Blog Update: (15/12/11)

Today me and Kirstie both Re-Wrote our treatment and are really happy with how our film looks and how we have planned it out. We changed things from before for example we changed the title of the film from Love Triangle to 'Two can play that game' because we feel this new title fits the film more effectively than the original title me and Kirstie both felt that now our film is starting to look and feel like a professional film which i think is good, Overall i am happy with what we have changed for the opening sequence and the film as a whole. Me and Kirstie have learnt a lot from the research that we have done and it has helped us a lot, and because we used a variety of research methods it helped us with our work loads because of how we can link back our work to this research.

Treatment Re-Write

Here is the treatment re-write that me and Kirstie have wrote up and now we are confident that it is appropriate and that it is suitable for a Romantic Comedy film we have improved the story from when we last did the treatment. Because now we have changed their personalities so that we can have a clear distinction between Ellie and jessica this is good for the audience so that they do not get confused between the two girls. Plus we changed the name of the title as it is better for a rom-com and we was suggested this name from someone in our focus group therefore we have now changed the title as it looks better now. We both agree that now we have a story and style that we are confident to film and plan so here is the treatment Re-write that we have produced:


Two can play that game

An original screenplay by Connor Still, Becky Hagger and Kirstie Staggs 

15/12/11

Centre Stage Productions presents a romantic comedy film about two girls named Ellie and Jessica who fall in love with the same man called Connor but dont realise they both fall for the same guy. They are best friends but live completely different life styles because of how their personalities vary. Ellie is a secondary school art teacher who is very dipsy and enjoys life on the other hand Jessica is a lawyer and can be serious at times because how how stressful and serious her job is.

As the story unfolds we realise the two girls fall in love with the same man and are best friends who have advised each other with advice on the same man. But this can only lead to  disaster as there friendship will be tested as the film progresses.

Through going on dates, talking in work, conversations on the phone they reassure eachother that theres not another girl on the scene and that he does like her not knowing its the same man. 

Think 'In Her Shoes' meets 'Something Borrowed'.

Our production company plans to have a montage in order to achieve the desired passing time effect targeted towards a demographic composed of primarily of women. After our audience research we are going to include music over the background of the opening sequence and use of voice overs.

Blog Update: (13/12/2011)

Today we i have summarised our finding from the research we have undergone i found this task good for me today because by summarising it i have gathered enough information to begin to see my target audience. And by finding my target audience our group can then begin to make our opening sequence to be aimed at the target audience, so then we know all the key feature we would need to include in order to appeal to our target audience. I also uploaded our interviews that me and Kirstie asked people so now i have a lot of research that we can conclude from which is good because we can now begin to shape what people our film will be aimed at so then we know what type of things we should include in our opening sequence.

Our Target Audience

Now we have had all of our research put together and summarised i can now begin to see who our proper target audience profile is. So after getting all the information i require here is our target audience who i am aiming our film to:

Nmae: Amy
Gender: Female
Age: 17
Occupation: Collage Student


Amy is a teenager who has recently got herself a part time job in her local supermarket, Amy spends her weekdays in collage and the weekends in work. Amy works so that she can get herself all of the latest clothes and other accessories. When Any does get her money she likes to go to the cinema once every two weeks minimum, Amy likes to see any film that everyone wants to see so that she can keep up to date with what everyone else has seen lately. Amy uses a variety of media daily which mainly consists of the internet, Amy uses her iPad 2 to go on the internet, and read any magazines that she wants this is how she gets most of her media.


Amy is currently dating a boy who she has fancied for a while, she was swept of her feet when he asked her on a date and now she goes to the cinema to watch the rom-coms that she loves, so her boyfriend has no choice nut to watch them too. Amy loves rom-coms and will go see the latest rom-com if she has seen it advertise on the TV but she will only go and see it with her boyfriend so she can feel the love from her boyfriend. Amy's hobbies are shopping, she would never go more than two weeks without going shopping for new clothes or shopping for other because she is a kind nice and caring person. She also likes to read books every now and then she mainly loves rading romantic book that invlove a fairytale love between two people because that is what she wants when she is older.


With the busy life she has, she still seems to find time to revise and get the best grades she can in collage and is currently getting top grades, because when she is older she wants to be a dance teacher. She sees that by working hard now it will pay off later in life. Home life for Amy is good because her mum and dad are both very supportive of what she does and her little brother loves to annoy her but they love each other really. Amy wants to go on to university after collage and knows exactly what she wants to do in life. Overall she is just a very happy go lucky girl who never gets too stressed or angry over something as she believes that everything will end up being ok in the end.

Audience Research Summary

We carried out different types of research which included a focus group where we got around six people in front of a camera and asked specific questions that we have planned before hand. Becky wrote up the questions for when me and Kirstie go and interview various people, which we did as a new form of research. We also interviewed our media teacher so we could get some results from someone who was in the media industry. But we found the questionnaire to be the most effective because  we got a various results from all ages and genders, so from this we can begin to form our target audience which is good because we know who and how to aim our film to the target audience.

On our questionnaire we got 22 people to fill it out and 69% of them were females so from this we can predict our target audience gender is female because the majority of the people answering the questions are females. Then we found out that a massive 95% of t=of the 22 answered we teenagers so from what we have gathered so far we can start to see our target audience unfold as so far we have seen that our target audience are females who are between 13-19. And another key factor from our questionnaire is the occupation question because we found out that 18 people out of 22 were students so now we re forming our target audience. These people also see the most adverts for films on the TV  and they use the internet the most so from this we know how to reach our target audience if we wanted to advertise.

So from this i can say that our target audience would be females around 15-19 who sometimes go to the cinema and see film advertisements on the TV and regularly use the internet. This is the target audience after collecting all the research our group have done. 

If i were to improve anything i was of added a few more questions onto our questionnaire for example we could of asked what type of music they listen to. Also i felt that the question where we asked them to rank  the genres in order was not good because it was hard to analyse the results after and i thought that people wasn't answering properly because it was long to do, so to improve i would of made the question more specific so we could get better results. Plus if i were to improve the interviews i would of asked more teenagers because now we know who are target audience is so now it would be more relevant for us.

TA research Interviews

Here is our interview that we carried out on various people and we gathered our results we found out that it was mainly women who liked Romantic Comedy and any man that we did ask says that they would watch it with their wife or girlfriend. Also we got three features that they would expect to see in a romantic comedy which will help our group when we make our opening sequence. Me and Kirstie were interviewing these people so that we could get a better understanding of our target audience.

Interview with Miss o'Dell

Here is an interview we did with our teacher Miss O'Dell, we did this so that we can see the views she has on Romantic comedies. As she is a media teacher she then tells us the keys features that she would expect to see in a Romantic comedy, this helped us get a view of a media teacher and what she thinks about Romantic Comedies.

Focus group

 Here is our focus group which we have planned for a while now because we had to make sure that we got everyone and had the questions ready. Before filming this we had to plan the questions which we wrote down so that we could ask the focus group. We think it went well because we have gotton a lot of infomation and feedback about our idea.

Here is the results from our survey, we got 22 people to do our survey and got our results so here is what we got and each question.

Here we can see the majority of people who took this survey were females with almost double the amount of males that took our survey. This is good because we can at the end we can make a judgment knowing that most of the people answering this questionnaire were females.

This is an important question that we have provided and we can see 21 out of the 22 people who took the survey were teenagers, which is good because now we can see that we have mainly females and they are mostly teenagers.

3. What is your occupation?

Student (18)    Teacher (2)     Kitchen fitter (1)      Other (1)

And here is the different types of occupations we got in and as you can see students with 18 is the biggest answer we got from this survey. So now i can begin to make an assumption that so far we have mainly females who are students, which is good for our group because we can go on to find our target audience.

4. What was the last film you watched?

Twilight (3)    
In Time  (2)
Arthur Christmas(1)
Angus Thongs and perfect snogging(1)
Anuvahood (1)
The thing(1)
Human centipede 2 (1)
50 First Dates (1)
Paranormal Activity 3 (1)
Takken (1)
Passion of the Christ (1)
Officer and a Gentleman (1)
Anchorman (1)
Harry Potter (1)
Wild Child (1)
Goodfellas (1)
Chuck and Larry (1)
Horrible Bosses (1)
Hangover 2 (1)

As you can see there is a wide range of films that have been watched recently but most of these films were films that have recently come out in the cinema or on DVD so therefore they would have been watched the most. In here we also see a few Romantic Comedies which is good as we can now see some of these people watch rom-coms for example we see; 50 First dates, Officer and a gentleman and angus thongs and perfect snogging.

5.What are your hobbies/interests?

The top answers were:

Football(5)
Shopping(3)
Dance(3)
Reading(2)


These were the top answers that we got and the top answer was football which i would think were from the males who took the questionnaire because the people who took the survey generally liked football the males i mean. Then we go to the 'more' feminine hobbies for example shopping and dancing which are labeled as female hobbies so i would think these particular hobbies were written by women.

As we can see we got a variety of answers for this point and it is good because we have a very balanced answers for example we have someone who doesn't watch a film a week ever and someone who does every week. The main answer was sometimes so most of the people who took the survey watch a film at the cinema every week sometimes but not every single week.

From these choices we see that most of these people see film adverts on the TV which is a good point where we can use this information and say that if we were to advertise our movie we would have to put it on to the TV to reach a wider audience.

Internet is a big feature for these people because we can see this is the form of media in which they use the most. This is good as now we have a clear idea of what our audience use regularly and that is the internet. So now we know how to reach these people by advertising on the TV and advertise on the internet because this is the most used.

9. What Are the key features you would expect to see in a romantic comedy?
Here are the best answers given;

Comedy (9)
Male and female breakups (7)
Relationships (5)
Awkward Moments (5)
Sex (5)
Hot Guy (5)
Happy ending (4)
Love Triangle (4)
Happy ending (4)
Romantic Music (3)
Love (3)
Romance (3)
Kissing (2)
Hot Girl (1)


Here we can see that something that everyone expect to see in a rom com is mainly comedy and a relationship, so from this our group can conclude that we should think about including some comedy and clearly show a relationship. So now i think in our opening scene we should show that we do include some elements of comedy to make it clear that it is a romantic comedy not just a romance film.

For this we asked the people to rank the specific genres in order of there favourite to least favourite and now from these results we can now see which ones were chosen as their best and which ones we chosen as the least. But i do not like how the results came up because it was difficult to read so if we were to improve we would change the way the question has been layed out so that we can read the results more effectively. 

Focus Group Questions

Here are the questions that Kirstie has produced to ask to our focus group, and i think they are good because we can get a lot of information from all of the individuals which will give us effective results. And we can get all our groups different opinions and ideas which is how Kirstie has designed these questions.

Focus Group Interview Questions

Here are the questions that Becky has done to use when we interview miss O'dell, she has done these open end questions so that we really can get a wider range of answers to give more accurate results for our opening sequence and research. I think these questions are good because we can get a lot of detail from one person using these particular questions. 

Focus Group Letter

Here is the letter to invite people to our focus group, i wrote this letter for our group so that we could use it to invite the people we would like to come and take part in the focus group. I think this letter is appropriate because it gives them a choice if they want to be filmed and gives them a contact if they would like to be involved in our contact group. I am happy with how this letter looks as it gives the vital information and isn't too long.

Predicted target audience

Gender: Female
Age: 18
Occupation: Collage student

Bio: Emily is an elder teen who is currently studying hairdressing in her second year of collage. Emily still lives at home with her mother and on saturdays she works at her local supermarket in order to get money to go out with her friends. Emily also has a older brother who she always argues with but they always will have each others back. Emily enjoys going out of a night this would usually consist of her going to a party nearby or the local cinema to watch a new film that she must see with her friends. Emily also enjoys finding out the latest news and gossip on the celebrities and to do this she reads OK magazine and uses the internet to gather more information about certain celebrities she looks up to.

Emily is currently single but loves all relationships and is always going on dates to find the guy right for her. Emily also loves celebrities and anything in fashion she would go out and buy because she always wants to look in  style and cares about how she looks. Emily also uses media as surveillance and most commonly uses the internet and magazines because this her best way to find out about her favourite celebrities. Overall Emily is a fun bubbly person and loves to socialise with her friends and loves relationships and is still looking for a relationship herself.

Audience profile research

Here are my questions that I came up with after thinking what would be the most effective questions to use.  

1. What are your favourite genre's of films? (rank in order 1 being the highest)

Action/adventure ()  Comedy () Rom-Com () Thriller () Horror ()

2. where do you see film advertisements the most?

Transport () Billboards () Internet () TV () Newspapers/magazines () Other ()

3. What was the last film you watched? 

4. 'I watch films in the cinema regularly' 

Strongly disagree.......disagree........sometimes.......agree........strongly agree

5. What are your hobbies?

These are the questions that i came up with and i put my input into the overall questionnaire and i am happy with what has come from this. And here is our finished survey...

Textual analysis of 5 Rom-Com opening Sequences.

Love Actually  Was released in 2003 and is a British Romantic Comedy which was written and directed by Richard curtis. The cast of this film are mainly British actors.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsnruVriVYw 


In the opening sequence of Love actually we first see a clip of this woman in and airport hug her husband or her boyfriend. The opening credits are edited over the top of the film which i think is effective because it is more interesting than a black screen. This opening is a montage and when researching i found out that a montage is a main key feature in most romantic comedies and already in the first parts of this film we instantly see a montage of clips. 


You can hear the non diegetic music which sets the pace of the film and in this case it is a slow paced which creates a mood of being soft. This music is good for the scene because we don't see anything that is fast so the music and the clip are in sync together. This opening sequence opens with a woman walking and does not say the name of the film, we just hear the music then see this woman walking. Which i think is good because we don't know if this woman is a main character she then approaches this man and kisses him. I liked this idea because we instantly see the love between then which is good as it relates to the genre.










The devil wears Prada  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNfEHIcWQYM


This opening sequence to this is similar to what i would like to achieve when making my opening to a film. We have the alternate shots between the two women to show the clear difference between the two this is something we have planned to do. This allows the audience to bond with the characters  

SWOT Analysis

Strengths  


Our strengths in our pitch was that we managed to find in our research that many Romantic comedies include some sort of montage at the beginning. We was told this was a good feature to use as many romantic comedies include a montage in the beginning which we felt was to introduce the characters or to find out their personalities. And sir was happy with how we had planned and had researched this idea. Sir told us that our research was effective and we knew what we was going to do with our opening because we are using some of the conventions of a Romantic comedy film. Also we as a group had confidence in the idea, and we all knew the concept. This is good because we all have many ideas for the opening sequence so we can begin to expand the best ideas from our heads. So overall i think that our best strength was that we all knew what we was doing and had confidence with our idea.


Weaknesses 


The teachers and our group agreed that our two main characters were too similar and we needed to make a clearer distinction between the two. We was going to make them different through wealth then we was told that we should make them different by there personalities because wealth wouldn't be as good a different between the two characters. So we now are making one character a school teacher and the other a high class business woman so they are now clearly different but are still good friends. This was the key weakness in our pitch and we feel that sir was pleased with the idea and research we have produced therefore we were given some things to change in order to make our opening sequence as best as it can be.

Opportunities 


Our main opportunities are that we could make a really good montage that fits the Romantic Comedy genre, if sucessful we could get the audience to understand the two characters and their personalities which is good because they canstart to relate to them. Also now by making our characters different we could really get the audience engaged with the relationship between the two women and they would want to see how there relationship will fair. To make the best romantic comedy we can we will have to, listen to what we will need to improve and do research to see what can make our opening sequence that could be the best it can be.


Threats 


The treats of our opening is that the conversation between the two women could be boring, so to make it not boring we would have to make it relevant to the story and give key information about the story. Also we would have to add something fresh to the opening so it is not the exact same as many other of the Romantic comedies there are out at the moment. When we make the montage i think the biggest threat is; it could look unprofessional so to avoid our montage looking unprofessional we will have to:

• Plan our camera angles and shots
• Use convincing actor's/actress'
• Make sure we edit the clips effectivly
• And make sure we plan in detail

If we do this we can avoid the many threats that could happen when we make our opening sequence, and by us being aware of the threats it should make us try to avoid these threats and overall our opening sequence shoud be the best it can be. We will also have to look at the strengths of our idea so far and begin to progress on them so that they become stronger and it should make our work benefit from this.

Our Pitch

This is our treatment pitch  which was held on the 22nd of November 2011.

Treatment Pitch Feedback

What worked well? (e.g. effective application of genre conventions) 


I think our pitch went well because we managed to get across our main key points that we are going to include in our opening sequence. We was told that our research was effective because we noticed that most Rom-Coms include a montage somewhere in the film. We told everyone many different things including the target audience for this film also why we chose the characters we did. Also when i was reading the script i decided to look at the sheet then direct my words to the audience so that they feel involved with the pitch rather than me just looking at the paper and reading from it. Overall i thought that our pitch came across well to the audience and am glad that we got our positive and constructive criticism because now we can make our opening the best it can be.


What would make your initial idea even better?


We was told that to make our initial idea better we would have to make the two characters (jessica and Ellie) have different personalities so that it is easy to make a distinction between the two. So it was suggested that instead of making them different through the money they earn instead make them different in personality for example make one of the women be a really bubbly fun school teacher and the other a very serious business woman and this is good as the audience can see a clear difference between the two characters and would be good to see the difference between them. I think by looking at more opening sequences we can begin to get more ideas for our opening sequence and it can only improve from now on.


What will you do next? (e.g. more genre convention research)


We will now begin to look at the common conventions of Romantic comedy films and see what conventions that would improve our opening sequence. We will have to analyse more opening to romantic comedies so that we can have a full perspective of what they all include and what makes them good or bad opening sequences. We will look at the types of; Camera angles, camera shots and other feature such as actors/actress' and the overall plot to the film. This will help us begin to shape our opening sequence and will give us a wider knowledge of romantic comedies. This will specifically help me because Romantic Comedies are not the genre of film i generally watch so by doing this i can learn more about romantic comedies.

Treatment Pitch Script

Pitch Script

Kirstie.

We decided to call our film Love Triangle made by our company Centre Stage Productions. As a group we’re hoping to create romantic comedy film about two girls named Ellie and Jessica who fall in love with the same man called Connor. As the story unfolds we (as the audience) realise the two girls fall in love with the same man and are best friends who have advised each other with advice on the same man. The twist however is that the two friends don’t realise they like the same man.

Through going on dates, talking in work, conversations on the phone they reassure eachother that theres not another girl on the scene and that he does like her, without either of the girls knowing it’s the same man. We decided to base our film on two rom-coms; In her shoes & something borrowed. Our production company plans to have a montage in order to achieve the desired passing time effect as an opening sequence.

Becky.

In our opening scene we have various close up shots of things happening to show that the girls are getting ready. For example, shots of brushing teeth, doing hair & waking up. The shots will alternate between girls to show them both getting ready and to introduce to us that they’re both main characters. Over our opening sequence montage, we will have a song called Lenka- The Show. We chose this song because it’s a happy one and quite cheerful. Also the lyrics in it are about being lost in love and are appropriate. Also, it sets the scene for the rest of the film and makes the opening montage less awkward,  Later on in the sequence we will have the two girls on the phone to each other talking about their weekend and how Ellie met a guy Christmas shopping. Jessica then gives Ellie advice on the situation. Jessica reaches work and finishes the conversation with ‘im here now, I’ve got something to tell you’. We then have a shot of the lift doors closing on her and this makes the music cut out. This is the end of our opening sequence.

Connor.

The reason we chose to do a montage because Becky’s research on Romantic Comedy films showed that various films had a montage at the beginning. For example, the devil wears Prada, Just Married, Love Actually. We decided to do a montage because thought it would be a good way to introduce our two main characters and to show that they both have a similar aim i.e to get to work. This is how we know the two characters share something similar in life. We feel that this opening sequence will represent our chosen genre of rom-coms as it features two girls/women trying to win a man with many obstacles along the way. However, we did choose to change a convention; and we done this by making the two main characters two girls rather than a man and woman. This gives the typical romance story a twist as the main relationship is a friendship rather than a romance. However, it is still a romantic comedy as the main plot is that these two girls are both trying to chase one guy.

Kirstie.

Within our team we haven’t decided on specific roles just yet but we have a rough idea. Connor’s skills are editing and he has a steady hand when it comes to filming so we think Connor will be good at this. Becky is good at deciding what actually happens on screen and assembling the rush cuts before editing, so she will be given this role. I am quite good at editing and picking out little things that need to be changed so after Becky and Connor I will take over the editing to finish it all off.

Becky.

We decided our target audience will be females aged 15+. Of course certain conventions of this film will appeal to men, most of it follows the lives of two women and men may find it a little boring. We’re happy to take any questions. 

Potential Opening Sequence

1. We would have a slow Zoom in to the alarm on the bedside table. Alarm goes off. Ellie's hand slaps onto the alarm, music   then cuts in "The show"- Lenka (song)
2.  The we could have a shot of Jessica rolling over in bed. Birds eye view of her stretching.
3.  Then a close up of Ellie's feet landing on floor and putting into slippers. 
4. After a shot of toothpaste being put on toothbrush and then Jessica brushing her teeth (mirror shot) 
5. A shot of straighteners running through Ellie's hair ( close up then head shot)
6. Now we could have a shot of Jessica pulling her hair up. 
7. Then a close up of Ellie buttoning up top.
8. Stragiht after we could have a shot of Jessica buttoning her trousers up. 
9. Now to a shot of Ellie picking up her keys
10. Then a shot of Jessica's door closing
11. Similar shot of Ellie's door closing
12. Shot of Jess getting into in car
13. Then a shot of Ellie going through ticket barrier at train station
14. Shot of Jess starting up the car ready to drive.
15. Shot of Ellie getting on train and doors closing shut. 
16. Shot of train pulling away.
17. Shot of Jessica's car pulling off drive.

Treatment Template

Love Triangle

An original screenplay by Connor Still, Becky Hagger and Kirstie Staggs 

Centre Stage Productions presents a romantic comedy film about two girls named Ellie and Jessica who fall in love with the same man called Connor.

As the story unfolds we realise the two girls fall in love with the same man and are best friends who have advised each other with advice on the same man.

Through going on dates, talking in work, conversations on the phone they reassure eachother that theres not another girl on the scene and that he does like her not knowing its the same man. 

Think 'In Her Shoes' meets 'Something Borrowed'.

Our production company plans to have a montage in order to achieve the desired passing time effect targeted towards a demographic composed primarily of women.

Potential plot for my Rom-Com film

Name of Film: Love and Homeless People

Summary plot idea;

• Homeless man fall for this rich woman 
• He does everything to try to become a better person
• He works his way up to be a cleaner at her work
• She pays no attention to him
• Until they get locked in a lift and fall in love

A young man named Jack is homeless and lives on the streets he then see this business woman who he instantly falls for. After this event he decides to change his life around and begins to save money and then buys himself a suit, after this long period of time he then applies for the cleaning job at the building this business woman works for he gets the job at the company as a cleaner. We begin to see him getting a home and more stuff going into it, we also see him trying to capture the attention of the woman he desires but she pays no attention. She only gets to know him when the lift they are both in comes to a holt and they are stuck in for many hours and at first they say nothing to each other and he tries to be funny but he is really not but we then begin to see her fall in love with the man and he asks her on a date. At the end we see him walking off with her taking her into his house and he is very happy.

Why our group chose Romantic comedy

We choose rom com because after we had done our research we agreed that Rom-Com would suit us best because we all discussed possible settings, characters etc.. and we felt that by doing romantic comedy it would best suit us as we all had good ideas for a potential plot etc.. So then we all researched a little to see what main key feature Romantic comedies all included, first thing we fed back was a montage of either a girl getting ready of her waking up we almost found this element in every rom-com we could find. Also another feature we found that was vital for a rom-com was a romance between a male and a female. But also we still would see friendships between two girls or two men which i thought was interesting and suggested that we should show two girls in the opening sequence and show that they are friends. But Overall our group is very happy we chose Romantic Comedy because we all had so many ideas for our potential opening scene which is good as we can take the best ideas in order to make an amazing romantic Comedy opening.


We didn't choose any of the other genres because not only would they be very difficult to shoot but they would also be very hard to make look professional as some would need more equipment to film and we would not be able to afford or acquire this equipment. We first ruled out doing a horror film because one we felt that a lot of people instantly think to do this because they would use some sort of chase scene in the beginning in a forest or in the street. But not just that, it would not look professional enough and just look very amateur and we wanted our work to be the best it can possibly be therefore we did not chose Horror because we felt it would be very difficult to pull off. And as for the other genres like action, comedy etc we just felt that if we made opening sequences for those films they would not look as professional as the opening sequence that we could do for Romantic Comedy.

Peer Assessment

Becky's assessment 


Becky said that she thought my first opening was good but it their was one section which she would change because it is brief and doesn't give much detail as to why this man is angry. She liked my overall idea for this particular story and said "the tension you have created is good because the audience will be instantly engaged into the story line and by starting with this it will make people want to viewon. But i feel that you could change a section to show why he is angry and to give us a bigger insight to why he is this mad". As you can see in the screenshot below this is the section that Becky felt could need changing, i also agreed with with her as it could include more detail in this section.

Here is the section that Becky said i should add more detail to so that the audience can get more information as to why this man is angry and what the other man has done to make him angry. I agree because it is very brief and more detail could be added to it to make it better for the audience. And below is the screenshot where i added more detail to the section so that it is clear what the man is acting like and why he is angry.

I put in more detail which explains why he is angry, as it suggests that the man has betrayed 'The low' and not done a job properly that he was asked to and that is more clear from where i have added the section. I also added a part in brackets because it shows us that he is becoming louder and more aggressive. I think that this assessment has helped me because i have realised that i should put more detail into how the shots look and be really visual so that people are able to see what i would look like if it was filmed.



Kirstie's assessment 


Kirstie told met that the story line was good because it is intense, she also really liked how the story starts in the middle or end of the film because it will make the audience want to see how this happened and what caused this to happen. But she did say that it was breif in certain areas and that i could improve them. She suggested that i could add a few more camera shots and i could say about the mayhem that is happening because she was quite interested to know the full story so this shows that the storyline is engageing but this needs to show a bit more so it is less breif.

Kirstie felt that saying ' and all sorts of mayhem' was too brief and that i should expand on this because it was like i was rushing or that i couldn't think what the other mayhem was. As you can see in the screenshot above there is the highlighted section which Kirstie told me that i should improve. Kirstie said to improve i could write the types of mayhem we see, or exxplain some more shots that happen and how they show the types of mayhem. 

As you can see in the screenshot above i have changed the brief sentence and i have expanded it more also added a few more shots so that anyone reading this can see the filming in thier head because it is more clear than it was before. I am glad Kirstie told me that i should improve this section because now it looks so much better. I think now this story looks better because of the peer assesment by Kirstie and it has maked me improve this potential gangster film plot. She read it after and said that she likes it much better now and that no more changes would be needed as i have done everything she thinks i needed to.


Daniel Wright's Assessment 

Daniel said that my third opening was too brief and that i should expand on the key elements more so that he gets a full picture of the openings. He told me that he really liked my idea because it is intense fast and sharp but he wanted more detail so that he can understand it more and get the storyline. Also she said i could add more camera angles and shot types in order to capture the mood of which it would be filmed. I agree with daniel by saying that i should improve how i try to show this opening it would look much better once i have edited the parts which Daniel said i should change.

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Gangster Film openings

Here is my three gangster film openings that i am going to do and i'm going to include how they would look by describing the four key areas: Mise en scene, Camera, Editing and Sound.

Synopsis


This gangster film is called The Low. Which is about one group of Mafia living in America in the 1960's this group known as "The Low" this is not just any old Mafia, The Low is the most feared and widely respected groups in America. The Low aren't just known for there gruesome antics but also for how they use and make money. But The Low come under some trouble when some of there very own men are trying to sabotage the organisation but siding with another mafia group on the rise in the same state as The Low. Overall this film consists of the main characters in battles or situations where they have to find out who are the snakes in the organisation and who is trying to kill of their own men.




 1. For this opening the camera would be outside a dark room where it then pans in through the door where a figure is seen sitting down on a chair and he then starts talking in a slow a soft tone towards the camera. Then he stands up ( camera at low angle so he looks powerful) We do not see this man's face but he then starts to shout at the man telling him how he has not been loyal to 'The Low'' and how he did not successfully complete the job that he had trusted him to do (His voice starts to get louder he starts to become more aggressive).  The other guy begins repeating the word sorry, and now we see a close up shot of this mans face as sweat pours down his face and we can see that he is worried about what is going to happen. The camera then cuts back to a close up of the 'Don' and he freezes saying nothing then calls for his gang to come in. The camera then switches to a close up of the door handle turning then back to the worried guys face then back to the door, Three large guys enter the room, one of them is wearing a white vest whilst holding a meat cleaver, the other two guys are both in suits and shades. The camera now goes to a shot of the Don's face with light on one side of his face and he says "take him away" The guy now drops to his knees and starts begging for forgiveness (high angle of the man). The two men in suits take the man out into the alleyway we then see a close up of the meat cleaver and see the mans reflexion in the silver, the meat cleaver then comes straight towards the screen and it cuts straight into a black screen with the sound of the man scream fading into the background. That's the opening to my first gangster film i have come up with.


2.  Now for another opening, The camera pans in from an establishing shot of the city where we can see fire and smoke in the distance. The camera slowly pans towards the direction of the fire, we now begin to hear the sound police sirens and screaming.Then the building itself has holes in it with the whole street  demolished, people on the floor, paper falling from the air. The camera goes past all this mayhem and does not focus on anything until it reaches the shop when it then stops. Bodies are all over the floor some alive and trying to stumble away others lay still as if they were dead. This destruction seems like it has hit the entire city not just this road. The shop itself has be almost completely destroyed the camera still is focusing on the camera then the camera now zooms into the building where now we see some movement a guy stands up, stumbles out of the building and then a close up of his face as he looks around. We now hear him say "How did we end up here?" Then the camera zooms out rapidly like the clip is in rewind, it then goes back to the establishing shot we first saw, non digetic music begins to play,the screen goes black and the title screen begins.

3.  My last opening idea is; The film starts with a pitch black screen then a voice over starts talking "soon enough, friends will become foes, or foe become friends" these words are said and nothing else is on the screen then he speaks again the words are also said slowly to create a mood of tension. "My life?" long pause then "My life is The Low" music now kicks in a loud tune which has a great beat. The mans voice is deep and manly, this gives the audience the sense that he must be the main character if it is from his point of view. The titles run over the establishing shot of the city  and various people in the city doing there everyday rountine, then we start to see people dealing drugs, buying guns titles are still going over the top of this scene. Now from this montage we start to see the same characters appear around 5 of them, they are all reloading their guns grabbing their bags, then the music stops and zooms into a large build man with a scar on his face these men are all dressed in suits and are all very tall and muscular but we know who the main man is because he is in the middle and has a scar on his face. It is a close up of of this mans face then he says "lets go boys"but is the same voice as the guy talking at the beginning so the audience will recognise him immediatly. An then the film will begin and the story will start to unfold i think this would be a good opening because it starts with a man building up for action so people will want to see what will happen next.

Prelim Opening Evaluation

What was my role in the filming and editing process? 

 My role in the filming process was to film certtin sections including any high angle shots because im tall and have a steady hand. Below are the shots that i filmed:

I am happy with the section i filmed for which was the over the shoulder shot and i used the 180 degree rule which was one of the required elements we needed to have in our prelim. And when filming i could get a good angle over the girls shoulder because of my height advantage which was good for this section. When i was editing this section i had to go through all of the over the shoulder shots and find which sections of the clip followed the words of the script, Becky started to edited this section then she past it over to me fso that i could find the sections to match. Then after we had reviewed the clip we then had to trim the clips down a bit more and we all discussed if a clip should be slowed down or become faster. After this we was all happy with the prelim and was all happy with the imput we put into filming and editing so we had now finnised our prelim.

How did i meet the brief? 

I think, as a group we met the brief as we managed to include match-on-action(showed below)..

We also did the other elements which were shot-reverse-shot, as well as 180degree rule (shown underneith)

Also in our prelim we had our character walking across the room to where she had to stand for the rest of the filming as they had thier conversation. (Character walking below)

So we had all of this so i think me and my group met our breif.

How am i going to improve and use what i've learnt for my main task.

To improve on this i will think about using a more complicated and deeper meaning to it because i felt our prelim story became predictable and tended to not be exciting. So to improve on this in my main task i would make sure in my main task i included something that would keep the audience's attention by using something diferent or new like a montage of the characters for example. Also to improve next time i think i would make sure i plan where the filming would take place before we get the camera so that we are fully prepared for the task when we come to film it. Overall from the prelim i have learnt that when filiming i should make sure we have filmed some sections twice or more so that just in case, and then i'll have two then i can choose the best one which looks the best. One positive thing that i have learnt from this is i would use a lot of different style shot angles and types so that the emotion and expression from the characters can be clearly shown. The prelim was good expereince for when i come to filming my two minute opening as my main task and i will use what i have learnt here to help me.

Here is the costume desgin we came up with for our prelim:

Here is the storyboard that we used to help us film our prelim:

Let the right one in Homework

Here is my Let the right one in homework from a while back that i had written on paper but now i am going to write it up on my blog thats why its a little late on here...

I would not class myself as a horror fan, I do not like horror films because sometimes i find them to be too unrealistic for example insidious etc... But also whenever I have watched a horror film i generally start to get nightmares which i do not like because i dont really like to be scared. Horror films from around the world are not that accessible to me because when i do watch horror films i would like to watch it in english because you don't have to think much about what your watching. And the language barrier doesn't really pose a problem to me when watching a horror film from another country because i can rad it simply but sometimes ill watch a film to relax and not think and subtitles would make me think if i am trying to relax.

A trailer would try to convince you to watch a film in the cinema generally by montaging the 'best bits' or 'exciting bits' of the film  together this would make the target audience think that they must see it because the film consists a lot of what was cut together, but most times they were the best parts of the film in the trailer so can be disappointing sometimes to certain people expecting more of what the trailer showed. And sometimes they would have to be out of the ordinary and something fresh so that people will want to see it because its like nothing they have seen before. And if it is out of the ordinary it gets people to talk about it and the more they talk hype begins and then everyone would want to see it because they want fit in which was a theory  by Blumler and Katz which was personal relationships.

Familiar Conventions of a horror film;

• In this film there is a lot of blood as you would expect in a horror film
• Action moments for example a fight or murder
• There are vampires, you would usually expect something or someone to be out of the ordinary
• Scary moments that put you on the edge of your seat and makes you feel fear
• And a main character that you like and may come across various events that are horrific

Let the right one in has different approaches to horror like; 

• Meaningful love - between the young boy and the girl vampire
• Two children, generally children aren't the main characters of horror films
• The girl saves the boy which normally never happens as the girl would typically play the damsel in distress

I think in this film it is clearly shown visually who are the outsiders because Eli is not dressed like a typical girl, as she wears a long hospital like gound with long grey boring hair and always has the facial expression of looking sad. Oskar is also an 'Outsider' because when we see him in school he always tends to be on his own and we constantly see him being bullied by the other boys for looking like a "pig." We know that Eli is very different to the others and that is clearly shown at the beginning of the film, but she seems to instantly bond with Oskar as he is also different to the other 'normal' kids. But later on in the film we realise that eli is a true outsider altogether as she turns out to be a vampire that eats humans, which us as the audience expected but Oskar did not see this event coming. After Oskar finds out she is a vampire her appearance changes from how she was always seen to Oskar to now having blood on her face and a whole darker tone to her skin, this visual representation now clearly indicates that she is different to the people she is with.

My personal response to the characters is that i like Oskar because he is a innocent kid who is being constantly bullied and victimised by other boys. Although he is a bit disturbed, for example when he has the knife with intentions to kill i still like him because as the audience you want to see him overcome the bullies once and for all. Then because i like Oskar when he meets Eli i liked her because you can tell she wants to be his friend and that she could help him overcome the bullies. And as the story progresses we tend to like the characters more as their relationship grows stronger and begin to fall in love. I think people in general would like both these characters for the relationship they have and how they both would give up everything for each other which is what i think people would relate to the most. And even tho Eli is killing innocent people for food us as the audience still warm to her because we understand her story and understand why she is doing this.

In this film i did enjoy the narrative a lot and it appealed to me in many ways one of which was that Oskar was being bullied, and by him being bullied it made me want to help him overcome this bulling because we can see what he is going through and i want to help him. And this tension builds up throughout the narrative until finally Oskar overcomes this fear barrier he has and attacks the bully, this moment for me was a relief and made me feel happy for the character which was good because it made me emotionally connect with the character. I liked when the father of Eli kills the man in the forrest because that is the point where the plot of the story goes from normal day life to something out of the ordinary as the man murders someone, hangs them upside down to get the blood from him, i like this section because for me it was the point of the film where i was 'woken up' and i knew more scary and action scenes were on there way. On the other hand i didn't really like the story of the men trying to kill the vampire because i though it was completely irrelevant to the story as a whole and i didn't connect to the narrative as much as i did in other sections.

Eli and Oskar's relationship is unusual because they are so different as she is a human eating vampire and he is just a human, which is unusual because Eli eats humans for food but falls for Oskar even tho he is a human. If Eli was not a vampire and just a human the film would be completely different as i think it wouldn't even be a horror anymore and more of a romance. and if she was not a vampire she would have to change how she is for example how she acts, dresses and how she goes about things. As well as changing her you would have to change the settings and the mood created from the film  itself like removing the night time scenes to daytime and possibly change the music used throughout the film that creates a horror and tense mood.

I dont think from this film you would be scared of the vampire because we see a loving and caring side of the vampire's including the dad as we se the love he has for his daughter. I think this film is trying to show the the vampires in  a good and bad like because we also see the dark side of them and the bad actions they have to do in order to survive. At points in the film she is very scary but we as the audience are not intended to be scared of her but it is use to clearly show us that she is different and scary to the other people in the film. The only times i think we are encouraged to be scared of the vampires are when Eli hides in the dark and we don't known when she will strike this are the most scariest scenes in my opinion because she is killing the innocent people but after she kills we see the remorse she has so we then understand her feelings and emotions so we understand why as she does this therefore we would not be scared by her.

Eli's Father is also not a typical vampire as he wants to look after his daughter and please her so he gets her blood from and innocent man for her to have. But we see him being very remorseful and see that he doesn't really want to kill these innocent people, we see this when he is in the changing room and is about to kill the young man but then he gets scared and goes and hides, and pours burning liquid on his face to hide his identity but w do see that he doesn't want to do this and that he has to in order to please his daughter (Eli). Also we don't see his vampire like actions but we see him killing these people with knives to collect the blood from these innocent victims rather than the typical vampire actions. I think the relatiomship between Eli and her father is unique because she seems like she has the power and that he wants to please his daughter because she gets angry at him for not getting the blood. This shows that she tells her dad what to do like she takes advantage that he cares for her and she is the only thing that he is living for.