Thursday, 30 January 2014

Progress Review

Need to complete more blog posts
- Shot by Shot remake comparison 
- Pitch; PDE, Risk Assessment
- Holiday Task 
- More Individual posts 

Improve: 
Work on timing and keep up to date with all blogs 

Monday, 27 January 2014

Planning final project: Ideas



We came up with our own film idea; Weirdly Connected, however we got inspiration and useful ideas from other teen films- Bratz, Mean Girls and East A. The films all had location as a similarity and that being in a high school, in which all the drama and story unfolds.



Idea

  • There are four main characters 
  • A fire alarm breaks out and the school shuts down- automatically locking the exit and entrance doors.
  • The rest of the school evacuates
  • The girls realise that they are locked in- no where out of the school.
  • An event/plot happens in which the girls discover a secret.




**** Spolier**** The girls discover they share a past together which turns their lives around. 



Characters



Samantha-

Dumb, happy and careless.






Grace- Intelligent, careful, passionate.






Britney - stuck up, bitch, vain 









  El - Lazy, unmotivated and moody, outcast


Planning - Locations

LOCATIONS:

Classrooms - in which all the character enter near the end of the scene. The classroom should be full of tables and chairs and should be an empty room other than the main characters who enter the room one by one.
Classroom in college

School/college - We will need a place to set the main part of the film in which will be a college or school in which all the characters attend. Could use C&I shots of outside the building and shots of the characters entering the college.

Outside of houses - For one of the character's who will need to come running out of her house rushing throwing parts of clothing on like a jumper etc putting shoes on and constantly dropping things bag, books.
Houses near the park near college

Quiet Streets- For the man character to be walking down on the way to college should be one of the only people on the street making her stand out more.  small street off oxford street.

Bus stop - To show one of the characters form of travel. Bus stop opposite school have a shot with the bus passing past the character revealing the college behind her.

Places in the city- Lester square, kings cross, big ben, chapel market etc





Props

PROPS
Books- books represent knowledge and the fact that she's focused on her studies. We can get them from the library.


The popular, glamorous girl
Wears high heels
Carries fashion magazines
Always hold loads of shopping bags
This character is always up to date with the latest fashion trends and very glamourous.



Holiday Task

Analysis of teen film - John Tucker Must Die






Plot line
The film is about 4 girls getting revenge on guy who played 3 of the girls. Their way of getting revenge was playing the player so they used the 'pretty ugly girl' and turned her into a perfect girl who he fell in love with.
This an typical teen film as they include the following characters; the jocks, pretty ugly girl, token black guy, popular girl. John tucker must like most teen films include a love story or some kind of romance. Also most teen films have similarities between real life so cheerleaders and the story lines are usually about something the target audience can relate to so in this instance the target audience would be 13-18 year old who would be going to High school where this film is set.

This film includes many stereotypical characters
The jocks



Pretty Ugly Girl


Popular Girl

Token Black Guy


The Nerd

Comparison of The Breakfast Club original & remake

In terms of similarities between our remake and the original Breakfast Club film I would say there is not much difference, this is down hugely to the in-depth planning we made and the storyboard we produced. Having a storyboard with us while filming made it easy for us to know what kind of shot we needed to film. For example for when there was a shot of the locker an then at shot of it zoomed in, we made sure we had a shot of lockers and of a segment of it zoomed it, this was done to replicate the exact clip of the original.

As a group we thought of it as important to capture the college as a whole as we felt that the original set the scene of the school well by having various shots of different aspects of the building, hence us having a range of different shots of the college and not reusing shots. furthermore as a group we made sure that we included similar text font to those used in the original and made sure we incorporated the voice over. Including the voice over meant that I had to spend quiet some time going over the intro of the film to make sure I had the right words written down. That is how determined we were as a group to make sure that we got it similar to the original as possible. I also went to the extent on putting on an American accent add to the overall effect.

Having trouble with filming the car scenes made it did have a impact on how our remake looked to the original. For example we did not have enough character and not a change in clothes to make sure the characters were differentiated from on another enough. This made it look like jump cuts of different conversations with the same people, which we were not happy happened but at that point we did not have enough time film the shots again.


Planning, filming, editing - The Breakfast Club

Before filming could take place planning needed to be done. Doing this would save us time when going out to filming and would also give us time to think about how we were going make the crucial element of the car look lifelike and what type of shot was for a particular scene. During planning time we watched the actual opening of The Breakfast Club several time so we could note down the type of clothing the different characters wore as it said something about their social background. 'The princess' was dressed in pink, in contrast to 'The Basketcase' who was dressed in all black, from this we as a group could tell that the character dressed in all black was anti-social and the character who wore pink was very feminine. By planning what we was going to do before filming we as a group was able to develop our understanding of the characters which would help when we would come to portraying them. We also created a digital storyboard which we had with us while filming to remind us what came next and what shot type it was.

When we went out to film thing went smoothly because we had planned before hand. The tripod meant we were able to get the steady shots featured in the film. However when filming the toy cars we had to make sure they were close to the camera lense to make them life like, but we also wanted it to be a still shot because that was how it was in the original, so we had to make sure we had a steady hand while filming the cars. Although planning meant we'd saved time from deciding on what shot it was , we did not get all our video takes in one day as we had difficulties with filming the cars.

Editing was one of my favourite part of the process in creating out Breakfast Club remake, this is because it was where all our work would come together and ultimately see the similarities with our version to the original. Editing did not take as long as I expected because when we went out to film we made sure that we had one video clip of each shot reducing the confusion of having several takes of the same shot and going through each clip and analysing which would be the best to put in our remake. During the editing process we were able to put things in our remake that were not possible while filming such as the universal distribution logo and the credit. Having our storyboard while editing made it easy for us to tell what people came next in the order of titles rather then constantly referring back to the actual video. Adding music to the remake brought the clip together more as it became more interesting and tempting to watch. My favourite part was being able to add a voice over because it rounded off our remake as we did not have much dialogue in it anyways. I also enjoyed putting on an American accent!

 
 
 -Katherine hard at work editing our remake! Eeek!
 


 -Our remake almost ready to upload!!!!

Sunday, 26 January 2014

Examples of Sub-genres in teen films

Teen films

horror - Scream, The Roommate
Rom-Com - She's all That, it's a boy girl thing
action- Kick Ass, the amazing spider man
Musical - Hairspray

All these sub genres are seen in teen films mostly teen films mix in romance and comedy. All teen films follow the specific stereotypes and representations of their characters no matter what the genre of the film is.

Note for group teen film:

Decide on a genre that we will work well for us when we do our film. 

example of sound in teen film

10 things I hate about you
 
The sound at the start of this film I used  first to show how the character Cat is represented(the loner, outsider). This is done by the way in which the creators have used the character's cars. You see when Cat is first scene she is listening to punk rock music (bad reputation, hit girls) while the girls in the other car are listening to very popular pop music.

extension blogging task - sound


Task One
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Task 2
 
 
 
There are a number of different effects of using different sounds. Mainly the music and/or sound can be used to start the atmosphere of the start of the film. For example in some films the opening scene has very slow and soothing music at the start of the film is creates a very calm safe atmosphere however when a film starts with very upbeat music there is a vey positive and happy atmosphere which is set.
 

Blogging Task-sound

1. Our task was to take a opening sequence from a teen film and add our own sound to it using creative commons and sound effects. It is important for us to use copyright free music as you cannot use copyright music and it is better for our film if we design our own sounds and music

2.   Creative commons- The concept behind creative commons is to be able to find different sounds an music which is copyright free.

Steps to using creative commons











Storylines and plot in teen dramas/ Binary oppositions

Binary oppositions refers to two things that oppose each other. For example dark and light, up and down, yes and no.

TWILIGHT:
Twilight follow Bella, a teenage girl who moves in with her father after her mother and step father hit the road. The film follows her journey in trying to fit in with the kids at school and falling for a vampire.
BINARY OPPOSITIONS IN CLIP:


-Predator vs Prey
-Big hot city vs Small dull town
-Anti- social vs Social
 Bella does not say much when she arrives which shows the withdraw she has towards her father. She is also persistent in her request not to be featured in the school paper which shows how she does not like to be the center of attention.



GREASE:
The opening Grease follows a group of teenager on their first day back at school, in particular a couple dealing with having to be away from one another.

BINARY OPPOSITIONS IN CLIP:
 -Macho man vs Innocent girl
The boys are seen hyper as they arrive at school which demonstrates their eager manor, dressed in all back with slicked hair which in those times was essential if you were to be perceived as a real man. Furthermore the boys have a conversation about cars which is a very typical topic boys choose to speak about. On the other hand the girls wear very feminine clothing with subtle colours showing their delicate manor. 





Attack the Block
Attack the block is a film where an alien invasion has taken place and a young group of people come up with a plan to kill them.

BINARY OPPOSITIONS IN CLIP:
bad vs good
loud vs quiet
-vulnerable vs confident
Firstly the lady is alone whereas there are at least 5 boys in the group, this makes her vulnerable as she has no companion to protect if she were to be in danger. Furthermore when she hears the noise in the alleyway she flinches demonstrating her awareness which the audience can interpret as her being paranoid. On the other hand the boys perform a robbery against the woman showing them as brave as being on the streets of London could see them getting caught anytime by the police or even passerby's. 


Comparison of The Breakfast Club opening sequence (Original and Re-make)


Both the original opening sequence and my groups re-make start with the Universal logo which comes onto screen. The music for the original comes in after 4 seconds the re-make's music does not come in until the credits have started to appear on screen.


 
Title sequence is rather similar mainly due to the order of the credits the re-make which the same as the order in the original. However the font and size of the credits in the re-make is very different from the original.



  Unlike in the film we only had four people staring in the re-make whereas the original has seven people staring in the film which were shown in the title sequence.




 



Shot held for 11 seconds in both clips voiceover starting straight away.










The car scenes are also very different as while filming the re-make we did not have access to a real car so had to make use with toy cars. Making it very difficult to make it seem more realistic.
Also in our re-make we did not have much dialogue so our scenes was much shorter than the ones in the film.