Media- As

Berhan, Jamila and Dani

Blog• Auteur study 1 & 2• Genre conventions:

Thriller conventionsSocial realism/j horrorComedy conventionsHorror conventions

• Initial ideas- 2 or 3 each• Film idea• Questionnaire + analysis• Response to planning feedback• Mood board• Story boards• Location shots• Individual evaluations• BBFC task• Blog intro

Auteur study Our first task was the Auteur study. Each group had been given an Auteur to research- we had to be research Francis Coppola.

We had to find out what his main genres were, what themes he used in his films, give examples of movies he did (The Godfather), awards he won, his back story, his trademarks and so on.

This task was good as it helped each group learn what the main conventions of each genre were and some themes we could use in our films.

Auteur study 2We had to do a second Auteur study.

This time we had to research three directors from the U.S, three from the U.K and three from around the world.

We had to write what they were best known for; their films and so on.

We could have done more for this task because (as you can see -.-) the paragraph on each director is really short and vague.

When you do your Auteur, try and do one that relates to your chosen genre ;)

Genre conventionsThis task was one of the longest tasks we had to do for our blog.

We had various different genre conventions we had to do e.g. comedy, horror and so on.

We had to watch the opening two minutes of different films from each convention and write the narrative and what were the main things used in that scene. For example; Frankenstein had mainly low key lighting and slow eerie movements.

We also had to write what camera angles/movements/shots there were, the lighting, Mise-en-scene, editing and sound.

We had to do at least four or five movies each and write about them.

When we first started doing the task we did not include enough information for the films but as we went on we started to improve and add a lot more detail.

We also did not do enough social realism films which was our chosen genre so that could have helped us understand the conventions of that genre better and benefited us in our coursework

Initial ideasWe each had to come up with initial ideas and then choose the best idea out of all of them.

We came up with one idea each and came up with the plot, the shots we would use, the narrative, the sounds and so on.

We all came up with similar genres; social realism, so in the end we merged our ideas together instead of just choosing one story.

Doing this benefited us because we had strong points in our ideas and putting them together made our final idea stronger.

Film IdeaOnce you finished your initial ideas, you can develop or merge them to create your final idea.

You will need to write out the narrative and know the genre that it belongs to; you’ll also need put further research into it, for example; if you choose to do J-horror, find an auteur such as Takeshi Miike and research him (awards, conventions, signature shots etc) and analyse 1 or more movies that he produced/directed.

You should also analyse J-horror film intros and blog it!

You will also need to create character profiles, who it’s aimed for, location as well as inspirations and so on.

Storyboard

Once you finalized your idea, start thinking about what is going to happen in

your 2 minutes.

Think about the timing, sound (dialouge, diegetic sound), Framing and shots

(Long shot, 180, close up), credits, narrative, scene numbers, transitions.

You will then need to draw up a story board, this includes drawing what will

happen in each scene, planning the timing of each scene, the shots you will

use, the lighting, the sound, the Mise-en-scene, how it will be edited (fade,

slow-mo etc.) and any other additional info that could get you more marks. For

example we included the idea that we would use pathetic fallacy (when the

weather represents your mood- so if they’re sad it could be raining and so on).

Individual evaluationsThe evaluation is worth 20 marks. It can be written on paper, on a PowerPoint, a podcast or a video etc. In the evaluation, you will answer 7 questions:• In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and

conventions of real media products? • How does your media product represent particular social groups? • What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? • Who would be the audience for your media product? • How did you attract/address your audience?• What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this

product? • Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the

progression from it to the full product

This is really important and you need to do it well, proof read, include media language and so on. Write it up on your blog first, then put into a PowerPoint with pictures and make it look interesting so it will engage the examiner. The content is also very

important, and make sure to get it done on time because we left it to the last minute and freaked

out a lot. Meet deadlines and prrof read

Questionnaire analysis

The aim of the questionnaire was to find out more about our target audience (age 16-20).

We had to come up with 12 questions; some of these were; Does your mood reflect the type of movies you watch? What makes you want to continue watching a movie? And so on. We then handed them out to ten people and analysed them in graphs and diagrams.

This task benefited us because it showed us what genres our target audience preferred and helped us because we got a better understand of how we could make our film intro engaging for our audience and make them want to watch the whole movie.

Respond to planning feedbackFor this task, we had to look at each others final plans and give positive and negative feedback on them. The main things that were said about our plan were:• It was good, however the themes of the idea were difficult to pick out.  • It was really good and modern. However the idea is a bit simple (some

thought this was a good thing and some thought this was a bad thing) and may be a bit too short for the two minute intro.

We then went and thought about our idea and came up with points we could improve on according to our feedback.

This helped a lot because of the fact that it was our peers responding to our planning and they were our target audience so it helped us see our flaws and improve on our work. It also helped us because we had to look back at our work and pick out points to improve on so in the end our final plan was stronger and this benefit

BBFC taskThe questions we had to answer for this task were:• What type of institution is the BBFC?• How are they funded?• What are there primary roles?• How do they classify films? What criteria is being referred to?

We also had to ‘Select three case studies relating to film and discuss the issues involved; why did the film receive it's allocated classification? Do you agree with the decision?

We had to research this in our groups, all we were given was a website (http://www.bbfc.co.uk/ ) to get all of our information.

This task taught us how to research and pick out only the relevant points you need. It also taught us about the BBFC and what they and how they’re important to the media.

We did quite well on this task as we found out all of the information and put effort into it, and it shows on our blog. One of biggest mistakes was procrastination and not putting enough effort into our tasks- if you compare some posts on our blogs to others you can see how much effort we put into some than others. If we did our work straight away and did it properly then all of our work could have been excellent.

Blog intro

Our blog intro was one of the first things we were supposed to do….

We just had to write the name of our blog and why we chose that name, who was in our group, what the blog was for, what our coursework was and what we had to for our coursework.

This was the easiest thing to do our of the whole blog because of the fact it was just an introduction. However, it is important because it is introducing your blog and it is probably one of the first things the examiner will see so you have to create a good first impression.

Our mistake here was that we did it halfway through our blog so it wasn’t actually at the start. It was also very vague and short, it had some description in it; but not enough.

Location shotsWe had to take many location shots and these are just some of them. Having lots of location shots will give you a idea of how your final piece will look when you’re actually filming it.

Its best to do this because you don’t want to go to a location and then realise it does not look good an you have to find another location shots..

What went wrong in our final piece is we didn’t actually use these location shots.. The location we used was a bit random so we had no idea what camera movements or angles to use.. Where as if we stuck to our location shots an story board we would have had more time trying to perfect our final piece rather then

Mood boards Its recommended that you make

mood boards.

A mood board consists of many categories:

-Props-Locations-initial ideas-inspirations (other

movies like yours)

-Posters

-musicThis was just one part of our mood board with just inspirations.

We chose Easy A because there was a shot at the beginning that we wanted to use for our final piece.