Evaluation Part 8 - Looking back at my preliminary task

Evaluation Part 7 - What have I learnt about technology

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

Evaluation Part 5 - How does your media product represent particular socail groups?

Evaluation Part 4 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions or real media product?

Evaluation Part 3 - Impact of Film4 during Production Stage

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

Evaluation Part 1 - Summary of Brief

The brief of the opening sequence stated that it must be under two minutes and if it was to not be at that exact time frame then it must be around to 10-15 seconds under or above the time frame. The brief also stated that it must be targeted to a British audience of 16-24 year olds from a social realist genre called BSR (British social realism)What was also stated was in the brief was the way we constructed our film such as the types of shots and angles and copyright free material that was used in post production such as music and everything must be original. My opening sequence 'Backwards' was within the time frame that was required and it was 2:10seconds long I also stayed true to the audience being British as the setting and locations were all recorded in a British setting, all the clothes and props used all fit the mise-en-scene that was realistic British setting. No gender was required but we only had males in our film as they were the only people we could use for filming during that time.

The main narrative and story line of our opening sequence is a slave being chased and pursued by two slave owners that are hunting him down. I believe this is a great and intriguing narrative for a BSR film as it shows that slavery is still around maybe not like how it was but in a different form and it denoted how the realism of what places in the Uk are like and how the media completely ignores it or doesn't cover it, it doesn't just only denote what places are like but it also is very engaging to watch for instance it is very tense and is considered a 'smash mouth' opening as the action happens right away and this also helps to relate to the audience because the teenagers would enjoy an action opening when compared to a slow paced one with just talking as they would find it boring when compared to this. The outfits we used also helps relate to the audience because the slave is wearing track suits.

In our treatment we feel like we have used most of the material from it in our opening sequence but there are differences such as the locations and maybe some other variables because of a filming incident that we had encountered. The fil called Adulthood also gave us a lot of inspiration for our film such as the language and slang that was used to represent the British society in a BSR film and this is helps depict the genre of realism in the film and the opening sequence helps create and depict realistic view of our story that would carry on throughout our film. The clothes in Adulthood and notified in our film as its a style that people would wear that suffer with poverty and suffering which is exactly where both our film and Adulthood are trying to achieve

Here at 0:22 seconds here and immediately we have set up the genre of a BSR film because of the setting depicting a typical British street and housing and I feel like we have definitely have established this by this one scene another thing at this clip is the use of audio, the audio is very ambient and not over the top and is the sound of distant cars in the background which also supports the BSR genre.

The next screenshot depicted is from Adulthood at 0:01seconds in and right away we see a person wearing clothes suited for the BSR genre to show poverty and suffering and this all links and relates tour film because we use very similar clothing such as hoddies and tracksuits which is used in Adulthood the first time we see a person in out opening sequence is at 0:24 seconds in and it denoted the slave being chased by the owners and we can see the clear similarities between the clothing and the setting too as both films have been set in east London and have very similar clothing styles.

So I think we have clearly depicted and established the BST genre instantly but we do have other themes such as slavery and violence but those aren't established until at least halfway through or towards the end of our film because it isn't clear right away what is happening as the guy at the beginning could be running from anything and the audience would have no idea what he would be running from. Another thing we wanted to include was lighting so we aimed to record during sunset as its was darker enough give themes of tension and mysteriousness but it was good that it wasn't too dark as the quality of the recording would be bad as the grin would be noticeable on the camera, the use of camera language had to be sued correctly and creative which is what we tried to aim for so it wasn't boring but not unnatural for the audience to watch as a BSR film wouldn't consist of really fast paced shots of a birds eye view as it isn't realistic so overall we followed what was specified in the brief and tried to be as creative as possible with out opening sequence

BSR Opening Sequence

Production Log 18

I think overall the production of the film was very original and our finished product was successful keeping true to our research that we did early in pre production. I think the way we planned it and how we decide the story and the opening sequence would be was very well executed and became an original story that is based upon real life events, the planning stage was very well organised and we got the work done quickly efficiently without that many problems. We had good actors that helped use film as they got the work done and stayed true to the role that they had to portray and they were reliable and they communicated with us very well, the were not professional actor but this was what we wanted as it sated true to film 4's ethos.

The way we portrayed our conventions worked very well and this helped create the BSR film opening sequence. For the production stage I think contributed very well to the BSR opening sequence because I was good at directing and I had help with my partner as well, and I did the camera work for the opening sequence so I made sure that things went they way it had to on the plan even thou there was some complications, the camera shots were very steady and had little to no shake apart vibrations, I also contributed some ideas that helped us add to our production stage so did my partner. I think that my group functioned very well together during the production stage as we all did our roles and everyone listened to what we had to do, for instance we had no arguing or anything complications we just got the work done which was very helpful. Our group helped us ensure that we had to make other spare time out of school to film the rest of our BSR opening sequence and because of this our reliability had increased and for future projects that would be a primary choice.

The key strengths our opening sequence I would say is the initials idea such as modern day slavery and the themes that were also in it. I like how the smash mouth opening of our sequence it flowed and worked very well and made it interesting to watch and helped engage the audience, and the use of our conventions for BSR opening sequence which all helped the atmosphere and locations. Finally for the production process of my BSR the things that I would improve such as more time on the pre production such as maybe more various shots and camera movement that could be incorporated in the shooting script, and I would make sure that we filmed with more people if I was going to film in some locations because of gangs and threats. I would also look for music in an earlier stage as finding music later on was a challenge.

Production Log 17

During the end stage of our Post production of the BSR opening sequence we did have some issues with sound such as the music and some of the clips. For the music it sounded too dramatic and intense for a BSR film and because of this we had to change it and make it more 'casual', luckily the music fitted the clips very well and this was helpful as we wanted to sync some of the moments of the music with the clips which helped make the scene flow a lot more. Another issue with sound is the sound of the background noise of some of the scenes, for instance the sound when the slave gets captured by the slave owners the sound was very loud as there was a lot of loud cars and t combat this we lowered the sound down and we had added a fade to the audio to make it not sound abrupt and in improves the quality control.

Another part of sound that we decided to add was the use of Foley sounds to help improve some of the sounds that were used for some of the scenes such as the beginning as it was quiet and it helped create a sense of realism and verisimilitude for the audience, it was fairly hard to find the exact sound that we wanted because it either felt to dramatic or too close as we was going for a distant car sound effect to create that sound that you always hear at motorways which creates the BSR conventions of typical working life. I think the use of sound effects that we decided to use such as the distant sounds and even the sounds for the ending and the institutional logo was great as it gave a dynamic feel of tension and helps relate my opening sequence to the my target audience which follows film four's ethos.

Production Log Week 16

This week we are finishing off our opening sequence in the post production stage. During this stage we are under going some decisions  that will affect our final version. For instance were deciding if there should be any changes to the graphics such as the positioning where they are placed on the screen, such as on the wall and on the floor to give the illusion of it being a real life object to fit in the environment/mise-en-scene of the opening sequence.Another issue that we have encountered is where one scene has a positioning error and we did over come this and solve it by doing editing techniques to cover it up and make it more fluid and less of and mistake. Another issue that we countered was where the text was positioned and how it would move on the screen, for instance when we moved the object around the screen we couldn't key frame its movement and it wouldn't move as it was a 3D text which caused issues to our original vision and this had to changed to another way that we could go around this.

What we did was do a still image and moved it around as that was the only way at that time. From our feedback from our first initial draft that we did we got lots of feedback saying to change certain timing issues on the clips such as when one of the slave owners was walking down one the alleyway and we cut it down because of how long it was. It was originally about 6seconds long and we changed it to about 2-3 seconds as it became a drag and it wasn't really necessary. Another thing that had to be changed was during the end of our production the music and style of the graphics had to be changed as they seemed to be too dramatic and because of this was changed from bold concrete looking to a move slim bold black text which suited the BSR genre a lot more.

Production Log Week 15

This week we have encountered other issues that were less significant to the previous ones we had encountered but overall we have passed and overcome these problems, We have now finished filmed our opening sequence over two days and there was little issues during that period. One issue that we had to overcome was from the time we had to do it.We filmed outside of school and after school because there wasn't enough time during lunch and it was better for everyone and it was just more convenient another for filming. Another issue was the time of day it was such as it was getting dark which hindered and caused grain on the picture which lowered the quality of the image that makes the video look worse so we decided to film the rest or reshoot some scenes on another day because of this. Another issue was when people that walked past and we had to wait for them to walk past because they got in the way of our shots for our filming, Another one was the match on match action for instance a scene with a baseball bat wasn’t used in the correct place for a match on match action and this was only detected in the post editing and we had to improvise such as cutting the scene t removed any inconsistencies within the filming or we removed the scenes together and used other material that we could still use which helped a lot. Another one was the new location for our filming because of the pervious filming we had to change locations and the shooting script had to be changed because the change of location and setting but overall the filming was the same idea of the original shooting script and we did include and incorporate some of the original ideas.