Music

We decided that the music needed for the film opening has to be fast, up-beat and happy to reflect our protagonist's character.

Songs we considered:




My favourite song choice is Heartbeat - Scouting For Girls. It is upbeat, grabs you by the first chords and is iconic as a feel-good song for people of all ages.

Change of Plan

We have decided to make a slight adjustment in our film opening. We think it would be good to have ashley playing a girl who absolutely loves football but is really bad at playing it. This would mean re-filming the football footage and having her getting hit with the ball a lot as well as having her friends being supportive but not so enthusiastic as their friend. The new start to the opening will also add a new location as we will shoot some parts in a house to show a girls excitement as match day begins, this also allows for us to have her listening to the radio so we can have any music we want throughout the opening.
Some adverts we saw that inspire our new opening are the following Halifax and Barclay's ads:

Vlog On Location

Train Shot

We took a practice shot of the train leaving the station as we could use it as part of the journey to the station. We liked the overhead shot but it would make anybody on the platform look too vulnerable.

Football Flashbacks

As part of our film opening we encounter some flashbacks to show the audience our protagonist's love for football. We have decided on 3 flashbacks which are shown in this clip, so far we haven't got the actual sound but we do have the white fade which will be before and after each flashback.

Our Storyboard

Here's the basic storyboard we have for our film.

Football Fail

Here's a shot we found on the flip of Ashleigh's football fail for our opening.

On Location

Me and Shaileyee went to our film location, the Emirates Stadium, to familiarize ourselves with were we would be filming and to see what shots would look good. We took some test shots whilst we were there.

Football Practice Shots

As part of our film will include us playing football we decided to film ourselves having a kick about to see what shots would look good for our final film. We also found out thing we needed to lookout for for our proper filming such as the person filming's shadow which cannot be in the final footage. We also found that footwork held most of the action in football which was a main focus for our filming although we also filmed headers.

Flashbacks in Doctor Who

After watching this clip in lesson I noticed who the editors differentiated between real time and flashbacks. This gives my group a great idea of how we can do the same in our film. This clips fades to white instead of a straight cut so the audience knows there is a time difference, every fade to white transition also has a sound effect to make it more powerful.

Vlog #3

Ideas for Inspiration

The 3 movie each link very well to the theme of my group's film and provides us with lots of inspiration for shot types.

Test Camera Shots

As we are all new to the camera and coming up with good shots we took the camera out to test different shots.

Research

As part of our research we had to ask people about their favourite and least favourite movie genres. I asked friends and family some questions to try and understand a possible target market better.

The filled in questionnaires:

Representation of Age

For the written side of media we were asked to make a presentation on the representation of age in a TV show or a film, I based mine on a clip of Eastenders and my Prezi is below:

Initial Pitches

We pitched our first idea:



After thinking about it we decided we wanted to take a complete different, and more realistic route:



Our synopsis:
Our idea is to have a girl who worships Arsenal and dreams of playing for the professionally. For our opening two minutes we see her and a group of friends travelling to the stadium to watch a game, however, whilst talking about the players and how they inspire her we see flashbacks of her playing with friends and we see the determination she has to become a pro footballer. If we were to make the full feature length film we would see the young girls struggle yet determination to follow her dreams. We want the film to be a feel-good movie and to be quite light and happy.

Sound Terminology

Whilst researching different areas of sound and some of the terminology I stumbled upon this slideshare which gives the names of different parts of sound in media, and their definitions. This will be good to look back on to teach myself all of the different areas of sound and what they mean.

Glossary Sound And Music In Film from Media Studies

Prelim

Prelim:

Outtakes:
Today we added the final touches to our prelim video and put together a little outtakes video out of the left over footage. Filming and editing was great and I know it's just an insight of what else is to come. The editing was quite an easy process but I can't wait to get onto learning better and harder techniques and effects to improve my editing standard. If there's one thing I want to have when I leave after this course, other than hopefully a  good grade, is the knowledge and understand of how to make a good video which conveys the emotions and feelings I want it to. This is the part of media which I find the most interesting.
All in all I think this prelim was a good first edit using the imovie software and was a lot of fun to do to start of the course.

Editing The Prelim

Today I finally got onto the mac to do some editing! It was good to sit in the editing seat and try to figure out the imovie software. Looking back the software is pretty easy to get to grips with and I look forward to learning new effects for further videos. Clearly right now the editing isn't quite up to the standard I would like but this is the first thing and as time progresses and the group get more familiar with editing everything should be fine.

Mac 5's First Group Vlog!

Here's my media group's first vlog together talking about media so far, filming our prelim and working together as a group.

The 180 Degree Rule

The 180 degree rule is a rule put in place to avoid confusion for the audience of a TV show or film. The rule says that once a scene starts the camera can film anywhere along the 180 degree line however the camera must not cross this 180 degree line. Doing so would cause the characters to appear on the opposite sides which would be a mistake.

This diagram shows the effects of the 180 degree rule. The green side is where the camera is allowed, it shows the guy in the orange on the left and the guy in the blue on the right. In this example the red side is where the camera is not allowed. Having the camera here would have the guy in orange on the right and the guy in blue on the left.

AS Media Studies Course Booklet

This Booklet explains exam criteria and marking in relation to the AS and A2 Media courses.

ECS as and A2 Media Studies Course Booklet

My First Vlog

Here's my first vlog, sorry about how bad it is!

Storyboarding

Tuesday's lesson this week was an introduction to storyboards. These are very important as they are the backbone for and story and are necessary for any successful film or video. They map out every separate shot and say what type of shot it is (e.g. close up, mid-shot), if the shot is at an angle (low angle, above shot), if the camera moves during the shot or pans/ tilts, if there is any zoom, what happens in the shot, if there are any sounds needed and how long the shot lasts. This means you save a lot of time out on location filming.

Storyboards also let you pre-plan the story and allow you to easily write down any ideas you have. Storyboards are done before filming but for practice in the lesson we looked at a short clip and storyboarded that.

Luther, S03 E01

My storyboards:

My favourite movie

Choosing a favourite movie was hard as I always change it depending on what mood I am in. Thinking about it my favourite movies have to be the Harry Potter series and The Hunger Games. If I absolutely had to chose between these I would have to chose The Hunger Games as it stars my favourite female actor, Jennifer Lawrence.

What I love about this film is not just the storyline but also the way it has been filmed, and how great the actors are in it. The best thing about the filming is how unsteady it is. The director has done this to make it all seem more real like you're actually running alongside Katniss. This unclean filming style also reflects what the movie is about and engages the audience in the action. However, sitting through an hour and a half of this filming can get a bit tedious.

The movie also includes a lot of CGI which  find fascinating and I would love to learn more about how the CGI is created and put into a movie.

I also admire the camera man's work in this movie. Many shots, like in many moves, just blow you away and everything about this movie just leaves you in awe.

My Favourite Female Actor

My favourite female actor is the stunning Jennifer Lawrence.

The first role I saw Miss Lawrence portray was Katniss Everdeen in the movie The Hunger Games. Although, unlike Johnny Depp, Jennifer Lawrence is not an actor I have known for a long time after seeing her in this role you could see how great she is at portraying different emotions. She has also stared in The Silver Linings Playbook. This role is very different from the role of Katniss Everdeen as Katniss is a very serious character struggling to survive whereas Tiffany Maxwell seems to be a fun loving girl despite her troubled past.
What I really look forward to is the Hunger Games sequel: Catching Fire as it will be great to see Jennifer Lawrence back in that role.

My Favourite Male Actor

My favourite has to be the one and only Johnny Depp.

Depp has stared in many movies from Edward Scissor Hands to Pirates of the Caribbean to Charlie and the Chocolate and he has even voiced characters in animated movies like Corpse Bride.

His latest movie is The Lone Ranger which I went to see in the cinema, it was a fantastic film that showed what a great actor he is as he played the role of Tonto. He is a very versatile actor which makes him so great.

However, my favourite role of his has to be either Jack Sparrow in the The Pirates of the Caribbean or the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland. The first which is a funny character and show off his comedy skills and the latter which is more solemn.

First time using a mac

Today I have used a mac for the first time and it's very different from a windows PC. Not only is the keyboard set out different but there is also some extra buttons like the command button. Also, you can screen shot parts of the screen on the mac, not the whole screen, by using cmd+shift+4

For Example

I think this feature is very good and I will probably be using this a lot to help get my point across in future posts.

Another thing I am struggling to understand is all the different features on the mac's desktop, and what button on the internet means minimize and which one means close as I kept making that mistake. I'm looking forward to learning more about macs and how to use them although I am nervous about using imovie as I'm not sure how complicated it is but I'm sure once I know how to use it everything will be fine an I will enjoy it a lot.