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

Activity 1

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

Title of the film picture. This is the Title of the film Picture which tells the audience what the name of the film is.

This picture of our title of our video it is done in a bubble styled font which is similar to that of a lot of other musicals films for example in the right picture above there’s the title picture of another musical film called Hairspray. This musical was seen as a very feminine and romantic film; also the music accompanied by this part of the film is almost a form of old pop music of that era. Another example of this would be High school musical which is a romantic pop music based musical. In this way we differ from other musical films due to our music at the title of our film being a form of soft rock. Also our title for our film at the beginning is and is on a horizontal line like writing on a word document. In the picture on the right the writing is still legible but it also is not totally on the line and different letters are at different angles. This interests the audience’s eyes as it seems slightly unorganised. For our video this could have made it more interesting by maybe having a effect on our title for example we could have had light bulbs inside the writing like in the film High School Musical, or to have neon lights effect on the title to attract the audience’s attention.

The setting/ location Picture.

This picture shows the setting of our video which was in our school grounds.

The setting for our film was based in my school where I do my A-levels. The setting of a school has been used before in many films of different genres, for example the film “High School musical” is based inside a high school in America. Or there is the film “School of Rock” which is again based in a school but it also is about rock which makes it more similar to our type of film that we have made compared to a film that is about pop music. Another difference that our setting has to a lot of films that are based in schools is that most are based in America due to the funding usually coming from American companies and are more stereotypical in films.

Costumes and Props picture.
This picture shows one of our scenes with a group of our actors playing a stereotypical character called a “chav” this group have clothes that they are typically seen in which reinforces the image of the stereotype. For our video we used many different costumes and props due to our movie being based on the stereotypical groups inside a school in the UK. This means that we put a lot of research time and effort to get the look of the characters right. This means that we try to get the Mise-En-Scene for our characters to conform to these specific stereotypical views. Also due to getting the characters costumes to fit their characters gives a sense of verisimilitude which allows them to be immersed into the clip more easily. Our costumes compared to that of other films that are in the same genre in my view are generally different due to the fact that we made our costumes and props over the top and almost too stereotypical. For example in our picture we have 3 guys all in hoodies and American style baseball caps, and all of them are looking ominous which you would not normally get in other films due to it being controversial and too stereotypical. The only exception I can think of is that of the “Chavs” in the film “Hot Fuzz” where they are depicted in the same light.

Camera work and Editing.
This picture shows group of the stereotypical group “Chavs”. This picture gives the impression that the “Chavs” are powerful and are a group not to be messed with. This is due to the fact that is filmed in a low angle shot which makes the audience feel subordinate and less powerful. At our school we have to work with the equipment that we are given to film and edit our videos. We had to improvise on some of the equipment that we used. For example we stuck a handheld camera to a wheelie chair and used it as a form of steady cam. This meant that we could get reasonably smooth shots of a scene at the same height. This allowed us to film our transition scenes with ease, as all we had to do was wheel this chair round the school and film as we went. For our transition scenes we speeded up footage from different locations, this gave the effect of going to different places at high speed. The effect that we used is called ellipsis which means the speeding up or slowing down of time. Using these transitions also gave the effect of continuity editing which made the video smoother to watch, as you would not jump from location to location.

Title font and style. Here we have a picture of the font and style of the writing that we used throughout our video. The font that we used is a form of bubble writing, this is commonly used in musicals as it is usually has a romantic theme or childish appeal, for our video we are trying to attract these sorts of people so we used this form of writing. The style of font is similar to that of “Hairspray” and “Highschool Musical”, which we based our film on. I have used the colour yellow for our font colour due to it being a bright attractive colour that will attract the audience’s eye.

Story and how the opening sets it up.
Our video is about a rock band in a school that may be about to be sabotaged by a group of Chavs. The old singer of the rock band (harry) is replaced by our main character (George) and now harry has made new friends with a group known as Chavs and plans to get his revenge on his old colleagues for kicking him out of the band. He will try to sabotage the bands performance at the battle of the bands competition. This sets the story up to be about a ride of old friends becoming enemies. You do not see this in many musical genre films but I thought it would make the story line seem more packed and exiting.

Genre and how the opening suggests that.
Our film is a musical based film. This is shown in the 2 minute opening by there being non-diagetic sound track that overlaps the footage, this music being a form of soft rock which can be associated with musicals. Also in the ending part of the video there is a scene of a rock band rehearsing for the battle of the bands concert and also that George is mixing on the turntables. In the scene after George is playing on the piano the last cord of the song in acoustic version, which shows the main focus of the film is to do with music and his band. Our video has also used some of the common stereotypes of musicals for instance the common one on having a handsome man playing the main male character which is stereotypical of most American musicals, with the exception of in Hairspray where they cast a more moderately sized main actress rather than that of a stick thin one. In our film we have the more hansom approach with our main character to attract a young audience that will like to have a person to idolise.

How the Characters are introduced.
In our video we introduce the characters by having a subtitle of the name of the stereotypical group name at the bottom of the screen. This allows the audience to quickly identify the type of person that character will be like. The only exception of this subtitling is George our main character due to him not being in a stereotypical group. Because we have not labelled each and every character that has appeared in our film it will make it easier for the audience to read just the stereotypical group and not be overwhelmed by a massive wave of subtitles. The reason why I have not subtitled George as a stereotypical group is due to him being in more than one scene so the audience should get the idea that he is the main character of the film.

Special effects and how they were used. For my film we had no shortage of special effects that I used to enhance the experience of the audience for example the use of the fading characters at the beginning of the film makes it appear that the film is slowly coming and will start any second. Also the use of the transition scenes was done with special effects by speeding up the scenes to give the effect of travelling really fast through the corridors. Also I have used an effect where there is a flash after the transition scenes to help cover any editing problems of then going into the next scene this then allows for continuity editing. I was going to include 4 pictures of the different stereotypes with different backgrounds, but I ran out of available time to use to put these pictures in, otherwise I would have gone over the available 2mins 5seconds max time limit.