Evaluation(Part 8)- Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Strength: I think that a strength of the preliminary task is the continuity, as when the character was walking from the park towards the other male character the camera had cut from a long shot, to his feet then to an over the shoulder shot and I believe that when we had cut each shot we had cut and changed shot in the correct place. (0.13)
I think that another strength of our piece is that we had made an original narrative for a preliminary continuity task, as due to the music it feels more romantic, yet the surprise is that our main character (walking) wants to buy concert tickets.
I think our general rules were met, and were not broken, such as the rule of thirds and the 180 degree rule. 

Weakness: A weakness of the practise exercise is that when one character is speaking there is no wind and the dialogue is clear, and when the second character speaks there is a lot of wind, making it harder to hear him speak. (0.21)
I think that some of the continuity was damaged, as we had not ensured that all of our possessions were out of sight, as at 0.20 we see our bags, where we had not seen them when our main character was walking up to character B.

Improvements: The improvement that we could have made was watching over the shot to see if the shot was good quality, and then refilming to ensure we have a contingency/back up shot if needed.

How the preliminary task affected our main opening sequence:
In our main task, we had taken care with the continuity, as we had a lot of scenes where we needed to use match on action, such as when our protagonist Jay is opening the gate, walking down the stairs and opening the main door into the boiler room. In our main task we had kept out possessions out of sight and had kept items in the same positions, such as when Jay puts the box down, we had made sure it was in the same position for all of the shots.

Targets: 
Next year my targets will be to evenly spread my workload out, and to create a plan of when to complete certain pieces of work to the best of my ability, and taking feedback from my teachers on boards instantly, to improve my work. I would also like to try out different shots, and learn how to use more advanced features within Imovie and Final cut on the Macs. 

Evaluation(Part 7)- What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Evaluation (Part 6)- How did you attract/address your audience?

Evaluation(Part 5)- How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Evaluation(Part 4)- In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Evaluation(Part 3)- What impact did the media institution Film4 have on each production stage and why?

Evaluation (Part 2)- Who would the audience be for your product?

Evaluation(Part 1)- Brief

The brief that we had worked to was;
"You have been approached by Film4 to make a new British Social Realist film aimed at British 16-24 year olds. To give Film4 an idea of how your film will develop they have asked you to produce the first two minutes of the film, providing a clear sense of the graphical, editing, and musical style of your film will use. To protect Film4's reputation as a leader in British cinema the film must conform to the conventions of the Social Realist genre, and meet all audience expectations for this type of film. Finally, to keep costs low, all visual and audio material used in the film must be entirely original, with the exception of stock sound effects."

Our title was "Framed", clearly this relates to an event set up, that will put them on the wrong side of the law, another meaning that the title has is that physically a frame consists of four boarders, and this could symbolise a prison cell, connoting that this character is trapped and the picture is already painted.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HG89tcElrN4
In our opening sequence (0.11) we see Jay (our protagonist , who is played by an actor who is 17 years of age- so that he relates to our 16-24 year old target audience, working delivering packages, we see him looking slightly puzzled about where he is going, he walks down some stairs (0.21) into a dirty, dark, empty, enclosed room where he delivers the package (1.02), he then receives a phone call from his anonymous boss (1.20), where he is told to "run", instantly a undercover police officer bursts through the door (1.29) and finds Jay with a box full of drugs (1.42). We then see Jay though a CCTV camera in a interview room... (1.43)

We had met the brief as we had conformed to the conventions of a BSR movie, we did this as we had kept it low budget, as we had used a unknown actors, we had used locations that were locally available to us and we had used themes that personally relate to British 16-24 year olds, such as poverty and drugs.

Our film "Framed" contrasts to the film "Ill manors", as the main theme is poverty and drugs, here we have a similar shot where the main theme is established, the theme being drugs, but we had decided to show it from a different perspective, that being, people who are indirectly involved with drugs and face the consequences of someone elses actions.

Production Log Nine

This week was deadline day. We had to finish our whole opening sequence, this had meant tightening up all of our shots, making sure it had continuity, picking and putting the music onto the sequence, and then finally adding our graphics onto the piece.

The week had started off well, as we thought we would finish on time, but we had received feedback from our teachers to make our character look more curious about where he was going and to use close ups to show his emotion. Taking this on board we had refilmed during our lunch, hoping to have the piece strung together by the end of the day. The problem that we had faced was that our SD card was corrupt, and our footage was showing up, but we was not able to import it onto IMovie, we had tried many things to try and import it, such as try it on different Mac's, try to import it from a camera directly, and after a long time we had to make a decision to refilm or use what we had, Finally we had decided to refilm, which had taken us one hour, and then we imported the new footage into IMovie, we had put a third of the footage together before we had to leave as it was 7pm. The next day we had managed to put all of the footage together, we then decided on our music and had chosen "Flux" - By Ahab and Black market pharmacy, we had found the music on "BeatPick.com" this music was slow paced at the start and builds tension and it gets faster when we have the police kicking the door open.



The final problem we encountered was that in Final Cut the graphics that we had created had outpoints on them, so then we couldn't increase the duration of the graphics, this had affected all of our graphics as when creating them we had kept one template, typed into them and saved each credit individually so the outpoint was on all of the credits, to resolve this we placed all of our graphics and credits onto the timeline on Final Cut then had fixed each graphic individually as LiveType and FinalCut work together, so when we had fixed the issue in LiveType it had also changed on FinalCut enabling us to increase the duration of each graphic.
Once we had finished the graphics, we had our teacher examine it, so that we could export and put it onto Youtube, we had exported a low quality version so that it would upload onto YouTube quicker, and so that we could embed it onto our blog and a High quality version for the examiners.




On the final lesson that we had this week we had started a group analysis of each opening sequence created by our peers, getting feedback from other groups will help us later in our evaluation as we well have quotable negative and positive points to talk/write about, from having feedback from our peers, we will gain rich, honest opinions on where we could have made improvements, what they had liked about the composition and what they disliked.

"Framed" - Low Quality Version

"Framed" - Opening Sequence Draft

Production Log Eight

The key issues of the post production this week was that we was told to refilm the whole of our piece as our main characters costume was too bright, and we had not used a range of shots and that we had packed 4 different scenes into a two minute opening sequence.

To overcome these issues we had decided to change our main characters costume to jeans, a white t-shirt and a plain grey jacket. As there was too much packed into our sequence we had to make a important decision on what we wanted to keep in the opening sequence, finally we had decided to have our first scene where we have our main character delivering the package and getting arrested and the the second scene a police interrogation/interview. When we had refilmed we had used a wider range of shots as our character is walking down the stairs and into the room. We had then put this together, then created a draft opening sequence.

We had then started working on our graphics, and we had to make a decision about what kind of font we wanted to use, as it had to fit our narrative, we couldn't have a very posh font, but it couldn't be too graphic, so to match our themes and issues we had decided to go with a very block, boring and plain font as this would be readable and represent our character as ordinary and innocent. The font we finally decided on was "Ludica Grande" 

Production Log Seven

This week we had almost finished filming and putting the, but then we had to refilm a few shots where we had needed more dialogue as this had stopped us making any progress to our opening sequence, this was the only issue that we had faced this week, and once we had resolved this issue we could make progress onto our opening sequence.

The issue was that we needed more dialogue, so to resolve this we had decided to refilm the scene, which hadn't taken us long to organise and film the shots that we had needed, when refilming we had decided to change the shooting location as we had thought that the previous location was not suitable for our interview/interrogation scene, as the new location had seemed more plain and confined compared to the previous location. 

Call Sheet 2

Date and time: 18/03/13:      9.25-10.10 Location: Interview Room (Chadwell Heath Academy) Script scene no.s: Scene 24-29 (interview room/office) Contributors: Amandeep Sall, Jaspreet Kaur, Satveer Degun, Hardeep Panaser Contributors Contact Details: Amandeep Sall – amandeepsall686@gmail.com Jaspreet Kaur – jaspreetkaurrai28@gmail.com Satveer Degun – satveerdegun123@gmail.com Hardeep Panesar - hardeeppanesar16@gmail.com

Crew:

Amandeep Sall, Jasprret Kaur, Satveer Degun, Hardeep Panesar
Equipment:

Card box Box, Pen, Clipboard, Tripod, Camera, iphone 

Travel Arrangements:

Walked to interview room in Chadwell heath academy

Production Log Six

This week we have started filming, we had filmed the scene where Jay is delivering a package. Jay, our protagonist delivering a package, so he walks across the car park, opens the gate leading into the basement, walks down the stairs to the door. We have filmed him from a higher angle and have used levels (stairs) to show how he is a weaker character and is unknowingly getting himself into trouble. The issues that we had faced was keeping the continuity of the car park, as we have no control over the cars that are in the car park, another issue was the weather as it is unpredictable, when we had filmed it was extremely cold.

The decisions that we had made to overcome these issues we had tried to film the shots we needed and extra shots just in case we need them during the editing process, we also had a contingency plan, so if we were inable to film, we could create our graphics, and also had other actors on standby as some may not be available when we need them.

Prodution Log Five

The key issues that we have faced this week when prodcing our narratives, and shooting scripts have been deciding on a narrative, and adapting it to the british social realism conventions. Once we had created out narrative the next issue that we had faced was deciding on possible shooting locations, we had to think about what found locations that we had available to us. Another issue was the two minute time limit, where we had to put the content of the narrative that we wanted into that limit without putting too much into it and too litte, but just enough to keep it interesting.

The decisons that we had made were that our protagoinst is an ordinary individaul who finds trouble in a part time job delivering packages, when his employer was using him to do his dirty work, when our protagonist Jay isn't guilty he is arrested and sentenced to jail. The shooting locations that we had chosen where the school carpark, leading to the basement, as the basement is "scary" and dark and dirty which fits the BSR location conventions.

Shooting Script

Production Schedule

Call Sheet 1

Date and time: 14/03/13:      12.00-13.10 Location: Car Park Script scene no.s: Scene 3-5 (car park) Contributors: Amandeep Sall, Jaspreet Kaur, Satveer Degun Contributors Contact Details: Amandeep Sall – amandeepsall686@gmail.com Jaspreet Kaur – jaspreetkaurrai28@gmail.com Satveer Degun – satveerdegun123@gmail.com Crew: Amandeep Sall, Jasprret Rai, Satveer Degun Equipment: Card box Box, Pen, Clipboard, Tripod, Camera Travel Arrangements: Walk to Chadwell Academy Car Park

Location Recci

Location 1:

The Chadwell Heath Academy basement.

Reason:

The reason why we picked this location was because the interior of the basement is very dark and gloomy - much like a British Social Realism movie. Its abandoned, not much happens in it which makes it an ideal place for the opening sequence due to the actions that take place. The whole point is that it is meant to be quiet so it seems like a place where potentially drugs can be sold.


Problems we might have:
One of the main problems we may have is the accessibility of the basement. We will have to ask the caretakers when the basement is available because other students may want to use it too. Other problems we may have is the lighting in the basement. The lights in the basement may not offer the type of image we want for our opening sequence. We may not have enough time given to film in the basement so might have to come back a few times.


Location 2:

Car Park (basement exterior)


Reason:
The reason we chose this location is because in our opening sequence we need to include someone looking from outside witnessing the protagonist being arrested. It also gives the audience someone elses perspective of what is going on and also provides the audience a better understanding of where the location is.

Problems we might have:
As it is a car park, it may be busy a lot of the time and there may be a lot of noise in that area too. This means we have to shoot at the least busy possible time to make sure there is no interruptions. We will need a car parked in a specific position so we can film from an over the shoulder position of the car. For this we might have to get permission from someone we know so they can position their car in the place we need it.


Location 3:
Hall

Reason:
The reason we chose this location was because at the end of our opening scene we see the protagonist going to court and being sentenced.We thought that the hall resembled a court room really well and was an ideal choice.

Problems we may have:
There may be exams or assembly's in the hall which means we have to be careful what time we film. Also we have to make sure that it is quite outside the hall too as we need there to be silence when filming in the hall.

Location 4:
Reason:We needed this room as it resembled an interigation room which we need for the opening.

Problems we may have:Availability as we have to make sure no one is in the room when we are filming.

Production Log Four

This week we had conducted audience research; my group had decided to create vox pops, and from this we had learnt key issues that we should tackle in our BSR movie; the main issues that had come up was violence, drug/alcohol abuse and crime, these are issues that are currently a unresolved, and are affecting teenagers lives, and from the vox pops this shows us that the audience we are aiming at want to see content that is current, so that they can relate to the media text.

Institutions that are involved in the production of a independent movie are usually British companies, such as Film 4, that target a niche audience; this means that the budget is often low budget, and target a interactive audience as they're not made for entertainment, but to convey a message to the viewers, and these films are usually shown in smaller independent cinema's. Most independent movies are lottery funded, such as Fish Tank. It is also the ethos of Film 4 to use unknown actors and directors to give them them a chance to get known.

Taking all the institutional information into account this will inform our production by keeping the movie targeted at a niche, interactive audience, and also by keeping the movie low budget; the movie will be used to convey a message to the audience about the injustice of the law system, and how the guilty dodge prison, the movie will also be produced by us, and will contain actors that have very little experience- to keep to the ethos of an independent institution.

Treatment for BSR Movie

Title
The title of the film would be titled "Framed". This represents what the film will be about and is like a clue to the audience. Many BSR films have a simple name which tells something about the film which is why i have kept this one simple.

Identify Target Audience:
This film would be aimed towards a niche British audience. It would mainly be for males within the age range of 15-24 year olds. This would because the film would be more interesting to guys as there would be a lot of violence and males character are more dominant in the film. The other interests would be law, drugs, gangs and revenge. The class would be aimed towards people living in normal areas such as seven kings, Ilford, Newbury, Barking etc... These areas would be working class places. It would be aimed towards people living in these areas as the film would be set in these locations and the audience would be able to relate to the areas. Here is a link to work I recently did on Audience. This is primary research.
Audience research:
http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2713845355680337736#editor/target=post;postID=4550158782469529688
Vox pops:
http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2713845355680337736#editor/target=post;postID=3342282789684314949

Technology
The technology I will need would be equipment such as cameras, tripod, mac to edit on with the Imovie. the technology i will use when it comes to camera work would be a wide range of shots and angles were needed. This would make the film seem more interesting. There are also some limitations for what i can do such as using CGI and special effects. This would be because they aren't apart of BSR and don't have any verisimilitude  The other reason would be that it would be too expensive and we can only use what we have to make our film which has to be BSR.

Representation  
Our main characters in our opening sequence will be working class, and approximately 16 years of age, his representation would be more ‘nerdy’ and less suspicious, he would have a light complexion and would be 5ft10, he is represented as an innocent character and is caught delivering parcels, containing drugs, but he doesn’t know this.
Our antagonist is mysterious, we do not know much about him, as he mainly speaks to the protagonist over the phone, he would have a deep and intimidating voice, and would be feared throughout this movie, the enigma built up for this character would make the audience feel intimidated due to his actions and ruthless personality.

Narrative
Our movie will be about a 16 year old teenager who will be working a part time job of delivering parcels, he is an ordinary person, and his family is working class, who looks less suspicious to the police and is completely unaware of what he is delivering. One day when he is preparing his packages for delivery, he is arrested, and is imprisoned for 5 years, even though he isn’t guilty. He is released from prison and plots revenge upon his employer, he finds his employer after going through many sources and brawls with him, eventually getting stabbed.  

Conventions
How will you use the conventions of the BSR genre (conform/subvert)?
Some conventions we will use are real life sets in London. Other British Social Realism conventions that we will use are the use of unknown and untrained actors - us or other people we know.Our main protagonist is going to be working class which is another British Social Realism convention. Usually British Social Realism films contain a lot of fast paced rap and grime music. We will also use grime music (copyright free) which displays a convention. The type of camera shots and angles we will use are a lot of tiled and canted angles and use handheld shots. The camera frames will also look more rough. When editing, the contrast of the video will be lowered by 10% to provide it with that more dark, grimy feeling to it which conforms the BSR conventions. We will also use natural lighting.

Will you have any hybrid elements?
The only other hybrid elements we will have is a little bit of thriller in our opening sequence so we will try to build up some suspense and tension in the opening clip.

Style & Iconography
How will you use camerawork to create an effect for the audience?
We will use the grimey type of camerawork used in British Social Realism movies. This means there will be lots of tilted an canted angles. Also a lot of handheld shots will be used to capture the realness and rough truth about Britain. This will help to create an effect for the audience that they are there witnessing the film taking place in first person.

How will you use editing to create an effect for the audience?
One of the main things we will do in the editing is to drop the brightness of the video by 10% which will again provide that more dark, rusty feel to it which will create the effect on the audience of experiencing the real Britain creating verisimilitude.

How will you use costumes/props as visual signifiers for the audience?
We will use costumes and props in our opening sequence. From these the audience can tell a lot about, for example the location of where the film is taking place just from the costumes. We will also use props as appropriate to the character in the opening sequence which could connote to the audience what the personality of the character is. For example if the character is carrying a weapon the audience can connote from the prop that the character may be violent and has bad intentions.

How will you use costumes.props as visual signifiers for the audience?
We will use sound similar to what is commonly used in British Social Realism movies. For example a lot of grime is used so we may use grime too. We will also use real life sounds and no sound effects as it rarely happens in British Social Realism and it makes it creates a more believable experience for the audience.

Institution
Our movie would be distributed by Film 4, as it would meet their conventions, of having a low production budget, unknown directors, and unknown actors- also the movie would be aimed at a nice market and wouldn’t be produced expecting a profit, but more to convey a message of life in Britain, we would exhibit this movie at film festivals to build slow word of mouth promotion, and also in small niche cinemas such as PictureHouse as they’re known for exhibiting independent movies.

Movie Narrative

Exposition:

Character one (the protagonist) is an ordinary guy with an ordinary job. He has an ordinary job of delivering packages to places and people and as he’s sixteen years old – he earns minimum wage. Character one is around five foot ten; he has around a medium length brownie/black hair and has a light complexion. His family is of working class which is the reason why he needs the delivering job that he currently has. Surprisingly, he got the job as his close friend used to work there when he was younger, although character one has never met his employer only talked to him through the phone and his payments are received by the employer’s assistant. He is what some people may call a ‘nerdy’ type of character and never hangs around with the wrong crowd and never thinks too much of himself – completely ordinary teenager with an everyday, boring mundane life. The Exposition starts off with character one delivering his packages in a basement in London, when his phone starts ringing.

Agents of Change:

Character two (antagonist) is the agent of change, the character who changes the protagonists whole life. Character two is the employer of character one – his boss. Not much is known about him, he is a mysterious character. His description is unknown and only speaks to character one over the phone and that is only if it is urgent.  One day while character one in delivering some packages in a basement, he phones character one.

Conflict complication

In this part of the film, we see the protagonist framed for delivering drugs and goes to jail. He was betrayed by the guy he was working for and is proven guilty in court when he was innocent. He spends 5 years of his life in jail. This part of the film will have the scenes of him getting caught, the court, and some jail scenes. He comes out after 5 years out for revenge.

Elaboration

5 years later he gets out of jail out to find the people who framed him and got him locked away.

This is the main part of the film and will be the longest. In this scene we see the guy come out of jail and hunt down all the people involved in framing him. It starts off with him coming out of jail and then going back to the basement. He gets into contact with his old mates and plans his revenge. He finds out about where the employer’s assistant lives and goes there with his mates to find out who his ex-employer is and where he is to get his revenge. This is part of the scene will contain scenes of violence and as a result will leave the employer's assistant in need of hospital. The protagonist will go through many different people to get his way to the top to find the main guy who framed him. There will be many different locations used here. This will also be many scenes involving alcohol and drugs to portray the the stereotype of gangs. After when he finds the employer, there is a big fight scene between the protagonist and the antagonist.

Climax & Resolution

During the fight the protagonist and antagonist continue brawling; trading punches, and cursing each other, character one has been waiting 5 years for this moment where he finally can claim revenge! as they continue fighting they eventually break off of each other, they stare each other down, and character one walks away slowly, character 2 then draws a blade brutally stabbing character one in the back multiple times, killing him.

Coda

We see the protagonist to be dead, eventually the ambulance arrive, along with the police, and we see character one’s face covered with a white sheet, and also see character two arrested, and taken away in a police car; and character one finally claimed revenge, with a cost...

Vox Pop Results

What BSR movies have you seen?
My participants had said that they have seen; 

• Fish Tank
• The Boat That Rocked
• AnuvaHood
• KidultHood
• AdultHood
• Four Lions
• Looking for Eric.

What did you like about them?
My participants had said that they liked that they tackle key points, they're true stories, and the audience could relate to them, and that it is set in our era, so we can understand the slang that is used in the movies.

What do you think of our ideas so far?
We was told that our ideas had to be more realistic, to differentiate our movies and make them different to others (female gang), sounds like a very common idea and we should make it more unique.

What ideas do you have?
Some of the ideas that we was given was that a character has a unbelievable dream, and it could end in a catastrophic accident, and using peer pressure as a problem for one of a characters and this is what ruins them.  

Possible filming Locations?

• Alley ways
• Near/In estates
• Peckham
• Trampy but local areas.

Current Issues that we should tackle?
My participants had said that the issues that they think we should tackle are violence, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, sex, isolation, racism, petty crime and peer pressure.

Opening Sequence Sound Analysis - Made in Britain

BSR Visual Style

Production Log Three

I have learnt that opening sequences are more complex than we originally think as they hold a lot of conventions that build the base for the rest of the movie, as it introduces the main characters and the people involved in the production of the movie; such as the director, featured actors and the institutional logos. The title devices in an opening sequence are though about in great detail as the typography must match the themes and situations in the piece, the order in which they show up in is also thought about, as when the featured actors appear, they generally appear in the order of who is paid the most, and the director would usually appear right at the beginning or at the end of the sequence.

This will inform my production as I will know a basic order in which they should appear, and the different jobs that are involved, and during the opening sequence, the names that are shown are mainly heads of each department, featured actors, director and executives.

In my opening sequence I will try to make my institutions and typography match my themes and issues, as they instantly hint to the audience what the movie is about, and adds extra emphasis if the typography matches the the themes and issues shown in the text.

Possible Fiming Locations

Ilford Lane: This location fits conventions of BSR as it is a very run-down, rough area. The streets are small, very cramped and the houses are also very small. This location does not have a very good reputation as there is a lot of crime on this road.

Forest Gate: Forest Gate would be fit the conventions of BSR as it has gained the reputation of becoming a rough area, due to roads like green street, it also has a lot of crime happening and in this image we see the train station and a big building.

Stratford: Stratford would fit the BSR conventions as it has a lot of tower blocks and is a run down area, a few minutes away from the station, it also has a high crime rate, and for example; someone was stabbed inside westfield shopping centre.

Maryland: Maryland would fit the conventions of BSR movie, as it has alot of council housing, and it a very rough area, in the image there is graffiti near the train station, showing us a true picture of Britian, and how there are nice area and rough area's such as this.