Storybored for final piece...

as media londons burning

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

The product we have created challenges forms and conventions in three ways:

Narrative and flow- The conventional film will usually fit into the ‘hero’s journey’ Monomyth theory. This theory suggests that there is a circular plan which fits into conventional films.  It suggests that all films start with a hero being called on an adventure and along the way he is given help or is shown the way by a mentor. This slowly moves on to a revelation by the hero, this could be a death or rebirth which affects the hero. He carries on with the journey and is transformed in some way which leads to an atonement. This is the end of the journey as the hero returns. This journey can be seen to fit in with the majority of films, but does not fit in with our film. The piece I have created does not follow the Monomyth theory, or conventional story lines. Studying this theory and how this might tie a in with a real life drama, we have found that there is no place for this in our film. The reason for this is because the ‘Hero’s journey’ does not happen in real life. Our film shows the desperate need for money and power, and with this there is no fairy tale ending.

Camera work- the camera angles we have chosen break the conventional rules. We have tried our best to come up with creative shots that show the same quality as any other film. With this we had to be careful not to lose connection with our audience. We wanted them to see everything that was happening in the film but see it in a different way. I believe strongly in this. Just a little change in a camera angle or a change in the way the camera moves, which breaks with conventional filming can separate your film from the thousands of others watched by the audience. I also believe it can strongly reflect on the environment that we were trying to get across. A high angled tracking shot on a plastic bag in the wind (for example) will connect in the audience mind and they will instantly know they are looking at an urban setting. We found it hard to keep to our beliefs and move away from conventional camera work, we dipped back into them at certain points, but I am happy with the work and feel that we have moved away from convention.

Location- Our location is unique in the sense that our film is based on events happening in London but for filming it’s not in London. This may seem like an odd point to make but I believe it is crucial for an underlining point about urban environments. This point is that all ubran places look the same, not only is this good for us because it allows us to film close by, but it also reflects on the life style people live in. The dull lives these people live can be shown all round England. Our film shows this due to the environment we film in. It says that this life style we show is not just happening in London but can be shown all around England. This is not a direct message, but more of an hidden statement. Our film is a call out to not living this life style, it shows the truth in a 1^st world country, and 1^st class poverty. 

 

How does your media product represent particular social groups? 

The product we have created reflects a stereotypical image about youths today, which suggests they are, rude and commit crimes. Picking out the youths and saying they belong to this social group of ‘gangsters’ I believe is wrong. We need to back this up with why they are like this. Our product shows us why in today’s society we have created a generation of these youths and the answer to this question is poverty in the UK.  This is 1^st world poverty, and is happening all round us, it’s just hard to see because we have another stereotypical view about what poverty is. My example of first world poverty would be when a family have to make a choice between high quality food or heating in their house.  This sort of life style does not suit the average family now, as a nation we have become more greed. Who can blame us? The media spoon feeds us their idea of living, and this is a big house with cars and this TV and that radio. Being exposed to this media has harmed us and leads us to believe this is the way we should be living our lives. We as a nation are fighting to live this life style and what do we need for this to happen? Money. Youths are exposed to this media more than anyone, for they have been born into the age of smart phones and the internet, so naturally (like all of us) are in this fight to gain as much money as they can. How is this done? Crime, drugs and violence. The product we have created shows all of these different factors 1^st world poverty, media influence and modern day youths.  So to answer the question, yes we do show social groups, but we explain why they act like this. This is no revolution in film, real life dramas have been doing this for years, they have shown social groups but not why they are like this.

 

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

PictureHouse- Picturehouse cinemas offer a wide range of small budget, indie films which don’t reach box offices and do not get shown in big corporate cinemas (e.g Odeon). Picturehouse have small cinemas up and down the country, ranging from London to York.  With very little advertising they rely on loyal customers and the quality of the films they show. Picturehouse offer small roomed cinemas with little seating (fewer than ten seats). This provides the best sound for the audience and more comfort, due to the lack of people in the room. PictureHouse also offer memberships for all the loyal customers, so they can rely on them coming back. Their membership scheme ties in very strongly with an 16 to 25 student audience, with the ‘slackers’ membership card, which allows these students to go and see specific films for free. Picturehouse cinemas would be the perfect place to show our film because of these 3 things: 

Style –The films they show would fit in with our style of film, low budget, individual and does not follow main stream films.  They choose edgey and controversial films, this is the same with what our film offers. Our film reflects modern ideas on resent events which affect our nation.This is what Picturehouse want. 

Audience- The audience that Picturehouse cinemas target (16 to 30) is same the audience in which we have targeted with our films. If shown in Picturehouses across England, it would be watched by the people who understand good film and will understand some of the issues raised in the film. I do not believe we would get the same audience awareness if we were to show this in a mainstream corporate cinema.   

 Advertisement-   The slackers club scheme would fit in perfectly with our film as it would bring the attention to our film which we need but cant because lack of money fund the advertisement. This awareness would create the best advertisement in the world, this is word of mouth.  If our product was to fit into Picturehouse scheme, it could be a Slacker’s club free film which would mean more people coming to see it because it would be for no cost at all. This would also create TV advertiment because of Picturehouse slackers club has a strong link with the channel E4 which shows the trailer of slackers club free film of the mouth, which would be our film.

Microwave- Microwave is a small independent company which offers loans and supports low budget films. It offers advice on where to go for sales agents for distribution and another of other things.  Microwave films has supported films like ‘ill Manors’ which follows the same time era and style as our film.  Mircowave would be a perfect company to look at for our film to start up, this is due to the location. Mircrowave is based in London, this would make it easy for them to come and see us and for us to go and see them.  They could offer ideas in which parts of London would be suitable to film in. They also offer small loans which would help our film, as we have little equipment or props. I think the strongest thing they would offer is their advisement, they have contacts which would target our audience and make awareness of our film through this audience.

Who would be the audience for your media product? 

Target audience-With our film we needed to target an audience which would be influenced by the film and understand it on the same level as us. But with careful consideration to the age certificate on our film, which would be 18 due to the violence in the film. I would age our target audience between 15 to 25 years old. Also I would say that the target audience would be a mostly working class, for this is the people we show in our film and this audience we want to touch with are film too. My secondary target audience would be between 13 to 30 years old and from working class to middle class. Giving a wider secondary audience for is film.

Target audience location and why-My film is based on the people in London and about this event affecting them, so this is where I will target my audience’s location. From people who have been involved in the riots to the people whose whole lives were affected in the riots. My film will act as a mirror to the youths in London who were involved in this riot, giving them the chance to see how and why they acted like this, I want this film to be lesson to these youths involved in the riot. For the peoples whose live were effect, I want this to be a reminder of what they went through at this time, all the emotions they felt, like fear, sadness and pain. I want to come back to them when watching this film. This may seem harsh, but I believe that when coming away from a film you should feel emotions, for films are there to spark emotions. More than this, the events that happened to these people still go on across the world, crime and pain is everywhere. This film is a wakeup call to our ‘western minds’ so we can consider the worldwide situation.

 How did you attract/address your audience?

The slackers club scheme would fit in perfectly with our film as it would bring the attention to our film which we need but cant because lack of money fund the advertisement. This awareness would create the best advertisement in the world, this is word of mouth.  If our product was to fit into Picturehouse scheme, it could be a Slacker’s club free film which would mean more people coming to see it because it would be for no cost at all. This would also create TV advertiment because of Picturehouse slackers club has a strong link with the channel E4 which shows the trailer of slackers club free film of the mouth, which would be our film

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Looking back on creating my piece I think there is a number of different things I could have concerning technology at the time. One of the main things was the quality of the technology we had. I believe this could of been improved greatly, as we had a problem when filming on set, this was the tripod. The tripod was broken in a certain place, meaning it would slant over if not held correctly. Looking back at our sequence, this is clear to see. But i believe a positive has come out of it! I slanted effect gives the films a slight change in camera work. This automatically separates it from most films in the same genre. The camera we used was perfect for film our piece, form it was small but with good quality. It needed to be small for we were going to a number of different places to film and it would have made these trips harder with a bigger and heavier camera to carry around. The small camera allows us to get into places to film which a bigger camera could not. This is shown in one do the last scenes when the boy is walking down the path. The camera is down very low between two railings, a bigger camera could not do this.

 

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

The step between preliminary to the final task is a big one, but I feel it is necessary to have. It allows the group of individuates to experience using a camera, props and location for the first time. For me and my group I think it helped understand the sense of time it takes to create a media product, even if it is just small like a preliminary. We found out that when filming for our task that our time scales were wrong, we believed that it would and could be filmed in 2 hours, when in reality (and found out) that really it took a whole today to film this short piece. There were a number of other problems we faced whiled creating this preliminary task, one of them was the weather. We had to keep the same looking weather for the film or it would look wrong, but we found this hard as we did not film it all in the same day. We found it difficult to find the right day for the weather in our already filmed bit of task. This was no one’s fault and is a common problem in the filming world.

Clothing

Clothing is important to any film being made, but to me I believe it plays another key part into understanding the characters we are looking at. This is a list of clothing to understand the character:

Dark high top shoes- This type of shoe is was used to show the audience what type of boy he is. Dark high shoes can be seen to be similar to those once used in the army. This connection has been placed by me to show the hardness and dangerous nature the boy portrays.

 

 

Large Dark hood- The hood allows him to cover his face and identity as he does not want people to see him for who he really is and what he has become, the hood helps him to do this and it also reflects his dark state of mind.

 

 

 

Red hat- only piece of bright clothing warn by the character, this does not show danger or love, but shows hope for the character. It shows that not all is lost with this child and that he can be saved from the life style he’s going into, a life of crime and violence.

 

Slow motion

Slow motion is used throughout the opening sequence. It gives the audience a sense of the time passing and what the character is feeling. On a simple level it allows the audience to take in what is happening in the opening titles and it allows them to have enough time to look at the titles and watch the sequence as well. I believe this factor alone gives it a very strong advantage, but this was not the only reason we used it, as it has a much deeper meaning to the film. Much like the director ‘Rian Johnson’ in the Breaking Bad drama we plan use colour to express the mood or feeling of the characters. Slow motion in our sequence is used to show how the character is feeling, this being, bored, dull and waiting. Not only does this reflect his emotion but shows how his life is. This young boy is bored of life, he is trapped in the dull loop and most of all he is waiting for something to happen. Among many other meanings to this film, this is one too, the youths as a whole are ‘over grown’ as it were, they expect more from life, which life does not offer. They look for excitement to bring new colour to their lives, this excitement comes from drugs, crime and a number of other negative things in the world. Just one little effect in our film (slow motion) has this whole other meaning and reflects why the youths of today behave as they do.

Reasons for no focus group

The reasons I would give for not having a focus group would be my confidence in the other two members of my group. I believe that the ideas we have come up with are strong enough to go without advice from other people. I also believe that the target audience could relate to our film and that I would not need their advice for this. The ideas we have come up with have been very similar to other real life dramas which had a wide target audience. To make sure that my group have a clear idea of what our target audience wanted from our film. I asked a few of my friends what they thought of the idea of the real life drama. The feedback was very positive and I felt this was enough advice from our target audience.

 

Narrative

 The narrative will be based around a young 16 to 18 year old boy who lives in London. Living with next to nothing, due to the family being on benefits, this has results in where he lives and the environment he has grown up in. Not knowing where or who to turn to, due to the stale lifestyle he lives, he mixes up with the wrong crowd. In the end this will be his downfall, and a young bright boy would mess up his life by introducing him to crime. This story line has been agreed between me and my other produces, As it is just an idea at the moment it might change when creating the piece.

Background story A young woman gets pregnant after a drunken night with a man. This sudden change in her life forces her to drop out of her course at university and pushes her to get a job as a cleaner. The small income that comes in from the cleaning job only allows her to rent a small apartment in South London. Once her son is born, she turns to drugs and alcohol because of the life she now lives and the life she could of had. 

As the boy grows up he has very little education due to his mum not paying for pre-school or nursery and skipping school with his friends. He watches his mum (on a daily basis) high or drunk. Little money comes into the family and the young boy turns to other means of getting money, crime.

Location

Thamesmead- With my two other produces we have decided a location, the ideal location will be Thamesmead. We have chosen this because we like the urban look of it and the fact that we have based our story line in London. The other reason we have chosen Thamesmead is because in our opening sequences we have looked at free running. The buildings and quiet environment of Thamesmead make it perfect for free running. Thamesmead is a perfect location, but with the reparation it has I would be concerned with the safety of me and my group. Filming in these locations can bring unwanted attention.

 

 

 

Bromley- Bromley would be my second choice location as I believe it still provides the urban look which is needed. It is in a less violent place and is closer to all of my groups homes. Bromley is a large place and will provide us with the necessary space to do our free running shots.

 

 

 

Tonbridge-Tonbridge is a good place to shoot our film, and still has an urban feel (not as much as Bromley or Thamesmead). It is even closer to my group’s homes than Bromley or Thamesmead. There is very little danger there. But I would say that the space needed for our free running would be good enough. However, having looked around although Tonbridge we have found little to no places suitable for our free running shots.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Target audience

With our film we need to target an audience which would be influenced by its content and understand it on the same level as us. I would suggest our target audience would be between 15 and 25 years old.  I would also add that the target audience would be mostly working class, for this is the people we show in the film and the audience we want to touch with our story. My secondary target audience would be between 13 to 30 years old and from a working class to middle class background giving a wider secondary audience for is film.  Our film does contain some violent scenes so there is a possibility that it will be given an 18 rated certificate.

Target audience location and why-My film is based on the people in London and about how the riots them. From people who have been involved in the rioting to the people whose whole lives were affected by the riots. My film will act as a mirror to the youths in London who were involved in the riots, giving them the chance to see how and why they acted like this. I want this film to be a lesson to the youths involved in the riot. For the people whose lives were affected, I want this to be a reminder of what they went through at this time, all the emotions they felt, like fear, sadness and pain, I want the memory to come back to them when watching this film. This may seem harsh, but I believe that when coming away from a film you should feel strong emotions. For films are there to spark emotions. More than this, the events that happened to these people still goes on across the world, crime and pain is everywhere. This film is a wakeup call to our ‘western minds’ so we can consider  a worldwide situation.

Font

For the titles I believe it is very important to get the right font, not only this but a font which will fit into the theme of film, below  are three fonts which I think could do the job:

Urban jungle- the urban jungle font is powerful and bold, its creative and fits in perfectly with our title opening sequence. The city skyline shown in the font matches the location in which we want to reflect in our film. The white, ugly spills match into our sequence too and they let the audience know that this film is not pure or clean but shows the truth. I think this font reflects the film perfectly.

 

Penta Gram’s Salemica- This font does not reflect the same genre as our film, but I feel it can be used because of how misleading it is. It does not give anything away, it does not tell the audience what this film will involve. The advantage of this would be that it goes with are opening sequence. Our sequence does not reveal anything about the strong line for the rest of the film.yes, it is clear to see what genre the film is, but it still gives little away. Much like this font.

 

  

Philly Sans- This font goes along with the theme of location and setting. It has an urban look about it, and I feel it shows the age of the character. It is a graffiti font, which fits in well with the genre. I would say this is least my favourite font, because I feel it will take the seriousness away from the film.

Event

Real life dramas are often affected by real life events, my group and I have decided to link ours to an event which has not been picked up on in the world of film, the 2011 London riots. Living close to London and watching it on TV at the age of 14, I saw the effect this had on families, communities and especially young people. I believe the London riots have shown one important thing, this is the western world ideology, which we think is perfect and should be the same around the world. This riot showed that even in a ‘western paradise’ there are still problems in the culture and we are not perfect and the riots showed this. I will be using the London riots as a platform to build a story line around a young boy. In my film I believe it is important to show this event, as I lived through the event and watched the outcome, but more than this I want to show how this event could change young males and females into animals. 

Style (Breaking Bad)

 Looking into styles I think I have picked out one which would tie in well with my narrative at the moment. This is the style of ‘Breaking Bad’ (director Vince Gilligan). His style involves using the colour of clothing and background to reflect to the audience the mood and feelings of the person on the scene.  For example, when main character in Breaking Bad is teaching, the colours are dull and dark but when he cooking crystal meth the colours brighten up with yellows, greens and reds. Not just the clothing the whole shot seems to become brighter. I would us he same style, when the boy is living in a stale environment and has little to do, this is the point where I would use  the dull colours. But, once he has mixed with the wrong crowed and enjoys it, the colours change and we use bright colours (yellows, reds and greens). I believe his would work well with the storyline, I’m not sure how to do this at the moment but I would look into editing and clothing. 

http://breakingbad.wikia.com/wiki/Color

Ideas

Location- location needs to look urban because it has to look similar to South London. Flats and industrial areas would be the ideal place to film. Even better than this would be London itself, then we would not have to change places, but could do all filming in one location. I would use close ups of rubbish, drugs and working class people to reinforce this point to my audience.

Character- Only one character is shown in the opening sequence, gender will be male (decided by group) Character would have to be young (16 year old ideally). The character will be easily lead and would conform to other groups. short hair to imitate hair of London youths. The right height is important, we want a medium height character (5.7 to 6 foot). Any other details are not important to our character. 

Clothing- the clothing that would be worn by the main character would follow the dress codes of South London youths in the 21st centre. This would be hoodies, tracksuits and hats. One of the points I will go on to say in my blog is about how clothing will represent the thoughts and feelings of the character who is wearing the clothes. A good example of this effect would be Breaking Bad, I will write about how this works later on in my blog.

 

Real life drama opening sequence studied  

Ill Manors

Ill Manors opening sequence starts out with a close up of young man, this quickly moves onto an over the shoulder shot of him watching TV. After this slow start to an opening an narrator (plan B) starts to talk. Establishing shot is used to let the audience know where the film is set. Rap music starts, held image of town is on camera, were we can see the whole town moving around. Quickly moves onto a number of different characters in the film. Still spend up they get on with their very day life, which involves drugs, prostitution and violence. This sped up opening sequence allows the audience to get to know very quickly who the characters are in the film, it also allows them to see what the film is about. Basic font used for names, but goes along with urban and industrial film.

For our opening sequence I would use some of these ideas. I believe the speeded up effect would allow our audience to quickly relate to our character and would allow them to see quickly what he would get up to on a normal day. I believe it is very important to establish the genre of the film and to let the audience know what the film involves. I also feel that the font used would fit in well with our opening sequence, as it keeps the ‘South London’ feel to it, and does not have any other look than simple and basic. Ill Manors does this very well, I think it would be key to take some of the ideas used in this and add it to our opening sequence. 

 

 

This Is England

Opening sequence is short clips of old snippets of the news in the 1970s, It shows riot scenes, it shows protested scenes and other different clips from the news. All the way from the beginning there is an upbeat reggae song. The song has been placed over clips which show sad or even shocking scenes. The reason for this is to show the view of the characters in the film and what they thought of the events happening. It shows that the characters were happy to be involved in the riots and protests and that they believed they were a good thing. The other point the title sequence tries to get across is the staleness of the time period this film was set in. Even the architecture was dull at this time and the opening sequence also shows this.

There is not much to get from this opening sequence, because it is impossible to us news clips of any event because of copyright (even though I would have liked to). But i have had a few ideas from this opening sequence. The first would be the music and how this would change the mood of what is being watched. Almost like an oxymoron, in which sad or disturbing events are being shown on screen but the music being played has an upbeat feel. The other idea i got form this would be reflecting a boring life style or place by what is being shown on screen. This could be done by including tracking shots or mid shots of doll urban places e.g. flats and other buildings. These are just ideas at the moment though. 

Research into real life drama

My research into this section of film has led me to find out that real life drama has had a boom in the last 5 years with world famous films, such directors as Shane Meadows with ‘This is England’ and Ben Drew (Plan B) with his hit film ‘Ill Manors’, real life drama reached its peak and is turning over billions. With this in mind, I want a piece of this action, and this research has just strengthened my thoughts on making a real life drama. This blog has made me dig deeper into real life dramas and I have come out with the some of the best is this genre:

 Ill Manors

Ill Manors comes completely from Ben Drews mind, and started out from a rap video filmed in one night with no budget. This rap video was called ‘Bizness woman’. The rap video was a hit, it was shown on TV and people became more and more interested in it. Ben Drew had seen ‘Bizness Woman’ become a success and decided to expand on it to make a short film called ‘Michelle’. The short film lasted 16 minutes and had a micro budget (very small). However, this too became a success and once again was shown on TV. The response Ben Drew had got from his ‘Michelle’ was good, but the audience were fascinated with the characters, so much so they wanted to find out the background story about each character in the short film, Ill manors was born. With a small budget of £100,000 Ben Drew created a film which showed the lives of the characters he had created and more importantly why they did these things. The film was a huge success. Ill Manors turned over £453,570 at the box office, in the UK alone. It also went on to win ‘Coup de Coeur’ for director and Production Company and ‘Technicolor Award’ for best Cinematography.

  

This is England

The story about a troubled boy growing up in England set in 1983. He comes across a few skinheads on his way home from school, after a fight. They become his new best friends,even like family. The story is based on the experiences of director Shane Meadows. The Budget for the film was £1,500,000 (estimated), The gross profit in America was $327,919 alone. This was a massive profit and very unexpected. It went on to win awards such as BAFTA Awards 2008, Bangkok International Film Festival 2007, British Independent Film Awards 2006 and Empire Awards UK 2008 and many more. The film has a strong reputation in the British film drama genre, also it has brought many actors like Joseph Gilgun (Misfits star) and Jack O’connell (Skins star) into the spot light of other directors and now they have become world famous.  The Link below will show all awards won:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0480025/awards

 

Quadrophenia

A story based on a boy called Jimmy, who hates the life he is trapped in and finds the only way to escape is to be a mod and live the lifestyle of one. He sees this as the dream. He slowly finds out that the mod life is not all as it seems. The film was written as a film play and was finally produced by the director Franc Roddam (an unknown director at this point). This film is seen as the birth of real life dramas, where it took a turn and was really taken in as a well known genre. Information was hard obtain about the films profit, but in Sweden alone it made a gross profit of over £1.5 million, this should give you an idea of the overall amount made. No awards were won by the film, but it is seen as one of the great British dramas and will go down in history.

What film genres should I do?

I believe it is important to choose a film genre based on the films you like, it is important to enjoy the work you are doing. On this basis, I will be looking at the films I have enjoyed and what genre they fall into. One of my top films in ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’ and I have recently seen the famous Clint Eastwood film ‘Unforgiven’, these two fit in with western film genre. But due to the technology, area and clothing available to me I believe this would be too hard to create and if created would not be up to my high standards. But, there is a different angle to come from this would be a modern western film, this could be new and original, but I still think it has the same risks and could go wrong. So western is off the list.  The second genre I have enjoyed is real life drama, films like ‘This is England’ and ‘Away Days’. I like the camera angles used, sounds used and I believe that me and my group could create a real life drama that would look good and be up to my high standards. I believe I would enjoy this and be able to come out with a powerful image. So real life drama it is!