I joined Media as an A-level a week into the course so I missed the first few lessons.
In my first media lesson we discussed the essential conventions of a film opening, including productions logos, titles, establishing the genre, locations, key characters, and themes etc. This will help me when creating my own film opening as I know I must include these aspects. We then made our own presentations is groups anlysing a film opening. My group chose Jaws, we looked at the enigma as we don't know who the characters are or what is happening. Also the sound and how the music causes tension. This helped me understand how the conventions link to an actual film.
Week 2-3
This week we learnt the different camera shots and angles, as I did media as an GCSE I had a good knowledge of these already, but it was good to refresh my memory. Again we put our knowledge to the test and made a presentation analyzing a film focusing on the different camera angles and how they effect the audience. I did mine on Harry Potter, it gave me a good visual idea of which shots they look like and also how they effected me. This will help me when creating my piece as I will know what shots to use to create my desired affects. Next we discussed analyzing still images, I learnt how to use Mise-en-scene to analyse pictures. The images we looked at were from movies such as the shinning and you've got mail, they caused confusion as the image didn't initially link to the genre. This has made me realise how important showing genre is and how I need to make genre very clear in my opening.We then put into practice what we had learnt, and was put into groups to take our own still images giving a genre and audience to make them fit. I was given action and young children. My group took pictures on the sport equipment and in the trees to give the action look. This helped me as I know how to give the look of certain genres and will use this is my film.
Week 3-4
At the beginning of this week we discussed the different theorys. Reception, male gaze and narrative, learning these gave me an idea of the structure of films, and the way people are presented. These will help me in my own film opening as I will make sure my films fit these theories. The next task we completed was to create our own film idea we had to plan the summery of what’s happening in the film, the age that will be appropriate to watch the film, what kind of genre it is, the location of the film and what characters will play who and why, this took alot of imagination which I did struggle with but after finally finding an idea I realised it was not a hard as I first thought. This will help me as I need to use my imagination to think of an idea, and these are the different aspects I will need to consider. My film was crime about drug dealers called Drug School based at over 15 year olds.
Week 4-5
I missed the week we was introduced to our preliminary task. So I joined a group late once that had already established an idea. But I was very involved in the filming process, while filming we came across obsticals such as lighting and setting problems, this helped me to learn to not pick a dark area in my opening, and to establish the setting before I start filming, which I will carry through to when I start my task. I then began editing which I have never done before, this gave me an introduction into the software and I learnt the basics of editing. Which will help me when I have to create my own task.
Week 5-6
Our next tasks was to re create the opening to the film Juno, the first stage of this was storyboarding the shots in the opening, this became a massive struggle when doing as a class as each person was at different stages therefore I chose to complete mine at home where I could work at my own pace. This did teach me how important storyboards are, and now much detail there need to be completed in, and therefore how I should create a detailed one for my own film opening. We them got into pairs and started our I'm shots, my pair and two other pairs all chose to use the same person to play Juno, this originally seemed like a good idea and that it would save time, but after the first hour of shooting we came across a lot of disagreements, time wasting and I found this decision a mistake, this has taught me that I need to chose people who are willing to cooperate well in my final groups and also chose actors who can be committed to my opening. We also struggled with producing certain shots such as tracking, but eventually after practice found our own technique, so I will now feel comfortable producing these shots in my own opening. After getting all the shots we needed we began to edit after doing this in our preliminary task I felt comfortable with the software so it was all practice leading up to when I create my own opening.
Week 7-8
Over the half term I had been given feedback on the work I have posted onto my blog, so my first task was to improve my work to get it to the highest standard. This helped me to understand my strengths and also my weaknesses that I need to improve for future work. Our first task was to get into the groups we would like to work in, and brainstorm ideas for our opening, we looked at all the different genres we could choose from, considering the use of thriller starring a girl running through a forest and cutting it off before you would see who was chasing her, leaving it on a sort of "cliff hanger" causing enigma. Another idea which we was most confident with fell under the romantic genre, we thought of having a montage of a couple going over a time period of around a year to eighteen months seeing them in there happiest moments. After discussing this further we thought this was very typical and would not stand out so we decided to go down the dramatic route and have the appearance of a funeral at the end of the opening, making the illusion the male character has died. We understood using a montage would mean needing lots of little shots, all having to look different, we thought we could do this by using lots of different settings such as park, house, cafe. Gaining permission to film in public places. Also using lighting cleverly would give the impression of different seasons. Finally we discussed characters we could use, we have chosen to ask two fellow students at the school who we know we can trust to give there full time and commitment into helping us produce this. This process has made me feel very confident and excited to make my opening. Finally this week we looked at other film openings that were similar to ours in genre and story lines, therefore we focused on romance as it was our strongest idea and the one which we was most confident about. Looking at the mise-en-scene, the use of the conventions of the film to fit the genre and what we liked about it and could use in our opening.
Week 8-9
This week we began to look at titles for a film opening, we looked at a variety of titles, answering questions on how they made us felt and how the imagery and sound added effect. We then had to pick a film of our genre and analyses that looking at the imagery and sound and when the titles came up on the screen. This has showed me how I can incorporate titles into my opening and how to use imagery and sound to make it more effective. The next lesson we looked at script writing, the conventions and effectiveness of scripts. We then had to annotate a script of our own genre. From this I have learnt how to produce a script for my own opening. Finally we created mood boards to inspire us for our opening, using pictures of setting, characters and props we would like to use. For our group we used pictures of roses and chocolates at they will be the props the boy gives the girl, and setting such as parks, cafe and houses as they are the settings we hope to use. This helped us to get all our ideas onto one piece of paper.
Week 10-11
We decided at this point that we needed some inspiration so we decided to look at other films from our genre to see how them film openings worked and also how the incorporated there titles into the opening. We looked at 500 days of summer, The vow, The holiday, The spectacular now and Grease. These gave us lots of ideas for which shots we're typically used an also what editing techniques are used. It showed us that lots of foley sounds we're used and also gave us the idea to do a voice over. Next we looked at scripts, we learnt the things needed to annotate scripts this showed us the way scripts we're set up and also how much speech there was to script. This helped as we didn't know how to write a script before and we may need to for our film opening. We then decided to look at specifically romance scripts. From looking at 'Runaway Bride' it helped us also understand the conventions of a romance film and some of the elements that we could possibly reflect and put it into our own.From looking at and analyzing this script I have learnt how to correctly write a script particularly for a romance film. I have noticed the dialogue stays between a small about of the cast, usually 2 main cast members. I have also seen that the ratio of speech to action is usually more speech, a few lines of speech to one line of direction/action. There is only few transitions or description of the speech I think this is because they try to keep romance genre as realistic as possible so people can being to relate to it.
Week 12-13
At this point we had the main idea of what we planned to do. But was still unsure on the whole process of adding the titles into the opening. We therefore did a task on title sequences which allowed us to consider the purpose of them and how imagery can be used in them to make them more exciting which we hope to continue to use in our own opening. We them decided to to a timeline to see exactly where the title appear in films, we used romance films so it would link closely to our own opening, we learnt that the main actors turn up first this is usually followed by the film title, this is followed by the supporting actors then we usually see the editing, photography ,casting, music, production designer, in no particular order. The final 3 are then producer, screenplay finishing with director. We used these timelines to base our planning around for which way we will put our titles to make them seem professional and flow according to a normal film.
Before we continued we decided we should get some sort of idea of what our audience wanted, therefore we conducted a questionnaire to ensure our target audience liked and what they wanted.
Week 14-15
We are now at the point where had to start planning filming. Firstly we looked a possible mise-en-scene we could use for our opening. We then looked at different settings that we could use. We did this so we could be as prepared as possible for when it came to filming. Also to be prepared we conducted a shooting schedule so we knew when we was shooting each shot so we could have our actors and props ready, also so we didn't get behind on filming. We also did a risk assessment so that everything would be safe went shooting.
It was now time start filming.
Week 15-17
Over these 3 weeks we conducted all our filming. We all created our foley sounds, this took alot of experimenting as it wasn't as easy to create our desired sound.
Week 18-20
Over these two weeks we did all our editing this was a massive challenge as we wasn't very experienced but we managed to complete it and we are very happy with our results. After we had completed our editing we also made a production logo with took a lot of experimenting but taught us all a large skill base.
Week 20-22
We spent this time evaluating our whole process, this was good to see how we have progressed over the making of our film, how our skills and ideas and contributed to make our film.
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