Roles Allocated

Hello!

Within the past week our teacher gave us the task of researching and allocating different roles within our team in order to be organised and produce our final product successfully. 

To do this we set out a grid with all the different roles that we needed for our project. We then did a bit of research on what the roles were and the responsibilities that each role would have. We then decided upon a person for each role and wrote a short summary of why. 

Attached below is a picture of this document:

I think that the progress we have recently made has really helped us to get a finer sight of our film and has given us even more ideas on the specific details. We are happy with our choice of roles and feel much more organised with our work.

See you soon!

Credits Timeline

Hello!

As the making of our final film is drawing closer, we have been looking at a lot of drama openings. One of the things we will have to focus on is the credits, as these come in the opening of films. Therefore, our teacher set us the task of creating a credits time line. To do this, we looked at two film openings and noted down what credit comes up and at what time. 

The first film opening we looked at was 'The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo". We found that this film had a lot of opening credits that flashed up very fast. The pattern was the important people came up first, followed by a list of actors, then came the different producers and designers, then the last credit was the director's name who came up again. One thing that we found interesting was that the Director didn't only come up twice but he had a gap of 13 seconds before his name came up. We think this is because the audience will then focus on this name and the director is one of the most important people in the film so this is very important.
Here is the timeline we created:

For our opening, we won't need as many credits as this. Therefore, we decided to look at another opening will less credits. For this second timeline, we chose the film 'Cyber Bully'. For this, there were a lot less credits, however it followed the same sort of pattern. The most important people were first, followed by a list of minor actors, followed by the producers and designers and the director's name only came up once but it was also at the end.
Here is the second timeline:

We think we will follow this pattern for our opening, however we will take some credits from the first timeline to add in. Such as the Production Company and Studio Name.

See you soon!

Genre Documentary!

Hello!

A few weeks ago we were set the task by our teacher to research our genre and present the information in a documentary. We were half way through creating our first documentary when we realised that the genre we had chosen probably wasn't the genre for us. Therefore, we had a meeting to discuss this problem and decided to change our genre to tragedy drama. This meant we had to start research and a new documentary again. We found it hard to fit this in because we had so much other work to do in media and were being given new information each lesson. However, we finally found the time and have now completed out documentary, here it is!

I hope you like it as much as I do!

See you soon! 

Tragedy Drama - Genre Features

Hello!

I am now able to present to you our research on our genre; tragedy drama!

The first thing we looked at was the overview of features. Obviously, there are a lot of features in a tragedy drama, so we chose six subheading that we thought were most important and useful to research. These were: Camera Angles, Lighting, Props, Main Characters, Costume and Narrative.


The next thing we looked at was popular actors/actresses and directors. We thought this was important as we need to know what's popular in this genre, as the most successful and popular actors and directors will be what our audience want. We found six popular actors/actresses and identified a list of films that they had featured in. We then chose three random ones and watched the opening of one of the films we had identified. We did this to get a feel for our genre and the rough outline of things the audience want. We then repeater this for directors.

Thirdly, we looked at the very first film which was "Romance of a Jewess". The reason we did this is that we belive it is important to look at where this genre has come from and the changes and improvements that the genre has gone through. 

I will now attatch pictures of this work so you can see our research:

The next blog post will be our documentary on this research and information that we are very excited to publish!

See you soon!

Tragedy Drama - Film Features

Hello!

We decided to research a bit about films like ours and look at the different features to see what we liked or disliked. To do this we chose to watch two tragedy film openings and make notes on the camera angles, mise-en-scene and editing techniques and identified what we wanted to borrow, change or throw away.

The first film we chose was Titanic. For camera angles, we found a lot that we could use. We identified three main camera angles used and decided that they would all be great for our opening in order to create the mood for our film. For mise-en-scene we found also found a couple of things we can use to help build sympathy for the viewers on the characters and situation. Lastly, for Editing Techniques, we only found one thing that we can use, which will also help us to create the mood of the situation. I will now attach a picture of our 'Film Grid' for this film that explains this work in more detail:

The second film we chose was Cyber Bully. For camera angles, we found two ideas that we want to use, one that was not included in the last film. We want to use this in order to held our audience connect with the characters and become aware of the character's emotions. For mise-en-scene we found also two ideas that we want to use, again one that was not included in the last film. We want to use this in order to create an opportunity for the viewers to connect and relate to the characters. Finally, we found another two things that we would like to use however we have decided to change them a little to fit our film. I will now attach a picture of our 'Film Grid' for this film:

We have also started looking more at our genre as a whole and have done research on the overview of features in a tragedy film, popular actors and directors within the genre, the first ever tragedy film made and a timeline of the genre. I hope to get this up in the next few days!

See you soon.

Target Audience Profile

Hello!

As you probably know by now, we hit a big brick wall in our recent planning stage when we started to interview our target audience. We found that our original target of males was not correct, therefore we needed to switch to females, which has a massive effect on our ideas. We originally created a 'Target Audience Profile' about a male called James. With our target changing we needed to create a new profile which we have now completed. 
Firstly we looked back at our notes from our Target Audience Profile lesson that I will upload a picture of here:

We then looked back at our old target audience profile and looked at the things that could be kept and the things that needed changing. We found that most of Emily's lifestyle is very similar to James', however has a big difference in meaning and affect as things affect females differently to males. Also, looking back on James' profile, we realise that many of his traits, with a little tweak here and there, are actually likely to be traits of a female. We think this is because we are a group of four girls, and although we had the basis of a female audience, we chose a male basis, then built female aspects.
Here is the new audience profile of Emily:

Emily is a 19-year-old female. She lives on campus in a room with her friend Lily at Warwick University studying Business. She came here from Milton Keynes college where she studied 4 A-Levels: Business, Media, English and Psychology. She has a part time job in Michael Kors, working three evenings a week. She is currently single and enjoying University life although is interested in males.

Emily spends most of her days revising, however she does allow herself time to hang out with her friends and have some time to herself. She goes home every other weekend to visit her family in Milton Keynes. Her family is large and are very family orientated, caring a lot for each other. This is very important to Emily and she makes sure she always has time for them. When she is in Warwick and has spare days, she enjoys spending time with her friends. They often go out in Warwick in the day to do activities such as shopping and going to the cinema. She hates antisocial people and loves a bit of drama and gossip. She likes to think of herself as a fashionable modern girl. She is a mainstreamer, meaning she shops in all the big brands. At night time, she often goes out for a meal with her friends, usually picking salads, pastas and fish dishes. She would never go for a big meaty meal and hates most vegetables.

In 10 years time, Emily hopes to be high up in a retail business, preferably in the fashion sector. Her goals are to climb up in a retail business to eventually become the boss and then start her own business. Her dreams outside work are to make a good amount of money, settle down with someone and start a family. She also would like to do a bit of travelling when she meets her husband. After University, she would like to stay at home for a few more years until she finds a boy and settles down with him. She then wants to move out of her family home and in with her boyfriend/fiancé somewhere near Milton Keynes so she isn’t too far from her family.

Emily has a TV in her University flat and loves to watch all the big programmes. Her favourites are Holby City, Hollyoaks, Broadchurch and The Vampire Diaries. She also loves films and takes recent trips to the cinema, trying to see all of the currents films with her friends. However, her favourite genre is drama and romance. She loves films about families as they suit her for all genres. In happy films, it makes her like it as she is a family orientated person and so she enjoys watching happy families, and in sad or scary films she enjoys it because it gives her the sympathy and fright even more as she thinks about her own family. She loves the actor Julianna Margulies and always sees the films she is in. In terms of music, she is very up to date. She follows the charts and her favourite artist is Ellie Gouding, her favourite band is The 1975. 

Our next step is to learn more about out genre. We hope to research our genre and create a documentary on this in the near future. We also want to look at openings of films in our genre and evaluate the different aspects, finding things that can be borrowed and improved.

See you soon!

Evaluation So Far - Final Film

Hello!

We have completed the evaluation of our progress and planning so far. To do this we split it down in to three questions that we asked ourselves. 1. "What did you learn?" 2. "What surprised you?" 3. "How will you use this in your production". Here is our response:

Part 1 - What we learnt: 

The first thing we learnt was that females are more likely to watch a tragedy drama, therefore we only listened to what the females were saying which changed our plans and ideas dramatically.

We learnt that most people we interviewed would prefer a female main character. However, two people said male, therefore we will include a few male characters in the main story line, and base it around the female. Also, out of the people we surveyed, 70% said they wanted a teenager to be a main character. Therefore we will definitely make the main character a teenager. We will also include a victim and a prisoner as they had 10% votes each and we are able to include these characters.

Also, we learnt that the people we interviewed all wanted the film to be set in a small town that’s a real life experience. We think that this would be a good setting because a tragedy drama has to build sympathy for the viewers. Therefore, we are happy with the setting that the audience want.

When we surveyed people, we included the question “What would you prefer the storyline to focus on in a drama film?” The responses were quite equal apart from one, crime solving. 40% chose suicide, 30% said prison and 25% said murder. Therefore, we will include all of these aspects in our storyline, making suicide the main aspect that the story is based around.

We learnt that most of the people we interviewed and spoke to only go to the cinema once of twice a month. This is mostly because of the expense and the other options that there now are such as free streaming. To get around this we will not put our film through the cinema. Instead, we will release it on DVD as a limited edition for a month to get our viewers hooked and make them go out and buy it. Then, after another month we will release it on to free streaming companies.

The last things we learnt is that drama is a very popular genre with our audience. And in drama, tragedy is the favourite subgenre, which is a massive relief.

Part 2 - What surprised us:

The biggest surprise to us is our audience’s cinema habits. We all enjoy going to the cinema and think that once or twice a month was surprising.

The other surprise we had was again, the target audience. We were set on males and had written up a ‘Target Audience Profile’ that we thought was perfect for our movie. However, it just shows how important research is because we were totally wrong! It seems that females would prefer our film much more! Now we look back over our film ideas, this makes sense. In our interviews and questionnaire we found that females wanted it set in a real life situation with a female main character their age. This is because females are much more effected with emotions and therefore would be much more interested in a dramatic, saddening tragic film where they can place themselves as the character and be moved by the film. It is understandable that females and much more likely to want to be moved by a film than males.

Part 3 - How we will use this in our production:

The first thing we changed is our target market, originally we thought males would be more likely to watch a tragedy drama because although they don’t get involved in every day drama as much as females, they prefer eery films that involve a big blow. However, we found out that females would be more likely to watch them as they prefer sad films and it would affect them more.

The second change is our male character. We had planned from the start to have a female character. However, when it came to surveying our audience, although females got the most votes, a male main character was also popular among a particular group of people. As film producers, we want to ensure we suit as much as the female gender as possible. Therefore, we decided to keep our main character as a female, however we have made the male character more of a big character who plays more alongside the main female character and is featured a lot in the film and is a huge part of the story line.

The final main change we have made is the plot line. We originally wanted the plot to be about a prison break. However, when surveying and interviewing our audience, we could that many of them would prefer things like murder and suicide and much deeper things. Therefore, we decided that we would keep a prison break as a part of the story line, however focus it around suicide and incorporate murder. This has dramatically changed our plot line. 

Our next step is create a new Target Audience Profile for our new and improved target audience: females!

See you soon!