Relating to the War time

Being able to relate to war time was tough, even though we are mere teenagers, we managed to use dominant ideologies of what it might have looked like in Britain.

We also used people such as the elderly to give us a better insight to what it was like, and what it looked like. We managed to see photographic evidence, get information from Lucy's grandma (Plays Dorothy in Timeless Love), and the vast amount of information was from the WII museum in London.

From the information we gathered, we also managed to use creative effects to add in on Final Cut Express. The Misé-en-Scene of the clothing was used to tell the audience that this is based in the WII time, and the black and white was to add on the effect and support alongside the clothing that is was based around WII time.

We had to avoid any contact, and photographic evidence of electrical devices in our filming, it was a NECESSITY to avoid it to give off the effect that it was based around the WII time, where there was hardly any electrical devices.

By Daniel Heighington

Prelim Film

BULLY, PRELIM FILM

Our prelim film was very successful, we managed to effectively show types of angles using the camera, our editing skills, and we nicely fitted in a music track that best relates to the video.

Our Prelim video is about a shy young girl, who has trouble growing up in her life. She gets rejected at school from "Friends", even relationships for her don't turn out good. Years after torture from others, she turns to drugs for comfort and for the alternative, but oblivious to her, it will end her life.

Post by Daniel Heighington

Film by Max Brawn, Daniel Fanthome, Lucy Hyner and Daniel Heighington

Inspiration

• For inspiration we went on a trip up to London, to the Imperial War Museum.
• On our journey we were overwhelmed by the interesting facts and objects that related to our chosen subject.
• This image, shows 8 individual pictures, all in black and white. Each and every one portrays it's own vast range of emotion, really engaging you to what is happening, such as evacuation and a baby with a gas mask on. Each image tells it's own wartime story, but with mystery behind it, wondering why? it is happening. This gave us the idea of adding a mystery effect in our film, we believe if it was able to show mystery through images, we could also show a great mystery through our film.

By Lucy Hyner

Focus Group Feedback

• There was a great amount of positive feed back which we were indeed very pleased with.
• They believed that the Black and White gave a added effect, alongside the clothing (Hats, war suit, jumper) - portraying a realistic viewing for the audience.
• 'Atmospheric' - reflecting back to the time, showing moving emotion, that is commonly shown in this genre.
• Romance, Period Drama, showing real life, romance and a historical side. Also mystery as it's left on a hangover.
• Family orientated film, as it's very loving. One member of the group stated the audience is 'Timeless' which relates to the name being 'Timeless Love'
• One member of the group, when discussing age and target audience, challenged the fact that it wasn't just for woman as it was a 'love story', and that it wasn't relevant bringing in a gender specific.
• There favourite scene was the separation scence, and would like to watch the rest of the film as it is such a mystery of why they separated?
• Liked - emotion, feel that kept in engrossed, photography, back to war - black and white, clear definition between past and presence.
• Disliked - More thought about costume, and costume work with the old lady and her grandson, more variation and focus on her face.

By Lucy Hyner

Evaluation Question 1 - Media Product

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

We have managed to develop the dominant stereotypes of the elderly into our opening, by watching trailers/openings of other films; we got our idea of conventions from “The Evening Sun” – to gain a better insight of the elderly, and we watched the opening of “Saving Private Ryan” – to gain a better insight of the war – this allowed us to understand typical conventions of the war, and of the elderly.

Near the beginning of the opening of our sequence, we put in a montage of clips, representing the elderly in present time, and showing their memories, suggesting how they think of their memories, that their memories are based around wartime. We chose these clips to engage our audience (The elderly), because it’s something they can relate to.

To avoid any slight confusion with our audience, the elderly, we wanted to stick with conventional ways of the elderly, to give off the right effect that this was a war- memory film. Having shown the elderly jumping around, on a sugar rush, being very hyper – this would just confuse our audience because the majority wouldn’t be able to relate to this.

Our genre to our opening has no action; just a war based time with memories of loved ones going to war. We tried to avoid the reality of action in our film because we thought it would be too much for our audience. Throughout our opening, you see not only elderly people; but also a teenager going to visit his grandma, and Dorothy and Edward in their 20-30s – this can relate to people that age today, to see how they may have acted differently back then. The music shows this film is calm, with memories from the past, proving it’s not the typical guns and violence movie.

Showing how the elderly back when they were in their 20’s may be conventions we have challenged because people that age today act differently than they people back in the war time did. Technology would be a huge convention to challenge because people back in the wartime didn’t have electronic devices, and nowadays, people do.

By Daniel Heighington

Evaluation Question 3- distribution companies

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

A film distributor may be a person or a company that is responsible for the release of a film for home viewing. They play a big role in the sales of films as they decide when and where the film is released. This is a important role as they also have to release advertising this helps to sell the film though means of a DVD or in a cinema. Some distribution company’s only deal with home video distribution this means that the only release such things as DVDs and blue ray disks

Distribution company’s that would distribute our product are: Amblin Entertainment, DreamWorks SKG, and Mark Gordon Productions. I think they would distribute our company because in the past they have distributed war time films, such as saving private Ryan. Which is based in the war time and I think tries to hit the same audience as what out film attempts to do. We tried to focus on the style of film that they used, watching it over a few times to get a variety of ideas and inspiration for our own film. All of the distributing company’s above would be suitable for our company however they are American based company’s, they would be suitable for the fact that they are good company’s and are able to hit and grab the correct audiences attention that we wish to hit. The companies mainly focus on main stream films.

With the companies named I would expect the company to advise on all kinds of media and new technologies to hit audiences. This means that I would expect them to advertise through a variety of ways, focusing on social websites, such as facebook and twitter, which a lot of people use, so it would therefore attract a high amount of audiences this would help to gain the biggest audience possible.

by Lucy Hyner

Evaluation Question #5 - The Audience

How did you attract/address your audience?

When doing our preliminary task I learnt many things as I got more confident with final cut express this meant I knew where the techniques where that I wanted to use, this helped by cutting down on the time that we where trying to find the correct techniques on the program meaning we could spend more time on it. I also learnt how to import and export music and sounds from garage bang this help our final project as we needed to make music for it, therefore being able to create music fast and effectively what fit the scene and mood. Though this we were able to start research on our final project though a questionnaire asking questions that where possible for us to do.
We found out many things from our questionnaire such as:
· We did ten questionnaires and out of ten 8 where male and 2 where females
· Out of ten questionnaires 3 of then came back as to not like our idea of doing a wartime project this shows that the majority of people will like the idea.
· 3 out of ten people think we should not do the project in all black and white this is a good result as our project has already been planned as to be both in colour and black and white due to realistic features
· In the questionnaire 5 out of ten people said that they would like to see love and loss of people.
We tailored out film to make it what our audience wanted by looking at the percentages of what people wanted and if it was a big percentage then we put that idea in the film. Such as from the findings a big percentage or a majority wanted it in part black and white or all black and white so we put half the footage in black and white. Half of the questionnaires also wanted love influenced in out film so we have made the film based on love and loss.
We have made our genre clear in the opening by including a black and white hue or colour correction over half of the footage this helps to give the audience the idea that the film is based when colour filming was not around, also we have made the props old looking so that the characters are wearing cloths that would be found in the war times.
In our opening sequence we have made it so the audience carried on watching by putting music that attracts people and kept a lot of lose ends open. Such as in the start you see a photo album. We left the question open as why is there one there and whose in it.
We asked people to watch our film to see what that thought of it most of our comments where positive about the editing and filming however we did have some negative so we tried to sort them things out to make it the best possible video.

By Daniel Fanthome

Evaluation Question 7 - Media Product

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

In the preliminary task my group and I used several editing techniques such as dissolves, colour correction, video echoing, cross cutting and changing the pace of the shot, some of the relevent techniques were also used in the making of the opening sequence. In the preliminary task i personally learned the amount of shots needed to create a successful piece of film, for example shots such as graphic matches and jump cuts make the piece of film allot more appealing to the audience. We used a variety of shots in the final task from differt angles/perspectives to make the piece seem relaxed at times but also intence at others. Weaknesses of the preliminary task include different colour corrections, too many editing techniques used in a simple shot, these issues were addressed in the final task as only relevent shots had excessive editing, also the preliminary task had a certain section that was clearly fake ( this was the section in which the bullied girl gets run over ) in the final task as a group we planned carefully and made sure that no filming casualties took place and all shots were as realistic as possible.

In order to make a brilliant media piece the shots are vital, but also the editing must be completed cautiously to ensure that no mistakes are clear. The ammount of filming is critical in the media industry, with research showing that most visual media requires ten times the ammount of footage than the final product itself to make sure the footage is good enougth for presentation. This was our only real mistake with filming as we only had around double the ammount of footage than required.

By Max Brawn.

Evaluation Question#6 - Learning about new technologies

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

The whole experience of filming and editing has been a thrill for all of us. I've managed to learn many key terms, experience filming with the camera, which later developed my use of different camera angles. Editing has got to be the best experience so far, just learning about changing the colour, lighting, cutting out scenes, placing scenes in different order, the speed... just using these effects has made our opening film more engaging to our audience, look better, and it related more to our story of our opening film. Just watching others use Final Cut express and listening to teachers about it has been so worth my time, I've learnt to much, and I tend to still learn more about it. Blogging was used for us to express whatwe had done during our filming. Jotting down simple notes helped us to remember what we had done, and what more we could do. Near the beginning of us filming, filming and editing was new to me, I found it hard to understand even the simplest meanings of camera angles, and what they were supposed to give. Our preliminary filming was a great success, it looked great in the end, but I found it hard to be a part of it because I struggled to understand the filming and the editing process. Instead I observed how people in my group used the camera angles and zoom in/out to give off effect, and watched the editing process happen - this allowed me to learn whatto do in time for our real filming.

When it came to making our final film, I took part in alot more than I did in our Prelim. I had my quota of filming, I took shots at many different angles, editing became easier and easier as Iused it more while editing our film scene by scene. Not only was it a great experience for me, but it can be used in a possibly future profesion as well.

Filming related to acting as well. When we filmed the part of the grandson (played by me) walking to his grandma's house to knock on the door, I had to replay my acting scene many times to get the effective angles we aimed for. Once the filming was transferred onto the editing process, we deleted parts of scenes to keep in tune of myself walking to the door, as well as the scene being viewed by different angles.

By Daniel Heighington

Evaluation Question#2 - Representing social groups

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

For the film opening, we, as a group try to represent the elderly, both women and men. A stereotype in our film opening representing the elderly, re-enforcing the stereotype that they're very old fashioned - the scene when the grandson visits his grandma; you notice that inside the house, it is quite old fashioned and not modern (Does not have electronic devices). In the scene of present time, you notice the misé-en-scene of the grandma's clothing is quite old fashioned, same goes for the house. Especially in the past memories, you see the clothing is different to today's modern clothes; we've edited the colour to black and white to give off the effect that it's in the past, and is old fashioned compared to today. W

e went with the typical, dominant ideology of the elderly, so that our audience can realise straight away that this is a film representing the elderly, and how they might act. It's also to draw in our audience (the elderly) to attract them to something that they can relate to.

Deciding the film was to be about war time, and memories based around that; it was reasonably easy to know our target audience, seeing as people that remember the days of war time today, are the elderly.
In the whole opening of the film, we see scenes from the montage of the elderly today, but memories of them when they were younger back in war time.
All of the above of what I've mentioned, we show the elderly in a conventional way, to avoid confusion for our audience. Elderly people, being the audience themselves, it would have been quite difficult to represent the elderly in an unconventional way, as they wouldn't be able to relate to that so much, as they wouldn't act quite differently other than what the dominant hegemonic ideology is of them. Old fashioned clothing, old fashioned house and accessories, and possibly being able to look frail is how we represented our audience in a conventional way.

Daniel Heighington

Evaluation question 4 - The Audience

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The film we are creating will be a family film that can be viewed by anybody that wishes to do so, this is shown instantly in the opening scene as each age group is represented ( young, old, middle aged ). Older people will appreciate the war aspect of the film as they may have live through or just after the war, they will encourage the younger members in their families to see the film as it may be considered educational. Although education is provided by the film it is still entertaining and family friendly, due to the manner in which it is filmed. The film is rated 12a, this is because children below 12 may be afraid of the scenes in which war takes place, so the viewing is at the parents consent. The target audience will be interested in war so it would be useful to advertise on historical documentary channels, towards the older audience of this film. Also it will be advertised on programmes such as daybreak, as both young and old people watch it whilst getting ready for work/school. The target audience will enjoy other historical dramas such as 10,00 BC and saving private Ryan as they both show struggles from different time periods. This film would advertised on cereal boxes that are multi grain, because many parents buy these cereals as they are healthy, so many parents and children will see this advertised daily. This audience will be interested in historical dramas for the acting and story lines as they appreciate this emotion instead of constant special effects. The audience will fall into the B-C section of the social demographic charts, as they are parents who have money and spare time to take their children to the cinema, E’s of the social demographic fall into the target audience as old age pensioners will enjoy a film that they can directly relate to, for this reason the film will be advertised during the advertisements of day time televisions such as the Jeremy Kyle show. The utopian theory offers the elder age group a look at their past, this will provide them with happiness. The utopian theory will provide those younger viewers entertainment from witnessing the emotional rollercoaster that their grandparents once had to endure first hand.

Written by Max Brawn