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

In order to see the ways in which I have applied codes and conventions to my final media product, click on the website below:

http://meganjaynebennett.wix.com/lonelythischristmas1

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

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

An interview with the MD of Vertigo Productions:

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

Primary Audience member example:



When watching back our media product, I think we have managed to successfully engage our target audience of teenage females aged between 12 and 18 in audience demographics D and E. As mentioned in the audience profile, we said that we would use many codes and conventions in order to attract our target audience in our opening sequence. For example the worry about the future is a convention that always comes up in coming of age films like Submarine and Perks of Being a Wallflower, and too comes up in our opening sequence. As this is a current worry for the primary audience of our film, we have used it to engage the audience as something that can help them and give them something to relate to.

The audience we have targeted in this film is very similar to the audience we had originally planned to aim our film at then creating our old film sequence, because even though the narratives and characters aren't similar in many ways, the same themes, ideas and codes and conventions have been used to attract the target audience. The reason that we didn't decide to change it during the creation of the opening sequence is because this is the target audience of the majority of coming of age films and has been very effective and so we thought that by engaging with the same target audience it would increase the chances of our coming of age title sequence being successful.

You can tell that our opening sequence is aimed at this audience because the protagonist is a female that is clearly feeling alone and isolated, which is a feeling experienced by this target audience many times over their teenage years. We have created an atmosphere that makes the audience sympathise with the character and sympathy is most often, stereo-typically, given by girls, whereby engaging the target audience of women far more than men. Although we haven't created the entire film following this 2 minutes, the rest of the film is based on her life as a teenager which therefore lads to her situation now. We decided to have an opening which didn't start with her as a teen because that is the same way almost all coming-of-age films start, e.g Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging. We thought that by starting the film with a reflection of the protagonist's emotions later in her life, it becomes more engaging for the audience whereby enticing them into watching the rest of the plot ewhich leads her to this point in her life.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

What I have learnt about new technologies during the construction process of my product? - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires

7. What do you feel you have learnt from the progression from your preliminary task to the full product?

I think that from my journey from the preliminary task, to the development of our second idea, to the creation of the final product, I have learnt so much in terms of production, filming and editing. For example, in the placement of characters within shot. In the preliminary task this was very poor, however I feel like since learning the rule of thirds, I feel like i have tried to use this effectively to draw the eyes of the audience to the right place.

I feel like the decision to change the idea from what we had thought of originally was definitely the right decision to make. This is because, as you can tell from the footage, it was not working effectively even after two attempts of shooting for the sequence. Filming for this proved to be really hard as we had two protagonists to film for, and trying to organise a few days which we could all be together for was really difficult. It was evident to us that after to attempts of filming, the idea wasn't going to work and so towards the end of December we decided to change our idea and try and come up with something better. This is where the idea for the Christmas theme of our newer opening sequence has come from. 

From task 1, I took away what sort of conventions opening title sequences used and applied in order to engage the interest of their audiences, and then in task two I learnt how the creators of coming of age films applied these conventions to their sequence successfully, so I started gaining knowledge of the sort of things to look out for and apply when it came to starting to create my own opening sequence. One of the best ones that I looked at was Ferris Bueller's Day Off and so it was from this film that I started making comparisons across media and took which things I liked and didn't like in terms of editing and narrative structure of a sequence. I also looked at the Breakfast Club and it was from here that I was inspired to do the jump cuts etc of things relating to Christmas and things associated with it, like they do in this sequence.

Sixteen Candles, a film I analysed in task 3, was quite influential to the ideas behind our project because it gave us a basis to go on as to how teens were represented in films: self-conscious, but also kind of overlooked by others in society. This was a way in which we represented the protagonist in our film in order to link her back to and engage with the target audience of our film so that they would empathise with her and see that she isn't so different from themselves. 

Tasks 4 and 5 were useful when it came to the production of our opening sequence because it taught me how different companies and directors use different codes and conventions to personalise and put their own mark on things that they produce. This made me realise that in order to make our sequence a success it had to stand out and be different from all the others, e.g in terms of atmosphere created and ordering of the narrative. Task 6 was then also really useful because it was all about audience research - learning who our target and secondary audience would be, doing a questionnaire to find out what people of our age group wanted to see in films, which ones they preferred and what it was about these coming of age films that they liked. We took away information from this task which was vital for the production of our opening title sequence, and this is how we built the structure of our new idea for the opening sequence.

Task 7 proved to be really influential to our final product because it was the titles which we struggled to get right a few times, but which in the end, I feel have brought the opening sequence together in that the authenticity and ambiance they bring to the sequence make it appear more sophisticated and professional. The typography we used was difficult to pick but on the place cards suited the titles really well, and we also learnt what the order of titles was here, and so this explains the order of titles in order to fir the convention of other coming of age films.

In task 8 I studied narrative structure within an opening sequence and is what lead us to revealing an equilibrium which was shortly followed by the disruption of an equilibrium in our opening. The representation of characters within this narrative was also really important, as I learned in task 9, because it was through this that I learnt the ways in which I could make the audience empathise with and feel sympathy for our protagonist, and also how I should present these characteristics and events to the audience. I learnt in this task that I should give the main character in the plot of the film an obvious hamartia which is what leads to the route of their problems, which in our characters case is carelessness in her youth.

Task 10 was where I finally got an idea of what opening sequences produced by others doing Media Studies A level looked like, and it gave me an idea of what they did well, what I certainly shouldn't do and also what I wanted my final product to look like. My final product from this course has turned out just how I wanted it to and so I feel like I have made something which fits the ideals of a coming of age opening title sequence.

The preliminary task made me realise what a difficult task it was going to be creating our own sequence and it taught me that I needed to learn how to control a camera, the techniques I should use for achieving good camera work, the correct positioning of characters and the way in which a narrative should be laid out in order to engage an audience in the opening two minutes. I feel like I have done all of these things from the progression from my prelim task to my final product, and that the development of my ideas for the sequence to the production and editing of it have improved vastly over the course of this task, and can be seen throughout the blog.

Edit 3

The content of this video is the same as that of our final product but we have decided that Paramount would not be a suitable distributor for our film as it doesn't fit the rest of the sequence and looks very out of place, therefore we have decided to have Vertigo be the producer and UK distributor for our film.

Editing Diaries

Editing Diary 1 

After our first session of editing, we managed to import all of our footage from filming into the iMovie programme. We had already been through most of the clips and selected the best ones to put into the final product, but we still had a few that we couldn't decide between until we put them into the rest of the sequence. Once we had ordered the clips they came to about 4 minutes long, and so we knew that it was going to be a difficult job to edit down, even after cutting out all of the unnecessary bits from the beginning and end of each clip. 
During our next session, we will need to start shortening these clips and make the last couple of decisions on which are the best pieces of footage to use. 


Editing Diary 2

Coming back to the film today we could see that there were some clips which didn't fit in where they had been placed. This has meant that we needed to do some reshuffling with the clips so that they made sense in the narrative. We started cutting out the parts of the shots which were too long or weren't needed in the sequence and this has taken ages and ages to do because we had to somehow get it down to about 2 minutes. This took a few sessions to do, and finally we got it down to 2 minutes and 11 seconds. I have written on the blog post under Edit 1 what the feedback from out teachers was and that has given us a starting point for the next session.

Editing Diary 3 

Today we tried putting music the chosen music in to our sequence. It took a little while to work out how to get the music to go onto iMovie because the music file type wasn't compatible and so we had to use a programme called Clip Converter to make the file an MP3 to go into iMovie. After adding this in, we decided that actually the music was a bit to festive and christmassy for an opening sequence that is actually quite saddening and is supposed to evoke empathy and sympathy from out audience, therefore we took the music out and tried looking for another choice of music. Annoyingly, before we thought about it we took the old music file out and put the new music file in before we saved a copy of it so w weren't able to put an edit of this on our blog. On top of this however, we have also decided that there are certain parts of the sequence, like the match on action scene with the candle being lit, that are too disjointed and need refilming, so we've decided to organise a date to refilm these parts.

Editing Diary 4

Since our last editing session a few days ago, none of us have been free on the same day so we haven't managed to refilm these parts yet  but there were lots of other things that needed to be edited this session. We made the titles for the actors, etc a bit longer because from our feedback from peers, no one had long enough to read them properly. So we did this, and also when trying to make digital typography for the more important titles such as director and producer, we realised that they looked out of place in the sequence and so in a way it was a good thing that we hadn't refilmed already because we then decided to do more ambient titles for these roles too.

Editing Diary 5

Over the holiday period we managed to schedule a time for re-filming where we re-did some footage and also came up with some more alternative and creative ways to display the end titles. In this session we have managed to replace all of the shots which weren't shot well enough originally, and also add in the titles at the end, and the institution titles at the beginning. The project finally started to look like it is coming together when we added in our new choice of music which is slower and more downbeat and so suits the atmosphere of our opening sequence a lot more. This version of our edit can be seen under Edit 2 under the construction header on the blog.

Editing Diary 6

When re-watching this edit with our teachers, they said that they felt that something was missing from the sequence to bring it all together, and that was something to frame the sequence and make it seem more like it was telling a story over the time given. On top of this, they said that the main title which we tried to do using online typography looked very strange in contrast to all of the other titles in the sequence, no matter where in the sequence it was placed. So to overcome this problem we decided to use the idea of a calendar to document time passing over the month and to outline the build up to her Christmas, and that we were going to gradually cross out days on the calendar all the way up to Christmas eve, where we would write the main title of our film. So in this session , we made a lot of important decisions for the sequence, and also did a bit more tweaking to try and make it look as smooth, tidy and professional as we could.

Editing Diary 7 

As the most convenient time for us to film soon was when we were all in school together, we used the school's photography studio to film the calendar aspect of our sequence. This took about an hour and I brought in some Christmas decorations to tie it in with the film. In our this editing session we put these clips into the film sequence to see what it looked like and it ended up looking quite good. However we did put all of them at the beginning of the sequence and then only two at the end and we felt that this looked a bit strange so we spread them out more equally about the sequence, which also made us realise that putting the title of the film at the end of it made  it look a bit too much like a trailer, so we decided to put it in just after the main actors at the beginning of the sequence. This complied to the conventions of films in that this is the usual order of titles, and so we felt that this looked the most professional.

Editing Diary 8

This was the final editing session we had and so Ella and I decided to go back and do the last few tweaks on the final product to neaten it up a bit more. This was really important for us as there was a blip in the end of the sequence where two of the files had been corrupted since the last session. So, to overcome this we took these two clips out of the sequence and edited them back in a few times until finally the file played correctly. This final edit can be seen on my blog under the Final Product header.

Final Product

Below this you can click on the video to see the final product of our media coursework:

Edit 2

Edit 1

The first cut we have done is showing the first draft we have made for our film and how it is going.




This version of our editing is good but we know that it is still missing a few key elements. For example it is missing music, the titles and a few key techniques like match on action and shot reverse shot that makes the flow of the opening sequence a more continuous effect.

Learning Comment:

The music that we would be using is the music that we had chosen on the music section of my blog. However when getting feedback from our peers and teachers, we have concluded that the music choice is a bit too christmassy for our opening sequence, so we are going to use a more mllow, but still christmassy themed song. Despite the rhythm of the song fitting with the cuts between shots, it doesn't sum up the mood and atmosphere quite right for the sequence. 

On top of this we have noticed that the match on action part of our sequence isn't smooth enough and so doesn't help towards creating a sense of continuity throughout the sequence. Therefore we are going to meet up again and just film a couple more parts of the sequence that need making smoother on top of some extra shots for the most important titles - the director, writer and producer, editor and the name of the film, but in a creative way like we have filmed the others.

The original idea for our titles was to have a mixture of those that were creatively filmed and handwritten, and then others that were elegantly typed and edited into the footage. However, on reflection, we have concluded that this would make the sequence disjointed and that the edited titles wouldn't be as effective as those that were done during filming. Consequently, when we re-film the other small parts of the sequence, we are going to also come up with some more ideas as to how we are going to work the other titles in and amongst the footage. 

Finally we are going to lengthen the time of which the titles are up on screen for because, when given feedback, we realized that the shots with the titles weren't on screen long enough for the audience to take in the information, so in our next editing session we will increase the length of time that these shots show for. On top of this the speech part where Victoria is on the phone to Chris has a two second part on the end in which there is no speech, so we will need to cut this out in order to make room for the addition of new shots.

Filming Diaries: Lonely This Christmas

Day of filming 1: Tues 22nd Dec

Today was the first session we have had filming for our new coming of age film idea. We used Ella's living room as the location for all of the filming today. We did it in the morning to overcome the bad quality picture and lighting issues that usually come with filming inside, and it wasn't lessened. 

The filming went really well today as we managed to film all of the cross-cuts we need for the titles and to break up the bits of speech. We also filmed the still images, establishing shot and all of the other scenes without the actress as she was unavailable until the evening, which wouldn't have worked.
Some of our shots however, did not look the way we had hoped for so we made the necessary tweaks where necessary throughout the filming, for example the diagonal pan across the tree was very rough and jumpy, and it took so long, so we've had to change it to a tilt shortly across in order to make it fit. 

The changes we made were only small e.g shot type and we did a couple more shots that we had originally planned to do in the original recording session. Overall, the filming went well and the next time we have scheduled to film is on Saturday morning. 

                                                                                                                        Ella & Megan at filming

Sound: Lonely This Christmas

For this task we researched and looked into different options of royalty free music for our opening sequence:

Stage 1:




 
To fit the christmas theme of our opening sequence, we figured that using christmas music would be the best way to go. So when we narrowed it down to these three options, we decided that the one we liked the most was the third clip "Deck the Halls", but when we went to put the music over the top of the sequence, the cost was far to high as we had to buy the rights to the clip from the website. Therefore we then had to choose the top one because we thought that that would be the most fitting from the remaining two. However when we asked a group of people from the target audience they said that it made the clip too cheesy and happy when the atmosphere overall was supposed to be more subdued. Then after a discussion with our teachers, we came to the conclusion that we should start sound research again.

Stage 2:





The three clips shown under the stage 2 heading are the songs we chose that were more calm and toned down to reflect the mood of the protagonist in our sequence, and were the music choice we had to choose from for our final product. We tried all three pieces of music over the top but overall we decided from feedback from our classmates and teachers that either the top or the bottom clip would be the most successful. Between the three of us we chose the bottom royalty free clip for our sequence because it seemed to provoke more sympathy for the main character, who we want our audience to empathise with, and made the video more effective and made it look more professional than the others because the timing of the notes syncs well with the length of our shots.

Annoyingly, since choosing this royalty free piece of music, it has been deleted from YouTube, so now it is unable to be viewed, but you can listen to it as the piece of music used to frame our opening title sequence in the final product.

Typography: Lonely This Christmas

We have used different fonts for the name of the film, and for the place cards with the actors' names on, because we decided that using the same typography for both would be too similar and wouldn't make the name of the title stand out like we want it to, as it is a vitally important part of the credits. 
This slideshow beneath is to give an insight as to how we chose which typography at which point in the sequence:

Props, Location, Fashion Planning and Risk Assessment: Lonely This Christmas

PROPS

• Expensive candles, for example in a glass (Yankee Candle) or with flowers or patterns within the candle
• Christmas tree decorated in red and gold as through mise en scene these colours both represent luxury and extravagance which is the effect we were creating in the opening sequence
• Sophisticated and elegantly written Christmas cards 
• Modern style home phone 
• Elegantly written Christmas tags on neatly and beautifully wrapped presents
• Neat and sophisticated wrapping paper for example with elegant patterns instead of a cartoony print 
• Sophisticated initialed stockings  
• Baubles 
• Neatly folded and pressed napkins, beautifully embroided and neatly placed on the plates 
• Dining room table, places set for christmas dinner
• Elegant and simple Denby china plates, spotlessly clean
• Cutlery polished until shiny
• Wine glasses polished 
• Christmas version of the radio times

LOCATION

• Sitting room decorated for Christmas: with presents stacked up in the corner wrapped in festive paper, decorations hanging on the ceiling and a Christmas tree decorated with red and gold tinsel and ornaments.
• Dining room decorated for Christmas with 6 fully laid place settings with a simple, elegant blue table cloth. Six table settings with characters names and the actors who play them in front of each table setting. A candle center piece on the table. Cutlery and wine glasses will be polished.

FASHION

• Our actress will be wearing a loose elegant black top made from chiffon and some sophisticated muted plum trousers and some glamorous jewelry to represent the posh and sophisticated main character 'Victoria'.

RISK ASSESSMENT 

Character Profile: Lonely This Christmas

Name: Victoria Richards

Age: 40

Hometown: London

Class: Upper class

Relationship status: Single

Current family: Doesn't live with family, distant from them as she pushed them away as a teenager

Other close relationships: None

Job: Successful business woman

Dress style: well groomed, sophisticated, high end, up-to-date fashions 

Religion: Atheist

Past time: Shopping, fashion shows, work lunches

Favourite sports: None

Favourite food: Sophisticated tastes, high end restaurants, fad trendy diets

Personality: can convince people to do what she wants, manipulative, appears confident in order to hide her loneliness and desperation to be liked

Temper: High temper, especially when things don't work out how she planned, tries to hide it because of her past and wants to be liked by other people

Consideration for others: doesn’t think much of anyone else of a lower class than herself as she was brought up this way

How other people see her: a bit stuck up, no one is really fond of her because of the past and how she treated others, friendly to her face but not friendly about her when she turns away, afraid to make an enemy of her

Opinion of herself: thinks very highly of herself because she is well dressed and polite and has been successful throughout her life, brought up being told she is the best of the best at pretty much everything, however she knows she is lonely 

Ambitions: already achieved everything she wanted to achieve, in a job of a high position, being paid a lot of money, wanting to get married and have a family whilst being surrounded by friends

Most important thing to know about this character: she may be rich and appear as if she has the 'perfect life' but she is in fact very lonely. Due to the mistakes and the way she treated people in her past

Will the audience like or dislike this character, and why?: the audience may feel sorry for her because of what is going on in the opening sequence (people are turning her down and she's left lonely at Christmas) but that is only because they do not yet know the reason behind this which they will find out later on in the film, they audience may end up sympathising with the protagonist Victoria as they will see the pressure put on her by her family to be 'perfect' and get everything right. The young teenage audience we have targeted for this film will be able to relate to the theme of pressure to be what everyone wants

Shot List: Lonely This Christmas

Story Board: Lonely This Christmas

 

Script: Lonely This Christmas

Audience Profile: Lonely This Christmas

As we have now changed our idea for our opening sequence, I have created a new prezi in order to identify what the new target audience will be. It is pretty much the same audience as was for our previous idea, as our sequence will deal with very similar themes and issues, but there are a few key bits that have changed.





Learning Comment:

From re-doing this task I haven't learnt a lot more but I have realised what I will need to change when creating the new opening sequence in order to attract the target audience the best we can. On top of this, from the last bit of filming and planning we did in the creation of our previous opening sequence idea, I have learnt that we are going to need a much wider variety of camera angles at a much faster pace in order to engage the audience properly and then keep their attention, and also by getting a better understanding of our target audience by re-doing this task, it has given me new ideas as to techniques and conventions we can use in the sequence to help improve our end result.