In this week, we made progress in our evaluations as thus, I have completed parts 2 and 3. For part 2, I had to talk about how my media product uses, develops or challenges conventions of real media products. We had to talk about narrative, location, effects, lighting, inspiration and if we used conventional pace. This was quite simple because we did use a lot of conventions that are seen in most BSR's, such as using natural lighting and having fairly slow pace. We did this because if the opening sequence was in a fast paced motion, then it would look more like a Hollywood film rather than a BSR.
For part, 3 we talked about who would distribute our media product. This easy for us because our brief already told us who would be the most suitable and so we just had to talk about why we would choose FilmFour.
Tuesday, 31 March 2015
Monday, 30 March 2015
Wednesday, 25 March 2015
Evaluation Part 2 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products
Narrative and performance:
Throughout the whole of our movie, we used handheld camera movement,as we believed that a tripod would not be of any use for us. This is because we wanted to portray as much realism as we could and a tripod would make every image stand still. Thus, realism would be removed, but would be re-instated with the shakiness of handheld.
In terms of clothing, we wanted to keep a form of BSR, especially with Omario, our drug dealer. In real conventions, drug dealers do not look very smart, in example in the movie Trainspotting, the drug dealer does not look like the smartest of people, which we would want to use in our opening sequence. We tried to do this by making our drug dealer look like someone not very classy, making him look quite scruffy. For example, when he's being told off by the teacher, he was sucking a lollipop, which could connote that he does not care much and doesn't look professional, something that is normally a convention in a BSR drug dealer.
However, we challenged a convention in a typical BSR film, with the protagonists' clothing. Typically, a drug user usually looks poor as they wear rags as clothes since they can't afford anything else other than their drugs. Therefore, we wanted to make our protagonist different by giving him regular clothing that would make him look smarter than a regular drug user in a BSR. We did this to challenge the conventional BSR drug user as we wanted our character to be sophisticated, something that is not regular in a BSR.
Furthermore, we had a shot where we were splitting the cocaine for our use. For this scene we decided to go with an extreme close up as this could allow there to be more detail to be seen. What we wanted to show was what we were using to split the cocaine - a ZIP card and a 6th form ID. This is so that the audience understands what age the characters are, as they are using cards which would be in the possession of a teenager. We did this to match the conventions of a BSR, as some movies such as Kidulthood involve teenagers doing drugs. This gave us some inspiration to make our protagonist be involved in the use of drugs as this is typical in a real media product.
Settings/Locations
For our opening sequence, we decided to go for a school. This was so that our audience would understand what sort of character we had as our protagonist - a boy who regularly attends school and gets good grades. Having a school is not conventional in a BSR because most of the teenagers who are involved in drugs would not attend school. This can make an audience member be intrigued in watching the movie because they could be interested in trying to understand how it feels like to have an addiction to cocaine but also be doing well in school.
So, we chose a school to show how studious our character is and also to demonstrate how strong the addiction to drugs are. It would be unlikely to see someone doing drugs in school as they believe that it could be too dangerous. However, because of how addicted our protagonist is to drugs, we got them to do it in a school toilet, as it strongly connotes how far they are able to go just to do some grams of cocaine.
Furthermore, we understand that usually, drugs are taken in dark and compact spaces, which we tried to copy. Because of how tight the toilet was, we were able to match it meaning that our opening sequence could look more like a BSR. We had the issue though that we were not able to change the lighting as it would be too dark to film and we weren't allowed to meaning that we had to stick to the high brightness. In the future hopefully, we will be able to get better lighting so that it matches the typical drug scenes.
Effects and transitions
In our opening sequence we tried not to use many effects or transitions as it usually goes against the conventions, as most BSR's do not try to have many effects as they want to keep it realistic. We decided to follow this convention for our opening sequence as we tried to not use many effects or transitions, but we still did use 2.
Firstly, we did an effect in our movie title as we made it zoom in. We did this so that the audience would be more aware on how the protagonist has given up which is connoted through the increase of the title. This effect goes against the typical BSR convention as many movies such as fish tank just put their title in front of a black screen. We got this idea of a zooming title from the movie 'Skyfall' as they too did it. We thought that it would be a good idea as it could demonstrate the character's current emotions.
We also used a very slight transition at the start before the actual opening sequence begins. We did this because we thought that it looked awkward if it just started and to fix this we just created a slight pause between the institutional logos and the opening.
Lighting
BSR's do not resort to using artificial lighting as they are wanting to keep the realism inside their movie as much as they can which is why they would rather use natural/ambient lighting. As we wanted to make our movie look as realistic as possible, we refused to add in any extra lighting so that it would change how bright or dark a room normally is.
For example, when our protagonist was sitting in the chair looking at his exam, we used natural lighting as we did not change anything. We kept the lighting on how it would normally be in a normal day so that it would not seem unrealistic, something that Hollywood movies enjoy doing.
Which artists/videos, if any, inspired you?
For our opening sequence, we did not get much inspiration as this idea came out of the top of our heads. However, we did get some inspiration for a few shots and events.
As previously mentioned, we liked the fact that in 'Skyfall' their title zoomed in. We decided to implement this ourselves into our own title, something that we believed would make sense as it can connote that our character is saying 'Skrew it' even more as time goes by.
Fish tank also inspired the way that we filmed the shot of 'Bailee' sending the text message, as in Fish tank there is a scene where the camera is walking in front of Mia, something that wanted to copy. Therefore, we copied this as we thought that it would be a good shot since it captures him sending the message and can also capture any facial expressions that he could express.
Our theme of drug use came from the movie Trainspotting as I had recently seen some clips of it and the theme looked quite interesting to do. We didn't use morphine however as cocaine would be easier to mimic.
Did you use conventional pace when editing? Was your narrative original/conventional?
To maintain the conventional slow pace of a BSR, we had to make sure that our editing did not happen to fast and that we let our scenes flow quite slowly. We attempted to do this by not having fast cuts or very short scenes but instead having scenes that can last 3 or more seconds. If we had gone for a fast sort of pace then our opening sequence would not really seem like a BSR as it is Hollywood movies the ones who usually have very fast scenes and cuts.
We did go quite fast however when Edward got the news that Bailee was ready with the drugs in the toilet. This is to re-iterate Edward's addiction to drugs as he is moving faster than how he moved in the rest of the opening sequence.
Throughout the whole of our movie, we used handheld camera movement,as we believed that a tripod would not be of any use for us. This is because we wanted to portray as much realism as we could and a tripod would make every image stand still. Thus, realism would be removed, but would be re-instated with the shakiness of handheld.
In terms of clothing, we wanted to keep a form of BSR, especially with Omario, our drug dealer. In real conventions, drug dealers do not look very smart, in example in the movie Trainspotting, the drug dealer does not look like the smartest of people, which we would want to use in our opening sequence. We tried to do this by making our drug dealer look like someone not very classy, making him look quite scruffy. For example, when he's being told off by the teacher, he was sucking a lollipop, which could connote that he does not care much and doesn't look professional, something that is normally a convention in a BSR drug dealer.However, we challenged a convention in a typical BSR film, with the protagonists' clothing. Typically, a drug user usually looks poor as they wear rags as clothes since they can't afford anything else other than their drugs. Therefore, we wanted to make our protagonist different by giving him regular clothing that would make him look smarter than a regular drug user in a BSR. We did this to challenge the conventional BSR drug user as we wanted our character to be sophisticated, something that is not regular in a BSR.
Furthermore, we had a shot where we were splitting the cocaine for our use. For this scene we decided to go with an extreme close up as this could allow there to be more detail to be seen. What we wanted to show was what we were using to split the cocaine - a ZIP card and a 6th form ID. This is so that the audience understands what age the characters are, as they are using cards which would be in the possession of a teenager. We did this to match the conventions of a BSR, as some movies such as Kidulthood involve teenagers doing drugs. This gave us some inspiration to make our protagonist be involved in the use of drugs as this is typical in a real media product.Settings/Locations
For our opening sequence, we decided to go for a school. This was so that our audience would understand what sort of character we had as our protagonist - a boy who regularly attends school and gets good grades. Having a school is not conventional in a BSR because most of the teenagers who are involved in drugs would not attend school. This can make an audience member be intrigued in watching the movie because they could be interested in trying to understand how it feels like to have an addiction to cocaine but also be doing well in school.
Furthermore, we understand that usually, drugs are taken in dark and compact spaces, which we tried to copy. Because of how tight the toilet was, we were able to match it meaning that our opening sequence could look more like a BSR. We had the issue though that we were not able to change the lighting as it would be too dark to film and we weren't allowed to meaning that we had to stick to the high brightness. In the future hopefully, we will be able to get better lighting so that it matches the typical drug scenes.
Effects and transitions
In our opening sequence we tried not to use many effects or transitions as it usually goes against the conventions, as most BSR's do not try to have many effects as they want to keep it realistic. We decided to follow this convention for our opening sequence as we tried to not use many effects or transitions, but we still did use 2.
Firstly, we did an effect in our movie title as we made it zoom in. We did this so that the audience would be more aware on how the protagonist has given up which is connoted through the increase of the title. This effect goes against the typical BSR convention as many movies such as fish tank just put their title in front of a black screen. We got this idea of a zooming title from the movie 'Skyfall' as they too did it. We thought that it would be a good idea as it could demonstrate the character's current emotions.We also used a very slight transition at the start before the actual opening sequence begins. We did this because we thought that it looked awkward if it just started and to fix this we just created a slight pause between the institutional logos and the opening.
Lighting
BSR's do not resort to using artificial lighting as they are wanting to keep the realism inside their movie as much as they can which is why they would rather use natural/ambient lighting. As we wanted to make our movie look as realistic as possible, we refused to add in any extra lighting so that it would change how bright or dark a room normally is.
For example, when our protagonist was sitting in the chair looking at his exam, we used natural lighting as we did not change anything. We kept the lighting on how it would normally be in a normal day so that it would not seem unrealistic, something that Hollywood movies enjoy doing.
Which artists/videos, if any, inspired you?
For our opening sequence, we did not get much inspiration as this idea came out of the top of our heads. However, we did get some inspiration for a few shots and events.
As previously mentioned, we liked the fact that in 'Skyfall' their title zoomed in. We decided to implement this ourselves into our own title, something that we believed would make sense as it can connote that our character is saying 'Skrew it' even more as time goes by.
Fish tank also inspired the way that we filmed the shot of 'Bailee' sending the text message, as in Fish tank there is a scene where the camera is walking in front of Mia, something that wanted to copy. Therefore, we copied this as we thought that it would be a good shot since it captures him sending the message and can also capture any facial expressions that he could express.Our theme of drug use came from the movie Trainspotting as I had recently seen some clips of it and the theme looked quite interesting to do. We didn't use morphine however as cocaine would be easier to mimic.
Did you use conventional pace when editing? Was your narrative original/conventional?
To maintain the conventional slow pace of a BSR, we had to make sure that our editing did not happen to fast and that we let our scenes flow quite slowly. We attempted to do this by not having fast cuts or very short scenes but instead having scenes that can last 3 or more seconds. If we had gone for a fast sort of pace then our opening sequence would not really seem like a BSR as it is Hollywood movies the ones who usually have very fast scenes and cuts.
We did go quite fast however when Edward got the news that Bailee was ready with the drugs in the toilet. This is to re-iterate Edward's addiction to drugs as he is moving faster than how he moved in the rest of the opening sequence.
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