Evaluation: Q5

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6fJk8wDMVA


For this question I recorded someone outside of the media class and department asking them a few questions about Making The Cut trailer and also about how well it has appealed to the target audience and in which way. Although this member was not part of the target audience I received very interesting answer's from her which I didn't not think this would be her response.

Evaluation: Q1

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

Our media product develop the forms and conventions of real media as the conventions are followed and explored, there are representations made on genre etc. Also we followed the order of the titles as it seemed professional and flowed with the media product, the only convention challenged was having the title at the end making it stick in the audience's head's it was more effective having the film title at the end of the opening sequence.


 

Media Q1 from neeka_xo

Evaluation: Q2

Evaluation Q3

Aneeka Peart's Slidely by Slidely Slideshow

This is a presentation on why certain institution relate to the film and also which one's would distribute us and why. This Slidely Slideshow is about the distribution and production companies they may be used for the opening sequence of Making The Cut and why the would be used.

Evaluation: Q4

Making the cut - Video Maker

https://www.facebook.com/group1makingthecut

For this question I made a Facebook page called Making The Cut (link above) to present who would be our target audience and why, which would be mainly male teens from the age of 16 to the age of 22, the reason for this is down to one main factor which is the genre urban drama, which consist of minor crime, which is mainly targeted at young males as they can relate to story lines due to computer games, music etc.

Evaluation: Q6

When using the technology I've have spoken about above, it makes you realise that they all play an important role in making the final product what it is, because without one of the technology for example Final Cut Pro the footage would not have been able to be edited and come together in order to produce a good opening sequence. The technologies can also be used in a a creative way which is very useful when representing stereotypes for example, using the JVC camera to do a worms eye's view of the main characters feet to show the trainers, which would relate to the stereotype of male teens in order for our target audience to relate. All technologies were important however I feel that Final Cut Pro and the JVC camera were the most important.

Evaluation: Q7

These two presentations show how I think I have progressed since the prelim and what I have learnt from it.

Production Progress 9

Our final outcome is now finished. From the recent feedback we received, final changes and edits were made in order to better the final outcome this included changing the soundtrack, creating our own idents and changing some shots around which we successfully managed to acheive as a group.

Throughout the project, we grew closer as a group the more we invested our time into the filming and editing. Although at the beginning it was a struggle being introduced to a new scheme of work that included a new range of techniques, as research and tasks were completed our stability as a group grew stronger which helped us produce a strong outcome.

Our teen opening, strongly reflects the storyline of the film which allows the viewer to have a clear understanding of what the movie will be about. As a group we are very confident that we accomplished  everything we needed to do in order for our opening sequence to be successful this was produced by including different camera angles, transitions and soundtracks.

To conclude, the teen film project was a success and as a group we are proud of our final outcome as well as each of us learning new skills in teamwork, creativity and motivation which reflects all throughout our blog.

Final Product

Production Progress 8

In todays session we received feedback from the rough cut which has been included in the previous blog post. As we received the feedback at the beginning we used the rest of the lesson to work on the feedback and incorporate it into our teen film opening. We were initially really really happy with what we had and where we were heading, but after progressing further with the feedback in mind we have found that it's made quite a difference and made it much better and we are now all excited to see the final outcome.

One of the changes we made was adding out own production and distribution ident instead of using one that's already in use. To do this we explored the app 'Motion', which had many effects which we found with add that extra 'greatness' to it. It was a new program and added to our collection of skills which we found useful as well as amazing to an extent. So we created out idents and added them into our footage.


We also took into other parts of our feedback and worked with those, e.g. we got rid of the reverse on the car and added an extra transition during the library scene to show time passing. Next lesson we are confident that we will be able to completely finish it all ready before deadline day which is 12th March 2014.

Rough Cut Feedback

Rough Cut

Production Progress 7

In today's lesson we carried on cutting down our footage and in the end we managed to get to about 2 minutes and 40seconds. We changed our music as well as we found we got pretty annoyed of the repetition of the first one that we had. This time we decided to cross fade between two sound tracks, one before our flash shots and one after. We also decided to add something with rap it emphasised our narrative. We also changed the positioning of our titles and decided to have them throughout the whole 2 minutes instead of just the first section.

We knew that we have a long way to go still however we were ready for our rough cut at this point in time and decided that we will be ready for feedback next lesson and including this with our own improvements that we came up with as a good. Not long to go now but we believe we are above task and will be all ready for deadline day.

Personal Progress Report

Over the half term we booked the equipment so that would could still produce footage towards our teen film opening, on the 17th of February we filmed parts of the travelling and arriving in the local area of Stoke Newington, as this mise en scene was best suited for the genre of our film. All of the group attended this filming process however last minute a member of our group came up with an idea for our teen opening, as it was last minute the rest of the group were not available the rest of the week, so one member of the group volunteered to take day/night shots of London which would then be added on to the footage we had already gathered as a group.

In monday 24th February's 3 hour lesson we split up the responsibility of the editing between the four of us, Lashay and I had to find some soundtracks that would best fit the genre of the film and the footage using SoundCloud we found some tracks that we would be able to use. While Nahida and Andres edited the order of the title sequence of the teen film opening. Overall I am very happy with how the responsibility of the group has been divided and we have been focused to produce and excellent opening. 

Production Progress 6

Today we worked on perfecting the cuts and watching it over and over to check that we were happy with the clip. We had Marissa watch over the clip and we realised it was really really long. It was about 5 minutes and our target was 2 minutes, this meant that we had a lot of work to do and we had to cut more than half and as we were already happy with what we had we did not know what to cut. Also at this point we had more footage that we had to gather as well so we were in quite a dilemma.

However we found that some clips were unnecessarily long and would not change the narrative it we had cut some off it down. This was a really long process and it took ages to cut at least a few seconds of most clips. We successfully were able to cut it down to about 3-4 minutes by the end of the lesson and decided that we would carry on cutting next lesson before we started to fix the fonts on our titles and the finalised position.

Marissa also suggested that we cross cut before the night scenes and the day scenes, we thought this to be a pretty good idea that help make the production look better. This also helped our narrative to show the contrast between our main characters day life and night life.

Next lesson we plan to carry on cutting and fix up our titles a little bit all ready for our Rough Cut. We still have a long way to go but we are certainly excited to be in the direction which we are headed.

Production Progress 5

Although according to our production schedule we were supposed to be filming in this session we were unable to as Andres was not in costume and this would have messed with continuity. However we decided that after having a filming session during the holidays we should watch through all the clips we had gather to see what we had to work with and what else we needed to film. As we already started placing our clips in Final Cut, we watched through what we already had and then started to add the rest of the clips we had. This created the initial outline for the opening sequence. Inorder to have every member of our group involved and have them doing something, Andres and Nahida focused on the editing while Lashay and Aneeka carried out more music research to find the perfect song to match our opening.

 

Production Progress 3

Today we filmed all the shots we needed of our character traveling to college. All this filming took place in Stoke Newington (Lordship Road/Queen Elizabeth's walk) as we felt this location best suited our character. Also as our initial character was actually based on Andres and he lived in this area we found it was perfectly suited to our teen drama. The plan was to meet at 3pm however there were some difficulties for us to get to the location as we have never been and were unsure of the exact location. But in the end we did manage to get there and still get all the shots we needed.

As Andres put it 

"Today's filming was a success and we did a lot"

Now all we need is the shots of different parts of London, which Nahida will hopefully complete tomorrow and then when we get back to college we will need few more shots of Andres on his phone at the bus stop and a shot of him just getting on a bus as it drives off. After that we have all the shots we want. So editing will be our next step. We will also have time to collect extra shots we may need and redo any shot in case the camera is too shaky and the footage is not useable.

Success is nearby yet so far...

Production Progress 2

Today (13.02.2014) we did not film although our schedule said we would. The reason for this is because Andres was not in costume and again it was a short session and we felt it would not be as productive we had decided to film. Also we felt we didn't have much left to film so it was okay if we left filming out of this session. Instead we used this lesson to plan where we wanted to go from our current position. We watched through all of our footage and were pleased with most but there were a few we may considering re-shooting if we go ahead with actually using them. We started to place some of the clips together to see whether our outcome would be possible and we felt we were making great progress and were happy with where this project was going. We decided that we would definitely be using the half term holiday slot to get the footage we need outside of college such as the traveling to college. We felt that this would be a more useful time as we are able to choose the date and time which we would want to film. This means that we are less likely to have a time limit in which we must have our footage. Our plan now is to get all the footage of Andres traveling to college on 17th February, and also to hopefully get out shots of tourist attractions of London the day after. Hopefully the filming is a success this holiday, so when we return to college we can watch all the footage and record any extra footage within the college which we feel could've been done better. If this all goes to plan then we will be able to start editing earlier then planned and ace our teen drama opening. 

Production Progress 1

                                       

Today (10.02.2014) was our first filming session. Unfortunately we started off to a slightly rough start as half the group failed to turn up on time due to transport issues, however we used this time wisely to think of what we wanted to film and what shots would be best. Also as we found a shortage of shots in our animatic, this time gave us a chance to figure out what extra shots we wanted to add. We decided that we wanted to film all the shots we needed within the college and just around the area in Angel Islington. We didn't want to go to far out as we were unsure of how much we could get done and still be able to get back into college on time to upload our footage onto the hard drive ready for editing later on. This filming session was a success in our opinion as we were able to get all the college shots we wanted and we think we have set off to a great start and are looking forward to our final product.

Progression Blog

I personally feel that since the beginning of the unit I have become more comfortable with blogging and also have more detailed blogs than the very early. I have tried to use various types of ICT in order to make my blogs more attractive and show my development throughout. I have also contributed to group blogs in order for us to all achieve the best grade possible co-operation is needed when doing the group blogs. There are things I could do better to improve my blog which would be; time management (blogging regularly), have more input and more research about teen films to get a better understanding.