Blog

Mon 8 Sept 2014

A new start to media A2, in the first week of media studies we all discussed about

what this year will be based on. We was told about everything that we will be doing

through out the process of the year. We was told that by the end of the year we will

have a short film and two of these, movie poster for the film/radio advert/a film magazine.

Before we reach that goal we wioll have to we have to plan everything that we will be doing

and also have an Evaluation by the end of it all.

Mon 15 sept 2014

In week two we started focusing on a short film called 'Mixtape'. This short film was about

a young boy trying to win over a young girl by creating a mixtape for her with her favourite

songs. he then takes the mixtape over to her house but ends up leaving it with her mum

because the girl isn't there. later on that day the girl gets home and finally listens to the mixtape

and enjoys it. We had to take down notes about the Camera angles, Editing, sound

and lighting/mise-en-scene.

Mon 22 sept 2014

This week we worked in groups to analyse a short film. My group picked a short film called

'A favour'. We noticed that this short film challenges stereotypes and has similar codes and

convention of different short films. We had to create a powerpoint showing the class of

our understanding of this film, so we had different ideas of what makes this a good and effective

short film.

Mon 29 sept 2014

We carried on looking on more short films and was really analysing them in detailed. We started

focusing on the sounds and seeing how sounds makes a different when trying to portray genre or

even portraying the characters. By doing this is really helped and gave us ideas on to how to create

an effective short film which will catch the viewers eyes and make them engaged to the short film.

We also started to look at lighting and how this shows the mood of the film. Most short films

use natural lighting to show the realism and naturalistic of the performance.

Mon 6 Oct 2014

We was coming to the end of seeing everyone's powerpoint about each and everyone's understanding

the codes and conventions that are used in different short films. Throught out analysing these short

films everyone started to share different ideas and views in to what they think makes they short film

interesting. We started to notice that most short films have the same type of code and conventions

and how most short films are relatively close with the same ideas.

Mon 13 Oct 2014

At the start of this week we started exploring different movie posters because for our end short

films we have to create a movie poster with it too. By looking at different movie posters we started

build up ideas into how we can design and create our own movie posters. We looked at different

movie poster that relates to a type of genre and how it portrays that genre within the design.

Comedy mostly has a lot of pictures and text heavy whereas a horror movie poster will have less

text and colour to match the genre.

Mon 20 Oct 2014

We have now started looking in detailed at different films genres and what are they codes and

conventions. This is very important to do at an early stage on the process to start thinking about

planning our short movie, because by doing this it will help us to work out exactly what genre

we would like to explore more and build upon that. After going through each film genres we each

decided with two main genre that we would like to work on and had to do some research into them

genres and see what the possibility are for us doing these genres.

Mon 3 Nov 2014

The two main genre that I decided was Romance and Comedy. I picked these two genres because

I watch alot of movie that are based around them genre so I'm used to them and know alot

about they codes and conventions. During the half term holidays we had to create a detailed

powerpoint about both the genres that we picked and link it to films that we've watch or will

watch that can help us with getting ideas for our short films. We picked our groups which we would

like to work with to create our short film. Each of us in the group did 2-3 slides each in detailed

about the genre and how we can use to to create an effective end product.

Mon 10 Nov 2014

This week we started to focus and decide on the one final genre that out short film will be based on.

We went through typical codes and conventions of both to work out what we can do effecticvely and

what would be difficult to do while working on a low budget and limited time. Something that we

thought of was that if we do remance then we can film during the christmas/cold season as this

season has a link and relates to romance.

Mon 17th Nov 2014

We are still carrying out our planning and research in to our chosen genre. We are spending

alot of time doing detailed research into our genre so that when it comes to creating our

short films we know exactly what we can do to make our short film effective, looking

professional and so that we can get the best grade possible. We are also looking at different

shot types that can we use in our short films so that we can get mark for using conventional

shot types and angles.

Mon 24th Nov 2014

We have broken down the main and sub-genre of romance and started making case studies

to help out more with the codes and conventions so that I know the genre inside out and

everything that I need to know about it. Romance is really easy to notice and are relatively

similar to other romance films. We also watched psycho because it's classic movie that

includes, action, thriller and also romance which relates to most of the groups chosen

genre.

Mon 1st Dec 2014

We have been preparing for the PPE exams that has been set up to help us experience

what the real exams will be like. We did the exam based on postmodernism and the

question was 'Define postmodern media, with examples.

Mon 8th Dec 2014

For this week I started looking at romance films score. I started doing some deep

research into how music for romance films gets put together to match the mood of

the scene and also effectively matches the setting of the scene. I started putting

together my own score to the idea of our short film.

Mon 15th Dec 2014

We started to work on our audience research to know who will be watching our

short film and so that we know exactly what they would like to watch.

We started to create surveys for the audience to fill out so we undertood

our audience carefully and so that we could do our best to make a film that

they would love to watch over and over again.

Mon 5th Jan 2015

We started recording the music for our short films and see if it will match

perfectly with out short film. The music is really important to a film because

it helps the audience to work out the mood of the scene and makes the

scene more effective.

Mon 12th Jan 2015

We started talking about scripts for this week to know the plot of our short

movie. While doing this we also started looking at casting and seeing who

we're going to cast for our short movie. The actors are really important because

we want our audience to understand everything that'g going on and for thins to

happen our audience needs to be clear of the genre and script.

Mon 19th Jan 2015

We started creating a storyboard based around our main plot so that when it comes

filming our short film we knew exactly what we had to do on set. We also had a shooting

script so that when we was shooting we knew what shot we have done and have left to

do, even though we didnt have to shoot in that order.

Mon 26th Jan 2015

We started shooting for our short film and also location hunting. We went down to Brighton

to start filming and on our way there we was locating for other locations that we can film

in to match the conventional settings for romance and also what the audience would like to

see. We still have more filming to do located in a house to portray the feelings of the character.

Mon 2nd Feb 2015

On this week we started to edit the put of scenes that we have already shot and tried to see

what we have all together so far and what we have to do left based on our shooting script.

We have started recording the music scores for the scenes needed in our short film and started

to match it with the action we shot.

Mon 9th Feb 2015

We did some more filming. We was filming indoors this week, in a house where the actor started

writing the 'last letter'. This scene is the most important scene for our short film as its he part

we he writes the letter plus its the opening scene of our short film.

Mon 16th Feb 2015

We have started Construting our short film movie poster, and for us to do this well we also started

looking at different movie film poster to work out the codes and conventions of a real movie

poster and try to match ours as close as possible to make ours look like a professional and

well planned movie poster

Mon 23rd Feb 2015

This week I started to make the right page of my double page spread. For me this was harder than the

movie poster because I haven't seen many romance film double page spread from magazines, this

has meant more research into it and seeing how I can make a double page spread which will look exactly

like a real double page spread

Mon 2nd Mar 2015

Because we have decided to change our short film genre into a genre we had to succesfully do our new

research and planning for our new film which will be based on horror. We decided to change our genre

because we as a group had a discussion with the teacher and we felt that our film weren't meeting the

correct codes and conventions of the genre of romance so we decided to do one that we would do

correctly. We split the group into just 2 member and felt that it was the best way forward.

Mon 9th Mar 201

We started location for locations for outr short films, this meant going to out to different places around

the area and even outside. We had to be really creatice at this point because we had to picture what the

film would look like in those different locations and how well it will match the codes and conventions of

the genre of horror.

Mon 16th Mar 2015

Filming started. We decided on the location that we wanted to film at and started filming for the short film.

At first we started having trouble shooting the film because of lighting, because of the cold and winter

season it meant that it was getting dark really quickly and by us not having a portable light to film with

it meant we had to come back on a different day a bit earlier so that we have more day light time to film

in so that the video will be visiable to the audience.

Mon 23rd Mar 2015

We started editing the first part of our short film so that we won't have to spend as long at the end editing

everything together. When editing we came across that the sound of the voice didn't really sound as good

as we wanted so we also started editing the sound as well as visual. This meant that everyone will hear and

understand everything that the actors will be saying to make the movie clear.