Organising Filming Session

Myself and Emily have be talking about the next and final piece of filming. Hopefully we are going to film on Saturday (30/1/11) unless we the actors are unavailable at that particular time. The way in which we were going to do this was to use a room which Emily's step-dad owns which sounds exactly what we want as we need a room which can represent a interrogation room. If we are unable to use this particular room then we are going to compromise and change our location to having the interview at the femme fatale's home. That means that we may have to film on a further date. As we know, this does change our first pitch we we wanted to keep on however, due to unforeseen problems we have had to change our pitch slightly.

Due to problems in our previous filming, we are going to have to re-film a certain scene and also having to change the characters because we are unable to get the actors which we wanted.

Our target for this time next week will be that we have filmed all of our production and now starting to edit the material we will have and be able to burn it to a disk.

Second Part of filming

Last Saturday (22/1/11) we added more of our filming so we could progress more onto our project. This particular scene we had to introduce the clumsy detective to the femme fatale. We kept very much to what we wanted to do which was just use the camera view like it was the characters eyesight. 

The filming itself, was very good because we wanted to have a very muggy day and while we were filming, it did start to rain. As well as that, the sky was completely white so it helped us with the effect of a strong contrast between the clumsy detective and the background (the sky).

After we had finished the filming, we then looked into the editing process which helped us to see if/sort out the problems which we may have. This helped because there were a couple of problems which had come to our attention was that the first take which we did only took the last couple of seconds so it didn't catch the first piece of dialogue. We were able to change it round so that we only had a screen shot of the clumsy detective character and then started the dialogue with our femme fatale. Also, one of the other problems was that we had a very obvious continuity error which was we ended up catching a dog walker over the woods in where we filmed.  

Researching into Previous Years.

After looking into some research and researching into previous students blogs, it can help me to see what I can improve on within my blog. Looking into this research i looked into two students blogs, one being a AS student and the other as a A2 student.

Whitney Mckernan's blog - This students blog is their AS media production. I would primarily like to have my blog end up in this amount of detail and looks into a wide range of detail into how our production and research ends up as. She particularly looks into the location shots and showing the main production in still photographs which shows she is putting a lot of detail into how her production is going to end up. All in all, she keeps to a consistent amount of detail into all of her blog posts.
Whitney's blog - www.whitneymckernan.blogspot.com

Ryan Carman's blog - As this blog is to a A2 level, it looks into more of external technology for example, using a website 'Prezi' to express his annotations into a more interactive way. The way in how i researched this is that he shows his proof by putting URL's for each blog is need be. In his blogs, they are very brief however, there are many blog posts to benefit from it. Just like in my research on Whitney's blog, he does look into many different ways to advertise and showing is research into the whole of the production. if i could only say one thing which he could have improved on is he could have written more into each of the posts to show he has a full understanding of what he was doing.
Ryan's blog - www.ryancarmana2.blogspot.com

Characters

With our characters, we have/are using four people. This is ranging from three males and two females. Firstly, Ella Spencer is playing our main femme fatale in which she murders our male victim who is played by Dean Baxter. The two main characters in our first scene are Ben Cawdron and Ella Spencer but we wanted to make it a little bit more mysterious by not showing Ella's face and only showing her hands, to enhance tension.   

In our second scene, in where the audience meets our two main heroes which are our two detectives who are investigating who murdered our male character. Our two detectives are being played by one young male and one middle aged male. The first detective is our clumsy detective who shows himself as slow and almost like a trainee to the job in which he is working. He almost looks at is colleague for inspiration and a role model. The clumsy hero is played by Chris Dack who is also my father so I know what his acting abilities are already like. Our little twist on this character is because, even though that he is looked on as clumsy, he knows who the murder was when the two detective interigate the femme fatale in her home and this is shown from the looks given from one character to another. He keeps it to himself and sees how everything will be planned out. The second detective is your normal stereotypical detective who everybody aspires to. Keeping with that stereotypical view, this is why we used Dean Baxter because of his high performance skills and his strong dominance apperance.


In our last scene, in where we are filming in the a small room which we can use as a interrogation room, we are using three our of our four characters, these characters are our two detectives who are showing a very high status to everybody else in the room. Our final character is our main femme fatale who actually murdered the victim. As i said earlier on in this particular post, the clumsy detective (played by Chris Dack) knows that the femme fatale they are now interviewing is the murderer but 'hero-like' detective still becomes unclear of who it is as there is evidence at the scene of the crime where there could be a threat to other people being involved. 

TASK 6 - The Two Step Flow - Part 1

In my opinion, the whole of the media industry is automatically influenced by how other people react to different programmes etc. around you. Although, i can see how other people can think differently to what my opinion is. For example, they might think that they keep to what they have previously watched or listened to and 'stick to what they know' because it is something that they are particularly interested in.

The two step flow is the idea that what ever our experiences of the media we will be likely to discuss it with others and if we respect their opinion then the chances are that we will be more likely to be affected by it. Normally, people of our stereotypical age group are influenced by roughly the same thing. for example, Skins and Misfits to name but a few. People who don't watch these examples of programmes are influenced by their friends to watch it because it can be something to make about and almost bring out a heated discussion about the situations in the programme. This can also happen in different kinds of media in the media industry.

Opinion leaders are pretty much, self-explanatory. They can influence the way that the public see the media. for example, if they watch a programme etc and have a very strong opinion about that certain programme then they are more likely to influence the people around them. This may be another way of how the public is put into stereotypical groups fort what they watch/listen to. Opinion leaders work in so many other things outside of the media industry. For example, sports or fashion.

Marking Criteria for the Evaluation

 Candidates will evaluate their work electronically. This MUST contain an element of audience feedback and may be either integrated with the presentation of the research and planning material or may be presented separately. Where candidates have worked in a group, the evaluation may be presented individually or collectively but the teacher must allocate a mark according the contribution/level of understanding demonstrated by the individual candidate.

Level 3 12–15 marks

Proficient understanding of issues around audience, institution, technology, representation, forms and conventions in relation to production.
Proficient ability to refer to the choices made and outcomes.
Proficient understanding of their development from preliminary to full task.
Proficient ability to communicate.
Proficient skill in the use of digital technology or ICT in the evaluation

Level 4 16–20 marks

Excellent understanding of issues around audience, institution, technology, representation, forms and conventions in relation to production.
Excellent ability to refer to the choices made and outcomes.
Excellent understanding of their development from preliminary to full task.
Excellent ability to communicate.
Excellent skill in the use of digital technology or ICT in the evaluation

　

Marking Criteria for the presentation of the research and planning

Level 3 12–15 marks

There is proficient research into similar products and a potential target audience.
There is proficient organisation of actors, locations, costumes or props.
There is proficient work on shotlists, layouts, drafting, scripting or storyboarding.
There is a good level of care in the presentation of the research and planning
Time management is good.
　

Level 4 16–20 marks

There is excellent research into similar products and a potential target audience.
There is excellent organisation of actors, locations, costumes or props.
There is excellent work on shotlists, layouts, drafting, scripting or storyboarding.
There is an excellent level of care in the presentation of the research and planning
Time management is excellent.

Research and Planning may be presented in electronic format, but can take the form of a folder or scrapbook at this level. Where candidates have worked as a group, this may be presented collectively, but teachers are asked to differentiate the contributions of individuals within the group in arriving at a mark and justifying individual marks on the assessment sheet. As part of the moderation sample, the moderator will expect to see research/planning evidence.

Marking Criteria for Video

There is evidence of excellence in the creative use of most of the following technical skills:

-holding a shot steady, where appropriate; framing a shot, including and excluding elements as appropriate; using a variety of shot distances as appropriate; shooting material appropriate to the task set;
-selecting mise-en-scène including colour, figure, lighting, objects and setting; - on this, we do understand this but we still didnt feel like we had the perefct light, for example, where we had to film in the dark, the lighting effected it too much and how to improvise on how we were going to use light, aka, phones.
- editing so that meaning is apparent to the viewer; using varied shot transitions and other effects selectively and appropriately for the task set; - we havent been able to do our editing yet as we havent been able to finish off our filming so we will be able to show our skills on editing when all the filming has been done.
using sound with images and editing appropriately for the task set;
using titles appropriately. © - Again, we havent edited yet.  

There is evidence of proficiency in the creative use of many of the following technical skills:

 holding a shot steady, where appropriate;
framing a shot, including and excluding elements as appropriate;
using a variety of shot distances as appropriate; shooting material appropriate to the task set; selecting mise-en-scène including colour, figure, lighting, objects and setting; editing so that meaning is apparent to the viewer; using varied shot transitions and other effects selectively and appropriately for the task set; using sound with images and editing appropriately for the task set; using titles appropriately.

- The text whihc is in green is where we have done and we fully understand.

- The orange is to show that we are showing the first of understanding and are being brought in to our project now and should end up fully understanding what we are going to do.

- Red is show that we havent done any of those into our project yet but, as i said before, by the end of this project we will have done and understood the rest of these targets.

This is where i would like to target to at the end of the project. This is looking at the grade of A/B.

Level 4 48–60 marks

First Stages of Filming

A couple of days ago, we organised an evening in which we would get the first scene done so we can edit and progress onto the next scene, for the day we filmed it, (30^th December 2010) it was the perfect weather which we wanted for that scene which was it was extremely foggy and had a sense of mystery. We decided on filming our main murder scene in Mousehold Woods. Unfortunately, with the tress and branches and that we wanted to film it at night, we found it harder to film. So, we improvised and used torches from our phones to have a strong and sinister way of lighting our start to our film noir opening title sequence.

To what we had discussed about our first pitch, we slightly changed it to have an extra character that sees the murder and is also looked on as another suspect of the crime which brings more of a twist into the storyline.

We have kept to simple point of view shots, head over the shoulder shot and shot reverse shot. The reason why is to keep to the main conventions for a film noir but slightly breaking them in smaller, less obvious ways, for example, the femme fatal is the murderer and is killing a man.

More of the filming will take place but as the other two scenes are in the daylight and in a enclosed room, so we have no restriction on where and when the next parts can be filmed. This will mean that me and Emily have to organise what still need to be done and times and places for where of the rest of the filming will be talking place.