Ideas - extra footage

On Tuesday evening I was on Hastings Seafront and the light was really nice so decided to film. I really like the footage I got and I think it could fit into our opening, especially the montage section. Looking out the window of a car could signify thinking and reflecting something which Fleur would do.

Evaluation question 5

conventions of social realism

Credit to Amy Crouch

Evaluation question 6

Evaluation question 2

Evaluation question 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

I also interviewed eight more people (7 females, 1 male) ages 16-24 to gather their opinions on our media product. Initially, this is our target audience age range, but we needed to prove our film opening would appeal to them, as well as that our film could possibly reach out to a wider audience, shown in the video. I asked the same questions as the interviews with the wider age ranges, and here are the results:

The results from the video interviews as well as the results from the target audience group show our strong points of our film opening, for example the majority of people interviewed said they found the transitions and effects we used in the montage were 'powerful' and really gave the meloncholic mood we were trying to achieve. Overall, we recieved the most positive feedback from the 16-24 year olds, therefore this would be our target audience.

Social realism directors

Danny Boyle

Danny Boyle is a British film director, producer, screen-writer, and theatre director.

He is best known for films such as Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours and Trainspotting.

His films have won in total 8 Academy Awards, including an Academy Award for Best Director, and nominated for 10.

Stephen Daldry

Stephen Daldry is an English film and theatre director.

He is best known for directing Billy Elliot (2000), The Hours and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.

He has won a Tony Award for his work and continues to direct theatre productions.

Franc Roddam

Francis Roddam is an English film director, screenwriter, television producer and publisher.

He is best known for directing Quadrophenia, as well as creating the worldwide TV phenomenon Masterchef.

His TV series Dummy won the Prix Italia Drama Prize. He also directed the US series of Moby Dick and Cleopatra, which were nominated for both a Grammy and a Golden Globe.






Credit to Amy Crouch

Evaluation question 1

Evaluation question 3

Evaluation question 7

Health and safety

During filming our main risk of health and safety was filming on the beach, as it had rained the previous day it was very slippery on the ground, the three of us looked out for each other at all times to make sure we weren't about to slip over. The shot with Fleur and India on a reasonably high wall also had reasonable risk surrounding it, both girls walked slowly to avoid falling off and we're responsible for there own safety.

The smoking scene in the montage was an optional scene depending on the actors we found Sydney was happy to smoke for the film and is 18 so this is legal. It was also legal for Maya to smoke but as she felt uncomfortable smoking we didn't make her she just held a cigarette to give the impression she had been. 

As our actress, Maya, was under 16 we made sure that her parents knew where she was at all time and where okay with what she was doing at all time. 

Voice-over

We all went away from our group to see if we could create a suitable voice over for our film. We chose Sydney's as it captured a sense of intrigue about the Fleur's illness, why she was looking back and also her relationship with India: 

Fleur,

Delicate,

Fragile,

 one touch and it will wilt.

It wasn't until people decided to define me by my illness

 that I really considered the meaning of my name.

 A happier thought would be Spring,

 or life itself, which is ironic seeing as mine is swiftly dwindling. 

But anyway,

 I want to take you back to the start of my forgetting,

 the day that I would meet her, the drug that would assist me in my last few months.

Voice over inspiration

After our first screening we got a lot of feedback that said our opening looked too much like a trailer, we decided to make it obviously an opening by adding a voice-over, to explain that it was a flashback. Voice-overs are used in numerous openings here are a few we got inspiration from:

Never let me go

The opening to Never let me go begins at the end of the film with a voice over from the main protagonist who explains to us that this is the end, however not through obvious wording. She then goes onto talk about how she prefers to look back this smoothly introduces us the the beginning of the film. Overall this opening does exactly what we want ours to do; intrigue audiences into what has happened in the time from the beginning to the end and to help audiences understand why she is looking back. The opening also introduces the three main characters something which would add to our voice-over if we could also do. 

The Lovely Bones

Even though not a social realism film, The Lovely Bones is about a dead girl who is looking back on her life. Fleur would die in a different way to the girl in this film but they still both look back on their life if only briefly in the openings. From the lovely bones opening it is evident that the protagonist speaking is a lot older or dead imposing a sense on intrigue on the audience. By using similar techniques in our opening such as words like 'I remember' we can also create the sense that Fleur is a lot older or has died since the beginning of the film.

Editing and the problems we faced

Our editing consisted of regular continuity editing in the beach and nosebleed scene as well as a montage with numerous overlays to create a dreamy looking sequence. We worked well as a group to make important decisions about where the cuts should be and where the overlays needed to start and so on.
We also had to work with sound inserting both music and a voice over this was relatively straight forward but meant we had to decide what part of the voice-over sounded best against certain scenes.
The trickiest thing we had to overcome during editing was that there was only a certain number of places we could put the titles on iMovie as in you couldn't tweak the positioning. We chose the best positing possible for each title, luckily this wasn't too difficult as there were many spaces our titles could go. 

Changes to our storyboard

Our storyboard had to go through a number of changes during the production of our film. The main problem we had to overcome, in regard to the storyboard, was that we didn't find a location that allowed us to film Fleur having a nose bleed into the sink and then walk out of her house onto the beach. In response to this problem we decided to get rid of her walking out of the house and just use a fade to black to show that she walked towards the beach. This idea then changed again after our first screening so in the final opening the nosebleed scene is part of the montage. 

We also decided to keep the beach scenes as we believed that these were key in highlighting her reflective nature. In addition to this the beach shots would add to the stylistic cinematography of the film. The beach scenes stayed at the end of the film as they were planned to in our story board but weren't attached to the nosebleed scene at all we achieved this by putting the beach completely at the end of the montage (we only decided this was the best option after our first screening).

The final shot from the storyboard has also changed this is because on the day we couldn't get the desired shot with the technologies we had; not having a tripod that would give us a shot high enough for it to look effective. In addition to this we couldn't get the right angle of the shot without casting a shadow on our actress.

Final film opening

A noticeable change to our opening is the absence of the beginning blood scene. As a group we decided that this scene needed to go as a response to more feedback which said it made the opening too much like a horror film and not of the social realism genre.

Music

We brought our music from melody loops, an online royalty free music supplying website. The music was £7 a small fee for such a crucial part in our film. We felt that the melancholic aspect of the music fit our opening perfectly and the string section also fitted in well with some of our shots. It is a convention of social realism films to use music that coneys the feelings portrayed in the film something we chose to use in our opening. 

Response to feedback

First screening and feedback

This is the first draft of our film opening that we showed at our first screening.

Feedback

Fonts

These are some of my initial ideas when it came to fonts for the titles in our opening. I personally like the look of the thin fonts the most but I'm not certain as to whether they would stand out well enough.