FILMING:INTERVEIWING OUR CHARACTER

In today's lesson we completed a task of us interviewing my character 'Xander'  15 years into his career. It involved Ryan asking me a series of questions.  These type of questions consisted of 'what was your greatest achievement', to which I answered 'winning the top try scorer award in the 2019 rugby world cup'. This shows the audience how proclaimed and talented our protagonist is. The aim of this task was to deepen the understanding of the protagonist in our film, it gives you an insight to my characters thoughts and views on his career and life.

We got the idea of interviewing our character from the Film Escape website, the post is from Charlie Sierra where she quotes Pen Densham, an oscar nominated filmmaker with over 16 features and over 300 hours of TV. He talks about how interviewing your character can increase the depth and understanding of a character to the audience. It helped us as well as it was a way of opening up my understanding to who the character could be. You can see the website here.

 The video can be seen by following pressing here. 

CONSTRUCTION:CALL SHEETS

These stills and video was filmed on our school grounds on the rugby pitches and top of the hill which over looks the pitches. These shots were taken on the 26th of November in the afternoon, we chose to do it at this time as the pitches were not occupied so we could film uninterrupted for the afternoon.

CONSTRUCTION:STILLS AND VIDEO

Today we went out onto the first team rugby pitch and recorded some video footage of me kicking the rugby ball for our film. We then also took some stills of me on the hill which over looks the rugby pitches, this still will most likely be used for our poster. The reason we will use this image is that it clearly shows our target audience that the film revolves around rugby and it gives off a masculine vibe to the audience, making rugby fans wanting to see our movie.

This image is a close up of our protagonist, his masculinity is shown through the confidence which he has while holding the rugby ball, he is comfortable in this domain of rugby. He is ready to play, he is in kit and ready to play whenever he is told to, this shows that he loves the sport and relishes the moments where he can wear his jersey bearing his number '9'. Not only did we take these stills but we also took video of me being in the same stance but slowly turning my head looking over the grounds which lay in front of me. This is symbolic of my character looking ahead into the future, in particular at the rugby pitches.

CONSTRUCTION: MUSIC

Here you can see me writing the music on 'Sibelius'. I wrote this music for our movie as it addresses the musical side of our protagonist. As well as being an AS Media student I also study AS Music. This project was a great opportunity to incorporate my creative musical side into our film. It is an original composition which I made specially for our film and it helps carry the key narrative of our film as it is quite an emotional piece. It consists of a piano which carries the melody with an ostinato a bass line which changes from being highly played chords to a low grungy, driven bass line, and string instruments consisting of a violin and a viola. The string instruments help to add a theatrical feel to the song and adds to the emotional connection to both the piece of  music and our film. It does this through softly played legato notes being played, the viola playing the perfect fifth to the violin, adding as sense of harmony and texture.

CONSTRUCTION: CALL SHEETS

Here is the image of our call sheet when filming one of our rugby games. I believe we organised ourselves well as we got the shots that were required for the part of the movie in which they feature. 

CONSTRUCTION:STILL SHOTS

Today we went out to the rugby sport fields to take still shots for our film. This shot will be very helpful when putting together the title sequence at the beginning of our film as it shows the beauty of the sport of rugby through the fresh cut grass and the light hitting the posts. We can also use this in the montage sequence which appears in our film the display the beauty of rugby. This can be seen through the way the sun is shining over the pitch, creating picturesque shadows from the trees.

CONSRUCTION: EDITING

Here we started to edit our film in the early stages. We used the first shots we got from the changing room, the info can be found on one of my call sheets. These shots in the changing room consisted of a moving shot of Ryan, Ollie and I, and an ECU of me tying my boot laces. I directed this scene in regard to the placing of the characters and the type of shots that we used. We edited it to the music soundtrack which I have written on the music software Sibelius.

PLANNING : CALL SHEETS

Here is a call sheet of when we went out onto the pitches to take stills of the rugby pitch. I believe this call sheet kept us organised as we were all there on time and took the shots required for our film.

PLANNING : CALL SHEETS

PLANNIN:TOPLINE, TREATMENT AND TWIST

Planning – Media

Topline: As a boy in his last year at school, wanting to make it as a big rugby player. Last game of the season – they are playing their rivals. Xander wants to persue a career in music, but doesn’t want to let his father down.

Father never made it, wants to push his son.

Cast:

Craig – Dad

Boothe – Coach

Xander – Player

Ryan – background

Twist: Father wants child to play rugby professionally, but child wants to pursue music career.

Treatment:

Present day. A loving father wants to push his boy into becoming a professional rugby player, as he never managed to make it when he was his sons age. XANDER enjoys rugby, however he is more interested in a career in music. He feels obliged to pursue his interest in rugby as he doesn’t want to let his dad down. He has supportive friends such as RYAN who is an aspiring professional tells him to follow him dream. Xander needs to make the decision of whether to go for music or continue playing rugby. The audience do not know what he chooses as the screen cuts to black.

RESEARCH: AUDIENCE PROFILING

Here you can see the brands of social media sites which our audience use, the brands which they wear, eat or use, the shows they watch, the music they listen to and the films that they watch. This audience profiling will help us later on in the process with the forms of distribution which we choose to use. For example, we will create an Instagram page, Facebook page, Twitter handle and Snapchat account because these are the social media platforms which our target audience use. This will allow us to address them correctly and these social media platforms will allow us to communicate with our audiences during the production stage. An example of this would be putting up release date updates and short behind the scene videos to tease them about the new film. This will entice our audience to come and see our film on release as they will feel more connected.

RESEARCH: PREZI ON DISTRIBUTION

This is my Prezi on distribution of films. 

RESEARCH: Audience Analysis

You can see this Emaze by clicking on the screen shot below. In this presentation I talk about topics involving Moral Panics, Theodore Adorno and the Two Step Flow Model.

PLANNING: Target Audience

Today I started making outline notes about what my target audience for our sports film:

- Our target audience is between 12-65
- Gender target is both men women 
- They will be a mainstream audience
- They are likely to watch sports, mainly rugby as this is what our film is based on. They could also be interested in music as this is another subject of our film, so they may watch TV shows such as Glee or The X Factor
- In their leisure time they might take part in sport, or contrastingly are interested in music. They could also be interested in watching sport, or listening to music in their spare time. 
- They could wear brands such as adidas, nike or kukri as these are sports brands which sports people wear.
- They could follow sports people or musicians on social media sites such as twitter, Instagram and Facebook. 

TWITTER

I have created a Twitter account to help keep me up to date with the world of media. I decided to do this after reading Alan Rusbridger's article on 'Why Twitter Matters'.  For Rusbridger, Twitter creates a level playing field where everyone can voice an opinion, not just voices of authority. Twitter allows me to access conversations with people that I do not know who could be experts in their field, making it a very democratic medium.  As a search engine, Twitter rivals google because it harnesses so many different human intelligence's to find out what is new, valuable and relevant.

Not only is twitter a powerful search engine and enables me to follow people of influence and who can help me with my A-level, it is allows a young film producer like myself the opportunity to distribute my film to a large audience of both male and female, young and old. This gives us a larger opportunity than other platforms than Instagram and conventional methods like P&A and webpages. This leads me on to my next point.

My final point to why Twitter is so important and helpful is that anything you post has the potential to go viral. Sharing something you find funny, interesting or shocking is one click away from being seen by everyone who follows you. This gives you the possibility of your viewer count doubling, tripling and even more depending on how many followers the person who shared your post has. This opportunity is priceless as you could potentially have to pay a lot of money to enable people to see information about your film production, for example paying for fleet marketing, putting posters of billboards etc.

Overall it is clear to see that Twitter is an immensely powerful tool to use as it gives us access to many powerful and influential people, allows us to distribute our film to a large audience, and then lets that audience show their family and friends, increasing our viewer amount.

Brief

I have chosen the brief of video where the main task is to make the titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes.

RESEARCH: PETE'S MEDIA BLOG

PETES MEDIA BLOG:

I found that Pete's Media Blog would be a good place to visit to find out information about media and could learn important information about how to cope with the A-Level course which I am taking. The fact that Pete is so involved in the media world (as seen in the image below) really helps us get an insight into the media world. Pete also has a Twitter page where he tweets about the A levels, which is very helpful for students in my class and myself as it is all relevant to us. 

OCR Specification

This specification helps me to ask myself questions while planning the production of our film opening. Some of these questions can be seen in a screenshot below, and will help guide  me during the planning and construction process of my movie opening.

Pete's Media Blog

I found that Pete's Media Blog would be a good place to visit to find out information about media and could learn important information about how to cope with the A-Level course which I am taking. The fact that Pete is so involved in the media world (as seen in the image below) really helps us get an insight into the media world.

Last of Us

Here is my art of the title for Last of Us

https://www.slideshare.net/secret/IQbgMLNUtQKX5b

Gone Girl

Here is my link for the Gone Girl art of the title

https://www.slideshare.net/secret/u10hDSYtQ0nVnc

Sherlock Holmes art of the title

Here is my link to my slideshare on art of the title for Sherlock Holmes

https://www.slideshare.net/secret/6Aw0TTc8G2MF8j

Les Bleus de Ramville art of the title

Here is my link to slideshare for my art of the title on Les Bleus de Ramville

https://www.slideshare.net/secret/HL3RRllNA33QWW

RESEARCH:OCR WEEBLY

Here we studied how Steve Thorne created story boards for video production. I intend to use this style of story board as it is easy to change the order of shots of using sticky notes so it is very flexible.

Filming Our Prelim

On the 22nd of October we filmed our prelim. I was in a group made up of Ryan, Ollie, Chloe and Bea. We chose not to film in our media class room as we felt it was all wrong for what we wanted to achieve the lighting was too harsh and there was insufficient natural light. We filmed in the drawing room of our school, we felt that the atmosphere in this room was better due to the lighting(as mentioned) it was more natural, the scenery and aethestics of the room are superior to those in our media classroom, and there is also a piano which I played to create an overlay sound to our piece, the room also had a very dry sound as the curtains absorbed a lot of the noise, meaning there was little echo.

At the start we didn't work as a team, for example we were debating for around ten minutes what our roles in the piece should be. However, after this we were relatively efficient apart from a few laughs due to how awkward our script was. I am pleased with the finished product as it is well edited and contains the required 180 degrees shot and shot reverse shot. This has given me a realistic insight to the problems with our movie trailer, for instance remembering the correct equipment when filming so it is as smooth as possible.

You can follow this link to see our prelim.

RESEARCH:OCR WEEBLY

Here we saw Steve Thorne teaching about video production. This will help me with my story board as he shows us and organised and clear way of how to create one. He uses sticky notes to draw on so that he can draw on the sticky note and then if the scene changes he can place it wherever he wants on the storyboard. This method will greatly help me when I make mine.