Institution (Distribution)

Myself and my partner believe that the most suitable place for our production to be is in a local art house or picture house cinema, because they tend to distribute films that are less contorversial and do not follow normal conventions, in which our production does not. Our production takes an abstract and artistic turn and approach and so we believe it will be best suited within that setting. Our production could for example be distributed by Working Title Films 2, shown in cinemas such as The Ritzy or Clapham Picture house.

Shooting Script

Shots	Shot description	Audio or dialogue?
1	CU- Close up of first character role	Continual song throughout (no dialogue)
2	CU-Close up of second character role	"
3	CU-Close up of third character role	"
4	MS-Mid shot of first character role	"
5	MS-Mid shot of second character role	"
6	MS-Mid shot of third character role	"
7	LA-Low Angle of first character role	"
8	LA-Low Angle of second character role	"
9	LA-Low Angle of first character role	"
10	ECU-Extreme Close Up of first characters facial expression	"
11	CU-Close up of the laptop that the 'hoody' is holding	"
12	CU-Close up of the screen flashing significant statistics and information about youth crime	"
13	LS-Long shot of the character standing without the laptop	"
14	OVS-Over the shoulder shot of the character then doing graffiti behind them	"
15	MS-Mid shot of the character turning to establish the second character role standing with the laptop	"
16	CU- close up of the character applying makeup	"
17	MS- Mid shot of the laptop flashing in and out of the characters hands.	"
18	LS- Low angle shot of the character feeling smaller	"
19	MS- Mid shot of the character with a magazine in their hands (in front of face)	"
20	MS- Mid shot of the final character holding a Math book in their hands in front of their face	"
21	MS- Mid shot of the book being removed from face	"
23	LS- Long shot of the character working out sums and looking concentrated	"
24	HA- High angle shot of the character touching face	"

Surreal

Surrealism was founded in 1924 by Andre Breton. Surrealism is a part of our genre for our production, it is a cultural movement. It touches upon an abstract, artistic and visual component and imagery from the subconscious mind. It creates art but not in the mind set and intention of being abstract or not following the normal convention. Surrealism complies with our short production because our film could be described as abstract as it does not follow normal conventions and story manners.

Progress

 

2nd representation of sterotype

For our second representation (Fashion) myself and my partner have produced a collage, cuttings from different fashion magazines such as Vogue to show that fashion is pressurised by the media and the need to look good is a constant factor which makes teenager girls and boys feel as though they need to always be the 'perfect person'. The collage will be used on our back drop whilst our character is standing in front of it. This is just to portray the idea across that we are talking about fashion, so that the audience is not confused or perplexed about the product.

The cuttings out included things like dieting food, skinny models, top end high street clothing and many more.

Below are our progress that myself and my partner have made towards our collage. Unfortunately we did not use this collage for our production.

25 word pitch

25 word pitch for 'Who Am I?'

Who am I? is a postmodern almost touching on a surreal five minute production, showing the problems entailing youth culture today, represented by one teenager. (25 words)

Character Profiles

Writing a character profile allowed us to know how to convey our production to our niche target audience. This task was challenging because we needed to explain the roles of the different identites. We have chose one character to depict three different identities: fashion, exam pressure and hoody. We needed someone who was available and reliable at the times available we were and the best candidate for this was my partner Kerry!

Location Shots & Lighting

My partner and myself took shots of our location. The reason why we picked this location is because it already includes lighting, back drop and it is an ideal location because it is easily accesible.

Story Board

Storyboards helps myself and my partner have a sense of what and how our story should turn out to be like. It is a visual and textual including pictures and story layout, so it is easier for us to understand and it is a walk through of our short film essentially. The story board has been completed, however in order to show that I am 'inotuch' with technology and to go that extra step further I am going to upload the storyboard onto my blog.

In addition to uploading our storyboard onto our blogs, my partner and myself are going to act out the storyboard, thinking outside of the box and going that extra step. Filming our storyboard would give us an idea of whether our idea can realistically work and be fixed. It is essentially like a practice run, allowing us to see our defaults and enabling us to additionally put in what we feel needs to be placed into our film.

Costume

I have researched into conventional clothing within the character roles we are using. This is valuable because in order to create a character which fits the stereotype, we know that it is important to use the right propps.

Character 1 (Hoody): This character needs to reflect the dominant stereotype within the youth. These types of people would conventionally wear a hooded jumper. And also wear trainers and baggy jeans. This is how we are going to dress the first character to emphasise the stereotype.

Character 2 (Fashion): This character will reflect the dominant problem that, predominantly teenage girls face. The problem that they have to fit to the changing fashion. And the pressure from models, size zero. Therefore this character will wear fashionable clothing, and makeup.

Character 3 (Exam pressure) This character will be dressed formaly and wear reading glasses to stress the importance of intelligence.

Target Audience

After composing our story board and poster, myself and Kerry have a great idea on who our target audience would be. As our short film is about the struggle of youth, finding their identity, teenagers are being portrayed as our main object therefore our target audience is evidently teenagers and young adults. To show we have done research into finding our target audience, we conducted research. Me and my partner carried out a survey of different target audiences and the results conveyed that young adults would suit our production best because the abstractness would be portrayed in a way they understand.


7-11 year old target audience

Conducting a survey towards 7-11 year olds, we found that for our short film, they were more interested in comedy rather than post modern, fiction and non fiction.





Conducting a survey towards 12-15 year olds, it was shown that they still like comedy and showed an interest in non fiction films.

Conducting a survey towards 16-18 years old the graph depicts an age that we will be targeting. The reason for this is because they would be most likely to  watch a non fiction and post modern film and understand the conventions. This graph confirms that our target audience is young adults and late teenagers. Having a non fiction film is good because we have a low budget to work with so having a post modern genre fits in well because it is abstract and does not need to be high budget.

Below shows a clip of one of our target audience. Kerry and I decided that people aged sixteen plus as they would most appreciate our film. As 'Who Am I?' is of a postmodern genre we felt as though people of the late teenage years would want to watch the film as it unconventional compared to other dramatic films currently on show.

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For example the clip below shows different short films that our target audience may watch, as it is exciting and holds a sense of suspicion!

Kerry and I feel as though this would appeal to our target audience, but because this sort of crime film is cliché and one way or another we know what will happen, so we decided to do something different but still attract our audience.We feel as though people of an 'indie' character will appreciate our product, however we are still trying to reach out to all teenagers.

An example of what background music we will be using is B.o.B featuring Hayley Williams from Paramore- Airplanes. We will use this music in the background of our short film because the instrumental beat, we believe goes hand in hand with our product.

An example of what Kerry and myself are trying to show is the idea of abstract. Being abstract will not limit our ideas and this is what the clip below illustrates. 

Our target audience will enjoy our five minute short film because they would like our video because it relates to the struggle teenagers are going through, finding their identity. It reaches out to young teenagers and young adults in the sense that a young person is depicting the struggles and quotes that they can relate too.

First Draft of Poster

After using different softwares such as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe InDesign and getting different pictures of different people. Myself and Kerry were able to compose our first draft of our poster. It was a very challenging but a fun experience because we found out how to use different applications as it is always a learning curve and we are able to find out different things even if you have used the software before.

Using the post modern conventions the head inside the laptop is abstract because there is two different people a male and female but their faces are going diagnol opposed to vertical and horizontal. As you can see we have used ideas from our pre production poster research.

Although we are using one person for our production we are going to continue using this poster because it represents different youth and how they are struggling for their identity. The different ethnic backgrounds shows that all people from different background struggles to find themselves and who they are.

Poster Pictures

Myself and Kerry experimented taking pictures for our poster with a professional camera. We used a still camera and took many photographs of different people and chose the best ones with the best quality. We took a plan photograph of a female holding a laptop, in front of her face so that the laptop was covering the view of her face. using Adobe Photoshop we cut the laptop screen so that we were able to put other pictures of people inside. This shows abstractness and shows conventions of post modernism.

We plan to put the picture behind the one with the laptop and add other parts of other peoples face to create a collage and abstract effect. We will being doing this task next. Below is what we have done so far.

 

Stage one                           Stage two                Stage three

Pre Production Poster

I took an interest to this poster because it is very unusual which conforms with our production. It is a style over substance which shows postmodernism which is also conforms to our convention. For our poster, we was thinking something along these lines because from all our post production research we felt this was the best poster and wanted to make something similar. Our short film will include a range of different characters from different ethnic backgrounds. This poster is very unique because it does not have writing or any information to show what the programme is about but the auidience are able to take a guess that it is about diverse culture.

This poster is also an interesting poster that we have also looked at whilst thinking of what our poster will be like because again it is the same as the first poster but shown in  a different way using different people.  

This poster touches on the postmodern genre to a certain extent, as it conveys an abstract poster. The fact that the whole style dominates over substance suggests that this will be similar to my poster because this is the look I want for my film and poster. The font is unique and the pictures are broken up and disfigured which makes the whole film more abstract and eye catching. The fact that the whole poster is black and white suggests that it touchs on the neo noire genre and the lack of colour is similar to the last poster. At first I was going to do a neo noir film genre because it was unique but now we have decided to do a post modern genre.

Film Treatment

'WHO AM I?'

Screen play by Ashleigh Inniss-During & Kerry King

Production company name: A2 media students presents a genre of: Non-Fiction/ Reality

Premise/Baseline: Featuring a range of different characters representing youth culture. They will be standing in one location with a blank canvas/ mise en scene behind them, they will be shot in stop motion/ movement photography. This production is based on style and abstractness, in which we will be following a postmodern convention. It will show characters who are holding a blank canvas with different statistics showing information of stereotypes and youth culture. The purpose of this film is to question youth cultures struggle for identity and originality and if they are pressured into sharing the same identity opposed to having their own individual one.
Scene 1: The first character is filmed in a mid shot, the character will then flash to another person and this will continue as a range of different teenage characters change in a fast motion to show a variety of representations. This reflects abstractness, their faces will show different expressions of confusion to show how they struggle to find identity. The different characters will be wearing different items, propps and clothings, to show where and how they fit into society and social norms. They will be holding papers, laptops and possible an IPAD with question marks and sad faces to emphasise their struggle.
Scene 2: In this scene we will identify the specific problems within youth culture, showing some stereotypes and problems showin in the media. The screen will appear and flash on and off, showing clips of the first character who will be very much involved in fashion. Fashion is being presented because there is so much representation of size zeros and being negatively represented in the media. The pressure of fashion can impact teenagers because they feel that this size is the right size to feel accepted. This character struggles to fit in with the developing change in fashion and pressure from size 0.It will then zoom into the canvas and show a clip of catwalks and fashionable culture, possibly from Britains next top model. It will be filmed in stop motion aswell so that the viewer can pay attention to detail shown in the models. It will be shown in a more edgey effect to show a range of different atmospheres.
 Scene 3: The next scene touches on another stereotype, which was recently a massive talk about subject within the media. The character will take 360 degrees turn to emphasise the postmodernism, and the canavas will flash to a 'hoody', this is to show what dominant stereotype is of youth culture. This will zoom into clips off of the BBC reporting youth crime. They will be holding a laptop in the area of their faces and their faces will be shown through the laptop screen to increase the abstractness. Hoodies emphasis youth culture of today because they are mostly assosciated with negative things such as knife crime, gun crime, theft etc. The impact of video games can also be included in this scene because video games can be an insight into why youths behave the way they do.
Scene 4: The third person will be representing those who are pressured by the increasing exam pressure and university figures rising. This person is oppresed and is portrayed with statistics about university availibity and A Level results. As the places at university are slowly decreasing the competiveness of the students are increasing to fight for a place at university. As A levels are becoming much harder the pressure to succeed is increasing. In this scene we will take an insight into how teenagers are coping.

Research

Research was not difficult because we are learning about Postmodernism in class as part of our Media exam. Instantly when we learnt the topic, my partner and myself knew that we wanted to have this as our theme because it was not a stereotypical convention. Not having a sterotypical convention is important to my partner and myself because we want to show the examiners something different.

Having some insight into our topic was relieving because it was so intriguing to learn more about it and what uses it had in society.  Postmodernism at first was hard to define because it is so abstract and this is one of the reasons for our choice of five minute film, because our film did not have to follow a particular convention. Finding a definition is hard because people have constructed their own meaning. But researching into Postmodernism, I found it can be related to the genre of art and literature.

Continuing to learn more about postmodernism we learned more and watched short clips demonstrating examples of postmodernism. This is were my partner and myself gained our inspiration!






Below I have looked at a four minute clip on what postmodernism is and it helped me to understand that postmodernism can not be defined and it is beyond our language barrior. We interpret postmodernism in a different way and it can be whatever you want it to be.

Another short clip that influenced our film is the one below because it is in stop motion. Stop motion is an animation technique to make a manipulated object appear to move on its own. It is the process whereby a combination of different individually captured images makes a sequenced film, if played as a consistent and continuous sequence. Stop motion was important to our film because this is how our film would look like at the end. For this research had to be conducted in order to know if our film would be realistic. 

Movement photography is important to our film because it adds a hint and sense of postmodernism to our production. Movement photography will show abstractness and depict a sense of meaning to the film. To understand postmodernism to a certain degree, one must look at different artistic forums such as poems, still art, moving art etc. This allows us to see the conventions of postmodernism in a different way for it to become meaningful when we create our production piece and for it to be realistic.




These pictures below portrayed postmodernism because it uses different colours to depict something meaningful. As you can see the pictures are not clear at first but if you analyse it, you may get an idea of what it is portraying. As our production is following a postmodern convention, it is not obvious as to what we are trying to portray to our audience, however we will be adding in quotes and trying to make the storyline obvious to a certain extent in order to reduce confusion.

Pre Production Tasks

• Response to brief
• Treatment
• Moodboard
• Location search
• Storyboard
• Production scheduling
• Analysis of existing products
• Target audience research
• Market research

Introduction to A2 coursework

JULY 2010
During our lesson we were told that we would be starting our coursework for A2 year 13. The reason for starting before the half term is because during the Summer holidays we are able to familiarise ourself with the softwares such as Final Cut Pro. Also we are able to construct our ideas and form them into a solid plan, so when we come back from the holidays we can get straight into filming and proceed with our coursework.
For our coursework options we had to make a decisive decision between different media products including a documentary, music video or a short five minute film. In order for this product to be done realistically within the time scale, we would have to chose a partner that we knew was both reliable and creative in order to achieve the best possible grade.

This task would be completely different to the media coursework from last year because we are advancing our skills in software, working with cameras and working with a partner. Having a partner would test our ability to work within a team because our coursework from AS Year 12 was a magazine which was done independently.

The software was much different to last year because we had to learn the basic of something complex; Final Cut Pro. With this software, it was neccessary for us to learn this programme as we were alien to this. My inital reaction to this programme is that it is a challenging software to overcome but hopefully with more practice I will get the use of it!!!

Finding a partner was not difficult because I knew which product I wanted to create. The student I decided to work with was Kerry King because we both wanted to produce something unsterotypical, which is a Postmodern, five minute clip in stop motion(series of continous pictures)

RESPONSE TO BRIEF...

10. A short film in its entirety, lasting approximately five minutes, which may be live action or animated or a combination of both, together with two of the following three options:

• a poster for the film
• a radio trailer for the film
• a film magazine review page featuring the film

The brief above shows three compulsory features that needs to be included within coursework. My partner and myself chose to complete the poster and film magazine review for the film alongside the five minute short film. The poster and film magazine review was the most realistic task to do at hand because my partner and myself was familiar with the software because we used this software (Adobe InDesign & Adobe Photoshop) in our previous AS Coursework.

Some ideas have been put forward for the film and posters, but these ideas have not been confirmed as yet. We are researching into different postmodern films and ideas to help contribute to our film.