Evaluation 7 - What do you think you have learnt from the progression from it to full product?

In the process of completing the preliminary task, I learned how to use editing software, and about different camera shot types. Before we started this project, I didn't know how to use Adobe Premier Pro, but I  now feel I can use it effectively and have learnt about it. I have learnt how to edit separate clips together, how to cut sections out of clips, and how to add effects and titles/credits on screen. When we started filming our film opening, I  wanted to mainly be the camera man, and as a result, I am not in our film very much, as I felt I could do this well, and I had some good ideas about shots we could use. I feel that we used a good range of camera techniques throughout, such as the canted camera angle as our main character walks down the corridor, or the first person shots as the main character sees the school bullies, walks thorough priory park, and approaches their friend. We also used  wide/panning shots in our film, to give a feel for the main characters loneliness. We also included a match on action shot, when our main character puts his headphones in, and the music
fades in, to give a feel for how the character feels when he listens to music, and how it makes him feels feel more complete.

Evaluation 3 - What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Here is our directors commentary style recording for our film opening:

 

In case that hasn't worked, here is a link to the YouTube video:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=A-VFeaZSo9w

Evaluation 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products.

In our film opening, we wanted to not follow the usual conventions of a teen angst film, although we may have used some of the usual conventions anyway.

For the title of our film opening, we originally used a fairly boring and generic font, and all the writing was just one colour, but now, we have used a more interesting font, and made different words in the title/credits different colours.

We filmed our opening sequence in Longsands Academy and Priory park. We used these locations because school is where most teenagers spend the majority of their time, and teenagers are seen as quite sociable, and the park is quite a common place for them to hang out.

The costumes we used were just what the characters were wearing on the day we filmed, as this was the sort of clothes we would've wanted them to wear anyway, casual clothes. We didn't use many props, and those that were used, were just what was around us, as we wanted usual objects you would find in a school.

The camera work used was mainly panning, or wide shots, to give a feel for the location they were in. We used a Canted camera angle to give a feel for the somewhat chaotic life of a teenager.

The story of our film would be following the life of a teenager, as they deal with social anxiety, and try to make more social interactions.

The Genre for our film would be a comedy, and this is implied by things our main character says in the narration, such as 'he's nice, and I'm grateful he isn't a dick'.

We introduce our main character at the start of our film opening, when we seen him in a classroom, the leaving the room, and it is then obvious he is the main character, as the main focus is on him. We introduce the main characters friend towards the end of the opening,  as we see the main character walk up to him, and then narration tells us about him.

At the start of our film opening, the shots are all in black and white, but when our main character puts his headphones in, it turns to colour,  suggesting that music provides some fulfilment in his life.

Lonely Life of a Teenager - Final Product.

We have changed our film opening quite a bit since the first draft, we went away and filmed more shots to include in it, we changed the font used for the credits, as well as some of the colours. We added more camera shots/effects, and added a conversation in the classroom scene at the start of the film.

Evaluation 2 - How does your media task represent different social groups?

In our film, our main character is seen as a social outcast, with not many friends, and this is shown by the fact that they are walking by themselves. In Easy A, the main character is also seen this way, as we can see she is walking by herself, with people laughing at her as she walks by, and the look on her face shows that she doesn't appreciate them laughing at her, showing that they probably aren't her friends.

For the bullies in our film, you can see that they are bullying someone up against a wall. This shows that are quite dominant in this situation, and that they are in probably quite popular, as there are three of them in this shot. We can see that this is quite similar to the mean girls in Easy A, as there is one girl in the centre of the shot, and she is the 'leader' of her group, and she has lots of people following her, showing that she quite popular.

For the  main characters' friend, we decided to go for one main friend, fir the main character, and we can see this by the fact that in the first half of our film opening, Our  main character is walking with only one person. |This is similar to the friend in Easy A, as they seem to have one mainfriend that they talk to.

Evaluation 4 - Who would be mosty likely to watch our film?

We aimed our film mainly at teenagers, as it is a teen angst film, and represents struggles of teenagers in everyday life
Here is an annotated picture of someone who would be more likely to watch this film.

Evaluation 6 - Technologies used in the process of constructing this product.

 In the production of our film, we used multiple pieces of technology. The school provided the camera we used for most of the filming, which was a canon video camera.















We also used someone's phone for filing one scene, the bullying scene, which was a Samsung Galaxy S7. We initially meant to film this scene with a regular camera, but there weren't any available when we were filming, and it was meant to be a third person shot, but because we didn't have a camera stand to ensure that the shot was steady, we changed it to a first person shot, so that there was a reason that the camera was steady.










We used a tripod for holding the camera for almost all of our shots, although for some of our shots the camera was rested on nearby objects.













For editing our film we mainly used Adobe Premier pro to edit our footage together, although we used Adobe fireworks and Photoshop to create our Credits and company/film logo.

Teen angst film opening, draft

Here is our first draft for our Media Studies teen angst film opening, 'The Lonely Life of a Teenager'


We are planning to change quite a few things about it before the final edition, but this is what we've done so far.

Teen angst film opening, changes

As with anything in  film making, there will always be changes that are made part way through production. Our group were no exception. We changed quite a few things from our original plan, such as:

• Our main character (Max) was initially meant to be female, but we changed this, as it was easier to shoot with someone from our group as the main character, as the person we originally cast wasn't free to film very often, and didn't understand that we needed to film more than one scene.
• We removed the classroom scene from the start of our film opening, as we weren't able to get everyone we wanted together to film at the same time. This meant that we also had to shorten our script, and we had a smaller cast as some people would've only been inn that scene.
• The bullying scene was initially mean to have 3 people bullying the someone (me), but on the day we were filming, one of them wasn't in school, so we filmed it with just two bullies instead, which worked just as well.
• In the film, our main character was meant to be wearing headphones, but in the draft, he isn't as he didn't have them when we started filming, so he didn't wear the for the draft, however, we are re-filing most of it, and he will be wearing headphones there.
• We changed our logo from our original draft. Our initial logo was supposed to look like a wolf howling at the moon, in a snow globe, but we have sine removed the snow globe aspect of it. We have also tried to make an animated logo, and came up with a few attempts, but we currently just have a still image for our logo in the draft, and I don't know if it will change for the final film or not.
• We changed where our main character is coming from at the start of the film. He was initially meant to be leaving his last lesson of the day, a history lesson, however, when we were filming there weren't many people around, so we changed it so that he was coming out of detention after school, to give a reason as to why there weren't many people around. We did, however, rope in a few of our friends that were around to make it look like there were still some people in the school.