Evaluation 2

How does your film represent particular social groups?

In the opening to our film, their is them emphasis on the main character Amelia, we represent her to be a stereotypical teenage girl that would be portrayed in the media as a trouble makes, on drugs, drink having a child early. Yet we wanted to use this then change the attitude to the teens of today as we understand more than anyone.

We wanted to show how a lack of a proper childhood and guidance can lead teenagers to other things, yet it isn't all hopeless as although our character has some downsides and has to struggle to get on the right track.

So, really we wanted to use the stereotype of a modern day teenage girl and show people how with help people can change and do want to be more.

Naming our film

For our film we came up with the title 'Dead End' we chose this as we thought it would effectivley reflect how Amelia has come to a dead end and a stop in her life, as the voice over shows that she has had enough. We thought it could also leave some mystery to whether she gets past her troubles or not.

Research into film opening sequences & conventions.

To get an idea of the most effective opening sequences, we looked at a variety of genres, some films differ in the way that, most action and thriller genres that are Hollywood blockbusters, tend to grip their audience from the word go.  This could be with action shots, so an audience would be interested and effectivley want to watch the rest of the film.

We saw this in films like:

Blade 2: 

http://www.artofthetitle.com/2008/03/31/blade-ii/

In this opening, an audience is shown, the famous actor Wes Snipes, giving a voice over that explains, who he is and what is going on in the film, which works effectivley. The images are dark and violent representing what the films is about.

Research

British Drama:

British drama's are often associated with social realism and the 'hardness' of everyday life, and personal struggle. These type of films seem to appeal to the British audience, as the show, every day life... The not so glorified Britain.

After researching in to this genre through films like Fish Tank, we saw again the conventions such as a London council estate, showing the poorer Britain, with conflicts between people and families. Again the personal stuggle comes through, which we wanted to link to our own film.

Planning a shooting schedule

As we began to plan our production schedule, we worked round our eachothers other lessons and part-time jobs and so we came up with this plan and updated eachother via email and text:

February

• Our Tuesday lesson would be spent filming the motorway scene.
• Our Thursday lesson would be spent getting the park and pregnancy footage
• Our Thursday free would be to get some of the walking shots
• At the weekend we would film any other footage needed at that point

By doing this schedule, we would get the filming done quickly and would be able to focus on editing, then giving us more time to film any other footage if needed.

Sourcing people and resources

Picking the actress

As we have a few friends that do drama, we asked them if they'd like to act and take part in opening sequence for us, it came down to two people until we chose Amelia to help us, as we thought she 'looked the part' for the ideas that we had.
She was happy to work with us and was very copperative.


Also as in our opening sequence we wanted to put emphasis on how Amelia was alone and 'abandoned' we didn't have to enrole anyone else apart from the legs of a man which are shown at the end of the sequence, but the audience doesn't get to quite see his face.









Resources:

When filming our footoage we were given a digital camera and tripod, to then upload the footage to Adobe Premier to edit and put the effects needed on and also Adobe Photoshop to help us create our logo.

Allocating researching and production roles

After we'd picked our genre and pitched some ideas within our group, we then together started to further research into the conventional openings to our genre, the films we looked at were Trainspotting, London to Brighton and Fishtank.

Trainspotting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Naf_WiEb9Qs

London to Brighton: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KU3G7EEFnwQ

Fish Tank: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7BFZqQ4ruA

• We then planned who would have what roles in the group:
•  Raven would be the main person to film the footage, with help from the rest.
•  I would do the editing and help film with input from the others
•  Fliss would write the script and design logo's but we would help eachother too.

other ideas

Our other idea, was to be a cameo of the film Resvoir Dogs, we thought it could be effective having a group of teenage boys trying to be the 'gangster' type and showing themselves up along the way wearing the classic suits and shades, that are over sized and they'd getting mixed up in drugs and buisness they thought'd they'd be able to handle.

                                                        

Although after trying to script and get people together to do this pitch, it was clear that is wasn't possible as we couldn't find the right actors.

Deciding on genre, approach and pitch.

After exploring the different genres looked at, we decided that, to do the best that we could do, we couldn't pull of an action/horror film to our best ability as we don't have the budget or equipment to do so.

So, we decided to go with the Britsh Socialism genre and that our approach would be to go with the generic conventions, and so our idea is:

A story of a young girl that is overcome by the wrong crowd and finds herself alone, on drugs, and facing pregnancy and to focus on her ups and downs along the way of getting back on the right track.

After our research we thought it would be effective to use a voice over to begin with, whilst stood on a motorway...giving the impression of suicide. We wanted to use a post-modern approach, that being that the timeline in the story is disorted and starts and finishes with the same scene.

Our opening scene is going to show an audience how our character is alone and doesn't have any idea where she is going, showing that she is nervous through a variety of close-up shots. The opening will also intoduce you to the posibilty of her pregnancy through showing the test, and to keep an audience gripped and interested will end with our character answering the door to a persistant man.

Audience.

Research into films' target audience

Aiming your film to an audience is crucial to the film being successful, so each film produced, must have a target audience. This differs in the different types genres... Such as big action Hollywood blockbusters are aimed to an audience that prefer to enjoy the escapism of films, it's aimed at the widest of audience as they are there for everyone to enjoy. These films will also try to give the 'spectacle' to impress an audience, whether it be through new technology like, 3D, Blu Ray and use of special effects.                                                                                                

This can be seen in Avatar, as this film seemed to have an unlimited supply of money, it was able to create a 'buzz' for an audience with various marketing techniques. With this it's audience was offered to anyone.





Other genres such as Rom Coms (Romantic Comedy) are aimed to girls/women and couples. These types of films are there for a feel good effect, they obviously have to be enjoyed by only some people as, some one who enjoys Sci-Fi films, is not going to enjoy films like, Knight and Day or The Break Up. So the production wouldn't aim these films at that audience.

     

There are also the smaller productions, within smaller industries, such as the British industry, where films tend to deal with social problems and will be shown in the 'arty' circles of people, so the target audience is much smaller, but these films are enjoyed, as they seem real and meaningful, other than the superhero/spy/action films. Films within this genre are, Fish Tank, London to Brighton, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, The Full Monty.



  

Other genres explored.

Horror/Slasher Movies.

When exploring this genre, plots to the storylines have many simularities, such as the story focusing on a group of teen friends that find themselves in dangerous situations.

A film that highlights this would be Scream, this film fullfils the generic conventions of this genre, including:

slaher weapons

Undermine the security found in everyday locations - schools, homes, libuary

Masked killers

Teenage protagonists

Inefectial adults

Action taking place at night time

Lots of point of view shots

Use of string instruments for tense atmospheric scenes

Red herrings or false clues

Isolated locations

Research into film genres & generic conventions.

British Social Realism films:

British drama's are often associated with social realism and the 'hardness' of everyday life, and personal struggle. These type of films seem to appeal to the British audience, as the show, every day life... The not so glorified Britain.

After deciding to use this genre, we started to look at the independant British film companies, and their films, like films made by Film4, BBC.

Generic Conventions:

• Council estates
• Drugs
• Harsh reality
• Social problems
• Violence
• Personal struggle

An example of a film that includes all of these conventions, is, Trainspotting (1996) Directed by Danny Boyle. Which went on to win awards and was very successful.

Researching.

It the start of AS, after having our briefing on what our project was, we started to look at various film openings via http://www.artofthetitle.com/ from a whole variety of different film genres such as:

• Action
• Sci-Fi
• Romance
• Comedy
• Adventure
• Drama

       
                                        

After looking at films openings such as Transformers, Bourne Identity, P.s I Love You, GoodFellas and Trainspotting. It was clear that without a big budget we could not fullfill an action packed 2 mintue opening to a film. So we decided to a British Social Realism film, as it would appeal to an 'ordinary' British audience and have a better effect that a film aimed at a glitzy Hollywood audience.

Script for our voice over/phone conversation

Script:

Amelia:
              I can't rememeber the last time I felt happiness, everything is wrong recently.
              I have no reason to be, so why should I be here?
              Suppose sometiomes you just hit a brick wall, the end of the road.


This speech that we scripted for the voice over at the beginning of the opening sequence is to convey to an audience just how Amelia is feeling, (lost and hopeless). The rhetorical question would make an audience think, what is she going to do... if she doesn't think she should be here. That giving the impression of suicide, which is what we wanted before the sequence goes back in time.