EVALUATION PART: 8

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

At the beginning of my course, I was very anxious to do this project as it seemed like a lot to do and I was unsure how to do them; like working a camera for example or using final cut pro - it was all very new to me. Even though I was the main cinematographer I was unsure how to operate the camera properly. However thanks to this project I feel as though I can say I am extremely confident in using both of these forms of technology which is a skill I am proud to say I have.

I was also anxious to work as a three, me and Sophie were originally going to work in a pair considering we are close friends, until Julia wanted to join as she didn't want to work by herself. Eventhough our project is now finished I felt lack of communication was a common theme throughout the project with Julia. However, most problems we had got resolved and overall I think I have learned that I will be working by myself or with people I know are going to put in the same amount of effort next time.

• I have learned thanks to my research; the generic codes and conventions of a title sequence.
• That planning is very important when it comes to making a title sequence and filming
• Take into consideration  who you choose to work with
• How to operate and camera and how to use final cut pro

 I think that the title sequence me, Sophie and Julia made was very successful and conveyed everything we wanted it too very well. I can say that the process of making this project was stressful but educational and exciting.

EVALUATION: PART 7

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

Me and Sophie used a Canon DSLR 500D camera to film our title sequence that we borrowed from school, along with a tripod. We knew the title sequence was meant to be very stylized so we thought it'd be best to use a professional camera, as well as a tripod to stabilize most of the shots, the tripod was mainly used to help when we panned across the room and also some of the more wider shots of the location where we were and ones where all the girls are in front of the camera and no one was there to hold the camera. However, some of the shots we took the camera off of the tripod and had handheld it. This decision was made before  because we felt it looks more natural and its draws you in with the action and friendship of the girls as it is all POV shots. Considering our title sequence is very modern, the handheld feel to the title sequence helps with the modernness as it looks as though it is being recorded with a phone, this could appeal to our teenage audience. We did use our phones within production just because the shot with the balaclava's being thrown down on the bed was too dark so we used the torch on our phones to

help lighten up the shot.
Post production we used final cut pro to edit our footage, we decided that mainly Sophie and Julia should do the editing on final cut pro because they had previous experience using it so it would be easier and quicker to get it done. I got taught by them how to use it and it wasn't as hard or complicated as I thought and I learned quite quickly and had a go at using it.

EVALUATION: PART 6

How did you attract/address your audience?

Our target audience is 15-30 year olds and I think our media product (title sequence) did reach this audience. When focusing on 

how we were going to attract and address our audience we mainly wanted to include things they would recognise within the miss-en-scene such as the clothes, shoes, heels, perfume, alcohol etc - stuff

that would appeal to them. We included some designer brands such as DKNY and Prada (the opening shots of the bags), Gucci and Michael Kors (the second shot of the table where it pans down) We also used aspirational lifestyle as a way to attract our audience because as we can see in the title sequence the girls have a lot of money which is probably not only a dream teenagers have but older people as well. We included a shot of the new iPhone 6 which has

           just come out and showed on the screen an alarm for the girls to leave for Vegas.

When we had feedback  from our class our most successful thing was a choice of song seemed to be the thing people loved most and one of the  things we as a group worried about from the beginning was what song we was going to use and if it would fit in and luckily it did, our song choice was a good success. It sounds quite like a modern song and some people mistook it for exsiting artists which is a good thing. Our least successful thing was some people noticed that in our title sequence it looked as though we were messing around too much and laughing however the whole performance is meant to look natural and not put on and once saying this people understood the whole feel to it.

EVALUATION PART: 5

EVALUATION: PART 4

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

Action film is a film genre in which one or more heroes are thrust into a series of challenges that typically include physical feats, extended fight scenes, violence, and frantic chases.(Our film includes a lot of the iconography displayed in an action film; the fight, chases and violent scenes happen when the girls go to California and the drug lord's squad find them)

A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. (The emotional themes in our film is the girls realising they have got nothing left after getting chased and caught by the drug lords squad and the FBI, also dealing with the death of one out of the four, Scarlett.)

(Subgenre) Teen films is a film genre targeted at teenagers and young adults in which the plot is based upon the special interests of teenagers, such as coming of age, first love, rebellion, conflict with parents, teen angst or alienation. (All of the iconography of a teen genre film is clearly shown in our film. Rebellion would be the business the girls are in and stealing the money etc, first love would be Scarlett and Alejandro, conflict with parents would be two of the girls who come from higher backgrounds, leaving home to join this lifestyle.)

When thinking about the narrative for our film and how were going to show the codes and conventions of a action/drama and teen we thought about STINCS:

Settings - (Where the film is set and takes place) London, Las Vegas and California.
Themes -  (Genre) Action/Drama/Teen
Iconogrpahy - (Visual elements portrayed in the film) Balaclava's, money, alcohol, drugs, knives guns, make-up, designer jewellrey.
Narrative - (Storyline/plot) Four girls who are employed by a drug lord decide to take his money and run away to California to start their own business however they first stop off in Las Vegas to double their money in the Casino's. The luxury lifestyle however doesn't last for long and all hell breaks loose in California with the drug dealers squad.
Characters - (Main/minor characters) Scarlett, Vivian, Chantelle, Lacy, Darnell, Samuel, Alejandro, Milo.
Style - (Way it is put together) We used Tzetan Todorov's theory.

Much like the cinematograpghy in a typical action/drama film, our title sequence is very stylised and includes quite dark colours along with the costumes and everything from money to guns and cars within the mise-en-scene. The colour scheme is all black and red, red connoting the danger and black connoting the darkness of the girls' life and what's to come. The camera is very still most of the time focusing on each shot keeping you locked in with the drama and action.
When editing our sequence we decided to cut the scenes sharply and some smoothly just to capture the fast pace feel to the scene.
The music to our title sequence was originally going to be a male rap vocal however looking on the website I come across the song we used and my group aswell as everyone in my class seemed to enjoy and love the song and thought it fitted in perfectly with our title sequence so we decided to use that. It portrays the upbeat excited feel the girls are feeling in our title sequence very well.

EVALUATION: PART 3

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

We decided on SUMMIT ENTERTAINMENT. (SE) Summit Entertainment LLC (formerly Summit Entertainment LP) is an American film studio and a subsidiary of Lions Gate Entertainment headquartered in Universal City, California with international offices in London - perfect for our film as we are set in both London and California.
We chose SE because of their success on the Twilight series and Sorority Row. Being owned by Lionsgate meant that it would have the appropriate funding to distribute a smaller action/drama budget film ($30 million) in the summer period.

EVALUATION: PART 2

Evaluation Part 2 from EmilyCollins7

EVALUATION: PART 1

Our brief was to create an opening title sequence of a narrative of any genre and narrative. The sequence had to be between one and half minutes to five minutes long and contain at least ten different shots and use micro features of cinematography, sound, editing and mise en scene in our sequence. We were allowed to work in groups no more than four - I worked with Sophie Lisi and Julia Misheva. The blogs we had were used to document and develop our progress in making the title sequence.

Our first idea for the film was the aftermath of a teenage house party where drugs were taken and the group of protagonists have to work out what happened and deal with the subsequent dramas. The second was a group of girls in London who take their heart broken friend on a night out. This idea got the most developed but we realized to film the title sequence (which would be the party) was next to impossible. Me Sophie and Julia went back to this idea and developed the story line before changing it completely but keeping the four main girls, this then developed into our final idea.

Four girls who are employed by a drug lord decide to take his money and run away to California to start their own business. They first stop off in Las Vegas to double their money in the Casino's. The luxury lifestyle however doesn't last for long as The Drug Lord's squad catch up with the girls and all hell breaks loose in California causing one of the girls' death and the rest to be put in prison, loosing all their money and lavish things in the process.

TITLE SEQUENCE FINAL CUT

FEEDBACK

These are the feedback sheets for our title sequences we showed to our class. It includes feedback for both title sequences. Most of the feedback say that we need a new font as it is difficult to read so we will change this and I will look for another font for the credits. Overall our class preferred the second version which was our original one. On Julia's version the colour needs to be sorted out as it has a blue tinge to it and the footage looks stretched so were going to scrap that version and just continue editing from our original version.

DRAFT VIDEO

This is one of the versions of our title sequence we showed to our class before receiving our feedback sheets. This is a version that Julia made and there was another one which was mine and Sophie's. We had some disagreements in the group as Julia was just meant to add the credits to our original title sequence, however she cut the finalised version of our title sequence and changed our colour scheme by herself, without the remaining members of the group there.

DRAFT VIDEO (2)

This is our first finalised draft that we were going to add the credits to and then show to our class for feedback, however there were some disagreements in the group which led us to have two versions of our title sequence. This was the version my whole group made however Julia made her own version, causing us to have two.

SOUND

Today after picking our new song we have for our title sequence, me, Sophie and Julia edited the ending of the sound of the footage. We wanted the effect of the music fading out and the actresses foot steps getting louder because the original sound in the original footage came out really well and created a nice ending. We learned how to make the sound fade out and make the steps louder which you can see by the pink lines.

EDITING

Today me and Sophie are editing our footage in final cut pro. We have mainly been rearranging footage along with deleting and adding to see what order and clips works best, along with the music so it all fits in. Last time we filmed we didn't realise that the white balance was set too warm on the camera and our footage came out with a slight yellow tinge as we was unsure how to change the colour using the camera at the time we were filming. We learned however that we could change this using final cut pro. We had to use the colour correcting technique on each shot that needed fixing to change the orange/yellow hue to a slight cooler colour. We dragged the saturation down aswell to make the colour less vibrant.

FONT CHOICES

Today we decided to change the font for the credits of our title sequence. I found this font on DaFont and I thought it was easier to read and the girly, curliness of the font fits in well with the characters and completes the stylised look of the title sequence.

MUSIC CHOICES

We changed our mind on the music choice we had. I found this music on audio network and after playing it over the footage I thought it sounded and suited the whole feel/theme to our title sequence, and my group agreed so we will be using this. It is a pop/rap song with female vocals and the lyrics fit the narrative really well. The fact that it is a female vocalist also we found works better and creates a better feel to the title sequence considering we were going to use a male vocalist for starters.

EDITING

Today me and my group imported and converted our final footage onto the macs to edit in final cut pro. We went through all the footage we filmed on Friday and picked the best pieces and the ones we thinked worked. We then started to re arrange and add our footage to our existing footage that we already begun editing. It was difficult at first to work as a group as we all had different ideas of how we wanted the final piece to turn out. However we started to work together well and the process of editing was fun as we got to see our work slowly come together.

MUSIC CHOICES

 

Considering we are not allowed to use copyrighted music for our title sequence, I went onto audionetwork.com and began choosing some songs which I thought would fit my groups title sequence. These are some of the options so far - we like the third one best (Notorious). These songs are mainly RnB/Rap songs with a male vocalist which was what we wanted to use before we found out that we were not allowed to use copyrighted songs.

ACTORS

Scarlett Rose
         (Emily)

                                          Vivian Redmayne
                                                                               (Sophie)

Lacey Fisher
          (Alice)

                                             Chantelle Ford
                                                                               (Enola)

These are photographs of the actresses me and my group will be using for our title sequence. The first two photographs are of me and my group member Sophie, the last two girls are our friends. We used ourselves and our friends as it would be convenient concidering our narrative is about four close girlfriends and that is exactly what we all are. We are all comfotable filming/acting around each other which makes the footage look more natural and te narrative convincing for our title sequence. It also came in handy as we needed a re shoot after we lost some of our footage as we could film whenever we needed to. 

FILMING

We began filming today for the third time. This time round there was no problems with the memory card however with the camera, the footage came out with a slight yellow tint although we learned that we can change this using final cut pro when we edit. This time it was slightly harder as we wasn't exactly sure what we had to re-shoot. We filmed loads of little bits and re-filmed some stuff that we didn't feel was perfected enough from last time we filmed and I'm hoping we've now got enough perfected shots and that we can fix the colour. Hopefully there will be no more complications and we can focus now all on editing.

PROPS (ADDED)

These are props Sophie made of photoshop to use in our title sequence. We added these because the whole title sequence is meant to be the girls leaving for Las Vegas and we realised that we didn't have any indication of that in our title sequence so they were made to help the understanding of the narrative for the audience. Each one of them have the characters names on.

ROLES WITHIN THE GROUP

I will be taking charge of the camera when we film, making me the cinematographer, I'll also co-direct and be an actress.
Sophie will be director, co-camera woman and also an actress. She will also begin editing with Julia when we have filmed our footage considering Julia will not be able to film with us.

TITLE SEQUENCE FONTS

These are fonts I looked for my groups title sequence on DaFont.com. I printed off these fonts and went round to people asking which one they like best and the most popular was the first one, which is also my groups favourite. It fits in with our title sequence because in the narrative they go to Las Vegas and the font is slot machines so it ties in nicely. Considering the title is going to be at the end of the title sequence, it ties in nicely and emphasises/gives more indication of the girls leaving for Las Vegas.

FILMING

Today we filmed for the second time. We had an issue with one of the memory cards we filmed on and it turned out the footage we filmed for the middle part of our title sequence was wiped so much to our dismay we will have to film again and re shoot a lot of footage. This is going to be hard because we had some very good shots that we were we proud of and having to film again and perfect it to how it was previously is going to be difficult. However we will get this done as soon as possible and hopefully better than before now we have another chance to re shoot.

LOCATION

This is the setting we shot the majority of our title sequence. This room is in Sophie's house and it is her older sister's. We used this location because we thought it fits in best with the style we was going for (that includes the colour scheme).

PROPS

All week we have been printing off money to use in our title sequence. We have included £50, £20, £10, and £5 notes. We're using this in our title sequence as the money the four girls stole off of the drug lord.

PROPS

Today the balaclava's we will use as prop/costume in our title sequence arrived. We ordered four off of amazon, they were very cheap (around £1.50 and good quality) We can now begin filming because we have one of the main props we need.

COSTUME

BALACLAVA

BLACK HIGH NECK TOP  BLACK SKINNY JEANS HIGH HEELS

This is the full costume we've decided on our characters to wear for our title sequence. All black and balaclavas to connote that they've stolen the money and do not want to be seen by anyone on their way to the airport and we've added high heels and designer jewellery to emphasise the girls' glamour and desire to still look good even though their face is covered.

  

TODOROV'S NARRATIVE THEORY

EQUILIBRIUM - Four girls who have worked for a drug lord (Darnell) for many years are fed up of their lives (having someone bossing them around) and want to start their own buissness in the same area of work (drug deals). They steal the money they've earned working for Darnell back.

DISRUPTION OF THE EQULIBRIUM - The four girls decide to leave London and start a new life, they steal thousands of pounds and escape to America. They stop in Las Vegas where they double their money, they then settle in California with their own illegal business.

RECOGNITION OF THE DISRUPTION - The drug lords squad from London are on the girls tail trying to track them down but are always one step behind. As the girls business takes off, other gangs in California are trying to take them down.

ATTEMPT TO REPAIR THE DISRUPTION - The girls gang are involved in many shoot outs and deals as the illegal side of California erupts into chaos when the Londoners arrive, as do the FBI as they have caught on the situation.

NEW EQUILIBRIUM - Three girls are left and business partner (Alejandro) are in FBI custody being interrogated but don't give up any information of their remaining business.

FILMING

Today for the first time we filmed footage for our title sequence. Me and Sophie from my group feature in the footage as well as two of our friends. We chose to film in Sophie's sisters room as it has the perfect feel for the girls in our film. We cleared stuff out of the setting, gathered and added props to the location and begun getting ourselves ready and putting costumes on. After doing everything we were ready to start filming around 9:30pm. It took us a while to get used to the camera (how to work it) however considering this was my job within the group (cinematographer) I grasped it quite easily. We finished filming around 11:30pm. We didn't get all the footage we needed so we will need to film again and maybe re-shoot stuff when we watch the footage back.

ANIMATICS

These are the animatics Julia made from our story boards using Final Cut Pro. This will help us when it comes to filming as we'll know how long each shot is going to take and what is needed in it.

STORY BOARDS

These are the storyboards for our title sequence, which will help us when it comes to filming. We've included the drawings of what we want in the shot and the shot types and angles. Next we will make these into animatics to visually get a bit of an idea on what our title sequence is going to look like and how long each of the shots will be and if it fits in with the time limit of our title sequence.

RE-PITCH

FINAL PRESENTATION

FEEDBACK ON PITCH

These are the feedback sheets from our class after we presented our pitch. Most people said they enjoyed our narrative, character details and release date however what we need to work on would be getting a title for our film and looking more carefully into our budget as a few of our stars are well known which would increase the budget, along with our choice to have our film set in three different locations.