Final post!

This is my final post, this blog is now closed.

Final Vlog !!

So sad last Vlog as a group for AS!

The Aftermath!

The idea after the burning of the picture is because the boyfriend has doublecrossed Leanne by informing the police that she has killed her best friend and that's why he has double crossed her and that is why Leanne is so scared of the siren, anxious and hiding. After there would be a 2 weeks earlier and the story would continue and progress from there.

Evaluation!

Here are the evaluation questions and answers for 4,5,6,7...

Evaluation questions!

Here are the answers to evaluation questions 1,2,3

Evaluation editing !

We have almost completed out evaluations the only thing me and Alicia have to do is add the mini screen/videos into it and we will be complete. We are quite nervous about our evaluation but we feel that we have answered it to the best of our ability !

Costume!

We realised that we didn't actually explain the reasoning behind the costuming. So me and Alicia have done a Vlog about it and there is a bit of an update on our evaluation also!

           

                        

 



 

 

Title!

Thinking about it I realised we did not describe why we chose the actual font of the Media title - Double cross but spoke more of the reasoning behind  the chosen name. So I have decided to give a little background on it. The reason why we chose this style is because it adheres to the genre of film, as the broken, jarred pieces are very urban as well as showing destruction this is also similar to Leanne (the protagonists) physical state, which is broken due to this horrific act of homicide that she has committed on her best friend. Therefore this was the reasoning behind the style of text. The text crosses over again to emphasise the point that she is being double crossed as well as double crossed.

Media Showcase!

Yesterday we presented our film opening to the audience and we had a good response to them. All enjoyed every one and we got some video feedback. We had to write a speech and present it in front of a group of our friends and family and get some audience feedback. We recorded the speech as well as the audiences comments and feedback to help with our evaluation.
Many people enjoyed it and loved our song choice and use of shots.

Certificate!

We discussed as a group what we thought which certificate our film would be and have come to the decision that a 15 certificate would be most appropriate.

This is the wikipedia definition:

The 15 certificate is issued by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) to state that, in its opinion, a film, video recording, or game should not be seen or purchased by a person under 15 years old.

The following is a list of what is most likely to warrant a 15 certificate, although it is a very rough guide:

• The work as a whole must not endorse discriminatory language or behaviour. 
• Drug taking may be shown but the film as a whole must not promote or encourage drug misuse. Promotion of drugs which are easy to obtain are unlikely to be allowed. 
• Strong threat and menace are permitted unless sadistic or sexualised. 
• Dangerous behaviour (for example, hanging, suicide and self-harming) can be allowed provided the detail of such is low so that it can not create too much of an impression of the viewer. Abuse of weapons which are easily obtained will not be tolerated. 
• Frequent use of strong language can be permitted, although very strong language needs to be restricted and would have to be seen as reasonable in the context. Frequent usage of very strong language would be seldom allowed. 
• Nudity in a sexual content must be restricted however nudity in a non-sexual content does not. 
• Sexual activity without strong detail would most likely to be allowed. Some strong sexual references may be allowed to, but very strong ones may not, unless used within reason. Sexual acts or references with the intention of causing arousal is not likely to be permitted. 
• As long as the film is appropriate for 15 year olds, no certain themes are prohibited. 
• Violence may be strong but should not dwell on the infliction of pain or injury. The strongest gory images are unlikely to be acceptable. The same applies to references. Any sexual violence should be discreet and be strongly justified. 

                                       (The bullet points in bold, would most likely be featured in the rest of the film)

As our film is about, gang culture and killing, themes such as drug taking, violence, possible sexual language, dangerous behaviour and strong language would occur several times throughout the film therefore a 15 certificate would be most appropriate.

These are the different ratings from the BBFC:

I have also added the link to the BBFC website on what they classify as 15 and some FAQ's about the certificate.

BFFC Certificate 15

Here is a snippet from the website:

If we distributed our film to other countries such as America the rating would then become R rated.

these are the primary ratings for the American film certificates by the Motion Picture Association of America.

The primary MPAA ratings are G (General Audiences), PG (Parental Guidance Suggested/Some material might not be suitable for children), PG-13 (Parents Strongly Cautioned/Some material may be inappropriate for children under the age of 13), R (Restricted/Under 17 not admitted without parent or adult guardian), and NC-17 (No One 17 and Under Admitted).

MPAA formerly used GP for PG, which originally stood for "General Audiences, Parental Guidance Suggested. The M rating was the original name of GP/PG and signified a film with mature themes. X was the original name of NC-17 and started out as no people under 18, but later became 17.

And finally... this is the link to the Motion picture ratings page on wikipedia, to find out the certificates for different countries around the world. This is very useful in providing the rating system across the world incase we wanted to distribute our "film" across the seas.

Motion Picture Rating System

Evaluation questions!

These are the questions:

• In what ways does your film opening use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? 
• How does your film opening represent particular social groups? 
• What kind of media institution might distribute your film opening and why? 
• Who would be the audience for your film opening? 
• How did you attract/address your audience? 
• What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this film opening? 
• Looking back at your prelim task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the final film opening?

I feel like the questions seem quite difficult but when you break them down they are pretty simple to answer. To prepare I am going to watch many different Evaluation video's for instance:

                                                        
                                                   

I am also going to write up, on a word document, my personal responses to the questions and I will talk to Alicia about doing the same and then wen can get together and blend the responses together to get the best answer and from there, practice and record our responses. 

I am also looking for films similar to our genre to compare to ours for example Kidulthood, Adulthood and 4.3.2.1, which are gang culture and british independent.

"Parody" Trailer and outtakes !

We have created a fake trailer out of some clips that we didn't use from our film opening to make a trailer that was sort of parody like. We did this and outtakes to provide a bit more entertainment from our quite serious film, and this would not be our actually trailer because the music does NOT fit the genre at all (it sounds like the protagonist is joining some sort of pirate "gang") and the shot we used are only shots from the opening and there are no shots giving anymore to the film, so therefore it is classified as a "Parody" trailer to accompany the outtakes so hope you enjoy it ...

Evaluation time !

So as you know we have now finished our opening to our films and the final thing to do is our evaluation. We have decided to work in pairs Leanne and Hannah and Alicia and I. We have started to plan our evaluation and have been looking on YouTube and watching past evaluations to see what is best. We are definitely going to use a split screen as we can example little snippets of clips to complement what we will be saying. So more update on that at a later time.

EXPORTING!

We have finally finished our video and exported it !! The stress of it but we are happy with our final film opening !! Hope you enjoy it !!

Title sequence... Finished !!

Well we scraped the bus idea that would have been too complex and long ! So instead these are our final credits !!

Leanne and Alicia filming

On Monday Leanne and Alcia went filming ! And our film is official finished, done so we are finished and now we just have to finish editing and export !

Double cross !

Yep that's out film name DOUBLE CROSS! You may wondering why we used this... well, The protagonist is being double crossed by her gang member boyfriend who has told her to kill her best friend and she is Double crossing her best friend by killing her. So we only thought that this would be revlevant and suits our gender.

Vote Eloise as access officer !

Well, My friend's sister asked me to film and edit some footage for a publicity for a vote as acess offier cambridge school and I said I could definitley do it ! So at the UCAS fair on friday, we went round filming some people and editing together after at school and this is what we came up with. Although this is not to do we our 2 minute opening, I decided to put it up as it shows my editing skills.

Adding credits !!

Adding credits to put on our 2 minute opening is very stressful as iMovie will not let us move the credits around which is so annoying, so thanks  Apple for that !! Leanne and Hannah are stressing out over scrolling and fonts but they have found the font they like and we are only stressed about the positioning of the credits now !! :( but we had to get over it and chose a different title although it does not have the transitioning that we want but we have to make sacrifices. Now we are ver pleased with the credits at the start and now the stress has gone. Yay!

Provisional Production name

This is our provisional prodution name and this is the practice version. Aliia and Hannah done the final one in their study time. We though of this when I was messing around with some popcorn and seeds, it was origanlly going to bubble gum popping but we felt that the colour of the gum may not show up well on the camera, and here pop productions was born.

Editing troubles!

We had a few editing troubles the other day getting the music to become muffled after she pulls her head phones out. We finally figured out how to do that by layering the music on top of each other and then cutting the music where we wanted the headphones to come out and then editing the second layer of music to make it muffled after the headphones had left her ears. We finally got all of that sorted but then we wanted to add the siren on top of that and we were in a dilemma! The siren would delete either the first or second layer or music ! however after a long time of freaking out we realised that we had not applied the 3rd sound properly, we were supposed to place it on top of the video not the music to add it *slow clapping* well done group 2 ! But that's all sorted now and we only have to put on some ambient sounds for after the headphones are removed and that is all of our sounds finished.

The video below is showing Alicia editing the music to be perfectly in time with when she pulls the headphone out of her ears.

Music Change!

So our group was really not feeling Not giving in as we felt it did not go with the mood of our song as well as making the video seem more like a music video rather then a two minute opening so we decided to hange it back to our origianl song... Deepest Shame by plan B. Although i have already posted a video of this previously I will post another so you do not have to scroll back.



We also felt that deepest shame is more relevant to the story and the words correlate at some points to what has happened in the plot which we like. We also felt the song to be more mellow and street than the pop song 'Not giving in'. I think this song is so much more relevant and our group have agreed that it is prefect for our 2 minute opening.

2 weeks !

Oh my goodness !! I realised we have like 2 left to finish our film ! Although we only have 3 shots left we still haven't filmed them !! But there is nothing to fear Our group we definitely finished before the deadline and we will make an editing vlog and final thought vlog as well as filming vlog so we will keep you updated for the next two weeks ! I have also realised we still have a few more shots to do, need our title sequence, I won't stress because I know our group can do it !

Awww! Aren't they cute!

This is the photo we used for the end part of our film opening. What we really like about this is that it shows Leanne (the protagonist) Alicia (her friend she killed) and billy (Alicia's twin) this photo highlights their young age in contrast to Leanne's age now and also emphasises the point that they have been very close Friends for a long time. The fact that billy is also in this photo causes the audience to think of who he is and why he is the photo, this may spark interest in the audience's mind to why he is there, what affiliation he has with the two girls, who alicia is and why Leanne is burning this picture of them.

Title sequence!

Well as you know there would be no film without all the people who have helped to create the concept, have the contacts and produce the content, as well as several hundred more jobs to help make the film and these people are recognised during the Title sequence and the credits.
So we have to think of our title sequence, which has been proven quite difficult as we have come to the end of the road on inventive names.

However as a group we have decided to have our title sequence during our time lapse to allow more time for actual film content. we feel this will also add to our film as it causes breaks in the time lapse highlighting her fragile and broken feelings and therefore will add effect of time slowing down and speeding up for her emphasising her wait as well as her emotional breakdown.

Hannah created this great image!

This is the sort of effect we are going for, with the names on the side of buses during the time lapse when it is slowed down. We really like this idea however it will be very hard to do perfectly but I'm sure we will do it.

Slip-idie-doo-da !

As you know our group went out to film on Friday and we got some very useful shots !! Not to mention muddy shoes and a muddy leg because I fell over... Joy -_- ! (Lucky they couldn't turn the camera on in time to see me do the splits, just after I told Leanne she better not slip or I would laugh my head off for days! Thats Karma for you! ) however, we did get all the forty hall shots! The last filming -train - will be done during half term and we will be editing on Wednesday !! So we are all good and the progress is good well! We should hopefully be done in time.

My favourite shot that we got so far! 

Beautiful shot taken by moi 

My Slip mark !

The pictures we used to burn.. we used the top one

BAFTA's

Did I agree with all  decisions? Not at all but I have to say watching the BAFTA's is truly inspiring ! It has made me feel part of the film community which not everyone can relate to. Although I haven't personally watched Argo, from the few snipets I have viewed of the film I didn't think it should have won as many awards for example; Best film, I think Les Miserables should have, Though this is personal bias and Argo must have been a truly spectacular film to win Best film and the BAFTA's. All the awards were truly deserved. and Les Mis did win many awards which was deserved.

Watching it for the first time properly was truly tremendous experience as previously I would simply read who won out of the newspapers, but you don't hear the humourous jokes of Stephen Fry, the beauty of Bradley Cooper and the wit of Sam L. Jackson and his jokes about Snakes on a plane. As well as the great and amazing acceptance speeches!

One day I hope to be hosting or being part of the BAFTA's however, for now I shall just sit, watch and dream about how great and Inspiring it is!

Final filming !

*To final count down* It's our final filming! We will be filming our forty hall scene, running scenes and train scenes !! The excitement ! Afterwards we will be finished for editing !! We will be shooting this footage today and we will be missing our media lesson to do this ! But don't worry we will catch up !!

WEATHER!

Oh how I love you for once ! We will be filming the final footage for our film on Friday and the weather is perfect so we are happy !!

Running!

In Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging the opening is of a girl (Georgia) running home of embarrassment as she went to a fancy dress party as a olive! Similar to our opening with the running (but not running home from a party) or in an olive costume !
but I really like some of the shots and I think our group can replicate it like the wide shots, panning shots My favourite shot is between 2.36s - 2.46 when the camera tracks towards Georgia as she runs towards the camera itself causes them to meet at the middle, the camera then pans right and Georgia is central in the frame showing her trying to enter the gate.

!

Timelapse!

I feel like we haven't explained in detail why we have put our Time lapse in our 2 minute opening, so here is a Power Point I have made explaining it more clearly.

Thinking of names

My name is... My name is... My name is... Well we are kind of stuck on that one. We really can't quite find a suitable name for our 2 minute opening. One of Alicia's great ones was Taken 3 even though our opening/film has nothing to do with people being taken. Another that Hannah had suggested was Misled. Which I quite like because the girl in our film is misled by gang members. So that one gets a check on our name list from me! However in the time I wrote this blog I have just found that there is a film has been released this year called misled :(

I dreamed a dream...

On Saturday, I went to see les Miserablés with Alicia and some others, and there is one word that can describe it ...Amazing !! The cinematography was outstanding and I have to say it even topped 'The Impossible', which I also watched this year. The singing was brilliant for a cast of actors and not professional singers, and the acting was truly believable! The sound effects were very realistic and at one point when Javert commits suicide, he falls off the side and you heard his body crack. That was very horrific and it was so sad when Gavrosh died! The cinematography was so realistic and believable from costume and make-up to set and lighting! All I say is it is a Must watch however Is nearly 3 hours long !!

Here's some info on the film that I got from wikipedia:

Les Misérables is a 2012 British musical drama film produced by Working Title Films and distributed by Universal Pictures. The film is based on the musical of the same name by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg which is in turn based on Les Misérables, the 1862 French novel by Victor Hugo. The film is directed by Tom Hooper, scripted by William Nicholson, Boublil, Schönberg and Herbert Kretzmer, and stars an ensemble cast led by Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, and Amanda Seyfried.








If you want to listen to a one man les mis video here it is...
(this man is AMAZING he does the female and male voices, also watch his 1 man Disney medley)




and if that is not enough and you want the trailer, here it is...

Snow !

Oh how most people love snow! Although it is not my favourite of the weathers it sure does look pretty. BUT [and this is a big but !] we were hoping to film on Wednesday (as it is academic review day at school) and this was probably going to be our last day of filming, but the snow has ruined that plan ! and I am frankly very disappointed, happy we got a day off school, but upset we won't be able to film... UNLESS there was an odd day of immense heat due to global warming that would melt all the snow in Enfield... but that is highly unlikely, unfortunately for our group, So we will just have to find a plan B!

Update!

Just a little update on how filming is going !

Watch the Titles - The Borrowers title sequence

Watch the Titles - The Borrowers title sequence

I have just watched The Borrowers title sequence and may I say it is one of the best I have ever seen ! It is so pretty and Christmassy (If that is a word) and it is very ambiguous to what the storyline will be like. It is also so creative and I just love it, and everything about it, in my opinion I can't fault it to be honest.

One word : Brilliance.

Possibly the scariest thing I have ever seen in my life!

I decided to look on Pete's Blog to see if there was anything interesting I could find or any useful information to help us with the 2 minute openings and I stumbled upon this video. *Shudders at the thought* Despite the title, like a fool  I decided to watch this very well filmed video and  it was possibly the scariest thing I have ever seen in my life! I had about 3 heart attacks throughout and I was still slightly traumatised afterwards. This was, however, filmed very well and although slightly similar to ours as it is very urban, its is a horror and it is of not the same genre. But I love the CCTV images and the way it was shot with normal camera shots, handheld and the phone camera, which added to the experience and gave depth to the film and allowed us to see the storyline from different perceptions. Although the several fibrillation's my heart had to go through, I loved it and wanted to watch it again! However, I will warn it is not for the faint hearted or people who do not enjoy being scared!

Different Ending!

Crash also featured this, where the opening is near enough the ending.

We have changed our ending for the two minute opening and this will most likely be our final change, we have decided that instead of the house idea, as we didn't feel it was going any where and it was very difficult to find a large luxurious house that we could borrow for a day. So we have opted for a new idea that we will have Leanne in forty hall by the river, with a photograph of her and Alicia in one hand and a lighter in the other and we will fade out from there to leave it ambiguous for the viewer, we felt as a group this would be best to do as it then has no ending and makes people want to watch more. We did think of putting the lighter to the photo and throwing the photo in the river however, if this was done it would mean that the film had come to an end which we didn't want.

4.3.2.1 also features this.

We have also removed the 1 week earlier scene because we felt the opening would be best to just fade out and possibly just have 1 week earlier. This is to show that our 2 minute opening is actually right near to the end of the film and the one week earlier shows this. So for instance if the film was in 1/4's the opening is in  1/4 and  3/4 and the rest of the storyline is in 2/4 and the actual ending in 4/4, if I'm making sense.

Similar footage!

Hannah has recently found some footage that is similar to our genre. some of the shots look similar to our however we have stylisied our slightly more.

Starting to edit!

We have started editing our for our final film and we are already having problems! on Wednesday we uploading our 1 hour and 15 minute time lapse and had to speed it up, however the speed on iMovie only goes up to (+-)2000% and even with that it only brought the timelapse to 2mins 15 seconds ! which would be our whole film!! So we decided to upload the 200% sped up time lapse to youtube and convert the video back onto iMovie and then speed that footage up , there was a problem however... we could not find a free online youtube to video converter that didn't cause or force us to download all this other nonsense. so we decided to ask miss in todays lesson and she found a brilliant website and we commenced! Now we have about 1 min of the film completed and we are going out on academic review day to film our final forty hall and train shots, which will be our final filming, so hopefully we shall be finished soon! Proud of our group!

Can you believe it ...?

Can you believe it ? We have finally recorded our time lapse ? I know we are in shock too ! It's looks pretty awesome if I must say myself and it was a very Tiring journey! Poor leanne had to sit on the cold ground for an hour ! :( We have done a few Vlogs for your entertainment and I'll post some pictures up!

Mood: Very exciting to start editing !!

5:45 !

Why am I dreading tomorrow? Because I have to wake up at 4:30 so I can be ready to meet Leanne, Alicia and Hannah at oakwood at 5:45 ! Yes you read correctly, 5:45 and you may ask why? All so we can film the long, always put off ...Time Lapse! We are finally going to film the time lapse in Trafalgar Square! We can't believe it too! So why so early you may ask, Well we need the sun coming up on the time lapse.
I shall give you a run through of the day :
5:30- tube supposedly opens
5:45- we meet at oakwood (Piccadilly line)
5:45-6 -we get on the train( while on the train we film so shots of Leanne on the train getting on the train etc.
6-6:45- we change to the northern line and arrive a charing cross station (the closet to Trafalgar Square)
6:45-7 - We walk to Trafalgar and set up the camera and Leanne (making sure headphones are on show)
7 -until it gets light enough - we film the time lapse keeping the camera completely still.
The rest of the day we will film some shots of Leanne running and on the way home film some more shots train shots.

We will probably do a group Vlog and we shall put up a few of the shots up as well as some pictures tomorrow.

P.s Welcome to 2013!! This is the first post of 2013 and the first filming of 2013 will be tomorrow too bad it's so early in the morning !