Rose Final Product

Looking Back at Your Preliminary Task, What Do You Feel You Have Learnt in the Progression From it to Your Full Product?

Evaluation Task 7

Completing a preliminary taught me lots of different techniques and I learnt about features such as the 180 degree rule. This task enabled me with the basic skills for producing a short part of a film which I was able to transfer and use when filming and editing our own film.

Camera Shots

In our preliminary task we learnt the basic skill of how to use the 180 degree rule, creating a sense of realism for the audience. In addition we also used a range of simple shot types to film the such as long shots, mid shots and close ups. The long shots we used were useful as it allowed us to establish settings, characters costumes and also incorporate it for match-on-action when the character opens the door. We also used close ups in the task, for example on Joe's hand when he opens the door, this helped show how the opening of the door was a main feature of the short clip and was the first part of the match-on-action. Lastly we used mid shots during the conversation between the characters to engage the audience in the conversation. We also ensured we used the 180 degree angle between the mid shots so the shots made sense for the audience and looked real as we didn't want to break the verisimilitude.

The first improvement that we made from the preliminary task to the filming of our own film was the range of shot types. In our film we used a large variety of shots such as extreme long shots, point of view shots, high angle, low angle and extreme close ups. We learnt to use this larger range of shots compared to the simple shots used in our preliminary task allowed us to emphasise different aspects to the audience. For example we used a point of view shot of Tommy as he looks to hand Rose the papers she dropped on the floor. We did this to emphasise the importance of how Tommy is helping Rose in her confused and vulnerable situation and to provide a representation of how it looked from the characters point of view. Furthermore we also used an extreme long shot of when Lucy Lou first walks through a door. We learnt to use an extreme long shot opposed to a long shot like in the preliminary task. This is because we wanted to show the characters walk and presence which would have been restricted if we had just used a long shot like in the preliminary task. Along with the long shot is the introduction of a rock song that is very different to the previous soundtrack. This, combined with the extreme long shot of her walk and her flicking her hair emphasises the strong personality of the character and adds to her mode of address which is very confident and sassy. Lastly we used a high angle shot go Rose laying down on the floor when she has been pushed to the ground by Lucy Lou. We used this shot opposed to the simple shots in the preliminary task as we felt it emphases how Rose is very vulnerable at this point in time and makes her appear small and insignificant. This portrays Rose as a weak character with little confidence which is the mode of address we wanted to use for her at the start of the film. The last improvement we made between the preliminary task and our film was the steadiness of the shot. Our preliminary task made it clear to me how important it is to take care in ensuring the camera is steady at all times of filming because it is very noticeable when the camera is knocked or touched. To avoid this in our film we made sure that nobody touched the camera when filming and we gave ourself cut times at the start and end of each clip for when we pressed the camera to turn it off. The made a great improvement for our film as our camera was steady in all shots necessary.

Framing

The change in framing from our preliminary task to our film was very clear. This is because we did not concentrate on framing throughout the task. Although storyboarding what we wanted to include in each shot we still found our framing was weak. This was because we found unintentional objects in the shots such as posters, piles of books, bags and cups. These objects were simply unnecessary and also drew attention away from the characters and the conversation they were having. We learnt from this and greatly improved our framing in our film to ensure that everything in each shot had a purpose. We also had to make sure that the objects in the framing fitted our genre and added to the iconography. For example in the shots of Rose's bedroom we had objects such as make up, a hairdryer, hairspray, teddybear and love heart shaped ornament. These objects all relate to a character that is very girly and cares about her appearance which is the mode of address we wanted to give Rose, therefore the iconography in the framing allowed us to portray this. Lastly the framing was important for the settings because have different setting in the frame showed the audience where each scene is set and how this relates the the film. For example we had the school in the frame as Rose walks up to the door to show a clear change of setting from Rose's house.

Mise en Scene

We took care of Mise en Scene in our preliminary task, although focusing in greater detail in our film. The first piece of Mise en Scene we had to consider was the costumes. We took little notice of these in our preliminary task and just used whatever clothes that the actors were wearing on the day. This meant that the personalities of each character was not represented by their costumes which is important when portraying different modes of address. We learnt from this error in our preliminary task and ensured that each character in the film had the personality reflected by their costumes. Firstly we had Rose dressed in dark clothing which is a counter type for the stereotypical girl in a teen angst. However we used this as it forebodes her dark personality that is later apparent as the film progresses. On the other hand we used very bold colours for the antagonist's (Lucy Lou) costume as it reflects how she is fake and these bright and pretty colour are covering up her nasty personality, that is seen when she barges Rose over.

Secondly lighting was the next important piece of mise en scene because different lightings can reflect different moods. The lighting in our preliminary task worked well because it stayed the same throughout as high-key lighting was important was it created a neutral and positive environment as the characters were engaging in a typical conversation between teenagers. Lighting also a major part of our film opening as we felt it was important to use high-key lighting as we saw that the majority of teen angst films use high-key lighting. Although we found it was difficult to maintain a high-key lighting when we filmed in Rose's room due to the lack of windows to provide sunlight. However we avoided this problem because low-key lighting can be used to represent a more nervous and anxious atmosphere compared to a positive one. As it was Rose's first day of school we felt it was important to portray this mood so we decided to incorporate this low-key lighting into the first scene instead of adapting it into high-key whilst editing. However in the rest of our teen angst we maintained a high-key lighting which reflected a positive and upbeat mood which is important as it is generic for the opening of a teen angst film to do this.

The preliminary task also taught us how setting are a very important factor of miss en scene to use. This is because we were very confined in the preliminary task as we were given a door to use to show match-on-action, therefore the settings were unplanned and shows no relevance to the storyline. However we learnt from this a made sure we used setting that reflected our storyline and were relevant to our film. For example we used the school setting with iconography that was relatable to our target demographic such as the iconic school lockers and corridors. We also used Rose's bedroom as a setting so we ensured this was relevant to her girly character by having iconography that reflected this like teddybears.

Lastly we used props that were relatable to a teen angst, we lacked the use of props in our preliminary task so we learnt from this and used them to full effect in our film. This is because the only props that we used we simply a table and chairs for our characters to sit down on, which is very impersonal and didn't reflect any mood or personality of the characters. An example of how we used them in our film is the make up that Rose uses when getting ready and the handbag that she prepares before heading off to school. We used these props as they are stereotypical iconographic of teenage girl accessories and this makes Rose more relatable to our target demographic of teenage girls. Lastly we also used a collection of books that Rose was holding when Lucy Lou knocks her over. We used this because books are iconographic of a school environment which is typical of a teen angst film and to also emphasise the excitement of the collision as the books are dropped.

Use of Titles

In our preliminary task we did n't use any titles which meant we didn't have this understanding of how to add them onto clips which made it difficult when we came to use them for film opening. However through trial and error we eventually learnt how to add them and after putting the first few on it was like second nature. We decided to use pastel based bright colours for our titles because we felt this would be most appealing for our teenage girl target demographic. However we decided to use different colour for each of the actors names as this made them unique and stand out, such as 'Ella Thwaites', who had a bright pastel green on a dark background. This was very effective and really emphasised the name of the actor to the audience instead of it being lost in the background. For example in our first draft all of the titles were white but after watching the film opening we decided there wasn't enough differentiation between each title and this took away from the importance of each individual. We used a serif font that resembled a slightly hand-drawn doodle as this related to our teenage target demographic, although the font was still easy to read therefore maintaining to desired effect and conveying a professional look. We also used to different colours for the production company, director, editor, director of photography and main character. Wed decided to do this to emphasise the significance of these titles as the are the most important. For example we used a pastel purple for 'Shauna Ellis as' and then a Pastel pink for 'Rose' as this has the connotative effect of love which forebodes the events in the film and the purple connotes femininity which also represents our young female target audience. We placed our titles on places around Rose's house so that the seemed to blend in with the background props and iconography in each shot. This was important because it engages the audience as the look to see where we will place each title and emphasises the importance of the props in each shot. Instead of having the titles suddenly appear on the screen we decided to use a transition where the titles rise letter by letter, moving downwards and spiralling. The effect that this had made each shot more interesting and engaging for the audience whilst creating an energetic world which our target audience value. Lastly we decided to make each of the fonts the same throughout instead of changing between production company to actors etc. This meant that we kept continuity throughout and didn't cause confusion as changing lots of different titles could cause this.

Mode of address

Mode of address is a key part of producing an effective film as it is the foundations of the characters personality. However in our preliminary task we did not really consider the mode of address for our characters as the task was more focused around editing and getting the match-on-action correct. The downside to this was that our characters engaged in dialogue but showed little about their personality and character. We recognised this weak area in our preliminary task and realise how necessary it was to have good mode of address in our film opening. Rose's mode of address was introduced with a non-digetic soundtrack that is upbeat and easy-listening. This suggests immediately to the audience that she is a fun and interesting character, and due to the lyrics "you're like a love song in my mind", suggests she is a character involved with relationships. The actions of Rose also represents her mode of address as confident such as when she flicks her hair back in a sassy style and she drops her towel over the camera which also emphasises her confident personality.

Editing

Our preliminary task's main focus was on editing and we learnt some new editing techniques to aim to carry out effectively. Match-on-action was the first technique and this is used to represent continuity within filming and that cuts fit together properly. To do this effectively you have to make sure that each clip is cut down within the smallest degree of error so that the film flows properly. We learnt how important this was because of the shot of Joe's hand on the door handle was just slightly too long which meant the film didn't flow as nicely as it could have. We learnt from this error and made sure that we cut all of our clips down effectively for our film opening. Further to this we used what we learnt about match-on-action to represent the action between two different cuts and we also used this for when Rose opens a door in our film opening. The next technique was shot reverse shot which showed the conversation between the two characters in our preliminary task. From this we learnt how to effectively construct a shot reverse shot, such as filming all of one characters lies first, so that you are not moving the positioning on the camera for the same side. This was important because we learnt that filming like this made the conversation confusing due to the constant changing of camera position and took away from the value of the conversation. This helped us in our film opening because we used the same technique to film the digetic dialogue between Rose and Tommy after he helps her to her feet.

We also made great progression from our preliminary task with regards to our transitions. This is because in our preliminary task we only used simple cuts between different shots which showed little for the audience. However we learnt that we could heighten the excitement of our film opening through that use of transitions as it adds a depth to the narrative. We therefore decided that it was important to include a swoosh transition between when Rose leaves her door and walks up to the front of her school. The swoosh represents a ellipsis between the two shots and this adds the narrative that may have been confused without this.

Sequencing was also another major part of our preliminary task because we had to ensure that it all in chronological order so that it made sense. This is because sequencing is essential when constructing a conversation like in our preliminary task otherwise it wouldn't make sense for the audience. We used this skill of effective sequencing in our film opening because we also used a chronological order. This meant that all clips needed to be correctly in chronological order for the opening made sense and transferring this skill effectively benefited our film because of this.

What have you learnt about technologies during the process of constructing this project?

Evaluation 6

Mobile Phone (iPhone)
-Firstly we used our iPhones and made a joint ios groupchat with our 3 group members. This allowed us to easily communicate our ideas about the film when we are drafting ideas at home when we are not all together. This allowed us to help each other expand on certain points. For example when I was researching music for the opening scene I recorded the sound using a voice memo on the phone and put this into the groupchat. My other group members then gave me there thoughts on the song choices and we decided which would be best suited. This benefitted our film greatly as it allowed us to have a variety of opinion on different soundtracks, opposed to me deciding the song choice on my own. Using this feature taught me how to use voice memos on an iPhone and how to send them to multiple people. We also used the camera feature on our phones to communicate in this way. An example of this is when one of my group members was trying to construct our production company logo and he was looking at different fonts to use. He took a photo using the camera feature and then sent us photos of these different font style and we came to a joint decision on what font would best suit the production company. This helped benefit our production company logo greatly as we found a font that suited our production company very well and this wouldn't have been possible without the use of this technology.

Video Recoding Camera
-This was an essential piece of technology that helped us to produce our film. These cameras were available to access from school and we could book them out and use them in offsite locations such as at home. This was very important because it meant we could conform to stereotypical teen angst locations such as a girly bedroom which we filmed in our film. This was a very easy process due to the very convenient small size of the camera which meant we could easily transport them to various locations. This was also important because it reduced the chance of damage equipment which we had to consider in our risk assessment. Throughout the filming process we learnt how to use the camera in different ways to help achieve different effects. Firstly we learnt about the lighting settings on the camera which allowed us to create the best possible lighting for each shot, high-key lighting was used because its typical of a teen angst film. We also learnt how to take different types of shots with the cameras. For example we wanted to take a high angle shot of our main character Rose and before the process we didn't know how to use a camera to do this. This shot was important because it allowed us to portray Rose in a innocent way that would not have been otherwise achieved. Lastly we learnt the importance of a steady shot which we successfully achieved and made our film as professionally shot as possible, which is important when competing with other similar teen angst films. To assist us with this process we used a tripod, which although not entirely a piece of technology itself, it was an essential part of ensuring we took steady shots.

Websites
-Blogger was the first site that was an essential part of the process throughout this project. This is because it acted as an online diary that helped us track and keep all of our research and planning safe and recorded. The importance of this is that if we made these notes and records on paper it could be easily lost, however Blogger ensured the safety of our work. This benefitted the making of our film greatly because blogger is very easily accessible on a wide range of devices from desktops to iPads so it meant our research and planning was safe and ready to be used whenever we needed it for our film. When working on blogger I learnt lots of new skills such as how to customise a blog, add gifs, photos and videos, make draft posts instead of publishing unfinished work and changing the order of different posts. These skills allowed me to present my research and planning in a clear and presentable way. Further to this blogger allowed our teachers to view our work whenever convenient to them and allowed them to leave comments on our research and planning and these improvements benefitted our film.

-General browsing of the internet allowed me to access different sites that helped me research about conventions of similar teen angst films. For example it allowed us to access various websites that had teen angst films and showed photos or information about these films such as Netflix for viewing the films and wikipedia for information. This was very important because this greatly influenced the planning of our own film as we assessed what worked well and what didn't which allowed us to choose what teen angst conventions to conform to or not. During this process Iearnt lots about how to use these different sites for particular services like streaming videos. I also learnt web browsing functions such as holding ctrl and F to search for certain words when looking to identify certain things on a web page. These functions really helped benefit my research for the planning of our own film.

-Dropbox was another important website that we used throughout the process of the construction of our product. Dropbox is an online server that allows you to save documents and pictures on your account and access them wherever you are. This was very important throughout the planning and research process because it allowed me to save work and research that I had done in school and work on it during my free time at home. This helped benefit our film because having the access to the work at home allowed me to meet certain deadlines that I may not have otherwise met and this would have delayed the production of our film. Before the process I didn't know how this service functioned so using it taught me how to make an account, save work onto the server and access the information on other devices.

- Youtube was an important asset because it enabled us to upload our videos such as our preliminary task and our draft of our film, as well as being free to use. This made it easy to post onto places like our blogs which saved us a lot of time, allowing us time to work on other areas of our film. During this process I learnt how to upload videos onto YouTube and how to upload these videos from YouTube onto my blog. YouTube greatly benefitted our project as it allowed us to improve our blogs for research and planning and we directly used this research and planning for the making of our film.

- Freeplaymusic was the last website that we used to help us during the process of constructing our projects. We used this website to find different soundtracks that we could use for our film opening. The website has a wide range of music that is copyright free and also appropriate for the style of teen angst film. This website allowed us to find 3 different soundtracks that were appropriate for of teen angst genre and this really benefited our project as it helped set the mood which is necessary for a film opening. This process taught me how to use this website, download music from it and transfer this music onto our editing software. We also used another piece of technology which was a memory stick to help us transfer the music. We had to transfer the music found on a desktop onto a mac and the only way to so was by using a memory stick. Doing this taught me how to transfer files onto a memory stick and then download then onto another device.

Apple Mac
-The Apple Mac was an essential piece of technology for putting our film together. On the mac we used different apps like final cut pro for editing and using it to share our film in the form on an mp4. The macs provided much better quality than we would have on the normal school computers so this greatly benefited from us using them. The reason for this is that the macs allowed us to perform actions such as improving lighting and changing the size of our shots so that we are best for a teen angst. Using the Apple Mac taught me how to use this Apple software that I didn't know how to use before.

Powerpoint and Interactive Whiteboard
-For our initial ideas we had to carry out a pitch for our class mates and teacher. To do this we used Powerpoint to put all our ideas together onto a document. This allowed us to put together our thoughts about our plots, characters, music etc. in a visual way for our class. Through doing this I learnt how to make a powerpoint document and insert music and pictures onto it. We also used an interactive whiteboard to display what we made on our powerpoint. This allowed us to clearly show our class and teacher our ideas that would otherwise have been difficult on a small computer screen. Due to this we got lots of feedback on how to improve our initial ideas which greatly befitted our film. I learnt how to effectively use an interactive whiteboard effectively through this process.

Social Media
Social Media played a huge role in our research and planning process. We firstly used a site called Instagram to find out about what types of conventions that our target audience. I used the # to search for teen angst in the hashtag. This showed us pictures of what people had posted with the hashtag of 'teen angst' such as of the main character from mean girls. From this we learnt about what conventions from teen angst our demographic likes and we decided from this what conventions of teen angst to conform to. This taught me how to use hashtags to search for different posts relating to a topic like teen angst. We also used social media sites like Twitter and Facebook to post our draft of our film onto. We choose these sites because they have the highest traffic of 12-18 year old females compared to other sites. This allowed us to get feedback on our film opening from a suitable demographic and this gave us ideas on what to improve. Through this process I learnt about how to upload videos onto social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Final cut pro
Final cut pro was the software that we used on the apple macs to edit our film opening. Final cut was very useful for this process as it allowed us to put transitions, music, layering, fast-forwards, titles, etc. Putting all of these different edits onto our footage taught me how to edit in this way using Final Cut pro. The most important edit that we used on our film was the music and layering of different sounds together and played over our footage. For example at one point we had to fade our music down to a low volume while a diegetic speech played of two characters talking. The music set different moods that we needed for different scenes and made it fit well into a teen angst film.

Photoshop
I used Photoshop several times throughout the process of constructing this project and aspects would not have been possible otherwise. Firstly Photoshop was very useful when it came to making our production company logo. This is because we had to put a piece of text that we made along with our logo. Having used Photoshop in the past the interface was simple and easy to use as all the tools are very clear. However I learnt about however to carry out different actions that I hadn't used before such as the transform tool as this allowed us to change the size of our text and also rotate it so it fitted perfectly. Further to this I also used Photoshop to construct my teen angst mood board. This involved importing images found online onto Photoshop and putting them all into one big image. This meant I had to used features that I didn't know before such as the cropping tool and changing the size of an image without affecting the quality of the image. Before the process I did not have this in depth knowledge about Photoshop that I now know so doing this has taught me a lot.

How Did You Attract/Address Your Audience?

Evaluation Task 5

Who Would Be The Audience For Your Media Product?

Evaluation 4

Our targeted demographic:

• The age we are aiming to target is 12-18 because this is the age that provides the most revelance to the genre and we feel that this age group will be most interested in our film. However there is the chance that our sub-groups such as young female adults aged around 24-30 may be interested in our film due to nostalgic value from looking back at their own childhood.
• We are targeting a demographic that are based in the UK. We decided this because our film features the everyday aspects of a very english lifestyle, therefore a english viewer would be most interested.
• We are targeting a predominatly female target audience because the teen angst genre is best suited to this demographic. For example we researched about 'Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging' and they targeted females and as our film has very similar conventions we decided this would be the best suited target audience.
• Due to the age group that we are targeting it is highly likely that out demographic will have a low income level as many 12-18 year olds will be in full-time education. However this links in with the occupation of a target audience as there is the possibility of part-time jobs or even full-time in some cases, so there is still money to be made from this demogrpahic.
• Our demographic will be mainly students that are either in secondary school or sixth form. This is because the majority of our film is based in a school enviroment which will provide sense of personal identity for the audience.
• The marital status that we will be targeting is mainly unmarried and with the outlook of love in their prospects. This is because our film is about the sterotypical teenage love story involving complicated relationships. Therefore a young unmarried demographic will be able to relate easiest to our film.
• After carrying out research of similar teen angst films to ours we noticed that the majority of the characters and target audience are White British/American. Therefore the large majority of the characters in our film are of a White Britsh ethnic background. This is what led to our decision of targeting an audience that are also White British. 

The psychographics of our targeted demographic:

• We are targeting groups with certain tailored personalities that will best suit our style of film. We have chosen the target audience with fun loving, happy go lucky average teenage girls. We decided this because we looked at the types of common personalities of social groups in similar teen angst films such as Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging and also our social groups in Rose. This made it clear that we needed to target people with this type of personality.
• Another physcogrpahic value that we felt is important is the attitudes of who we are targeting. We have decided that we need to target groups of people that adopt the attitude of 'treat others as you wish to be treated'. This is because our USP shows what happens when you don't treat others correctly so we feel it is important to show our film to people that have a relate-able attitude to this.
• Our film portrays the common values of he stereotypical teenage girl. This means that we have decided to target people who have similar values. These are people who are very materialistic, value family and friends and want to do well in school. Throughout our film all of these values are portrayed so it is important we target people with these physcographics.
• As previously mentioned we are targeting the stereotypical British teenage girl. This means that they will be interested in hobbies that revolve around their attitudes and interests. For example they may have an interest in physical activities such as dancing or social interests such as visiting the cinema or watching films with friends. These factors are very important because we have portrayed a world that values social and physical strength.
• The type of lifestyle and behaviours that our targeted demographic will have is a healthy and fun outlook on life. This is because we are targeting teenage girls, who need to enjoy themselves and have fun, as shown in our film, but also not cause any trouble.

Evaluation:

• We are targeting a market of 12-18 year old teenage girls, which is a large demographic in Britain with such a large youth population. Due to this I do believe that our target market is big enough to specifically target this demographic. However there is also a chance for a splinter market that will offer the chance to provide an even larger audience for the film. This is young female adults aged around 24-30 may be interested in our film due to nostalgic value from looking back at their own childhood.This demographic of people outside our demographic will help our film reach a wider audience.
•  My demographic will see a need for our film as shown by previous examples such as Angus Thongs and Perfect snogging and Adventureland from my research. Both of this films were well accepted by a similar demographic and found major success. Our film will attract a similar demographic however it will also provide the added edge of a young female adults viewpoint which will widen our demographic. 
• We have picked a demographic that can be very influenced by those around them and look to seek approval from each other. This is often what causing gossiping and fighting between friendship circles. I believe that impressing friends and family is a factor that is most like to value this as what they will want to use our film as a means to impress others through knowledge or sharing with them.
• People are most vulnerable to other peoples opinions at their early ages. Due to this I believe that targeting teenage girls is a demographic that you will be able to reach with a message. This is because teenagers are at the age when they are very open-minded and will consider these ideas. This is important as our USP is looking to provide a message to our demographic.
  
  

What Kind of Media Institution Might Distribute Your Media Product and Why?

Evaluation Task 3