AS portfolio EvaluationLyndi Barruw and Olivia Budd

Olive Films

To Create the opening two minutes of a new feature film including titles

Genre: Teen Drama/Comedy Audience: Teenagers 14-18

Our Brief

Genre

Our film is a cross between a socially realist comedy like Little Miss Sunshine and the more conventional comedy like Step brothers

HYBRID GENRE

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

There are several areas in which we can discuss conventions:

Generic conventions

Opening Sequence conventions

Filmic Conventions

Opening Sequence Conventions

Conventionally not much happens in the first few

minutes of an opening sequence. Character and/or narrative Context is usuallyEstablished

Step BrothersTwo Middle aged men living like teenagers are introducedThey live in the suburbs with their parents

Twin ThingTeenage twins are introducedThey are the opposite of each-other and live in the city

Genre Conventions

ChallengesHaving Characters with mental health issues

This unusual to find in the conventional teen comedy however in a film such as little miss sunshine it is an

issue explored but not in a teenage character

Using Generic Conventions Teenage characters Contemporary music track The teen bedroom as location Binary opposites

FILMIC CONVENTIONS

Our Film follows manyfilmic conventions:

Titles

Continuity editing

Cross cutting

Different Camera angles and size

Our Film

Real Media text

How does your media product represent particular social groups ?

Teenagers in society today Break conventions of showing mental health in the cinema. Add humor to what people don’t discuss regularly about

OCD.

Normal Teen is represented as:

MessyLazySmokerunhealthy

OCD teen is represented as:

NaïveGirlyObsessively cleanHealth freak/paranoid

There are two representations in our film

How does your media product represent particular social groups ?

Although our media product sticks to the themes and conventions of feature films. We would like to think that we have broken the boundary of showing mental health in comedy.

Our film introduces two characters who are the direct opposites of each other. One of the characters being obsessively clean to the point of OCD, and the other being completely scruffy and disgusting.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Step brothers was made by Paramount who are a huge mainstream

company specializing in big feature films. Realistically our film would probably be distributed by

an independent company because our film is set locally to London and

doesn’t have well known actors in it. Our film would probably be distributed by an

independent company also because we would have an incredibly low budget.

Mainstream Independent

Who would be the audience for your media product and why?

The audience for our film would be teens from the age of 14-18.

This film would appeal to that age group because it includes issues that affect them, for example the daily morning routine before school .

Our film is aimed at teens who enjoy drama/comedies and socially real dramas such as Skins or the In-betweeners on television.

How did you attract/address your audience?

creating an enigmaBy creating questions that the audience would want answers to (are these twins, are they related?)

using musicWe used a contemporary soundtrack that would appeal to a young audience

Mode of Addresswe wanted to address our audience in a way that did not make them seem young and stupid. Offering real characters that are not ‘fake’ in any way

How do you attract/address an audience?

We used bright contrasting colours with each of the characters to match their characters. The neat twin has light pastel colored. We hoped that this attention to detail would attract the audience

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

In order to make our film we had to learn to use Final Cut Pro. We also learnt to use celtex to create our script

•Technologies made our film and made us into prosumers

•Open source software. We media allowing us to create quality

•Creativity. Technologies meant we could be very creative

•Professional editing software

Technologies We Used

•Final cut pro•Celtx•Photoshop for our production logos

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

In the prelim task we used basic match on action for the main task we used more sophisticated editing techniques such as cross cutting

Greater focus on mise-en-scene. Unlike the preliminary task we made sure our sets, locations, props and actors were right for the film we were making.

We found out how important music is for the atmosphere and tone of the film .

Using a greater variety of shot sizes and angles than the preliminary task

We learnt a great deal as we progressed from the preliminary task. We have learnt that making a film needs a lot of research and strong planning with a greater amount

of detail