Evaluation 5 - YouTube Annotations

When watching our film a few times, we realised that the shot of the definition of hope is on the screen for a long time. We also noticed that we didnt include a production company or include credits. To improve this we decided to shorten the hope shot and add in a production company shot to fill in the time. We also added in credits throughout the opening. Luckily the music and monologue still fit together really well so we didn't need to change the timings which would have taken us a long time.
We feel that adding these small aspects really improved our film and made it look more professional.

Film Production Mark

The mark you received at moderation for the Film Production is a Level 4 - 48/60.

Targets: edit and shorten 'the hope' frame, it is on the screen for too long.

Include titles throughout the film: titles for the actresses, editor, producer, director (the last name featured at the end of the two minutes.)

Evaluation 4 - Target Audience

This girl would be a good example of our target audience because she is a teenage girl who enjoys things that normal teenagers would. She represents the type of people we want to watch our film because she enjoys watching drama films and romantic comedies. Our target audience is teenage girls age 13-19 because we know that they like to watch drama films. We wouldn’t target our film at boys because boys aren’t interested in drama films, they would enjoy action, comedy and horror a lot more than drama. This girl is a typical teenager, which is exactly the type of person we want to target with our film. She enjoys the things that the typical teenage girl would and that is the type of person we want to attract.

Our film is about a teenage girl trying to find her real parents so for a girl who has both parents, it may be hard to relate to our character. That is what we were concerned about when making the film. We wanted to add the monologue to give the character a back story and to make her more relatable to stereotypical teenagers.

Even though it may be hard to relate to the lifestyle of our character, we think it is the journey that she goes on that people will relate to. The emotion that she will feel and the hardships that she goes through is what people will relate to because everyone goes through hardships even if they aren’t exactly the same. We watched the trailer of a new film called “Gimme Shelter” and realised that the character was a lot like our character in some ways. We realised that at first she was completely un-relatable but the journey she went on is what made us sympathise and understand her. This is something we wanted to portray in our film.

In the questionnaire we made, we saw that the type of music people expect in drama films is slow paced music. We added this into our film because it’s one of the main aspects that make a drama film what it is. Most of our target audience also said they would expect an everyday person to be in a drama film so we tried to make our character seem as normal as possible. Because her storyline wasn’t what we would call normal, we tried to make the clothes she was wearing and the way she was talking seem like what average teenagers would expect and relate to.

 

Evaluation 2 - Character

Our most important (and only) character in our film is the nameless homeless girl. She is trying to find her real parents whom she has never met. She has a lot of anger towards her biological parents, for giving her up and never trying to find her, which she takes out on the people around her. She is very hesitant to trust people as she believes they will hurt her like her parents did. She has every desire to find her parents but she tells herself she doesn't care about them loving her. We as an audience can see right through the facade and see that thats really all she wants. She wants to be loved.
We based our character around another similar character from a TV show called The Fosters. Her name is Callie Jacob. Callie had a hard life--her mother is dead and her father is in jail, and she has been abused in many ways in the foster care system. She has trouble opening herself up to her new family after getting out of juvi and being placed with them. She is very angry and will not allow anyone to break down the walls she has built up over the years. As soon as she feels like things are going well she will sabotage it. Like our character, she doesn't trust anyone who says they will love her because she believe they will just hurt her. Callie is similar in so many ways to our main character. They are both foster children, both angry at their parents, they have both been to juvi and they both have similar appearances and costumes.
Our main character wears very tatty and almost dirty clothing. She wears this because she is homeless and obviously hasn't got clean clothes to wear. Her clothes are quite darkly coloured and are very tomboy like. Callie's clothes are very similar. She isn't homeless so her clothes aren't dirty, but they are very dark coloured and again, tomboy like. I think their clothing reflects their personality. They are both dark, hidden girls and they wear these sort of clothes to try and almost deter people away from them, so they don't get to close emotionally. The girls both have similar appearances and facial expressions throughout. They both have brown hair and are of a similar body type. They both display quite sad and lonely facial expressions because they have both been through similar experiences.

Callie is the main character in The Fosters. The series revolves around her journey into trusting people and finding a home where she will be loved and most importantly, if she will accept that love. This is similar to our main character. Our film revolves around her journey into finding her parents and how she will finally overcome her fears of people getting close to her. These stories are very similar. The girls are both of a similar age, going through very similar experiences. The only difference is that Callie isn't trying to find her real parents because she knows where they are, and she knows her father doesn't care about her, whereas our main character has no idea where her parents are and she is on a journey to find out if they ever cared or if they left her for a good reason. If anything Callie is a bit further on in her journey, so if we were doing a full film, we could take examples from what Callie has been through and adapt them to fit our story.

We looked at many characters from different films and TV shows that were similar to our main character. We wanted her to conform to the typical stereotypes of a foster child, so we not only looked at Callie from The Fosters, we also looked at a character called Lux from a TV show Life Unexpected. These characters conform to the traditional sterotypes of foster children. They are both quite angry people, who are hesitant to let people in. They are fiercly independant and will do anything to stop themselves from having to care about people. This is because they feel like if they begin to care about people, they will just leave them, like they have experienced numerous times before.
We wanted our main character to portray these traits, so we made sure she had an angry, sad and lonely demeanour. We also added a line in the monologue that reads "I'm fine on my own" to make it seem like she didn't care about anyone, which a usual trait a foster child posesses. This makes our main character also conform to the stereotypes of a foster child.

Evaluation 1 - Camera Shots

Our first shot was an establishing shot. We chose to use this shot first so that we could introduce the setting of our film. This is crucial in the opening of a film because it makes the film more relatable to the audience. We chose to set our film in Guildford because we wanted somewhere close that inhabited a lot of people. We wanted the film to have lots of people in because it would reiterate the fact that the girl was completely alone in a place where there is so many people. Choosing to film in Guildford was a good choice because as usual there were a lot of people around and it really added to the atmosphere we wanted to create. One downfall of the setting is the time we actually filmed. Initially we wanted to film it nearer Christmas so that we could capture that atmosphere and make the girl seem even more alone because Christmas is such a magical time, but we were unable to do this as we were all busy. That left us to film it in January, which meant that the Christmas lights were down and the joyous atmosphere was no longer around. We tried to get shots of all the Christmas lights we saw, so that we could try to capture the atmosphere but i think if we had filmed it nearer Christmas it would have made the overall meaning and message of our film a lot stronger. Many drama films are set in busy towns. They are usually set in these sort of town to make a character seem lost and alone. The big city makes them seem like a little fish in a big pond and that adds to the drama. This is exactly what we tried to do in our film.

We wanted to follow the typical conventions of drama films when concerning our title. In most drama films, the title is very simply shown in the opening. Our inspiration behind the font was through the drama film 'The Holiday'. In this film, the monologue stops and the title is shown in the corner of the screen. We thought this was really effective so we tried it out ourselves and it really worked. The font is quite simple and it normally fades in and out in the corner of the screen. We decided to follow conventions and have our title in the bottom left corner of the screen. We wanted a black background so that the title would stand out as it is quite small. We think this title is very effective because although it is simple, we think it really portrays the dramatic message we want it to. We chose a font called Papyrus. This font was quite fancy but simple at the same time. It really worked well with the genre of our film and the storyline. The font has a lot of holes in the colour, which is sort of like the girls life. She has a hole where her parents should be and she needs to fill it. This link confirmed our choice of this font. The colour we chose for our title was a like brown colour. There wasn't really any deep meaning behind the colour we just thought it fitted well with the story. We think the font really fits well with the genre of the film and although it is simple, we think it is really effective.

In all films (not just drama films) characters have props and costumes. It is something that you use in order to make the film more relatable to real life. Costumes are necessary for the character to be relatable to a specific class, race or religion etc. For example in a film like The Great Gatsby, the costumes are very period and they link to what people actually wore in those days. Because our character was pretty much homeless, we needed her to look homeless in order for it to be believable. We decided to make her wear really baggy, tatty clothes, this way she would conform to the stereotype of a homeless person. As she is homeless she would need to make it believable so Lauren as an actress really committed to the role, for example she would shiver and be really jumpy and defencive. This really worked well with the character she was playing. We gave her a sleeping bag to carry around with her. This conforms to the stereotype of a homeless person because they always seem to have blankets and lots of layers on. The sleeping bag only made it more believable that she was homeless. The coffee was a major prop that we needed. We wanted her to seem cold, which would make the audience sympathise with her. We decided to make her hold a hot coffee to see how much she needed it more to be warmed up than to actually drink it. I think the props we used really made the fact that she is homeless, more believable and relatable.

In action films, the shots are really fast paced and edited with lots of fades and quick cuts. That wasn't really an option when filming a drama film as they are quite slow paced and simple shots. In films like 'Forest Gump' the shots are very continuous with lots of camera movement. We wanted to include that in our film so lots of our shots were filmed with the camera on a tripod and we would move the camera as the girl was walking. This made the scenes quite continuous and we think it made them flow quite nicely. We wanted our film to match up with the pace of our monologue so a lot of our editing was based around that. We would cut certain bits out and make them fit. A lot of our shots were filmed when it was a bit darker, as the sun was going down when we were filming, this made one shot seem really light and another quite dark, which really didn't fit. To fix this we made the shots that seemed dark, brighter, making it fit together well. One of our shots was the main character walking up a high street. In this shot, we followed in front of her with the camera, capturing all of her emotions and movement. We think this was one of our most effective shots because you can really see her emotions and her expressions. We added a lot of fades which made the film really flow and join together which was really effective in our opinion. Overall i think that we used all the shots we could use in order for it to conform to the stereotypes of a drama film. 

"A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, sexuality, poverty, class divisions, violence against women and corruption put the characters in conflict with themselves, others, society and even natural phenomena. At the center of a drama is usually a character or characters who are in conflict at a crucial moment in their lives."

This definition is what we mainly thought about during the whole process of our film. We wanted to make our character have some sort of problem to have to get over. We wanted her to be damaged because that is what makes a drama film dramatic and emotional. As we only have one character in the opening of our film, we had to make sure it was still interesting to the audience because they only have one person to try and relate to. Because she was homeless we wanted her to really seem hurt and lonely. This is why we tried to introduce her in quite a lonely situation. On the train she is seen holding a sleeping bag, this really lets the audience know straight away that she must be sleeping somewhere that isn't home. Throughout the whole opening she is seen on her own, not talking to anyone or interacting at all. This makes the audience feel bad for her which is what we wanted because that way we know that she is relatable and liked. We needed her to be relatable to all kinds of people as she is the only character so we really tried to capture her at her worst to show people that everyone goes through hard times, and she is no exception.

The opening doesn't really have any action to it, this is because  the drama isn't always right at the start of the film, it builds up. We wanted to give our character a back story before entering into the drama and real emotion, this is why we wanted to include a monologue so that the audience could hear the characters point of view of her situation. I think the monologue is what really makes it clear that our film is a drama film, because the emotion and almost heartbreak in the characters voice is what really lets the audience know. I think that the actresses facial expressions throughout also gave it away. She was very dismissive and kept herself to herself which is what you would expect a depressed person to do. We didn't give our main character a name because we wanted this to be part of her journey. At the start of the opening she says "I'd tell you my name, but whats the point when it doesn't mean anything" This sort of ignorance gave us something to lead up to and create a climax for the characters journey. If we were making the full film, at the end we would have a scene in which she tells someone who she has grown to trust, what her name is. This would show that she has moved past her anger and sadness onto something better. Overall i think we made sure that the audience knew our film was in the drama genre from start to finish.

Our storyline entails a newly homeless teenager on a journey to find her biological parents. The opening of our film starts at the beginning of that journey. She is finding somewhere to sleep for the night, walking through a busy town. We wanted to really prolong that journey to make it seem longer, making the audience feel sorry for her. The storyline of our opening suggests that she is homeless and walking through the town alone at night, which is correct. This really sets our story up for the main characters emotional journey. The story is sort of a coming of age drama, because she will go on a journey throughout the film which will end up in her becoming a lot more mature and understanding of other people. She starts off a being an angry, sad and immature girl, but the film is about her going through that and coming out the other side of it a better person. She will become a more forgiving and understanding human being, because when you are young it is easy to think that everything bad that the people you care about around you do, is specifically to hurt you. But throughout her journey she realises that maybe those bad things that were thrown at her, were really protecting her from something alot more dangerous. I think the story really shows that our film is in the drama genre because it is emotional and complicated.

Our Film

Anomatic Storyboard

We created out anomatic storyboard using Adobe premiare elements 10. Catherin sketched each individual shot, I then wrote the descriptions of what music and dialogue we want in each shot and also how long we want each shot to last. We found creating the storyboard fairly easy, all we really needed to do was cut down the length of each shot to be the exact length of time we need it to be for the real shots we will use when editing. Creating the storyboard is handy for reffering back to when we need to edit our film as it shows the length of each shot, therefore when editing we can cut down each shot to the length of time we need. The whole anomatic storyboard lasts for , we kept our storyboard within the time limit required for the whole film. We managed this task efficiently so therefore we can now start out editing as we have a completed anomatic storyboard to reffer back to.

Shot List - Updated

In general each shot went the way we planned for it to go however we have made a few changes to how we want each shot to appear. However we had various issues with timing which affected how each shot went. For example two of us weren't free leading up to christmas, therefore this meant that we had to film after christmas. We needed to have christmas lights in the background of our midshots and for our establishing shots. We had an issue with the christmas lights from building to building, these were the main Christmas lights in the streets and this is what Lauren will reffer to in the monologue with the first line being 'Every year I see these Chrtistmas lights...' We needed these lights for our establishing shot, we found that they were still up however when it got dark they were not switched on. This made us reconsider our shots, we decided to film several shots of any other Christmas lights we could find, these shots would be short and would feature at the start of the film. We also decided to only do one shot of Lauren walking up the street, this was because it was getting dark very quickly so therefore we wanted to make sure that we had enough time to film all of the other shots. Another change was the shallow focus effect we had planned to use to film the Christmas lights, we attempted to create this effect but unfortunately the camera would not focus. The Christmas lights were not on in the streets so we decided to bot use this shot because it would it be effective.

Test Titles - Final Choice

Our final choice on the title of our film is the one above. The font is called papyrus and we made the first letter of each word bold. This, to us makes it stand out more. The colour we chose was sort of a dirty white. We chose this because it is very simple, and it will stand out over the top of the scene we want to play it over. We like this title because it is simple yet effective. The font type is very gentle but also quite mysterious, linking very well to our film.

Research and planning provisional mark

Name of student: Molly Jenkins

	Done?	Comment/target
RESEARCH
Genre Research and mind-maps	Yes
Uploaded YouTube videos of openings - analysed		You just need to do one more
Opening titles analysed in detail – font researched		Questionnaire good research – screen grabs of similar films with titles you like would be good too – with a comment detailing why they are effective, why you like them and maybe how you would go about creating them
Uploaded YouTube videos of similar genre openings analysed in detail		You just need to do one more
Costume and location research – google earth and pictures you’ve taken.	Yes	Could you upload some images of the costumes you discuss in your post?
Actors and props photos and interviews	Couldn’t see any?
Soundtrack research (non-copyright music)	Yes	Great evidence of an ongoing process
Audience Research and Profiling (typical audience member and similar films)	Yes
Institution research (Paramount etc)	Yes
Certificate research	Yes
PLANNING
Own film idea brainstorm	Yes
Own film treatment	Yes
Relevant Online Tutorials and Comment	Yes
Documenting of influences on production	Yes
Shot lists		Shot type evaluations are great – could you upload the shot from your storyboard so there is visual representation too? It would then be a really detailed storyboard too (you’d still need to upload an animatic storyboard too though)
Consideration  of representation in your film and stereotyping – use theory from G325.	Yes
Questionnaire (and feedback) Get some feedback on your initial ideas!	Yes
Diary of filming/editing etc with photos and screen grabs	Yes
Mood board	Yes	Good, detailed comments
Script	No
Practice titles created and uploaded	Yes
Storyboard – animatic.	NO
Time Management Schedule	Yes

 

 

Research and planning mark scheme:

 

Level 2

8–11 marks

Planning and research evidence may be partially incomplete;

There is basic research into similar products and a potential target audience;

There is basic organisation of actors, locations, costumes or props;

There is basic work on shotlists, layouts, drafting, scripting or storyboarding;

There is a basic level of care in the presentation of the research and planning;

Time management may not be good.

 

Level 3

12–15 marks

Planning and research evidence will be complete;

There is proficient research into similar products and a potential target audience;

There is proficient organisation of actors, locations, costumes or props;

There is proficient work on shotlists, layouts, drafting, scripting or storyboarding;

There is a good level of care in the presentation of the research and planning;

Time management is good; there is a schedule of filming

There is no animatic storyboard and/or mood board

 

Level 4

16–20 marks

Planning and research evidence will be complete and detailed;

There is excellent research into similar products and a potential target audience;

There is excellent organisation of actors, locations, costumes or props;

There is excellent work on shotlists, layouts, drafting, scripting or storyboarding;

There is an excellent level of care in the presentation of the research and planning;

Time management is excellent.

Research and planning mark      15/20       Level 3

Molly – as soon as the tasks are all complete, your mark will be in level 4 quality. I’m very impressed with the efforts you went to to record your monologue – well done! Your documenting of it also ensures that the journey you have undertaken is clear, which is essential.

Test Titles -Futher Testing

Our next test for our titles is to decide how to present our title. We tested out the bold, the italic and the normal versions and these were our ideas. The top three are the normal fonts without italic, but different thicknesses, and the bottom three are all italic and different thicknesses. We found that the fully bold titles were just too much. But at the same time, the ones without bold werent bold enough. To change this, we deicided to make the first letter of each word bold, like we initially wanted. We think that the second from the bottom is the perfect font and thickness for our film.

Practise Titles - Font Colour

We tested out lots of different colours for our chosen font, overall these were the ones that we liked the most. We wanted the colour to be simple but stand out at the same time. All of these colours are really neutral and they really reflect our film perfectly. The white versions we liked at first but looking at them more, we decided that they were maybe too bland, and not very eye catching. The grey version really doesnt stand out very well so we dont want to include that in our film.
The version we chose overall was the third from the top. We decided to use this because as soon as you look at the picture, thats the image that jumps out at you. We want our title to really be seen, and as it will be appearing over the top of our actual film we need to to stand out over different colours.
Our next job is to test the thickness and size etc. of our font. Our initial ideas are to make the first letter of each word bold, but we are going to play around and see what we like and what stand out.

Practise Titles - Font Ideas

 

Because our film is drama, we wanted our titels to be as simple as possible. Selected these fonts so that we had a wide range to pick from.

Each practise title here that we didnt choose, we thought were really nice and plain, but they were just too boring. In general they were all just TOO simple and TOO plain. We decided we wanted to have a font that was quite dainty but also edgy at the same time. This would really reflect the films storyline and the emotion of the film. Some of the texts we saw were really nice but they just weren't what we imagined, so we decided to keep looking until we found the perfect font.

Another source of research we used to find the perfect font, was a website in which it told us what fonts, oscar nominated movies had used and how they were changed so they would be individual to that film. This gave us the idea that we should maybe change something with the text to make it more unique to our film.

In the end we decided to go for Papyrus. We really liked this font. It jumped out from the page as soon as we saw it and we automatically knew that we had to use it as our font for our film. It was just so much more interesting that all the other fonts we saw. It was exactly what we needed and what we wanted when we started looking.

Now that we have chosen a font, we are going to play around with it on Photoshop to see how we can change it and make it more unique. Our initial ideas are to make the first letter of each word, a font size larger to make it stand out, but we are hoping that we can do something a bit more complicated.

Program Choice - Post 2

A few weeks ago we decided to use our own program to edit our film.  Sony Vegas Pro 11. This proved to be extremly difficult for us for two reasons. The first reason is because my laptop was extremly slow which made it hard for us to see what the outcome of our editing would be. And the second reason is because when we previewed our video at full screen, it was extremly pixleated. We tried rendering it to see if it would do that when it has been saved but the rendering took extremly long and eventually failed. This was when we made the decision to change the software we are using to edit our film. We decided to change to Adobe Premier Elements. This was a hard decision because it meant we would have to redo our whole editing process, which would take a long time considering the work we had already done.
I think we are going to have to work extra hard now to get the editing done on time but i think that changing the program now was a good idea because it means we have time to make our film as good as it can possibly be. We didnt want to carry on using Sony Vegas, for it to go wrong at the last minute and ruin our film.

Editing - Hour 1

When using Sony Vegas Pro 11 for the first time we came across various issues however we expected this as this is our first time using the software. Firstly we uploaded the monologue into Sony Vegas Pro 11 and listened to it without anything playing over it. We were really pleased with how good the quality was and how clear it sounded. This made us glad that we decided to go to a professional recording studio as we are not including any dialogue in our opening, therefore we needed to make sure that our monologue was perfect. When listening to our monologue you could clearly hear the breaths that our actress was taking. To get rid of these we split the sound file before and after every breath and deleted them. When we played the monologue back, the pauses still remained but the sound of the breaths did not. This made it all the more clear.

The next step was adding the music. Sony Vegas Pro 11 has grids to allow you to seperate different sound and video files so you could edit them individually. This therefore meant that we could have each individual component playing at the same time. When we added the music, at first it didn't fit well with the monologue, so we cut out certain parts of it and moved it around so that it would fit with the pauses and the volume adjustments in her voice. When we listened to this back we were amazed at how it fit together perfectly. The music really brought out the emotion in her voice.

Our next step was inserting the video files. We decided to preview it in full screen before we started any editing, the quality was not good. We found that the video was pixleated. We searched online how to overcome this issue and we found that after rendering, the video quality will come out better. We decided to render our project with only one unedited video file inserted. This would then indicate to us whether what we found online was infact true and we certainly did not want to spend hours editing our project for it to fail on us at the last hurdle.

Tick List

	Done?	Comment?
RESEARCH
Genre Research and mind-maps (3 posts)	D
Uploaded YouTube videos of openings – analysed (10 openings)	D
Opening titles analysed in detail – font researched	D
Uploaded YouTube videos of similar genre openings analysed in detail (3 posts)	D
Costume and location research – google earth and pictures you’ve taken. (At least 2 posts)	D
Actors and props photos and interviews	-	Ask our actor to do an interview. Do an interview with one of the directors about what went well and what didn’t go as well.
Soundtrack research (non-copyright music)	D
Audience Research and Profiling (typical audience member and similar films)	D
Institution research (Paramount etc)	D
Certificate research	D
PLANNING
Own film idea brainstorm	D
Own film treatment	D
Relevant Online Tutorials (on filming and editing) and Comments (At least 2 posts)	D
Documenting of influences on production	D
Shot lists	D
Consideration of representation in your film and stereotyping – use theory from G325.	D
Questionnaire (and feedback) Get some feedback on your initial ideas!	D
Diary of filming/editing etc with photos and screen grabs (At least 3 posts)	Half Done	- We will need to do various screen grabs of our editing process. We will also need to call back our actress to do a diary of our filming.
Mood board	D
Script	D
Practice titles created and uploaded	-
Storyboard – animatic.	-	We decided to create our storyboard after the editing process.
Time Management Schedule – what you did& when, problems you encountered& solved	D
Codes and Conventions featured in your Opening Two Minutes	D
Ensure that all posts have a title, detailed comments and relevant pictures which are commented on.	D