1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e of film openings)

Write about how typical or not of opening sequences your particular design is.

The aspects we would like you to consider are:

The title of the film
Setting/location
Costumes and props
Camerawork and editing
Title font and style
Story and how the opening sets it up
Genre and how the opening suggests it
How characters are introduced
Special effects

How does your opening sequence develop or challenge the conventions of an opening sequence?

Does your use of conventions indicate that other opening sequences have influenced your work?
If so, then be specific with examples.

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

What are the social groups represented in terms of gender, age, class, race, etc?


Teenagers, girls

Pick a key character from your opening. Think of one or more characters from other films with some similarity to them (but maybe some differences too!). Write about the similarities and differences in terms of appearance, costume, role in film etc.

So for example if you have a lone cop type character, look for other lone cops to compare him with...



Kirsty because we mainly follow her

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

Would this be something that could be produced by a major Hollywood studio, if yes then why? Is it similar to existing products?

Would it be a TV movie?

Would it be an arthouse film?

Would it be an internet only release?

Why would it be released? Does it offer opportunities for franchises and/or merchandising?

Where might the money come from for a film such as yours?

What films are similar 'institutionally'?
(Name some films which would be released in a similar way.)

Link your conclusions to a discussion of the mise-en-scene (visual style) of your opening sequence.

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

Consider the age and gender of your target audience.
(Link this to the narrative and style of your film.)

What kinds of taste might your target audience have : Where would they shop? What music would they listen to? What would their favourite TV programmes be? etc.

What other films are similar to yours? Who do they appeal to?

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

Talk about the filming process. Were there problems you faced? How did you resolve these issues?

Did you get to use new equipment that enhances your opening sequence? I.e. the dolly.

Editing software - Final Cut Express. What have you learnt about editing?

Photoshop - What have you learnt about using the software?

Garageband - was it a useful programme for creating a soundtrack? What challenges did you face during this process?

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

Link this into your audience profile (I.e. what age and gender they are)

Are there particular points in your film that would appeal to a certain age or gender? If yes then explain them in detail.

You should refer to genre conventions, use of music, similarities with other movies and what you have identified as the Unique Selling Point of your imaginary film.

TEXT
SCHOOL
FRIENDS

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

Concentrate on editing and camerawork.

Show what you know about shot types, edit terms and techniques.

Discuss the planning stage, storyboarding, and explain how this helped you to produce your opening sequence.

Make sure you mention the 180 degree rule, match on action and shot/reverse shot

Has your use of specific shot types improved? I.e. match on action, point of view?

Do you feel more confident with the equipment?

How successful do you feel your end product is as fulfilling the task?

FINAL OPENING SEQUENCE / PEER FEEDBACK

T2-60 CHILDREN'S FILM OPENING FINAL from SATMEDIASTUDIES on Vimeo.

Peer Assessment

Positives: One of the main positive feedback's was that our group used good props for the titles, our peer group said that our titles were clever, colourful and quirky. This made it a good opening for the children's film opening as it is friendly and bold, making it gratifying for the children to watch. We are happy with these strengths in our title sequence.

Improvements: One of the main overall improvements was the music and sounds. This is something that our group addressed and also agreed on, and would improve on if we were given more time. Peers found the music repetitive making the title sequence dull to watch. Also, another criticism was that our editing needed to be sharper, and also more of a story line. Overall, we agree with these improvements that our peers made and would address and improve them if given more time. Our group found timing the main problem with the process.

Fonts!!!!

We have chosen a number of different fonts to look at for our opening titles.




The first two fonts are from the cartoon category from the website dafont.com. We chose to use cartoon fonts because it goes with the theme of childrens film. We the decided to add colour to one of the fonts to see the difference . The multicolours makes it stand out more and makes it appeal to the audience. The first font is called 'tourist trap' and the second font is called 'Candle chrome'.



This font is called 'Allstar' from the 'old school' section. We like the font because it's simple and easy to read which makes it good for the target audience; children! We then experimented with some colours, red and blue, to make it more interesting. It goes especially with a school theme.




These are all the fonts that we are going to be using in our titles.

Filming the Opening to Childrens Film

These are photo's of our filming of children film opening. As you can see we used different locations of the college, to create mise-en-scene of being at school. We filmed over two lessons and managed to get seven minuets of film. On the second lesson we had the problem of the rain, which made the filming process slower. We used a tripod, and a dolly. We used the Dolly for the long shots of walking and match on action, we did this during the second lesson of filming. The plot of our title sequence is about a group of three teenage girls lives starting colleges and experiencing the different experiences that college brings. This makes it gratifying to watch as the target audience is girls. Many girls can relate to the plot with being about friendship, college work and teenage hood, making it gratifying to watch., and making the audience range wider.

Locations

These are the locations that our children's film opening is going to take place.



The Refectory where the two girls eat a sandwich and send a text.

Storyboarding

Brothers Bloom Childhood Sequence Animatic from rcjohnso on Vimeo.

This is an animatic of the opening childhood sequence from The Brothers Bloom. It gave us an idea of how storyboards can be presented in a more complex way, with giving animation to the storyboard and what maybe presented in the film when it is produced, which really sells the idea better.

This is the opening for The Bloom Brothers film. We found it very accurate to the storyboard. However there are some changes from originally planned, showing us that our storyboard doesn't have to be an exact to the way we film it.

We also began planning and drawing our storyboard of our children's title sequence; East High. We tried to interpret the professionalism of 'the bloom brothers' animatic storyboard, but only making it by hand (pencil and paper). We've included crucial detail under each picture to remind us of which shots to use, what is going to be in it and the actors/characters.

Here we have a picture of our sixth form colleges quad. This is the setting of our title sequence, and we intend on placing the photo into our sequence as an opening similarly to Summer Heights High.

This is the opening to Summer Heights High, an Australian comedy which we used as a source of inspiration for our title sequence. Similarly to Summer Heights High our children's program has the setting of a high school.

Opening Sequences

The opening sequence to Napoleon Dynamite caught our attention for the uniqueness of the opening. It draws audiences in with the graphics and the audio. You immediately get the sense of who the characters are, with the names of different objects of food, drawing etc. The main character Napoleon is shown first out of the characters. With the mise-en-scene audiences immediately get a sense of the setting of a school, with the text books, music, and other props.
We like the idea of how the credits are laid out and its visually gratifying to watch. We hope to mimic this idea, to capture audiences attention.

We specifically liked the opening sequence to Juno, because it was done in a child-like way. The colours, movement and music combined made it an appropriate opening sequence to look and and get inspiration from. As you can see above, it shows different screen shots from the sequence and shows the simplicity of the look, which is ideal to capture a childs attention. However, we watched a behind the scenes video of the making of the opening title sequence and it changed our minds of mimicking a scene like it because it obviously was time consuming and more complex than the way it appeared.

Time line

We have chosen to look at 'Kung Fu Panda' to pick out the main features and when they come into the opening sequence. We chose 'Kung Fu Panda' because it fits in well with the childrens film theme.



This is opening sequence to 'Kung Fu Panda'



The music starts, quietly at the beginning of the sequence, it's a calm oriental type of music, which sets the atmosphere as the film is set in China. At 5 seconds into the sequence, the dialogue starts as a voice over of the main character. There is no opening titles as it is a dream of the panda's. However, it gives us the impression that the panda could be the hero in the story. At 17 seconds we are introduced to some more characters who resemble bad guys. At 40 seconds a fight starts which grabs the audiences attention, the fight ends with the panda winning which indicates he could be the hero in the film. At 1 minute and 26 seconds five more characters are introduced. They are called 'The furious five' which are the other hero's in the film. Humour is used throughout the sequence which attracts younger people and also older people. At 1 minute 47 seconds the panda starts to wake up from his fantastic dream and we see him crashing onto the ground as the real panda.

Preliminary Task T2-60

T2-60 PRELIMINARY TASK - YR12_2009 from SATMEDIASTUDIES on Vimeo.

For the preliminary exercise our group needed to demonstrate 180 degree rule, match on action and the shot/reverse shot. these are all types of continuity editing.

This is an image of the 180 degree rule taken from wikipedia, it is very important concept in the filming production. It is an imaginary line which cuts through the middle of the scene, from side to side with respect to the camera. Crossing the line changes the viewer's perspective in such a way that it may cause disorientation and confusion. For this reason, crossing the line should always be avoided!



Match on action shot is when you cut during an action to another camera angle but showing the action from the same point in time that you left in the previous shot. for example, in our video there is a close-up shot of Character two opening the door, then the next cut is of character two walking into the bathroom. the shot is important to continue the flow of the scenes.

A short/reverse shot is when one character is shown looking at another character and then the other character is shown looking "back" at the first character. Since the characters are shown facing in opposite directions, this technique is used when filming an conversation.

I think our group did succeed in demonstrating the basic rules and continuity editing. However, at the start of the scene you can here the background noise created by the dolly used for filming and also background noises from the classrooms. If we had longer editing, we should of softened the background noising or made a soundtrack to cover the fault, this makes our video look weak and unprofessional at the start of the video.
Overall our group did succeed in the basic rule but with more time given we could of made it look more professional. the purpose of continuity editing is to give the effect of smoothness to the filming.