My Closing Post...

Today when me and Charlotte finished our evaluation it suddenly occurred to us that we are finished! It hit us at how quickly everything seems to have gone. We felt quite sad that it's all come to an end after months and months of preparing, filming and editing. We have learnt an incredible amount about many different aspects to do with media and I think we've done pretty well considering we began in September without a clue about anything really. I literally had no knowledge on how to use imovie or how to use any of the camera equipment. I'm proud to say that we're now more or less experts at it...finally!

I now find myself analysing everything I see on TV, for example noticing continuity mistakes and shaky camera shots, it's quite amusing actually. I have loved every second of media, I seem to have found a real passion for it that I never knew I had. We've had so much fun, I'm sure that next year A2 will be just as great, at least next time round we'll go in already having lots of knowledge about how everything works. Hopefully we can improve our skills further and learn even more around the subject, I guess we'll just have to wait and see!

Here is our Evaluation of our film opening for Special Kate.

7 Evaluation Questions

Here are the questions we will need to prepare for our evaluation:

1. In what ways does your film opening use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

2. How does your film opening represent particular social groups?

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your film opening and why?

4. Who would be the audience for your film opening?

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this film opening?

7. Looking back at your prelim task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the final film opening?

Here is some of the feed back we received at the premier of our film opening. Our audience consisted of a variety of people, both male and female and of all different ages. However many of our friends came along to support us and as we are an all girl school the majority of people were young teenage girls which suited us perfectly as this was our target audience. Everyone else however who came to watch also enjoyed our film opening very much which was a relief.

We had the flip cameras set up in the hall in order for people to leave comments on about our work and what they liked. Here is one of the responses we received.



Here are also some quotations left to us on the feedback sheets that we gave out.

1. Please give details about what you like about our film opening.

"It was really fun and lighthearted.  Very enjoyable."

"Very well acted, made it funnier"

"Really embodied the Chick Flick genre"

"Really cleverly thought out for example the whole idea of Special K"

"Editing was great"

"Very creative shots and camera movements"

"Made me want to watch the whole film"

"Loved the quirky bumble bee at the start, it immediately caught my attention which was maintained throughout"

"Was very funny, totally got the humour"

"The credit fonts suited the genre, loved how they faded in and out"

"Really good use of ellipsis, the lighting and costume all worked very well and the timing of the soundtrack was really effective"

"Loved the camera movement when staggering out of bed"

"It was really amusing, a good choice of music,funky and upbeat, suited the genre well"

2. What is your favourite part of our film opening and why?

"Loved the bus scene, made me laugh"

"When she poured orange juice into her cereal, this was funny"

"I really liked the Benny Hill like running after the bus"

"When Kate looks out of the window and sees her sister is lying there, also at this point when the music stopped the surprise was really funny"

"I liked how Kate looks rough and then after spiting out her tooth paste comes up looking all pretty"

"The bumble bee at the start was really good"

"Loved the reaction to the orange juice"

"Liked the use of fast forward to show time passing by"

"Liked the part when Kate left her sister on the floor, was funny"

"Kate throwing the clock out of the window and knocking out her sister, very entertaining"

"Liked the zooming in and out of the blind for the costume change, very clever"

"Loved the switch from wide shots to close up shots in the bus stop scene"

"The bus stop scene was TOO FUNNY, loved it"

"I liked the alarm clock getting thrown out of the window and how it sets the scene for the humour to come"

"The mad hair!"

"Loved the build up of unpredictability"

"The shots in the fridge, very creative"

"The orange juice bit, added humour which is hard to do"

"Loved the music choice and how the clips all fitted to it, was great"

Overall me and Charlotte are so pleased with the responses we got, everyone seemed to really enjoy our film opening which is a big relief after all our effort. We are really grateful for all the lovely comments, the feedback is really good to hear. I think that my favourite comment was "Made me want to watch the whole film" which has been our goal throughout the whole process as this is what a film opening is meant to do, this comment meant a lot to both me and Charlotte.

I came across this video and I love it. At first I thought it was going to be something silly, but then it got a lot better with the results and it's actually really clever. I think it sums up quite neatly the way that people try to express an identity online and how pictures people have up of themselves, for example on facebook or myspace, can be very decieving.

Video to one side, this is infact a very serious issue and there have been many cases where people have been decieved by pictures leading to devistating consiquences. One recent case involved Peter Chapman, a British convicted murderer who has featured heavily in the media in the United Kingdom. He has become known as the "Facebook killer." He was jailed for a minimum of 35 years in March 2010 and his crime has led to serious criticism of police monitoring and Facebook.

Chapman used a fake Facebook profile, using a display picture of a very goodlooking young male in order to befriend Ashleigh Hall, a 17-year-old college student from Darlington. In reality, he was a 33-year old man living in his car. She met him on the 25 October and according to the prosecution, "When she met him on 25 October last year, he kidnapped, raped and murdered her."

Like the mother says in this video.."You just don't know who's behind that photo"

Yesterday watched the film Paranormal Activity 2 a 2010 American supernatural horror film directed by Tod Williams and written by Michael R. Perry. The film is a parallel prequel to the 2007 film Paranormal Activity, beginning two months before and following up with the events depicted in the original film.


After experiencing what they think are a series of "break-ins", a family sets up security cameras around their home, only to realize that the events unfolding before them are more sinister than they seem.


The people behind PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2 clearly learned a lesson from the debacle of BLAIR WITCH 2: BOOK OF SHADOWS; they’ve hewed scrupulously close to the original film in style and tone. The result is probably the best true sequel that could have been made to PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, without avoiding the pitfalls that come with creating a close-but-not-too-close approximation of a singular success. Paranormal Activity 2 follows the "bigger and more" ethos of sequels, while sticking to the ground rules laid down by the first surprise hit of a film. Of course "bigger and more" is a relative term. Here we get a slightly bigger home to be confined in and more people: two parents, a teenage daughter, a maid, an infant and a dog. The latter two make good use of the rather spooky thing that babies and pets do when their attention is fixed on something invisible to others. More cameras too: instead of the one image of the bedroom we get to cycle through six static security cameras (brought in by the family when they return to find their furniture and belongings in disarray, seemingly following a burglary, although nothing was taken). These changes aren't enough to distort or taint the basic premise.


I have to say that this film really did scare me, I spent half my time hidden behind a pillow as the suspense and dramatic tension was just too much to handle. The thing that always makes a film scarier is when it looks like it is real life, the dialogue doesn't sound scripted and because the actors are not famous (have just been in the paranormal films) it just adds to the realism. The jumpiest bit of the film was when all the kitchen cupboard doors and draws suddenly flew open causing a massive unexpected sound of crashing and banging. Everyone in the room with me screamed and carried on screaming!


I think the fact that they used a baby really added to the disturbing nature of the film as the child just seemed too innocent to be surrounded by such awful events. I particularly didn't like the bit when the baby gets dragged out of the bed, I found that really disturbing, but it definitely added to the genre of horror.


It was good horror film which didn't take anything away from the first Paranormal Activity. Apart from being terrified i did actually really enjoy it.

People's idea on 'what is beautiful' really is distorted, and in my opinion it's because of the media, for example in magazines every single woman is perfect, immaculate skin, slim, have perfectly straight noses, and are perfectly made up. It puts a lot of pressure on everyone on how a person is suppose to look and it can effect people in many ways including causing anorexia as girls especially feel they should be thin like all the models they see in news papers, on posters, in magazines and on the Internet. Nothing is real any more nearly everything is edited. Here is a video I found on YouTube which shows the process in which models undergo before their photograph is put out for the public to see.



Here is another video which I know is also very popular on You Tube ...

Recently I've been revising for my media exam which is coming up very soon. I started looking at Pete's blog, an examiner to see if i can get any tips or important info, and found some really interesting stuff on representation of young people. This is some of what I found.

Here are some quotations people have said about young people

"Kids are out of control... They're roaming the streets. They're out late at night."

“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”

The language that the second one uses is much older, but it surprised everyone to find out just how old. The first was from Gordon Brown in 2008 and the second from Plato in the 4th century BC. So as we can see, complaining about the behaviour of young people is nothing new!

Here's a quite a disturbing video, from a Barnardo's campaign, all dialogue coming from what adults had written on national newspaper websites in response to stories about teenagers.

Love this advert at the moment, think it's a really good idea, it's something a little bit different where people can actually relate to what is being said..my favourite comment is when the guy says 'so many shoes..what are you a centipede?', it's definitely the kind of thing my dad would say to me. I know that it must have started up tons of debates in every household for people who has seen the advert. I think adverts like this are the best kind of advertisement as the little funny jokes stand out in people minds meaning that they'll remember what is being advertised, in this case IKEA. I hate adverts when what they are showing barely relates to what they are advertising, I think this idea of 'who's messier men or women' is a great idea that clearly shows us that it is advertising storage. Oh and also the fact that men are messier!

Today we presented our film opening to a very large audience male and female, with a range of different age groups. Everyone seemed to really enjoy watching ours which was definitely a relief. They laughed in all the right places and we had some lovely comments from friends, family and teachers who told us how much they enjoyed it. Hopefully some people left some nice comments on the flip camera and if so we will publish their responses at a later date.

Here is what me and Charlotte said when introducing our film opening..

My favourite advert at the moment is the underwater advert of Katie Price, not because it's her but just simply because I love the underwater shots with her long mermaid-like hair, the flowing pastel coloured material and sparkly bubbles. It would be amazing if we had the equipment to get underwater footage as it would definitely help to add that professional quality we have worked so hard to produce in our film opening.

Here is the feedback sheet we will give to the audience on Thursday when they come to the premier of our film opening

Evaluation Sheets - AS and A2

Here are the results that I have recieved from the questionnaire of which I carried out a while ago now done for our pre-production stage. I did my questionnaire via facebook messaging, interviewing, and giving out handouts. I focused on favourite film genres asking 50 people, half male and half female, the age group ranging between 10-65. I did this to get a more diverse response in order to help us decide which audience we are targeting.

Overall I found that around 20 people liked Comedies/Chickflicks particularly the younger females aged between 10 and 30. However there were 6 older people of the 20 who selected comedy as their favourite gengre too. This tells us that our main target audience is focused on young girls however is still open to a variety of different people. Chick flicks are a specific film genre, which generally does target young females. The main purposes of chick flicks are to entertain the young audience and inject them with ideologies. These films usually focus upon teenage girl’s lifestyles and experiences as our film opening shows, and they follow typical stereotypes such as chick flick movies like ‘Legally Blonde’, directed by Robert Luketic.


Some of people comedies/chickflicks from those who said it was their favourite genre:
The Hang Over, Toy Story 3, The kid, Mean girls, Life of Brian, Pinapple Express, Life stinks, Bridget Jones Diary, Sex and the City, Love and other Drugs.

So after adding in some final touches like adjusting the music so that it stops and starts in the right places, we have finally finished our film and will be putting it onto DVD on Monday's lesson ready for our presentation on Thursday. We watched through it a number of times in order to make sure that there was nothing else that needed changing and realised that we had forgotten to justify the way in which we had designed our credits.

We decided to have our credits appearing throughout the scenes however we felt that it was essential to have the important credits placed on a black background, some of which we already allocated for when filming, for example when the fridge closes. We placed the production name, the film title, the co producer, the editor, the producer and the director on black backgrounds. We also decided to have a slightly different colour scheme for the actors, me and Charlotte who star in our film. We decided to use black and white to make our names stand out however this was the only time we changed the font, all the other fonts are the same. We did this so that our film opening looks professional like a real high budget film would look. We have also made a concsious decision to remove the freezeframes on the clips as we felt that they disrupted the flow of our film and it just generally looked a lot more professional for the credits to appear while the acting takes place.

 

I liked how at this point it looks as though Kate is brushing the credit away.

Here is one of credits which appears throughout the opening along with credits such as costume, soundtrack, casting etc.

This is the last credit that we see, as in all films the director generally goes last. It is on a black back ground so that it is clear and easy to read. It again highlights the importance of it.

Here are some screen shots of the new scene in which we filmed, luckily it all went to plan and so now all we have to do is tweak a few bits here and there in order to have a completed film opening.

At first we have establishing shot of where the scene will take place. The bus stop in the centre as it is the main focus. I really like this shot as it splits the frame up into thirds (the rule of thirds).

This creates reference points for good framing and is a powerful compositional device.

Kate then enters the scene budging everyone over so that she can sit down..

This then causes Yasmin to fall off the other side (a bit of slapstick comedy there). This is another long shot so that the audience can clearly see what has happened.

Then we have a panning shot to show everyone being irritated by Kate.

And this is where the panning shot ends. Here Kate is day dreaming while the others are moaning at the bus being late (well played by Miss Foster).

Then then have yet another long shot of the bus driving past and everyone running after it..

All except Kate. This is the final shot in our film opening at which point we hear a final strum of music as Kate looks up and turns her feet inwards. The clip then fades to black).

Here is another quick video we made a while ago also experimenting with using different shots. We did have a lot of fun making this might I add!

Today we filmed the last bit of footage for our film opening. After planning the shots that we wanted to do and grouping together some of our friends as extras, I got into costume (bearing in mind continuity) and we headed off to the bus stop. We managed to get some great shots so a big thank you to everyone who helped.

Charlotte imported the footage during break and I edited it, adding the new footage to the rest of our film opening. After roughly piecing together all the footage I had to extract the audio from different clips to get the sound of the traffic the same throughout so that it doesn't chop and change in every different shot. However I had to choose carefully which audio to place over the footage to make sure that the sound of the cars driving past is not heard when there are in fact no cars driving past. That would have looked really odd, however it all still needs a bit of adjusting. When editing I really liked the idea of having the end piece of music move with my feet right at the end, and when I tried it, it worked out really well. The only problem now is that our film has gone over the time limit so I'm a bit unsure about what we are going to do.

Here is our sixth draft...

Here is our fourth draft with all the new footage. I've roughly put it all the clips together and put the music in over the top however the sounds still need to be adjusted and the music needs to be edited in places. This should then make sure that the song lasts until the end of our film opening. We also obviously have to write in the actual credits and also put our production company animation which we have made in at the beginning.

When editing we had to delete some original footage as we have gone over 2 minutes and we also decided to keep the snorricam footage minimum which seemed to look more effective.

In todays lesson we managed to add in our bumble bee animation to our film opening as well as placing a bumble bee sound effect over the clip which we downloaded and converted from Youtube.

We also added in the credits using a similar order to the film opening of Mean Girls so that our work is of a professional standard. We also used similar transitions and font styles to Mean Girls so that the style of our film opening matches our genre of a chick flick comedy. We then made the decision of deleting the bus scene footage as we felt that all the new footage was a lot better making the old footage look less successful.

Everything seems to be coming together. We will hopefully be shooting one last scene at a bus stop on friday afternoon to avoid finishing our film with me walking off down the road as it seemed like too much of an ending. But other than that we are almost done!

Here is our fifth draft with all the new stuff we added in today...

Today in our lesson we mainly focused of the credits and sound. We decided to change all the credit fonts and transitions to be the same as before the credits on the black background were different to the others. For the sound we split the music in places to make it all fit in with whats being shown in the footage and so far it has worked really well.

We then made a quick outtakes movie, showing you bits of our day during filming...

Recently we've been doing lots of editing on our film opening, putting all the new footage from Saturday together.

Here is our third draft before we added the new footage to it obviously makes no sense however it shows all the bits which we have re filmed.

Yesturday we filmed hopefully for the last time. We managed to get everything done, this time with much brighter lighting, but had to be very carefull with continuity making sure everything in the room was the same as last time, for example how far the window was open and how low down the blinds were. We think it went according to plan but all will be revealed when we upload the footage tomorrow.

Lat night we went to the cinema and watched 'The Rite' an American supernatural horror film based on the making of a modern exorcist. It was directed by Mikael Håfström and written by Matt Baglio and Michael Petroni. It stars Anthony Hopkins as Father Lucas and Colin O'Donoghue as Michael Kovak.


Brief background of film...
The film is based on the book The Making of a Modern Exorcist by Rome-based Matt Baglio, which was published in 2009. To research the book, Baglio participated in a seminar on exorcism where he met Father Gary Thomas, a parish priest from California, who was tasked by the local bishop in San Jose, California to become an exorcist for the diocese. Initially skeptical and reluctant, Father Gary becomes an "apprentice" to a Rome-based exorcist and his skepticism is soon replaced by the cold reality of evil and the ways it sometimes takes the form of demonic possession.


My opinion...
I liked the film, although it was quite disturbing. The whole idea of the unknown really does scare me. It was also very jumpy in places particularly when the possessed priest whacks the little girl around the face and also when the devil hand starts strangling Kovak. At this point me and Valentina literally lept out of our chairs. Makes me laugh so much every time I think about out it!


The echoed, whispered sounds used definitely added to the jumpiness of the film. The scariest bits however were when it was silent as you just know that something scary is about to happen.


The first thing I noticed about the film was the camera work. The compositions were quite interesting. The camera’s perspective peaks from around corners and from behind fences which creates a mysterious, edgy feel to it adding to the genre of horror. I also noticed how detailed and intricate the make-up designs were especially towards the end of the film used on Hopkins. The dark blue veins and intense wrinkles really gave him that possessed, demonic look.

In the film after Father Lucas shows Michael his first case of possession, he remarks to the boy, “What did you expect? Spinning heads and pea-soup?” It seemed like a reminder that it wasn't like every other exorcism movie. However when the possessions started we saw nearly every single cliche of the genre. The possessed girl uses her sexuality to try and shame the priests. She plays on their secrets and insecurities (a very good actress might I add), they use electronically lowered voices, muttering blasphemies, blank contact lenses and blotting out eyes, sinister prophecies coming true, the vomiting up of odd objects etc. It all sounds quite familiar but I guess exorcism movies wouldn't be the same without it all, although I did think that red eyed horse was quite naff. 

                                

So recently me and Charlotte have been looking at some more options for music as it seems we are unable to use a song from freeplaymusic.com unless we pay something like £50. So we've been having a look on YouTube to see if we can find an un-copyrighted instrumental cover song.

Here is the one we are now planning to use. It is an instrumental cover song by a man called Craig Evans of the song Fell in love with a girl in white stripes, it is an uncopyrighted version..



We liked it as it's upbeat and funky which goes well with our genre of comedy. Also we liked it because there are lots of places where the music stops and then starts again which we can make fit with our footage. The silence we can use in order to highlight the funny bits again adding to our genre. In our first couple of drafts for our film opening we used the song Cool Shades, and we really liked how the music stopped when Kate walked out of the door and then started up again on the freeze frame of Charlotte lying on the ground. This is what initially gave us the idea of having a piece of music where there are breaks.We'd obviously have to cut the music to make the breaks in the music longer however this shouldn't be a problem as it can easily be done on imovie.

Big Fat Gypsy Weddings is the television hit of the year. But is it going to harm the community it portrays?

Remember a few years back when Eastenders ran an advertising campaign with the strapline 'Everyone's talking about it'? At the time, everybody was, or so it seemed. These days, British viewers have turned their attentions elswhere and it seems like you just can't escape people talking about Channel 4's Big Fat Gypsy Weddings.

The five part series is drawing in over seven million viewers with each episode, making it one of the channel's most-watched shows ever. And people aren't just watching - they're discussing it on Twitter and setting up Facebook groups. Newspaper columnists are talking about it. I've heard people telling their friends that's it's the ultimate television highlight of their week.

So why the obsession? The series grew out of the 2010 documentary My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, which focused on the weddings of three young women from traveller families. It was the sort of programme that gets described as 'car crash TV' and millions couldn't help but tune in for a glimpse inside the notoriously secretive traveller community, where marriages generally happen between teenagers and traditional gender roles are very strictly observed. With the return of the show as a series, viewers have kept going back for more - with mixed reactions.

Predictably, there's been a lot of snobbery, racism and ridicule. The gypsy and traveller communities are the subject of much prejudice, talk of 'pikeys' and 'gypos' and jokes about their culture are common.
In 21st century British culture, where plenty of people practically consider 'chav bashing' their right, it's easy to laugh atwedding dresses which weigh as much as a fully-grown man, six-year-olds getting spray tans and sixteen-year-old brides discussing the decor in their new caravans. And it's hardly going to change the way travellers are often treated by society.
Unsurpringly it's brought anger from travellers and the organisations which work with them, many of which feel the show nothing more than 'sensationalism' - an unfair and inaccurate portrayal of a culture which is marginalised enough in the first place. They have said that the unbelievably over-the-top weddings and apparently violent courtship practices are far from widespread and that only a small minority of travelling people live their lives this way. They're not happy with the way the tabloids have covered the series either.

The show's producers have reiterated that the people featured in the series have been happy with the way they have been portrayed, but the debate rages on.

A major area of concern for viewers has been the way traveller culture impacts the lives of women - even, it has to be said, people who aren't usually bothered by gender issues. Sexism may still be alive and well but to most, gender equality isn't a totally alien concept.

Watching these young women who have left school at 11 or 12, who are extremely restricted by gender roles and who freely admit that 'it's a man's world' has been really uncomfortable for a lot of people - just as much as seeing young men laugh at the idea of a woman having a job or saying that they think the custom of unmarried women not being allowed to drink alcohol or go out alone is completely 'fair'.

This is certainly heightened by the other facts we know about travelling communities. That the women within them are considered some of the most marginalised women in the country. That, according to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, up to 81% of them have experienced domestic abuse. When you add this to low life expectancy, alcohol and drug abuse on the rise, lack of access to support services, prejudice from the general public and the stigma of admitting to being abused, the picture doesn't look too rosy.

It certainly doesn't show those who are quick to mock travellers' lives in a particularly good light, even if it is 'just a laugh' as far as they're concerned. Their remarks about gypsies and travellers in general have shown that there's a lot of venom reserved for them, no matter what sort of lives they lead.

Agencies and organisations are working with travellers to support them and help combat prejudice, but I wonder whether Big Fat Gypsy Weddings is going to mean they're subject to even worse treatment from the public - and how much 'concern' will remain once the series is over.

Last night I watched death at a funeral a 2007 British comedy film directed by Frank Oz. The story line focuses on a family attempting to resolve a variety of problems while attending the funeral of the patriarch. It is honestly my favourite film of all time! It is so funny, I've watched it 5 times now!



They recently made a 2010 American version of the film but it is no comparision to the 2007 one. I personally thought there was no point making an exact copy of the film especially considering it wasn't even as good.

My favourite character was Simon played by Alan Tudyk. He is such a funny actor. In the film, hoping to calm Simon's nerves his girlfriend gives him what she believes is Valium but actually is a designer hallucinogenic drug manufactured by her brother Troy.

Here are some of the momentsin the film that made us all laugh...







This one is quite discusting but I thought it was really funny!

So I've just come back from my four day drama trip which meant no internet access for 4 days not even on my phone as we were out in the sticks (method acting). So anyway now I'm back I have some catching up to do.

I have been working on my questionnare questions:

1. Gender?
2. How old are you?
3. What is your favourite movie genre?
4. What is the genre you dislike the most?
5. Why? (for question four)
6. Specify a little about your preferred genre? (eg Horror - Psychological horror, Comedy - Chick flick)
7. How important are the first ten minutes of a film to you?
8. What is your view on using a freeze frame in the genre you have picked?
9. Does the actor choice influence you when deciding whether or not to watch a movie?
10. Do you have a favourite actor/ actress? If so which film genre's do you like to see them in.
11. What is your favourite film? (from the genre that you picked as your favourite)
12. What is your least favourite? (also from that genre.)
13. Name three things that you would want to see in genre you have picked? (eg if a horror you may say blood)
14.Which age certificate is your most watched?
15.Why? (for question 14)

I have started to hand these out amoungst my family as I have loads of cousins of all different ages which is great as it is important that I get a variety of responses. I will also hand some out in school when I get back from the half term.

Recently me and Charlotte have been looking at production company names and after watching lots of different film openings we noticed that they all had an introductory clip that shows which company produced the movie. This makes the film look professional and so we would really like to do something similar, however in a simpler and more quirky style to suit our chickflick/comedy genre. Like my idea from before, Bumble Bee Productions, a similar style to Juno who were called Mr Mudd Productions. We were thinking of having a little animation of a bumble bee buzzing around the production name, which Charlotte's dad can help us make as he is a graphic designer.

Here are a few examples of film company openings...

Last night I watched East is East, one of my all time favourite films. East Is East is a 1999 British comedy-drama film, written by Ayub Khan-Din and directed by Damien O'Donnell. It is set in a British household of mixed-ethnicity, with a British Pakistani father and an English mother in Salford, Greater Manchester, in 1971. George Khan (played by Om Puri), the father, expects his family to follow his strict Pakistani ways, but his children who were born and have grown up in Britain increasingly see themselves as British and reject their father's rules on dress, food, religion, and living in general.



It's so funny had us all in stitches.

I noticed some interesting use of shots to add to the genre of comedy, for example the point of view shot when Saj is looking out from his hood which, he never takes off ("that bleedin parker"). They must have put a fluffy trimming around the camera to make it look as though the camera is Saj and is seeing what he see's. It stood out to me as it is the only point of view shot footage they used in the film, and I really liked it. Simple but funny.

The mise-en-scene used throughout the film shows the that they are in fact not a particularly well off family. For example the small tin tub they use a bath and the buckets they use as toilets. Also at one point the camera zooms in to a small plate of biscuits that the mother has put on the table, whilst calling her 5 adult children to come down for breakfast, again adding to to the comedy genre. There is great contrast shown between the two different cultures. The father George (who carries a strong Pakistani accent with a hint of Manchester) insists on buying his sons traditional Pakistani clothing, and when this side of the culture is shown there are lots of bright festive colours in their costume and traditional Pakistani music (non diegetic) played.

The parents both have a very strong vision of themselves. The father, George, wants his children to be accepted by the Muslim community and live by its rules and customs. Ella, has agreed to this on her marriage but is still herself a Catholic and has influenced her children with her ideas. In contrast to the Pakistani culture the British culture is also shown throughout the film. Ironically George owns a fish and chip shop called 'The English Chippy'. Perhaps you would expect him to own a Pakistani restaurant with his strong views and passion for his religion.

The certificate of the film is 15 and this is likely due to some nudity and mostly the strong language, mainly coming from the father George, "bastard bitch", "bloody fucking idiot" etc. However because the swearing is used all through the film it becomes part of their general use of language and so we get used to it. It's just funny and used in a light hearted way.

Last night I watched BBC Three's supernatural Being Human. Being Human is a British supernatural drama television series. It was created and written by Toby Whithouse and broadcast on BBC Three. It stars Aidan Turner as Mitchell, a vampire; Russell Tovey as George, a werewolf; and Lenora Crichlow as Annie, a ghost who are all trying to live a normal life. The first two series were set in in Totterdown, Bristol; during the show's third series, Sinead Keenan became part of the main cast, and the series relocated to Barry Island, Wales. The series is one of the most popular shows on BBC’s iPlayer.

Here is some behind the scenes's footage of last nights episode...

"McNair... you'll be needing this."
With these words the stake was passed over and the wheels of vengeance were set in motion. A fight to the death was on the cards and McNair was determined to deal the final blow.
On set the mood was charged with adrenaline. Dozens of actors, two camera crews and a vast abandoned swimming pool were combined to create one of the finest scenes in Being Human history. We got stuck in behind the scenes to see how it all happened, and somehow managed to avoid McNair's stake, Mitchell's fists and Annie's baseball bat in the process.
Episode four has passed and the truth about The Pack has been revealed. But already dark clouds are gathering and the return of Herrick is imminent...

With the clip above its amazing to see how much effort, time and money goes into one small scene in the episode. They obviously have to repeat the scene a number of times in order to get some really good shots. I love it! Its pretty much a combination of everything you want to see in a tv series. Its a mixture of genres including horror, comedy, thriller, romance etc, literally a bit of everything.

Here are some screenshots and google images from some of the episodes..

Obviously the makeup department must take a lot of time to create such intricate, realistic detail like in the photograph above. Much research must have gone into how a burnt, scarred, rotting corpse looks. It's also fasinating looking at how they make the characters slowly transform into warewolves and how the combination of graphics and stage make-up can produce a very scary, grusome yet successful look. 

The appearance of the famous star Lacey Turner attracted hundreds more viewers. I loved her cheekiness and her well, not so 'Stacey Slater' from eastenders attitude. She definately pulled off the character well, she is actually a very talented actress and didnt let the hight standards of Being Human down.

Here is the reply to our email that we sent to feeplaymusic.com

Here is what Charlotte said in response, and so now we just have to wait, but things do seem to be looking up! 



Today we looked at music ideas and discovered that the website we previously found called freeplaymusic.com does in fact use music that is not copyrighted.

We then sent an email to the owners of the site just to be a hundred percent sure that we can use this in our film opening. Here is a screenshot of the email we sent. (You can click on the images to enlarge them, and read the message that we sent)

 And then they replied with this..

Here's a video to show you some of what we did on our day of filming. It shows you how we managed to film certain parts of our footage, for example how we filmed with the skateboard, and also you'll see some of our thought process behind it all.



As for the teletubbie music (Joely's idea) well I wasn't planning on putting it all the way through but it went shockingly well with certain bits of the video and so I decided to leave it there just because it made us all laugh, and of course the sad violin music at the end, as an extra touch(Charlotte doesn't know about it yet!)

Anyway here's our running order which we followed throughout our filming to help our day run as smoothly as possible.

In today's lesson me and Charlotte had lots to catch up on as unfortunately I wasn't well and so couldn't come in on Friday. Charlotte kindly managed to write up a list of all the things we will need to re film..for the third time now. Its all the footage of me (Kate) in bed asleep and all of the Snorricam stuff, which was darkly lit.

We also began to discuss ideas for our production company name and the actual credits themselves. We decided to go on YouTube and look at some more examples of film openings for chick flick/comedy genres. We watched the opening of mean girls, Juno and Cloudy with a chance of meatballs.

We liked the quirky colourful font colours they used for the credits especially from Mean Girls (couldn't get it off YouTube due to it being copy righted) and decided that we really liked the idea. Although Juno and Cloudy with a Chance of meatballs mainly use animation we still got ideas for the orders in which we will display our credits. I made a list for the order in which Mean Girls display their credits so that we know the main ones we will need to include.

Here is the order from Mean Girls..

1. Production company (Paramount)

2. A...(someones name) production

3. Main actor (Lindsey Lohan)

4. The title (Mean Girls)

5. Actors names appeared on the screen whenever the character was shown (this continued for a while)

6. Casting by..

7. Based on the book..

8. Music supervisors..

9. Music conducted by..

10. Co producer..

11. Costume designer..

12. Editor..

13.Production designer..

14. Director of photography..

15. Executive producer..

16. Produced by..

17. Screen play by..

18. Directed by..(at this point the directors name was shown on a plain yellow door which allowed it to stand out from all the other credits, this was also used in Devil when the directors name was shown on the plain white floor in order for it to be seen clearly)

We found this really helpful as before we had no idea of the kind of credits we needed.

For our production company name we found that it can literally be called anything, like for example in Juno their company name is Mr Mudd productions. I suddenly had an idea for a name we could use 'bumble bee productions' and the idea of maybe using some kind of graphics to make an animated bee fly around either to spell out the company name or underline it. Charlotte's parents are graphic designers so she is going to ask them if its possible to help us create something like that.

Maybe something a little like this bumble bee..(ignore the fact its foreign)

Here is something that we roughly put together on Garage Band then edited on imovie in order to experiment with the kind of music that would suit our genre and go with the footage we have got. They two separate songs in which we have combined, however we will still continue searching around for un copyrighted music until we are 100% happy with our choice. This is a very brief example of what we are hoping for and we haven't made a decision on whether to have music at the beginning when Sam comes in to wake up Kate. We quite like the idea of the music starting just after Sam leaves and  Kate wakes up.

Saturday night I watched greatest movie mistakes on BBC3 presented by Robert Webb. It was so good, spotting loads of continuity errors in all the big movies. I was so shocked. One of my favourite mistakes was seeing the obvious trace of an aeroplane in the sky when the movie was set in roman times. Here's 10 minutes of the 2 hours it was on for, I surprising didn't get bored at all, made me feel a whole lot better knowing that even the big famous films make mistakes too.

So we finally got down to re shooting our film opening which we did on Saturday. Overall it went quite smoothly. However our tripod did not have an attachment for the camera and so Charlotte had to walk back home (took about an hour) and get her tripod instead. Also towards the end of our day, it started to get dark and Alice's sister's room was not well lit, therefore our footage has come out quite dark. This means that at some point we will have to re shoot this as we are not happy with the outcome and me and Charlotte are very fussy!

Apart from those few things, everything else we had hoped for worked perfectly for example our panning shot using the skateboard. This was a successful shot so Charlotte won't have to lie on the floor again. It was absolutely freezing that day and sadly when we first filmed for our opening it was around summer time meaning the weather was warm and so obviously our costumes were meant for summer. Due to continuity I had to wear the same clothes (vest top and cardigan) and so Charlotte wasn't able to wear a coat either because it wouldn't have made sense for me to be without one. Basically we froze. The things we do for media!

Here is the video of our panning shot which we are hoping to use in our film. It does shake a bit but we think this was because we were using the flip, attached to the gorilla tripod, merely taped to the skateboard. We did do a number of takes however we couldn't stop it from shaking. When we do this in our film we will have to find a long flat surface which we can lie on top of Alice's drive as it is block paving.

Debates about representation



So why the fuss? soaps are known for their high emotions. Well, for viewers who have lost a baby to cot death, such a storyline not surprisingly brings back painful memories, however people are saying that it is the case with many of the narratives in other programmes like Coronation street and Emmerdale. In this case the objection was not to having a storyline about cot death but instead how the character of Ronnie was portrayed.

People argue:

“as is all too common, a bereaved mother has been portrayed as deranged and unhinged... For many, EastEnders might be their first or closest experience of a newly bereaved mother's reaction and subsequently they may treat baby snatching as a typical desire”

So in other words they are putting idea's into people's heads.

Personally I do think it is a really sensitive issue and Eastenders have kind of lost it a bit. Realistically how much bad luck could happen on one square and in fact to one person. Ronnie has been rapped by her father, left alone as a child by her mother, watched her child who she believed was dead die, her husband was shot in the head, she was stabbed in the back by her brother who actually turned out to not be her brother, and now when she is finally blessed with some good luck they decide to kill off her only child and add the twisted storyline of her swapping it with another baby. Of course the producers need to entertain viewers and come up with new exciting story lines, but using something so sensitive for entertainment seems to cross the line a bit. I know that you could say that for all the other tragic story lines they've used but I'm sure they've received complaints about those too, it just seems people have been extremely effected by this one in particular.Well I guess that's just my opinion. I know it's just a storyline and eastenders is just a soap which I've watched for years, but it's not the kind of storyline me and my family find entertaining, it's just too depressing and I can understand the point of view seen by viewers who have lost a baby.

In the last couple of lessons we've done lot's of things including practicing the panning shot we are planning on doing using a skateboard. We'll post up the video of us practicing using the flip on the skateboard as soon as its done.

In today's lesson we started looking at ideas for our music. We've found a couple of different cover songs which are un-copyrighted on youtube. We then converted them on fetch mp3 and imported them into garage bands where we split them, pieced the two different songs together to make one, as well as chopping and changing particular parts where we thought it was appropriate. We'll post that up here soon to show the style of music which we are planning on using to suit our genre of comedy.

Just to quickly say, I added some pictures to my previous post showing some more of the shot's which I really liked in the film Sherlock Holmes.

Now for an update of our film opening. In our past few media lessons me and Charlotte (now the only members of group four) have been planning all the footage that we are going to re-film. We've decided to pretty much re-film everything apart from the bus scene and this is due to continuity. We've planned all the props that we will need and we've even included some more interesting shot ideas, which will be revealed soon enough. We've planned the order of which we will film, so that our day can run as smoothly as possible and so that we don't have to waste time worrying about what to do or panicking that we've left any vital props at home.

Now all we need to do is actually get filming. We will have to wait till our location (Alice's house) is available and also wait till the weather gets a bit better. This is because we need to re-film the out door scenes, for example when Charlotte is lying on the ground in the drive. It wouldn't be fair to stick her on the floor in the rain (although it might be quite funny). A lot of what we are going to add is there to explain some of the questions that were asked by the class when we showed them our draft. For example someone said 'Why would the window and blind be open in the morning?' and also 'Why would there be a random person outside on the drive?'. Well Charlotte was meant to be Kate's (me) sister, however this was not made particularly clear. All will be explained and made clear when we eventually re-film and get some new footage. This day of filming will be a lot easier as we now know how to improve previous footage and also we know the location very well so we do not have to spend time planning where the shots will be taken from.