Evaluation Question 6

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

during the production of dazed as a group we have all learnt from each other on how to edit. At first we found it quite tricky as we have not had a lot of practice. However when editing our prelim we all got a little feel on how the software imovie works. our skills grew stronger and stronger and we all had equal turns on editing . We made sure that the sound matched the video perfect although it was quite hard to overlap sounds. Whilst editing the glitch we started to realise that it was going to be very difficult.  We fixed this problem by making the time between each shot a second or two longer. We all also had a chance to film and get a chance on how to use to camera we were given. it was hard to get perfect straight shots at first because the tripod was hard to manoeuvre. However once we got used to to all of this we were able to really enjoy editing and filming and also happy with the skills that we had learnt. 

Evaluation Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups? 

The main theme of our film opening is based around a party which shows how many teenagers enjoy the 'party lifestyle'  but also portrays the fragile sides of teenage life , including being anxious, constantly on edge and constantly questioning if they fit in. The protagonist is a teenage girl which hopefully allow other teenagers to relate to her struggles. This shows that not all teenagers are the same and enjoy the particular party lifestyle. This subverts the stereotype of teenagers being trouble makers and involved in crime. Again if our opening was to be a full feature film ( mentioned in my Overall Plot blog post) there may be some crime involved this again following the stereotype of teenagers being involved with crime and danger. We hoped to show the many aspects of different teenagers life.

Evaluation Question 7

Evaluation question 2

7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Looking back at our prelim we mainly used very basic mid shots and did not include a variety of camera angles. we also found that the music was way to loud to have a voice over added on top.  also the music did not match our voice over , which was not a huge problem but just frustrating to watch. We have learnt how to execute a variety of camera shots and angles including low angles shots overhead shots , over the shoulder and close up shots. Also whilst editing we were able to add in in the credits perfect to the film shots and so they both matched hand in hand.

Evaluation Question 3

our opening dazed would probably be classified as an independent film and similar to the likes of American Honey and Spring Breakers distributed by A24. Many films distributed by A24 have the same target audience as is was only recently founded in august 2012 , many of the films are appealing to 15- and above ( hence the certificate age rating) as they are very recent and fresh. Spring Breakers have very aesthetically pleasing scenes and is heavily concentrated on lighting , very similar to dazed. Also American honey features a female protagonist who is a troubled adolescent. Each aspects of these films relate to our film opening and would not be suitable for the likes of Disney as they are typically targeted at children and are usually PG or U rated. If our opening was to be a full feature film it would be 15 rated as scenes may upset younger children. 

Teen Protagonists

Many films with a teen protagonist often attract teenagers to be the target audience. There is many evidence on this including.

Donnie Darko

"Lots of teenagers feel trapped in a world they don't fully understand,
barely able to hold in their adolescent rage."

Back to the Future

"The lovable, somewhat flawed hero of the
Back to the Future movies gets into unthinkable situations" 

 Brick

"Isolation from popular cliques makes Brendan Frye 

the perfect teen detective in Brick."

Many audiences of these particular film is aimed at teenagers , mostly because teenagers can relate to the plot line and be more undersanding.

Script For Question 7

7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Looking back at our prelim we mainly used very basic mid shots and did not include a variety of camera angles. we also found that the music was way to loud to have a voice over added on top.  also the music did not match our voice over , which was not a huge problem but just frustrating to watch. We have learnt how to execute a variety of camera shots and angles including low angles shots overhead shots , over the shoulder and close up shots. Also whilst editing we were able to add in in the credits perfect to the film shots and so they both matched hand in hand.

Script For Question 6

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

during the production of dazed as a group we have all learnt from each other on how to edit. At first we found it quite tricky as we have not had a lot of practice. However when editing our prelim we all got a little feel on how the software imovie works. our skills grew stronger and stronger and we all had equal turns on editing . We made sure that the sound matched the video perfect although it was quite hard to overlap sounds. Whilst editing the glitch we started to realise that it was going to be very difficult.  We fixed this problem by making the time between each shot a second or two longer. We all also had a chance to film and get a chance on how to use to camera we were given. it was hard to get perfect straight shots at first because the tripod was hard to manoeuvre. However once we got used to to all of this we were able to really enjoy editing and filming and also happy with the skills that we had learnt. 

Potential Target Audience

Whilst making our film opening as a group we had to decide who our target audience was going to be. Whilst planning and editing we realised that the main actors in our opening sequence were teenagers. The protagonist (Lucy) is a 17 teen year old girl that is going through a difficult stage in her life. We realised that many teenagers might relate to Lucy's character and will hopefully teach them its okay to go through these particular problems in life and you will get through it. Having this relatable character we realised that the main target audience will be 15-25 year olds. The reason we chose this age range is because we thought that this particular age range would appreciate the aesthetics a bit more and also being more relatable. Saying this during our audience feedback we had gathered numerous feedback forms that varied in age ranges.This going to show that many people would be able to enjoy our film and would not just be targeted at specific ages. However this can be argued because the older generation may not enjoy it as much as the younger generation. Only because of the fact that if our film opening was to be a full feature film it may include some crime (stereotypical of teenagers) that the older generation may not enjoy. 

Evaluation questions 4&5

Our main target audience would be from teens to adults, Varying the age range from about 15-25. We incorporated relatable content that hopefully many teens understand or maybe have been through it themselves. However our audience feedback varied in age ranges which goes to show that many people could enjoy our opening sequence , but is still mainly targeted at 15-25 year old's. We attracted our audience by using the cliche scene of a party, that many people can relate to and imagine the atmosphere. The protagonist is also a teenage girl, this will allow teens to relate to her struggles.

Explaining Lucy's Character

Lucy Character is extremely introverted and quite a anxious character, hence why is receives a text to reassure her that "tonight will be fine" this character can hopefully be very relatable to some of the audience because many teenagers feel like this one point in their life. Lucy character is also there to explain that it is okay to feel that way and you're not 'strange'. 

Lucy herself is a great actress if i might say so myself! we thought that she would be perfect to be the main character. She also held it together very well! whilst filming there were some awkward shots to film. Thanks to Lucy the scenes were 10x faster to film because she did not mess about.

Of course we did have fun filming! we do have many funny bloopers but we managed to organise our filming time really well and were able to finish without stressing! 

Explaining Helin's Character.

1

 Meet Helin. Helin is 17 years old(as many of the characters are) one our characters in Dazed (seen in photo 1) the reason why Helin seems concerned when Lucy is running out of the flats is because Helin receives a text on her phone saying something along the lines of "if you see someone leave the party, they know" so this is why she seems suspicious and looks and Lucy when she runs away.

 However many people may ask 'why is she outside in the first place?' is it to keep a look out who leaves? is she experiencing something similar? this a theme we would like to carry on if we were to create a full feature film.

 Helin can also be seen at the party but leaves at a similar time Lucy does, Maybe she just wants to help?

Helin on the far right

Time Between Filming

As a group we filmed on three separate occations mainly because of lighting. The party scene and the scene within the flats were filmed in two locations but on the same day. The scene were Lucy is walking on her own was difficult to film because it started to get dark,  it was filmed in a hallway and the only natural light available was from an open door.  However the scene were Lucy is running down the stairs to her running out the door (pic 1&2) were again filmed on separate day to show a time frame from how the party has progressed and how she has been there for a few hours.

1

2

The rooftop scene was filmed a considerable amount of time later we wanted to finish editing the first half of the film opening so we could put all of our focus into the rooftop scene. We were lucky with the weather as we wanted it to be bright but gloomy, we found that this could ports Lucy's state of mind.

Media Institutions

Personally if our film was to be continued and finished i believe that the production company A24 would possibly distribute Dazed. This is because A24 is a newly founded production company (2012) with a fresh new vibe. Producing films such as Spring Breakers, American Honey and Ginger and Rosa. I believe Dazed has very similar attributes to these movies including the aesthetics and lighting from Spring Breakers. American Honey in similar in the sense that they have a female protagonist and she is troubled adolescent. A24 has a similar age audience to us. Dazed has a teenage protagonist and most of their films do. I feel that A24 have the same target audience so that people are able to relate to the movie itself.

Spring Breakers (lighting)

Dazed (lighting)

American Honey (female protagonist)

Dazed (female protagonist)

Choice of Title

Whilst designing our opening sequence we closing analysed Drive's opening sequence.We saw that they played around with bright lettering and dark background's  We found this very inspiring for our own opening sequence we found that the contrast between light and dark colours we able to tell a story. In our case it was the fact the teenage lifestyle has its 'dark' and 'light' moments and they can collide at some points. This also help to foreshadow on what will happen later in our film. 

Problems

Whilst editing our opening sequence we came across a lot of problems during this. This included our glitch scene, as a group we found it extremely difficult to edit our glitch scene. We wanted to make sure that it was perfect (well not so perfect, as it is a glitch) at first we decided to do a really fast paced glitch but them we noticed that you were not really able to establish facial expressions of the protagonist very clearly, and were not able to really view her state of mind. so then we decided to place larger intervals between the two, making each shot a little bit longer. We found that this looked bit unfinished as the sound was overlapping. so whilst she is walking by herself we decided to mute the sound completely however whilst Lucy is at the 'party' there is really loud upbeat music. As a group we found that this really enabled the audience to view her facial expressions for a longer about of time and would be really able to analyse her state of mind and hopefully feel what she is going through. 

We created a tally chart of how many people enjoyed the whispering or the silence whilst Lucy is walking on her own. We decided that we preferred the silence a whole lot more because with the whispering we found that too much noise was going on.

Plan For Evaluation Questions

This is a plan for all of my evaluation questions before i started to write my scrips. This really enabled me to add as much content in my evaluations as i needed and also made sure that I was able to mention all necessary information.

Titles

We used black screens to separate the titles from the drama. As a group we decided to do black screens instead of putting the title sequences on top of the shots we took. We believed that this would strip away from the drama and would draw away focus from the plot of the film and may leave the audience confused. I prefer to watch movies with a dedicated titles sequence at the beginning on its own or using black screens. I do not like to watch movies that have the title sequence overlapping the footage as it personally leaves me confused and draws away focus.

 

Again the contrast between the black background and bright pink lettering is another way to visually portray the contrast between light and dark.Also how this represents the 'light' and 'dark' aspects of teenage life

Feedback - Sound

Many people have touched on how they do not like the noise in our opening sequence. This is a good sign for us as we wanted to make the audience feel uncomfortable. The main improvements we were given were to get rid of the ringing noise, but it is supposed to be sudden and ear ringing noise, so that the viewers can feel as uncomfortable as the protagonist is at the party. Other feedback mentioned were to not look directly in the camera, we wanted the protagonist and the audience to have a strong connection and we believed that eye contact was the best way to address the audience almost as if we are breaking the fourth wall.

Script For Question 3

Evaluation question 3

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

our opening dazed would probably be classified as an independent film and similar to the likes of American Honey and Spring Breakers distributed by A24. Many films distributed by A24 have the same target audience as is was only recently founded in august 2012 , many of the films are appealing to 15- and above ( hence the certificate age rating) as they are very recent and fresh. Spring Breakers have very aesthetically pleasing scenes and is heavily concentrated on lighting , very similar to dazed. Also American honey features a female protagonist who is a troubled adolescent. Each aspects of these films relate to our film opening and would not be suitable for the likes of Disney as they are typically targeted at children and are usually PG or U rated. If our opening was to be a full feature film it would be 15 rated as scenes may upset younger children. 

Script for Question 2

Evaluation question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups? 

The main theme of our film opening is based around a party which shows how many teenagers enjoy the 'party lifestyle'  but also portrays the fragile sides of teenage life , including being anxious, constantly on edge and constantly questioning if they fit in. The protagonist is a teenage girl which hopefully allow other teenagers to relate to her struggles. This shows that not all teenagers are the same and enjoy the particular party lifestyle. This subverts the stereotype of teenagers being trouble makers and involved in crime. Again if our opening was to be a full feature film ( mentioned in my Overall Plot blog post) there may be some crime involved this again following the stereotype of teenagers being involved with crime and danger. We hoped to show the many aspects of different teenagers life.

Camera Shot And Angels

In our film opening we have use a variety of camera shots and angels to really set the scene. We filmed in numerous location such as

• Helin's flats (inside and outside) 
• Lucy's hallway 
• On top of Lucy's roof 
• Lucy's brothers room (just the window)

As we filmed in two locations we had to make sure that we did not get Lucy's banister in shot for continuty as we were supposed to film in the flat, but it was too small to fit everyone in.

Tilt shot 

Close up

Mid shot

Overhead shot

                                    

Low angel shot

Side close up

Over the shoulder shot 

Age Certificate Rating

We believe that our film opening will be a 15 rated movie. As mentioned in my Overall Plot blog post  our film may have some upsetting scenes that will not be suitable for children and could potentially make them upset. The only reason why we did not rate it an 18 is because we would not include any sexual scenes or strong language. As a group we believe that a 15 rating is suitable as our protagonist is a teenage girl we believe that the target audience would be 15-25 year olds. So teenagers are able to relate to Lucy's struggles.

Costume

As our film opening consists of many teenage characters we made sure that each character wore different but 'trendy' clothes , so it shows diversity and how teenagers find there own style. we gave a short brief to the other characters which was just casual, so they were able to wear near to anything they want. Lucy's costume is a contrast of dark and light colours (light blue jeans and a navy jacket) this is a constant theme in our film opening so we wanted to make it an ongoing theme. Again the roof scene we wanted Lucy to wear dark colours so it contrasted with the cold moody day. This was a good way to show a contrast visually. The was a big contrast between the roof scene and the party scene. The party scene Lucy wore quite staple pieces, however on the roof scene she is wearing no makeup and dark clothes.

Evaluation Question 1

                     
Our opening sequence consists of a constant contrast between dark and light colours. We have chosen bright pink font in contrast to dark black screens, followed by a high pitch ringing noise to make the audience feels uncomfortable. Also we have chosen to only used one line of dialogue and the rest is replaced by music. This is very similar to Nicolas Windling Refn film 'Drive'. Using the absence of dialogue is very risky but also very clever. It can either leave the audience very intrigued and wanting to find out more or very disinterested, so there is a fine line between the two.

Overall Plot

As shown in the opening itself, the film begins with the scene of a party. The text saying "Don't worry tonight will be fine" refers to the party happening on the Friday night. The protagonist is revealed to be a heavily introverted character, struggling with the expectations of teenage life hence the purpose of the text to reassure her. 

At the party itself, the protagonist witnesses or overhears a suspicious argument between numerous people. Upon realising that the protagonist has overhead their conversation, two other characters violently threaten her, leading into the bathroom scene. 

It is revealed later in the film that she was threatened again at the party forcing her to leave, evidently distressed. Helin's character seen waiting outside the flats could then have received a text saying something along the lines of "if you see a girl running out of the party. She knows!". 

I think if we were to create a full film it would be based upon the idea of her almost being hunted down and forced into keeping quiet. In doing so, the plot would be in keeping with the teen drama/thriller genre as key aspects of youth would be explored alongside the more thrilling, psychological aspect of the plot. 

Feedback Forms

If we were going to continue making our 'film' ( see next post ) we are happy that people found the opening sequence ambiguous this means that people are interested as what is to come. For the improvements about not looking directly in the camera, We were supposed to do this. If she was not looking at the camera then i personally think you do not get a insight into her situation and Lucy character would not feel as if she was the protagonist. This also is enabling a connection between the audience and the character.

Feedback Forms

Again very good feedback for us, this person understood the opening sequence as a whole. We are glad that they mentioned that the lighting was very good as it took a lot of time to film the party sequence. It had Me filming, Lucy in front of Me and then Alev behind me holding the disco lights above my head. Doing all this in a cramped environment and walking backwards was quite difficult. We also did not want to to place a filter over the clip and we would rather just use artificial lights instead. As we found that this looked a lot more realistic rather than a filter.

These were very similar to the lights that we had used.

Feedback

Response to 3: I agree that if we had access to higher quality cameras the sound and video quality would have been a whole lot better otherwise we were anticipating a cliff hanger so we are glad we achieved this.

Response to 4: Again if still editing we would be happy to enlarge the text of 'Friday' , but whilst editing we thought that the bright pink text stood out around dull greyish colours, we were compleatly unaware that people would find it difficult to read. Also the contrast of colours in our opening sequence were important to us and many people commented on the bright lights.

Feedback

Response to 1: if still editing we would of took on board the "5 hours later" idea as we figured that it would definitely help with confusion as we did get a lot of feedback that people were confused and didn't know whether the party came first or after the scene with Lucy on the roof.

Response to 2: Im glad that we got positive feedback on the lights and we did work quite hard to correlate the very quick black screen with a new shot , however the problem with the ringing noise is that many people did not like it, but that was the whole idea! we got loads of feedback saying that the noise made them feel uncomfortable and that it was quite creepy. Even though this was supposed to be constructive critisism , we are glad that people felt uncomfortable with the noise.

Ringing Noise

As we want the audience to feel uneasy and a bit uncomfortable we used a high pitched ringing sound in intervals. The sound can also represent an emptiness and this portrays how Lucy's character feels alone and isolated during the course of the opening sequence. This really helps to build tension and make the audience feel uncomfortable. There is also helps with the contrast between sound as we have quite upbeat party music in contrast to this ringing sound which shows the two sides of Lucy personality.

Post Production

Whilst re-watching our opening sequence I noticed that scene 12 might be quite confusing for people watching for the first time , there is a skip in between each of the same shot followed by a ringing sound. The skip between represents Lucy's character (later to be named) to be disorientated and out of breath, we found that this was a nice way to visualy represent this rather than have the stereotypical heavy breathing. This short shot of lucy standing still really helps to differentiate between all the fast paced shots and really helps Lucy to get her thoughts together , to then be followed by numerous shots of her running. 

Overview

After finishing our opening sequence and being happy with what we've done, it is very hard to be able to criticise it as mentioned before because we have watched it many times. Even after having class feedback, it is still hard not to keep watching it over and over again just to check any mistakes. Some questions might arise that we will be able to justify in a later blog post.

"I need your help!"

After getting feedback from our class, Yasmin pointed our that the quality of the sound when Lucy says "I need your help!" sounded as if it was recorded indoors (which is was). Yasmin also mentioned that it would make a much bigger impact if it was recorded outside, so you're able to hear wind,birds,cars etc. So myself and Lucy went outside and recorded it with our phone with our earphones in so we had closer access to the microphone. We uploaded it and changed it and found that it sounded so much better. We then showed Yasmin that we fixed this problem and she agreed that the sound quality improved. Getting feedback from the class helped us a awful lot, because we have seen our own opening sequence many times over and over again its hard to pick out and criticise things. When a fresh pair of eyes and ears watch it for the first time it is a lot easier for them to pick out mistakes. This also helped us a lot with continuity, because Lucy's character is outside in the first place, so the sound did need to sound as if it was outside. We also added the sound effect of a women breathing heavily as if she was out of breath, this again helped us with our continuity.

Production Companies

After finally finishing our opening sequence we wanted to add in production companies to give it more of a realistic feel. We found this quite fun and creative to do. Our production companies are Blue Eyed Productions , which is a moving picture followed with Pocket Film and Pocket and Underground Cinema. We found that these helped tied the whole opening sequence together, ever though we do not get marked on this. We found with our last opening sequence we needed to leave a longer blank screen before it faded into our opening sequence this again is following similar media conventions. We did not wanted to add all moving pictures and we found that this could be quite overwhelming and could distract from our actual opening sequence. 

This moving picture starts with our eyes closed and slowly start to open

Shot 7-8

The contrast between the artificial lighting on the stairs to the darkness outside is to create a timestamp. Its is to show the length of the time Lucy was at the party, we found this very successful and there was a direct contrast between the two. We also like how some of our shot are dark because when the party scene is playing , even though it is dark, the brightness of the party lights create a huge impact and contrast. Whereas if all of our shots were light then the party lights may have seemed irrelevant.