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Evaluation

Evaluation Notes

Question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The characters in our film opening sequence are all teenage girls. There are three girls who are the typical 'popular' girls, and two that are the 'geeks'. The fact that there are more popular girls than geeks gives the impression that the popular girls are powerful and in control, and that the geeks are outnumbered and 'loners'.

We used low angle shots when filming the popular girls to show they are superior to the geeks and to suggest they are at the top of the 'social chain' or hierarchy within their school. We also used high angle shots when filming the geeks, to sow they are inferior to the popular girls. 

The first half of the opening sequence shows the popular girls getting ready for school. We used shots of them shaving their legs and doing their makeup to show that they take pride in their appearance, and how it is important that they look their best, as they are at the top of the school hierarchy, and so have to look like they are. We tried to make the popular girls seem stuck up, and like they only care about themselves. The geeks are only in the opening sequence for a short time at the end; this also shows the importance of the popular girls compared to the geeks, as their time on screen is unbalanced (the amount of screen time the geeks have is predominantly less than the amount the popular girls have).

I think the way we have represented the geeks and the popular girls is quite stereotypical, as they are the kind of characters that films normally use when portraying these roles. Using stereotypical characters means that the audience can quickly identify with characters and almost know what they are like without being told very much about them. The genre is chick-flick/teen movie, and so these stereotypical roles fit well within it. Other films of the same genre like 'Mean Girls' use similar typical representations of popular girls and geeks. The popular girls are always in charge of the geeks, and act like they run the school, and the geeks are the victims who let themselves get walked on.

Question 4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

The audience for the opening sequence would be teenage girls around the ages of 11 to 16. I think it should be certified as a 12a, as it is slightly too old/mature to be a PG, but not rude or adult enough to be classed as a 15. It should also be 12a because people younger than 12 can still watch it, as these younger pre-teens are likely to be interested in this type of film as well. 'Mean Girls', 'Wild Child', and 'St Trinians' are similar films which the audience might have watched already, and enjoyed, and so they would be interested in our film. They have the same theme of a school hierarchy where the popular people have power over the rest of the school. The specific target audience is girls from the age of 11 to 16, who are in school or college, as they may be able to relate to the characters, if they are similar themselves, or know people who are similar. The wider audience is girls younger than 11, as they may be curious about what secondary/high school is like, and it can give them an insight, even if it is not particularly correct. They are adolescent and start to be interested in things that teenagers are interested in, or what they think all the older girls are interested in. People who would be interested in our opening sequence might also use social networking sites like 'Facebook' and 'Twitter'. They may watch programs such as 'Hannah Montana', 'The Suite Life of Zack and Cody', and other Disney channel shows. They may shop in places like 'Claire's Accessories', 'New Look', and 'Primark'. Knowing the other media they are likely to be intaking means that we could use this to decide on where and how to market and advertise our film.

Hannah :) 

Review

We went out and filmed another 2 shots which we felt were needed in order to make the film opening make more sense and flow more smoothly. These shots were of a bus going pass the school and a shot of shoes walking off of the bus. We feel that including these shots has benefited our film opening a lot as it has added a link to establish that the girls were at school which was no clear in the rough cut. We had a shot of the school which included no movement but this looked odd so we took it out and replaced it with the shot of a bus passing giving it a realistic feeling of school. 

Rough Cut

This is our rough cut of our film opening. We feel that there are still a few things we need to improve on. We have published the rough cut on YouTube to get some feedback to see if the audience get it and if there is anything they feel needs to be improved.

Filming Entry

Today we are going to shoot the "school" scene of the opening sequence. Originally we were going to have two guys opening the doors for them. In order to make the scene look less like our own college we are going to focus the camera on the door handles and gradually bring the shot back until the girls are in full focus. This allows us to get less of the background in shot as we are going from a close up shot to a long shot.

Diary entry for 7/2/11

Today we location scouted for our corridor scene and filmed a rough cut of the start of this scene where one girl walks through the centre of the double doors which are opened by two other people. We still have to film this scene so we have decided and planned to do this last bit of filming on wednesday.

Location Scouting

For our corridor scene we needed double doors with bright natural lighting behind it. Therefore we location scouted for the most suitable location. This clip shows a quick rough cut of the start of this scene using the double door location we will use for our actually film opening. However we will film a close up of the doors so that less of the corridor in the forground can be seen. Creating this rough clip allowed us to identify this and shows that we thought about the best and appropriate setting for this scene.

For our second attempt we added in the music that we would use throughout the whole opening which gave us a better understanding of which parts of the song fitted better so when it came to our final edit, we'll be able to cut the song down to us specific parts. 

After filming our first scene, we created an animatic to put see how everything fit together so we could see if the actions worked in this sequence or if anything needed to added or changed around. 

This is the Campus which we have decided to use as on our locations. We have chosen this location because we wanted to use somewhere that looks like a modern day American school. 

Font for our titles

We have chosen this font to use for our titles as we feel that it is very girly so it is suitable for our genre of film. Our inspiration of this style of font is from chick flicks such as legally blonde where it reflects a girls hand writing.  At this stage we plan to create the writing to look as though it is being written down.

Font

We have decided to use this font because it reflects an american high school with the big bold letters. This type of font has been used in other typical teenage films and we want the audience to make this association between the font and the style of the film.  

Prop Test Animatic for SCENE 1

This is our image anamatic to show the objects we will be using in the scene and to get an idea of how it will look. We left a two second time gap inbetween each shot but then decided it would look better if it matches the beat of the music (4 beats). We now know when we've finished filming that we need to cut each shot down so they will fit into the song. We did this because the music is so specific it's like it's routined, just like the girls plan themselves so they can end up with the perfect result. 

Overall DRAWN Animatic

This was our final animatic for the whole opening sequence of The Social Chain. Our next step is to re do the animatic containing the real props by taking photographs of each individual shot with the actual character using them. For this we will only use the first scene to test time and mise en scene continuity.

Storyboard Final :)

Film Title

We have decided to call our film "The Social Chain", we wanted a solid title similar to "Mean Girls" but also with a meaning. We came up with the social chain by linking the food chain and social classes, this relates to the typical high school, where our film is based. In a high school you have different social classes and groups for example the higher ranked "popular" people, then "geeks" and "unsocialable" people this relates to the the food chain. In the wild you have the lion at the top of the food chain and the less inferieor animals follow below.  The title also links in with our 25 word pitch that we published at the begining of our blog with the "jungle high school". The kind of characters we have in our opening for example the popular girls are suppose act almost like animals in the way that they are uncontrolable and will to whatever it take to survive in the jungle of school!


Alice :)

Filming Update!

We decided that we were going to show that there are three different characters by filming three different shots of them painting their nails in three individual colours and three shots of each girl placing on her shoes. We wanted to make this clear so the audience didn't get confused with the number of characters involved.


Alice x

We sent this e-mail the the record company requesting for permission to use the song "standing in the way of control" by the gossip.

Music Video for Opening Scene

This is the music video for the track we are going to use for our opening scene. We think that this song represents youth and the kind of target audience we are aiming for, since this song has been used in various other media with the same target audience such as the series skins. We plan to use the instrumental part of the song at the beginning for the scene where the girls are getting ready. This part of the song fits well because it makes the audience feel lively and creates an exciting atmosphere. We also want to use the chorus of the song for when the girls make their entrance through the corridor, as it gives a dramatic effect and it makes a strong impact, stating that they are high maintenance and they are always centre of attention, as that part of the song is very attention grabbing.