Production schedule

The following is a preliminary list of all that we need to complete our production:

Locations

•  Park/forest area/woodland
•  Pond?
•  Bonnie's house (group members living room)

Prop list

•  Rolls of cello tape 
•  Mobile phones
•  Bag of biscuits
•  Loaf of bread
•  Scissors

Costume list

• Bonnie 

           -Everyday normal wear

• Barry

           -Tights and fancy dress costume

• Louis

           -Party wear, perhaps also with some element of fancy dress

Actors/Actresses

• Bonnie- _____
• Barry- Jamie Payne
• Louis- Ryan Kent

Equipment list

• Camera
• Tripod? (as of yet unsure as to whether or not we'll need one)
•  Editing software
  

Time Frame
We will be filming during the day as such it is very possible that we should film during the lessons that we have finished all preparatory work, otherwise we would most likely be filming at the weekend following the lessons that we would have been filming during. 

Term summary and reflection

This term I started my Media Studies A-level, we've been put into groups and are starting our coursework for our foundation portfolio's. My group consists of me, Jamie Payne, Alisha Ward and Ryan Kent.  In these groups we've been planning and researching into genres of film so that we can create our own successful opening sequences. My group has decided to research into and create the opening sequence to our own Comedy film. I personally feel that as a group we work well together though admittedly we do work quite slowly, the questionnaire results took us longer to gather than was necessary, and the findings even longer to pull together. Overall though I think that we each balance out our individual shortcomings and have particular roles within the group that help us to get things done. I'm happy with the work we've completed thus far and I feel that over the Christmas holidays we've completed the necessary work to ensure success when we begin production. In all I feel that in this term as a group we have progressed well.

Below I will write out a brief schedule for our first few lessons back and what my group intend to have completed.

We intend to first check that the screenplay we have written in the correct formatting and generally works, after this we will create the storyboards for the screen play, we will then complete final props lists, final  location lists, camera shots(lists of ones we intend to use) and ensure our plans are as up to date as possible.

Screenplay first draft

LEAP Year Screenplay

Over the Christmas holidays my group managed to meet up and finish some of the preparation work such as the screenplay above, as well as completing a few last minute additions to our research findings etc.

Treatment revised

We have as a group decided that we needed to change our treatment pitch based on the information gained from our online and paper questionnaires and the focus group.
Title: Leap year
An original screenplay from Jamie Payne, Ryan Kent, Alisha Ward and Kayleigh Morris
Date: 15th December 2011

We present a comedy film about Barry and Louis two teenagers with an imagination that far exceeds normality. A third friend attempts to play the voice of reason as the two friends discuss the insanity of the night previous, but really with friends like those two it's not hard to imagine that he's In accordance to the suggestions of the focus group we are going to include a female character (Bonnie) as a challenge to the general conventions in which all main characters tend to be male not really paid attention to.

As the story unfolds we discover that on their night out turned out to be far more than was expected by anyone. They encountered superheroes, dancing aliens, emotional turmoil, a bromance and even llama's? When we pitched this idea to the focus group they thought that we might try to include all of this in the opening sequence and suggested that t might be  a little bit too much to put in the first few minutes. We did explain that we are not going to include all of this straight away and only included it in the pitch in order to give a general overview of the idea. Throughout their discussion of last night several fights and arguments break out. 

The opening sequence of this film would involve the third more rational person entering the room in which both Louis and Barry have collapsed, giving the both of them a cup of tea in order to sober the two up somewhat. From here a long discussion begins revolving around the unclear events of the previous night. 
We'd have the camera showing at first only extreme close ups of the three main characters as they wake up and start moving about. The camera would then reveal that the three are in a park with one character cello-taped to a tree this would be Barry whilst Louis is sleeping in the same tree and wakes up -falling out of the tree in the process. Louis answers the phone to find that Bonnie is attempting to contact them from the location of the party, she then hangs up after a short conversation and arrives with two mugs of tea and a pack of biscuits.

Think, Dude where's my car meets the hangover. 

Our Production Company intends to make use of fairly strange mise-en-scene, for example the characters would be dressed very messily in the same clothes as they had worn the previous night, 

The characters, on the suggestion of the focus group, will be dressed in fancy dress, as of yet we are unsure as to the exact costume they will be wearing. But we are considering having Louis wear tights the props would  be objects such as empty drink cans, cups of tea etc. The lighting would be vibrant and bright at most/all times. We would use a fair amount of effects on the scenes, as well as a wide variety of sound and music that fit the situations. In terms of camera we would use a lot of close-ups and reaction shots. We would make use of extreme close ups and close ups until Louis' phone rings and then when he reveals their location we would zoom out and show a long shot of the entire tree with Louis and Barry sitting in it or stuck to it. We would make use of mid-shots during the phone conversation as well as reaction shots We would include all of this in order to create a sense of humour for the audience to react to. Our target audience would be around the general age ranges of 15-21.

Lesson summary

Today, I managed to finish collating all of the data from our online questionnaires and begin to draft a revision of our treatment pitch, I intend to outside of class create a summary for the information we gained from our focus group as well as upload some graphs and analyse the information gained from the paper based questionnaires and then combine all the information from this and the online questionnaires. Next lesson as a group we intend to finish drafting our treatment pitch and also create a screenplay for our opening sequence based on all of the feedback we've received. 

Audience profile Part 1

Based on our online and paper questionnaires, we have found that;


In general our typical audience member would be of the general  age range of 16-20, the percentage of this range being 56.7%.  We also found that generally people answering our questionnaires was evenly split with 50% male and 50% female. Our general audience member appears to be a student and out of work, who prefer to watch comedy films with 60% of participants voting this genre as their favourite, with action thriller and drama all ranking fairly highly. People that preferred comedy seemed to prefer it as a result of the feel good factor that comedy happens to provide them with, they also tend to enjoy the fact that you watch a comedy at any time, you don't need to be in any particular mood to enjoy them and they allow the audience a means of escapism from the pressures of everyday life.
A majority of our answers came from people that watch films fairly often, with the vast majority of people accessing media on the Internet,  TV and through social networking. A majority of our participants said that they most commonly saw adverts on the TV and also from the Internet due to easy accessibility. Most of our results suggested that they preferred the genres of Rock, and Metal as well as pop, the audience members appeared to think that their preferred genre's would fit in with their favourite film genres as they generally seem to be of the opinion that most genres of music can fit in with any film.



These results whilst fairly useful are very generalised, and as such cannot be taken at face value. In order to gain a more accurate and representative result we may complete an interview or even look more closely at our focus group information (perhaps even form another focus group with more genre specific questions and with an improved treatment)

Questionnaire results part 2

Here is an example of one filled in paper questionnaire, I will be integrating the information from this into the audience profile that I will create shortly.

Focus group findings

Yesterday my group gathered  a variety of people within the age range of our target audience and first showed them our original treatment pitch in order to gain new perspectives on our original/base idea. We asked the group as a whole about their opinions regarding the idea, the feedback we received was as follows: 
~ They were unsure as to how we would do some of the events we said would happen in the film such as the aliens
~ One person also offered the idea that we set it in a Hollywood film set (using a school drama room to do this)
~ We were then asked how we would represent each characters personalities in the short amount of time that we had. We proceeded to explain that we would represent personality through use of costume and dialogue/actions

We then showed to them a clip from the opening sequence of the hangover (this was the only clip from a  key text that we had available to us at the time as a result of technical difficulties, we had intended to use a clip from the anchorman also but were unable to find the clip again) After watching the clip we asked the group why they enjoyed watching comedy films and received the following responses:
~ To laugh
~ The outrageous things that happen in a comedy film
~ More entertaining than other genres
~ They say the things that you are thinking but don't say
~ The situations are outrageous
~ They're easy to watch

We also asked our focus group whether they would watch our film upon it's completion and what they would like to change about our pitch, we had the following responses:
~ We need more to actually happen in the opening sequence
~ Perhaps we could relate the sequence we were planning more to the hangover
They as a group seemed to like the idea of us changing the setting and using one that was more out of the ordinary, in order to make it more interesting.
~We could make it more interesting by having a big important/interesting event happen in the first few minutes
~Maybe we could make use of more risky humour
Overall the group seemed to like the fact that we had used elements of the hangover to inspire us.

We then asked how they thought we should challenge the general conventions of a comedy film, our main suggestion was to include a female lead as women generally don't have particularly big roles in comedy films unless they are romantic comedies.

We had a short amount of time at the end where we answered any questions and received more suggestions about our idea that hadn't been answered of previously mentioned:
~ The group insisted that we should definitely reconsider our choice of setting and a few suggestions (An aquarium, ASDA etc) were offered as settings for the characters to wake up.
~ Maybe we could have a list of things that would go wrong in the first 60 or so seconds
~ It was also suggested that we could make use of symbols/symbolism
~ It can't be too similar to other comedy films, it should be original and stand out from the others
~ Could make use of strange fancy dress costume
~ We need to be practical about what we do

As we finished we asked the group whether they liked the idea as a whole and would actively choose to watch a film such as the one we will be creating the opening sequence to, the whole group said that yes they would watch this film and like our general idea. As a group we found this to be very encouraging and useful.

Focus group interviews

Today we were able to upload the video of our focus group and have posted it for public viewing to one of our group members youtube accounts. 

Questionnaire results part 1

Here are the results that we received on our online questionnaire regarding our film genre. I have included a screenshot of the graphs created from the results of all closed questions as well as samples of results from all of the closed questions. 

Focus group

Yesterday we sat our focus group down and showed them our treatment pitch in order to gain an additional opinion on the idea and opening sequence we created originally as they are members of our target audience and as such the best judges. We also showed them an example of a film opening from our chosen genre of comedy, after this we asked several questions regarding the genre as a whole and our specific idea. As a group we feel that we gained a lot from the focus group and we will be able to, from the feedback we recieved, create an opening sequence that our target audience will genuinely enjoy. 

We have not yet uploaded the recording of our focus group to youtube, but upon doing so I will embed a the footage to this blog.

TV Drama Analysis

Title: Merlin
Who made the Show?
Merlin is a drama created by Julian Jones, Jake Michie, Julian Murphy and Johnny Capps for the BBC.
What channel is it on?
It's screened on BBC1
What time is it on?
Due to the fact that merlin is a family show and suited to people of all ages it's aired at 7:00pm
What is the Genre?
This progamme is a Family drama, with the additional genres of medieval fantasy.
Who is the target audience?
The target audience of this drama is families, as such the general storylines are engaging and suited to people of all ages though some of the episodes have been gradually becoming darker as the series progresses. Regardless of the gradual progression into slightly more sinister and dark storylines I think that the show is still well suited to a younger family audience.
What is the narrative?
The show has progressed through four series so far and it follows the story of the mythological sorcerer Merlin, during his younger years as he watches over  a magic intolerant prince Arthur and the great city of Camelot, with the hope of eventually restoring magic to the city. 
What/who is being represented?
Merlin represents things such as gender, race, social status etc in a multitude of ways. For example, women though of a generally lower social status have been represented as powerful, strong willed and determined, Morgana goes against the kings word several times, holds her own in fights against some of the strongest male warriors and possesses a great magical ability. Guinevere has also proven herself several times over the seires,  though meek and mild mannered at first she has saved arthur, merlin and even some of the knights lives she has sacrificed herself in the place of her mistress Lady Morgana and fought alongside, arthur merlin, Morgana and the knights of Camelot, proving herself to be a strong willed and determined character regardless of her social standing. Over the last few series the greatest enemies of camelot have been women; Nimue, Morgause, Morgana. Race is represented in a manner that is the oposite of what you'd expect due to the context in which Merlin in set, for example, Sir Elyan, during the medival era there was no circumstance in which Elyan or even his sister guinevere would be able to gain a position of power, yet here you have Elyan as a knioght and Guinevere as the future queen of Camelot.     

Focus Groups

In order to aid our groups research and help to create a film opening that would be enjoyed by our target audience of people aged 15 to 30. We've decided that one of the best and easiest ways in which to gather this information would be through a focus group. As such we have created an invitation letter and will be distributing it to an assortment of  people. 









After writing out our letter we regrouped and decided upon the  potential questions we would be asking in our focus group. We have decided on a variety of questions that should evoke some interesting discussion and also provide us with the information we need to make our opening sequence more appealing for our target audience. The questions are listed below:

From our film treatment, what genre would you say the film is?

What is it about this genre that you enjoy?

Would the opening sequence make you want to watch the rest of the film, and why?

How could we make the film more appealing to our target audience?

What would you judge the target audience to be?

Would the film appeal to you?

What would you like to see in a comedy film?

What would you do in order to challenge the conventions of the genre?