always and never

Always and Never

PresentationBen Davy | Jessie Keable Elliott | Melissa Brazil | Richard Lartey

British Directors and Films

Melissa Davies-Brazil3060

Ken Loach

• Ken Loach- born 17th of June 1936, Warwickshire, England, is a British television and film Director, who is best known for his approach to film making.

• His films tend to be centred around the aspect of social realism, making them as deep and thought provoking as possible.

• A key technique he uses to make his films feel as real as he wishes the audience to perceive, is by including unscripted scenes. Which I believe in turn, creates a raw and natural relationship between the characters featured in the film, as well as the audience watching the film. He also achieved this by using unknown actors who can relate directly to the character they portray, with regards to their life experience.

• There are a number of reoccurring themes featured in his films, which are shown through his portrayal of social group. Themes include...

– The life style of the working class– Youth culture– Abandonment– And the general idea that society is hopeless-(a key aspect that his main characters try to

escape)...as well as a number of others, portrayed in films such as ‘Sweet Sixteen’ and ‘Kes’.

Sweet Sixteen [2002]

This film is about a Scottish, teenage boy named Liam (played by Martin Compston), who is struggling to find his dream and who he is as a person, whilst growing up in what can only be described as the gritty streets of Greenock, Scotland.

Loach portrays Greenock as an area centred around unemployment and tries to show that there is very little hope for the city’s youth.

‘Sweet Sixteen’ shows some very good representations of themes and social groups, which are portrayed in Loach’s typical ‘realistic’ manner.

THEMES & SOCIAL GROUPSWorking class life;

– Liam was born into a working class family– Family has financial issues– Tries to raise money quick, so he and his mother (jean) can escape their lives in Greenock, and leave behind

Jean’s boyfriend ,Stan-a drug pusher; and Liam’s mean-spirited, and horrible grandfather.

Youth Culture;– Liam-16 year old boy (age; gender)– is very close to his friends– Is delinquent– Deviant-gets into trouble

It seems that in a way, Ken Loach uses the character Liam, not only to portray the typical working class boy via certain stereotypes, but to also portray a working class boy going against the stereotypes. Even though Liam is getting into a bit of trouble, his prospects are driven by motivation, and are heading towards the right direction in his life. The motivation comes from his relationship with his mum-he loves her very much and wants to make her life better than what it is. So for Loach to go against a stereotype of a certain social group, is generally an unusual aspect to come across in British film.

Danny Boyle

• He is best known for directing films such as, Trainspotting (featuring Ewan McGregor and Johnny Lee Miller); The Beach (Leonardo Dicaprio); and his latest release-Slumdog Millionaire (starring Dev Patel).

• Unlike director Ken Loach, Danny Boyle doesn’t really enjoy making ‘serious’ films, but prefers to take a more vivacious approach. It is evident, that this is shown in the camera techniques and movement he chooses to use, which along with the type of soundtrack he normally uses, sets quite a fast pace.

• Judging from films such as Trainspotting and Slumdog Millionaire, Boyle tends to show unfortunate youths in his films, reaching a certain point in their lives where they decide to change it for the greater good; for example in Slumdog Millionaire-Dev Patel’s character decided to go on the Indian version of ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire’, and ended up winning.

• Even though most of Danny Boyle’s films have a ‘feel good’ mood and feeling to them, as in any British film, there are always parts that to some extent can be serious, and very dramatic.

•Danny Boyle, an Oscar and BAFTA winning British director and producer, was born 20th of October 1956, in Manchester.

Based on the book by Irvine Welsh, this film follows the life of a serious heroin addict named Renton (Ewan McGregor), born and raised in inner city Edinburgh, Scotland. Renton tries desperately to clean-up, and get out of the rough Edinburgh drug scene, but comes across a number of obstacles along the way.

With this film, it is apparent that Danny Boyle has taken a very controversial and sensitive matter, and managed to put a slight ‘feel good’ twist on it. It seems he achieved this by his choice of soundtrack songs, such as Iggy Pop-’Lust for Life’, which sets an immediate pace at the beginning of the film, which fits in with the fast moving tracking shot following Renton running along the street.

The key social groups and themes Danny Boyle is trying to portray are...•Youth/age•Gender•Cultural heritage

Trainspotting [1996]

•Working class people•And the underclass

Audience Profiling

Melissa Davies-Brazil3060

Audience Profiling-There are a number of ways in which the media target audience can be profiled. Types of audience profiling include...

– Demographic profiling- The method of grouping the audience into marketing “segments”, categorising and generalising the whole of the target audience, in order to understand is relevant. This would include categories such as; gender, age, class, geographical area, economic status and religion.

– Psychographic profiling- Unlike demographic profiling, this form of profiling categorises the audience in terms of their wants and needs.

– The four Cs- stands for, Cross-Cultural-Consumer-Characteristics. This categorises the audience in terms of their personal aspirations. These aspirations are then put into 4 main categories:

• Mainstreamers– the largest group– Concerned with stability and security– Buy popular brands and consume

mainstream text

• Aspirer– Wish to improve themselves– Define themselves as high status– Assumption that their status is established

by this consumption

• Succeeders– Those who feel secure and in control– Buy things that reinforce their feeling of

power

• Reformers– Are idealists– Actively consume eco friendly

products

Ways of identifying key aspects of the target audience.

Research for Audience ProfilingThere are number of different methods that could be used to gain the information needed in order to use audience profiling, so for example you could use a questionnaire.

Demographic Profiling–Would need to gain quantative information, so questions would be closed; i.e. Yes or No answers, or multiple choice.–Strengths of using closed questions would be that it makes it easier to evaluate and compare your results. And also that it is a quick process for gaining such information, and the fact you know that all the answers are relevant.

Psychographic Profiling–For this you would need to collect qualitative data, so questions asked would need to be open.–Strengths of using open questions would be that, the answers are more likely to be opinionated, especially when answering questions asking ‘why?’.–It’s far more realistic and is perfect for advertising.

Audience Profiling Questionnaire analysisAudience Profiling Questionnaire

1. Are you male or female?male female

2. Which age group do you fall under?

3. Under 16 16-24 25-35 36+

3. Where do you normally see film advertisements?

4. Billboards TV. radio buses cinema internet

5. What do you find appealing about advertisements?colour big letteringactor detail photosopening dates film name

•We decided to use demographic profiling, which means that all the questions we asked on our questionnaire were closed.

•Initially, we distributed 5 pilot questionnaires, just to be sure that there were no practical or ethical issues, for example, some of the questions may have been phrased in an irrelevant or confusing matter.

•From that, we made a final draft of the questionnaire and distributed 16.

•Respondents had 9 questions to answer, all of which helped us with our marketing and advertising strategies.

Narrative theory

• Before we made our film we decided to research a few theories. One of these was:

Binary OppositesThis was produced by Claude Levi-Strauss. This theory theory is the idea of creating opposites to structure texts such as stories. For instance in the film industry binary opposites such as good and bad will be used to create certain representations. After brainstorming we decided that in our film this would be represented through through gender (male and female) and class (rich and poor). We came up with the idea of trying to use these to highlight the common connotations and stereotypes that come with a working class male. We also thought about using the binary opposite of right and wrong to represent some of our characters. This is normally seen in most films and is also used on other narratives such as the news and children's books. We thought about using drugs to represent this.

Narrative theory

• Another narrative theory we researched was presented by:

Vladimir Propp - StructuresVladimir Propp was a Russian critic who wrote a book called ‘Morphology of the Folk Tale’. He basically studied hundreds of folk tales and came up with 8 character roles, these were :1. The villain, 2. The hero, 3. The donor, 4. The helper who aids the hero, 5. The princess (reward for the hero) 6. Her father, 7. The dispatcher and 8. The false hero. This research helped us to brainstorm the main foundations and characteristics our characters would have.This idea can be applied to any narrative in media for instance the portrayal of people in the media I.e. the representation of Tony Blair. Taking this into account we came to the conclusion that in our film we were going to have one character who was a hero and went against all the negative common stereotypes fitted with his situation, and one character who was a villain and went against all the positive common stereotypes fitted with her situation.

How we uses, developed or challenge typical conventions of real media products.

The narrative theory we used in our film was Claude Levi-Strauss's theory of binary opposites. We chose rich and poor, male and female and old and young, this helped us with our social groups of social class, gender and age.

A film that I have studied which also uses Claude Levi-Strauss's theory of binary opposites is Bullet Boy. While watching the first 3 opening minuets I found these binary opposites: Black and white (the credits) Old and young (prison guard and prisoner) Male and Female Prison and freedom

Inside and outside ect.

One of the films I researched that didn't use the same narrative theory as us was Monsters inc. The narrative theory used there was Todorov's equilibrium theory: 1) Normal day at Monsters Incorporated 2) Boo comes

3) Boo should go back home 4) They try and take boo home 5) she goes home and leaves and impact upon their lives


In our media production we tried to go against the common stereotypes which are often seen in other films. We did this with each character:

George – He is a white, working class male, who lives on an estate and is around the age of 17/18. The typical stereotype here would be; a lazy, aggressive, perhaps alcoholic boy who gets in trouble with the police, wears hoodies and is reluctant to work. This stereotype is shown in the film kidulthood. However we decided to go against these typical stereotypes and created a hard working, gentle, friendly character. We showed this by a medium shot of him working and a long shot of him calmly walking to school. George is quite open about his feelings which is shown through his dialogue - “love you” and quite passive, for he does not start a fight with Penelope. This goes against the typical stereotype of males for then are often presented being aggressive and too proud to show their feelings.

Penelope – she is a white middle class girl. The typical stereotype for her would be an emotional & soft girl who does well in school. This stereotype is shown at the beginning of the film “mean girls”. However we chose to go against this, making her a rude, underachiever who misses school, smokes and spends a lot of money. This is shown by the close up of her hand snatching the credit card and an extreme close-up of her lighting match.

Working class mother are often shown to be uninvolved in their children's lives and often single mothers. The mother in our film has good communication with her son and has a loving and affectionate attitude towards him. “love you”

Penelope's mother also goes against typical stereotypes, for she is not the “model mother” but neglects her child and gives her money to please her instead. This is shown by her not appearing in our film but only the note she leaves for her daughter. This contrasts with the middle class mother in Bridget Jones's diary where she is always interfering in her daughters life and trying to set her up with successful men she picks out for her.


How our social groups are represented

We decided to present a few different social groups in our 2 minute clip.

These include:

Social class

gender

age.

Social classGeorge – he is from a working class background and lives with his single mother. We

showed this by filming an establishing shot of a council estate to show where he lives, which is normally associated with working class people. We tried to create a poor atmosphere inside the house by making it messy and unorganizer, with George using an ironing board as a table, which shows he doesn't have much money. We presented our character being unhappy with his social status and wanting to move way from his council estate. We achieved this by having a medium shot of George sitting at an ironing board working and added dialogue to make it clear that he was “just doing his homework”. This shows he is aspiring to work hard at school to achieve a good education and be able to get a high income and successful job later in life.

Gorges mother – She is a single mother who is seem washing up in the kitchen which suggests that she is unemployed, perhaps living off benefits. It is clear that she is from a working class background due to her colloquial dialogue - “Alright darlin'”

Penelope – She is from a middle class background who has a disposable income. This is presented by showing a close up of a credit card which her mother left for her which suggests her mother tries to buy her love. The fact that we only showed her hand taking the credit card removes the emotion from the scene, making Penelope seem ungrateful. We dressed Penelope in a short dress with big hair and sunglasses giving the impression she has a lot of money, which is spent on drugs, this is shown through a close-up of her lighting a spliff.

Reflecting back on the Preliminary task What went well:

We were able to produce a short click which was well edited using jump cuts, motivated cuts and match cuts.

Our camera work was steady with a wide range of camera angles, such as close ups of the actors faces, medium shots of the actors sitting and a panning shot of the room.

We also did a recki to gain an idea of what the room we would be working in is like and how we would be able to access it when we want to shoot.

We also shot the scene many times from different angles to gain an idea of the different perspectives and so we had a range of shots to work with whilst editing.

What we improved in our main task

Our acting was 100% improvised, which worked for this task, however during our main task we to followed a script which was more efficient and easier

We also didn't plan our shots before we did them so on the day we were unclear about how to come about filming the clip. However for our real project we did a detailed story board so we know exactly how we will be filming our scenes.

Distribution

British film funding research

• The UK film council is made up of 3 sections 1. Premier fund - commercial funding2. Development fund - funding for poor scripts that need help3. New cinema fund - cultural / arty film funding• There is now a new fund for British films. If we wanted to get our film

funded we would have to bare in mind they are looking for: • *’ Fresh, original and dynamic work in any style or genre• * Diversity and innovation• * New and cutting edge filmmaking talent• * Films from black, Asian and other minority ethnic filmmakers• * Films from across the UK• * Scripts that have been substantially developed• * Films with a secured UK theatrical or high profile digital release, or clear potential to do so’

They have also supported films such as : This is England, Red Road, Adulthood and In the Loop.

Funding issues

• 22% of British films receive 'wide release' (30 prints or more).• 22% more receive limited release (approximately 5 - 10 prints)• Most british films fail but the majority of money earned by British films

come from TV broadcasts and from the video market.• If it wasn’t for channel 4 and filmfour the British film industry could have

died out years ago. They separated to become independent in 1998.• Channel 4 help fund films mainly through a company called ‘first light

movies’, this is also funded by the British film council and is looking for ‘a new generation of film-makers’

• Other companies that help film four support people with short films are ‘Netribution’, ‘Isle of man film commission’, ‘Northern Island film commission’ and ‘Scottish screen’.

• If we were looking for someone to support our film we would probably choose ‘Netribution’ because it would fit in with the region we are filming in and has more funding money to provide us with. However film-makers need to learn to be realistic when borrowing money off companies, this is why its always good to have a good strong backing I.e. a supporter of channel 4.

‘Sexy Beast’ failure

In 2000 Jonathan Glazer released the film ‘Sexy Beast’ a British gangster

film. The film was released in 27 screens. This was very popular as it was

quite exclusive and people would travel to cinemas to watch this film. Because of its success it was then moved from 27 screens to 72 films in the UK. This was not a wise idea because after only 4 weeks of screening the film fell out of the cinemas. The novelty had warn off.

This is an example of bad distribution. Baring this in mind we started to come up with ideas of how to distribute our film.

Who would be the audience of your media product?

Always and Never | Richard Lartey | Cand No: 3134

As a group we decided that it would be most appropriate for our film to be aimed at 15 – 25 year olds.This decision mainly stemmed from the fact that we all fall within this age group making it easier for us to produce a film that satisfies the needs of people in our age group.

We decided that we needed to explore further what satisfies the need of our target audience, and we achieved this through a questionnaire.

We then compiled the results and represented the data through charts and graphs. The following slides show the data collectively, however selected questionnaires were also looked at individually to provide a more in-depth analysis.

Are you male or female?

Which age group do you fall under?

We attempted to survey an equal number of males and females, with each sex receiving 56% and 44% of the total respectively.

We tried to question only those who fell within our target age group. Around 70% of those who filled out our questionnaire fell within this age group.

Where do you normally see film advertisements?

Which of these is your preferred film genre?

The majority of those we surveyed said that they see advertisements for films on billboards, busses and in cinemas.

There was a great range of responses for this question, however 2 genres stood out from the crowd. Comedy and Drama.

How far away is your local cinema?

How often do you go to the cinema?

44% of those questioned said that they live less than 1 mile away from their local cinema.

44% of respondents also said that they go to the cinema often and after closer analysis we found a direct correlation between the distance from the local cinema and how often people go to cinema. i.e the further away someone lives from a cinema, the less they visit it.

Do you prefer mainstream or independent productions?

There was an even 50-50 split for this question showing that although most people like their Hollywood blockbusters, the same amount of people like their smaller low key productions.


The results of this questionnaire have allowed us understand what our target audience want from films as well as how they consume media productions.From our results we were able to decide on a genre for our production. We choose to shoot a drama and this decision was based on the fact that our data shows that our target audience like to watch dramas and comedies.

We were also able to decide how to market our film. We don’t have the budget for put on large television campaigns or to decorate public transport with images of our production, but what our questionnaire did however reveal is that the most effective way of advertising is though forms of poster.

Finally our data shows that our production does stand a chance when put up against larger mainstream productions as there was a 50/50 split between mainstream and independent preferences

How did you attract/address your audience?


Marketing is important for media productions because is allows a production to reach out to a wider audience.A production may only reach a small audience, but if a large marketing strategy is used then the film will be able to reach a larger audience in various locations and therefore make more money.


As marketing is so important to the success of our film we put together a marketing strategy to help promote our film and give it the audience it deserves.

We had already decided that the target audience for our film was 15-25 year olds and therefore we decided to center our marketing strategy around schools and modern technologies.• Posters

o We put up posters around school promoting special screening of the film. These proved useful as they could easily be seen by students passing through the school.

• Social Networkso We created an event page on the popular social

networking website Facebook promoting a screening of our film. This was once again useful as just under a third of the UK population have Facebook accounts, with the majority of them being in the 15-25 age group.


After marketing our film we showed our film to a select audience made up mostly of 15-25 year olds.We asked our audience to fill in a questionnaire after watching the film.By asking our users questions about the film using the questionnaire, we had the opportunity to find out what they liked and disliked and then take action before finalizing the production.We analyzed the results of our questionnaire using spreadsheets, and produced charts from the data.Our results were as follows.

1. To what extent did the opening shown create a sense of intrigue? (4 high intrigue, 1 low intrigue)

2. How professional do you feel the opening was?

53% of our audience said that the opening created a sense of high intrigue. Nobody said that the opening had low intrigue.

32% of our audience said that the opening had excellent professionalism, however 63% said that it was good, therefore there must be room for improvement in this area. Nobody rated the film as being unprofessional (poor).

3. Which of these social groups do you feel were presented in the opening? (Mark all that apply)

4. Of these social groups which is most accurately portrayed?

For this question age received the largest response of 37%.Gender received 33% and social class received 26%. This is good because our film mainly represented these 3 social groups.

42% of our audience didn’t respond to this question perhaps hinting that a lack of understanding of the question. Of those who did answer 31% thought social class was most accurately portrayed.

5. Which of these film genre’s do you think Always And Never falls under? (Mark all that apply)

6. Which 5 aspects of the film did you find memorable?

77% of those questioned thought that our film was a drama. This is correct and the fact that the majority of the audience recognised this shows the strength of our production.

Question 6 was an open question, so to enable analysis to take place, the responses were broken down into groups. After this analysis we found that our script was the most memorable aspect with 43% of the response.

7. How appropriate did you find the music featured in the opening?

8. Does the opening make you want to continue watching the film?

47% of our select audience said that the music used in the opening was very appropriate. Just under half of that amount said that the music was extremely appropriate, so perhaps there is room for improvement in this area.

89% said that the opening made them want to continue watching the film, and only 5% (1 person) said that they would not continue watching the film, possibly due to genre preferences.

9. If you could change 1 thing about the opening, what would it be? Once again question 9 was an

open question, and the results also had to be broken down into groups so that they could be analysed.We broke the results down into script, sound, camera, nothing and other.Only 14% of our audience said that nothing needed to be changed.36% said that they would change the sound, which we already knew we had issues with.Other area that not so many people felt needed improvement were the script and camera work.


From the results of our questionnaires and our extensive analysis we were able to determine which areas we needed to work on before the production was finalized, as well as the areas our audience felt we excelled in.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this

product?


In order for us to make our production we used a wide range of technology.Our film was recorded using handycams however we learnt how to avoid the typical “wedding video” style that these cameras are typically associated with by mimicking professional camera angles and shot compositions. One problem we did however face by using these types of cameras was a “graining” effect on our film which was possible due to a damaged or poor quality DV tape.

We edited our film using Apple’s iMovie 08. The program allowed us the flexibility to edit our production in which ever way we felt necessary and provided us with the tools to create a film that 94% of our audience found professional. All of our group went from only having basic editing skills, to having the ability to create this production through the process of producing our film.


We used the internet and on demand services such as The BBC’s iPlayer , YouTube and channel 4’s 4oD to research similar openings, and to help us understand how films embrace their audiences.By doing this we picked up skills which will help up search for information on the world wide web.

We also learnt about audio editing from using the software packages, Audacity and Garageband.


iMovie 08 Features Used•Transitions

–e.g. where the film cuts to the female character striking a match.•Trimming

–e.g. The establishing shot of the housing estate was cut so that the scene ended when the car had passed.

•Individual Clip Volume Setting–e.g. where the 2 characters meet, the volume was increased to a level greater than the other clips as the scene appeared to be quiet.

•Individual Clip Brightness and Contrast Setting.–e.g. where the 2 characters meet the brightness was decreased in this scene.

•Titles–e.g. the title of the film and the credits. We also changed the font and colour scheme of these.

•Adding Audio Tracks–e.g. the audio backing track used in the film.

•Exporting as MPEG-4 File–We used the share to iTunes function to export the film as an MP4 file.


iMovie 08 Features Used: Our film being edited in iMovie


iMovie 08 Features Used: Audio Adjustments Here is an example of where we have changed the volume of an individual clip. We normalized the volume of all of our clips then made certain clips louder and quieter than the normal.


iMovie 08 Features Used: Our film exported (shared) to iTunes

Reflecting back on the Preliminary task What went well:

We were able to produce a short click which was well edited using jump cuts, motivated cuts and match cuts.

Our camera work was steady with a wide range of camera angles, such as close ups of the actors faces, medium shots of the actors sitting and a panning shot of the room.

We also did a recki to gain an idea of what the room we would be working in is like and how we would be able to access it when we want to shoot.

We also shot the scene many times from different angles to gain an idea of the different perspectives and so we had a range of shots to work with whilst editing.

What we improved in our main task

Our acting was 100% improvised, which worked for this task, however during our main task we to followed a script which was more efficient and easier

We also didn't plan our shots before we did them so on the day we were unclear about how to come about filming the clip. However for our real project we did a detailed story board so we know exactly how we will be filming our scenes.

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