My name is Emily Brown and this is my blog; it contains all of the work towards my Foundation Portfolio Unit for AS Media Studies, since September 2014.
I worked in a group of three with my fellow classmates to create a two minute film opening of our chosen genre, a chick flick. All together the film opening took approximately 4 months to complete (editing included).
I hope you enjoy reading my blog posts and especially enjoy our chick flick film opening!
You can easily access specific blog posts using the labels navigation bar on the right :)
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Here is an Establishing shot we decided should be the very first shot shown in our film. One particular idea we got from analysing 'Saturday Night Fever' was how early on in the film a train is shown to represent the emotional journey John Travolta's character will go through, throughout the film. As this was similar with our storyline and what we felt would happen we thought it would be powerful to show our protagonist going on a train journey to represent a similar notion. The establishing shot also develops the chick flick convention of the opening sequence, often the protagonist goes on a journey in the opening of the film.
For this shot, we decided a POV shot would be the most effective way of dropping in another element to our story. The first 30 seconds of our film just shows Samantha catching a train on her way to work, and so we decided to make the storyline more interesting by adding in this new component. We contemplated doing a voice over of one of us reading out the text however ultimately we decided against this as the voice over would have lasted too long, running over the next few shots and perhaps boring our audience if we decided to make the shots even longer. Furthermore, our Protagonist is characterised as a person high up in the fashion industry and so we felt in order to fit this persona, an iPhone would best portray this. We also felt, as this was a chick flick film the best 'text language' to use would be abbreviations, such as 'omg' (oh my god). POV shots are very conventional within chick flicks and they enable the audience to identify with the protagonist, as is the use of ‘teenage’ language in the text messages and the use of the latest technology.
I felt that this shot was particularly important as the mise en scene helps to contribute to the verisimilitude of the film opening. The mise en secene also uses the convention of a 'trendy' environment - typical of chick flicks and attracting the audience. The various props used were all objects you would associate with a magazine office (i.e. Clothes rack, magazines, clothes doll in far left corner). Additionally, we felt it would be more realistic if we had other people in the office. At first when we planned to film in this room and created our story boards it did not occur to us that it may be useful to have several people around in the background, we were so focused on our two characters that when we got there we felt it was necessary and realized it would help make our film more successful on the whole if we included extras.
As our Protagonist, Samantha, opens this suspicious, ominous letter (which has 'confidential' stamped on in big red letters), we felt it would be most effective to do an over the shoulder shot so that the audience could see exactly what it is that Samantha is reading. This letter follows on from our previous shot of the text message. We felt this would make the story more compelling as there seems to be a dichotomy developing here in the plot of the story, on one side you have this seemingly important character who turns out to be simply an intern and then you have her boss divorcing her husband (who happens to be the publisher of vogue magazine) who then appears to have received a letter concerning a 'court summons'. we felt this would interest the audience and make them curious and eager to find out what would happen later.
Here, as Mollie has just opened the letter showing her boss is being summoned by court, we thought it would be best to do a close up shot of her face to convey her shock. As aforementioned, this new element being brought in introduces a serious tone to the storyline. Having a serious subplot is something most chick flicks have as it makes the film more interesting, while challenging the stereotypical conventions. We also used a close up shot of the letter which read the word 'SUMMONS'. I also previously mentioned how we analysed the Devil Wears Prada where various issues arise and things go wrong which makes the movie more enjoyable for the audience.
A popular camera technique used in chick flicks is a slow pan upwards to show the characters outfit. In order to fit in with the stereotypical genre we felt this would be useful to use as our protagonist is wearing smart shoes, this makes it clear early on that our character is not going into London to shop or even meet up with her friends. Unfortunately, due to the weather Mollie had no choice but to wear a coat over her smart outfit, which did not allow for our camera shot to be as effective as we had hoped, as we did not get a chance to show off her choice of clothes.
An effective way of introducing an important character to the story, is to create some ambiguity surrounding them. This technique was used in the Devil Wears Prada, and me and my classmates felt this would be compelling if used in our film opening. Miranda Priestly, (the editor for the magazine in the devil wears prada) does not reveal her identity albeit numerous shots of her are used, these are specifically of her lower body, focusing on her outfit and accessories. This entices the audience, piquing their interest, making them eager to see the characters identity revealed. And so, we did not show Samantha's face until she enters the office.
For our credits, we decided a girly font fading in would help reinforce the chick flick notion. Although it is not possible to see in the screenshot, the letters appear gradually, softly bouncing in. We experimented with pink writing (as pink is considered quite a girly colour) however decided this was not the most practical use of colour as it often clashed with various colours in the background and as a result, looked fairly unprofessional when used in conjunction with this particular font. However, we were quite adamant this was the most suitable font and so we compromised by changing the colour to white. However, using the colour white did not suit one particular scene where we show Mollie Greaney's name, due to the background colour you are unable to see the 'M' for a few seconds until the camera pans up. We thought perhaps if we delayed her name appearing for a while, this would solve the problem, however this delayed all the other credits and so we had to leave the credits.
For our title, we initially had the idea of having the title follow after the bus however after experimenting we really thought the pink glittery fairy dust going through the title was most effective as the title of a girly film. The decision of the name 'two of a kind' depicts the characterisation of the two main characters throughout the film (Samantha and her boss Anna). Although at first they seem to be very different, we decided that although we won't be filming the rest of the film, we pictured the outcome of the film to have the two become unlikely friends.
Who would be the audience for your media product? We took a psychographic profile of our audience, this was the result:
Showing Viewers Our Film Opening This picture illustrates a psychographic profile of our ideal chick flick audience, which we found out through a focus group, we know from our internet research and past experiences that a majority of chick flick audience's are teenage girls aged 14-18. To find out what our target audience thought of our rough edit, we asked a group of girls from our school, aged between 14 - 18 years old, to watch our film opening and give us constructive criticism so we could improve the opening for our target age range. We asked them to fill out this form anonymously:
After showing our rough cut of the film, we found that most people commented on how repetitive the music was, however most people put a 4 for question 1 on how effective our film opening was and so we could tell that we had targeted our audience successfully due to the high score they gave us. We also interviewed a 17 year old viewer after watching our film opening to find out whether she might be part of our ideal target audience:
She really identified with our chick flick, and even wanted to find out what happens later on in the film! Knowing that we had found a really good example of our target audience, we were then able to act on her feedback and make some final changes. Now with more upbeat music and various sound edits we believe our film opening is far more successful.
In order to attract our target audience (predominantly teenage girls), it would be ideal to advertise our film opening on various social media websites such as Twitter, Facebook and Youtube, which are popular and regularly used amongst teens in our modern society.
Since it's initial release youtube has gained an average of 1 billion users per month. Therefore, it would be appropriate to upload and share our film opening on their website. Additionally, the use of tags can promote and spread the appearance of our film opening on different pages.
Furthermore, Twitter has 288 million active users per month and 500 million tweets sent per day. As seen with Disney's most recent release of the live action film Cinderella, their twitter page gained 47,000 followers who were eager to receive updates about the film's release.
In order to spread awareness it would be ideal to make a twitter page for our Film, and to tweet updates about the progress of the film and its release date.
After the survey feedback we spent hours searching the internet for a song that would suit our film opening. We got together another focus group of our target audience and we played them a song whilst they watched the film opening and we asked for their opinions. Finally, we found a song on freeplaymusic.com that fitted the theme of our film opening perfectly! It is an upbeat girly song called 'Loving Everything I Find' and the lyrics fit perfectly too because they're all about being anything you want to be!
For our evaluation questions we wanted to incorporate as many skills as we could. We have never used a green screen before so thought we should try to use it for our fifth evaluation question.
We set up our green screen and artificial film lighting in our classroom, and placed a chair in the far left of our shot. We chose to put the chair there so we would be sat in the correct position for following the rule of thirds. This was our filming set up:
Fortunately, green screening is very simple and this was a quick task to complete! To ensure each person could be heard we plugged in a microphone which also helped to cancel out background noise. I had the job of editing our footage and layering green screen shots on top of our film opening was exceptionally easy too! All I had to do was add the green screen shots above the original film opening on iMovie and then select 'Green/Blue Screen'. Selecting this got rid of the green background and left only us in the shot. However, when editing I realised that a limitation was the window above our filming area which brought natural light into our shot, so you can see in some shots the creases in the green screen. But this wasn't too obvious so we decided to leave it in.
For evaluation question 5 we chose to use a green screen and speak over the top of our film opening, so we could justify why we did things as they come up in the opening.We went through our film opening an analysed each aspect of it. We worked together to come up with a 'script' for each of us to say about the film opening. We printed the words off onto A3 paper and made our own auto-cue by having someone hold them up as we read them. We divided up the lines to ensure we had an equal amount to say, this is what our auto-cue looked like:
After showing members of our target audience our rough cut, we were pleased to see that the majority or our audience scored our film opening either a 4 or 5 out of 5 for effectiveness, this gave us the confidence that our film opening appealed to our target audience.
All of our viewers thought that our film opening was aimed at teenage girls aged 14-18, which is our ideal target audience. Most viewers also thought that the choice of actors and setting was very effective and worked well with the storyline.
We interviewed a 17 year old viewer and asked the same survey questions, this is what she said:
A common topic that was mentioned was our choice of music which is used throughout the opening. Many said it was boring and repetitive and didn't feel like it suited the type of film. Taking this into consideration, we are going to research and find a much more appropriate piece of music.
Over the past two months, Disney's Cinderella is becoming more and more talked about in the media as it is quickly approaching its release date (27th March 2015 in UK). The main key happenings are:
Advance ticket sales outpace last year's 'Maleficent'
The luxury make up brand 'MAC' released a 17 piece collection inspired by Cinderella. All products are encased in powder blue packaging, with the iconic Cinderella logo and are named after Cinderella themed things. Such as:
'Evil Step- Mother' eye pigment
Lipstick in the shade 'Royal Ball'
'Stroke of Midnight' eyeshadow palette
Lipglass' in the shade 'Glass Slipper' and 'Happily Ever After'
Disney's choice of teaming up with a make up brand allows the film to entice a wider age range of audience.
The American dress company, Ashdon inc, announce their Disney Cinderella 'Forever Enchanted' keepsake gown and prom dress collection with up to 50 different styles of dresses. Again, this is Disney creating a wider audience, reaching out to teenagers as prom tends to occur at 'high school'.
Finally, on 11th February, a second exclusive trailer was released in the US, piquing the audience's interests and making sure the film is still widely acknowledged in the media.
The fact that Disney are releasing synergy across many different forms, is creating a wider audience who wish to watch the film.
As part of a film opening you need credits to tell the audience who stars in the film and who helped to make and produce the film. To make our credits look professional we watched other chick flick film openings and analysed how they presented theirs. The film we look at was 'Legally Blonde'.
The makers used a pink swirly font which suits the girly chick flick film well. Whilst watching the opening, we made note of the credits we hadn't heard of such as 'casting by', 'music supervisor' and 'locations manager'. We will incorporate these credits into our film opening to make it seem much more professional.
We decided to use a girly font in white for our credits - the font looks similar to a magazine font.
To film the last part of our film opening we went down to our local train station. This filming day was much more stressful as to ensure we get all the shots we want we also had to get on a train, but the train we needed to get on onlt gave us 40 minutes to film everything we needed to. This was a good thing as it made us much more efficient. We also used two cameras again so two people could film different angles and different shot types at the same time. We also didn't want our protagonist's face to be revealed until she's at the office to add mystery, so this was another obstacle we had to watch out for.
We filmed; two establishing shots of the train station, Samantha walking to the station, buying her ticket, walking through the ticket barrier, walking to the platform, getting on the train and her on the train.
For the first establishing shot, we filmed over the bridge; in the frame you can see the station itself and a train on the tracks going under the tunnel. The second, was of a fast train going past, we used a mid shot and stood close to the edge of the platform.
We used a tracking shot following behind Samantha walking towards the station and the second camera used a wide-shot of her walking towards it. We had to retake this shot a few times to ensure Samantha's face wasn't in shot. This camera then panned to show her buying a ticket at the ticket machine. At the machine, we used a zoomed in tilt up, starting from her shoes and stopping at her hand which is using the machine. A zoomed in over the shoulder shot shoes her selecting a ticket to London Marylebone. We then use a close up shot of Samantha's hand getting the ticket out of the machine.
When Samantha walks through the barrier we used both cameras, one of us filmed her putting the ticket in from behind and I was filming a mid shot from the other side of the barrier and follow her until the stairs in which I stop walking and film her walking down them. The other camera then waited and filmed her from behind coming down the second flight of stairs. I then had to rush down the stairs to the bottom where we filmed a close up of Samantha's shoes walking down the last few steps.
It was very difficult to film Samantha actually getting on the train because someone needed to get on the train and film her getting on and I had to film her getting on but from behind and then get on the train too! Was very stressful but we managed to get the shots we wanted.
On the train we filmed her flicking through a magazine and we saw the opportunity to use an over the shoulder shot.
Overall the day was very stressful but the small time frame allowed us to get the shots we wanted.
Last Thursday, my media studies class and I went into our local town to film the rest of our film opening. The weather was rainy and dark so we took advantage of this and used it to create pathetic fallacy as our protagonist is feeling stressed because she forgot her boss' coffee. The scene we filmed was when Samantha is running to get the coffee. Our actor, Molly, had to run into Costa Coffee and collect the cups of coffee and run back to the office again. We decided to film with two cameras so we could get a variety of different shots and angles of the same footage and would add continuity when editing.
We started with both cameras on the other side of the road to Samantha, and one camera used an extra long-shot panning her running into Costa, the other used a more zoomed in long-shot of her running.
For Samantha leaving Costa, we borrowed two coffee cups which added verisimilitude. We then filmed a mid shot of Samantha leaving the cafe holding two cups and start to run the way she came from.
To add variation we then used one of the cameras to film Samantha running away from the camera on the same side of the road.
Then we filmed a long shot of her running back to the office holding the coffee cups.
Where the screen shot says 'Title Text Here', we envisage this being where our film title will come up. We hope to add a transition so that it moves to the left as if Samantha's running after it.
Next Thursday we are going to film our train station scene, this is will be our last filming day.
The release of Disney's Cinderella is just two months away so I've looked into how Disney have advertised their new film to attract an audience.
The first official trailer made an appearance on 15th May 2014. This trailer was only a minute long and showed no footage from the film but instead, a glass slipper is slowly revealed. This gave a clue as the glass slipper is always associated with the Cinderella story.
The second official trailer contained footage of the film and was two and a half minutes long. This was shown for the first time on 'Good Morning America' on 19th November 2014. However, two days before it was shown, a 15 second teaser-trailer was shown. This had a positive impact for Disney as over 5.6 million people watch Good Morning America everyday.
Disney also created an official poster, which was also released on 19th November 2014. The poster features Lily James who plays the role of Cinderella.
Within the first 24 hours of the official trailer being aired on TV and the poster being released the trailer had been viewed 4.2 million times on YouTube and 33 million times on Facebook. This is the highest amount of views Disney alone has ever had, except Marvel films.
Another official trailer was released on 1st January 2015.
Vertigo Films is an independent British Fim and Distribution company founded by Allan Niblo and James Richardson in 2002. The company's aim is to create and and produce 'commercially driven independent cinema' and since the company was founded, they have produced 28 films and distributed 35. The films produced are an array of genres, ranging from 'Street Dance' and 'Street Dance 2' to the multi-award winning 'Monsters'. Monsters
This film was produced in 2010 by Vertigo Films and is both a thriller and a sci-fi type of film. It follows the story of NASA discovering the possibility of alien life within our solar system. Eventually, new forms of life begin to appear in Central America and half of Mexico was quarantined as an 'Infected Zone'. 'Monsters' was first screened in America on 13th March 2010 and on 18th June 2010 in the UK. Since its release, the film has won 11 awards, including one BAFTA and has been nominated for 12 other awards. The majority of the awards were awarded to Gareth Edwards who was both the director and writer. He was also awarded the Evening Standard British Film Award for the 'Best Technical/ Artistic Achievement'. He won this for the cinematography, production design and visual effects. When this film was first showed in the cinema it made £348,577 in its opening weekend and was showed on 164 screens in UK cinemas. Within the next week, the film had created a gross of £695, 249 in the UK. To advertise 'Monsters', Vertigo films used the social networking site, 'Foursquare', to promote a new and exciting PR campaign to entice viewers. Here's what they did: http://www.bfi.org.uk/sites/bfi.org.uk/files/downloads/uk-film-council-digital-innovation-case-study-monsters.pdf
Vertigo wanted to create a 'buzz' around the film before its release and draw the audience into the cinemas. They teamed up with the social networking site, 'Foursquare'. 'Foursquare' is a location-based social media site which uses GPS enabled smart-phones. The idea is that you can check into locations from your smart phone for all your friends to see. The aim was to raise awareness of the cinemas showing the film and generate interest. As the director, Gareth Edwards, went on a UK tour, Foursquare created 'infected zones' in each key city, with volunteers dressed in protective clothing handing out fliers. Fans who logged into the 'infected zones' could win prizes and discounts on their tickets. The increase in awareness of the film was a huge success. This is an example of a film company using the latest technology to attract a target audience. It was also a networking opportunity for Vertigo to gain information about their audience from the cinemas. This is how much Vertigo Films spent on their advertising campaign:
Monsters 2
After the first Monster's success, Vertigo films decided to make a second. This one is called 'Monsters: Dark Continent'. However this film is directed by Tom Green, who also directed episodes from the popular British TV series, Misfits. This film is the follow up of the first story but looks at the events from the previous one, ten years on and the 'Infected Zones' have now spread worldwide. The sequel was first show in the UK in October of last year at the London Film Festival, but is set to hit the cinemas on 27th February 2015.
