening.

Audience Research Focus Group

By using Facebook, our group set up a focus group to find out what people in our target audience range like, in the ways of genre and what they expect to see in it; types of character and storyline. We conducted several questions to ask the people in our focus group to give us more information and help us to round-up our research. 

The people in our focus group are:

Rosie-May Williams 16 years old

Sophie Wheeler 16 years old

Dale Harris 16 years old

Tyler-Rose Neath 17 years old

These are the questions that we chose to ask them:

1. What are your favourite genres of film? 

2. What would you expect to happen in films of that genre? 

3. What do you like about this genre? 

4. What type of characters do you expect to see within this genre?

From those questions we hoped to find out what appeals to 16-19 year olds, to allow us to know what to include when we came to creating our 2 minute opening sequence to a film genre of our choice.