Group Roles- Luke Payne

During the research and planning stage of our film trailer I took on multiple roles. I helped co-produce our film. This includes writing up progress updates. I did this to help with the time management of our film and it helped keep us on task because we could then refer back to action plans to make sure that we had acted upon them. I wrote these progress updates monthly because i thought that this then gave us plenty of time to act upon action plans and access where our production had moved forward. I was also the cinematographer because I worked closely with the director during the animatic to make sure that we were able to take the correct photos so that when it came to making the film t was easier as we already knew what shot type we wanted. I also had to do a shot list so that when it came to making the final production of our film we knew exactly what shots we wanted for each specific scene.

Other tasks I had to do during the research and planning stage were locations shots, find copyright free music and fill out a risk assessment, During the animatic I featured as an actor even though I wasn't going to be acting in the film. I did this so that our production could be finished in time.

During the final production of our film trailer my main role was being the cinematographer. This involved being behind the camera and trying to execute all of the shot that the director wanted. At times this also meant helping the director to try and motivate our characters so that we could get that shot done. However it also meant that I had to tell the director when a shot was not looking as effective as he planned it and so I therefore had to suggest a different shot to him.

In the post- production stage of our film trailer I co-edited the film with the other member of our 'Watch it and See' blog, Steve Norman. I felt this benefited our production because of our varying roles with me being the cinematographer and him being the director we would convey our idea's on how certain parts of the film would be edited. Also we each decided where our found bits of music should go in and how it would contribute to the plot of our trailer.

In the ancillary task I was assigned to creating the Film Poster. We did this because after discussing with each other we found that I was slightly more skilled in the use of Photoshop and so this would benefit the film poster more. Another reason for this was because I already had a very clear idea of what I wanted the film poster to look like after looking at my influential film poster for 'Walk The Line'. However, having said this, the other member of our blog did have some input on my poster on how he thought it would look best and so that he could then create synergy by including some of the elements from my poster on his magazine front cover.

Group Roles- Stephen Norman

In terms of producing the trailer for our main task, pre-production planning involved myself producing all the documents involved in building the narrative and story for the product. This is reflected in the animatic in which I took on the same roles as for the final product of director and lead actor in which I attempt to convey narrative messages through the use of mise-en-scene in the form of props and acting. I also produced the pitch, initial ideas, script, and equipment list. I also produced the call sheet, budget and sound design as this linked in with my role for the production of the film trailer.

My primary role when producing the film was being the director, involving setting up each scene by working with the cinematographer to create a narrative plot line of the film were supposedly advertising to consumers. That being said I also took on the role as lead actor as I felt this would aid the time it took to film the product, as I could be involved in both roles simultaneously on set.

Post-production saw myself co-edit with the other member of -'Watch It and See', Luke Payne, in which we evenly allocated time to one-another to arrange and trim the clips we had filmed beforehand, as well as inserting text and production company logo's. The use of music was shared between myself and Luke, with both of us finding separate scores and deciding where they should be allocated on the final product. As Luke was the head cinematography and myself the director, we both exchanged ideas on how we felt the product would look best when communicating our ideas to the viewers.

My main role for the ancillary task was to produce a magazine front cover in the style an official film magazine, such as Empire or Total Film. I decided to take upon this role as I had various reading material and official magazines from the film industry at home in which I knew I could take inspiration from. That being said I still had input on the other ancillary task of a teaser poster produced by Luke Payne in which I conveyed my own ideas and suggestions on how the product would look best, as did he on my own ancillary task.

The blog itself has documents uploaded by both myself and the other member of this blog in which we have decided to upload our own produced documents for the most part, as we trusted each other to create the tasks set and upload them accordingly to the blog individually.

Roles:

Written and Produced by Stephen Norman

Uploaded by Stephen Norman

Evaluation- Stephen Norman

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

                                                       Ancillary Task Analysis:

Roles:
Written and Produced by Stephen Norman
Uploaded by Stephen Norman

AncillaryTask 2- Magazine Cover Final Draft

Improvements Made:

• Starting from the top, I have increased the size of the title for the magazine, so that it now covers the width of the magazine. This clearly stands out to readers now who will find it easier to identify the magazine.
• The 'M' and 'W' within the title have also been placed in a separate colour from the rest of the title, after feedback response suggested this would create a more recognisable brand identity.
• Issue number and date released have also been included for readers to identify the most current issue. A website has also been added to further promote the magazine across other forms of media.
• The title of the main film for which this issue is covering has also been squeezed tighter together after feedback revealed spacing was to large which detracted from the title of the magazine.
• Similarly, the 'Plus' subheading has also been brought closer to its content below for similar reasons.
• The star shape logo has also been brought further away from the main image of the interviewee to clearly promote the unique content inside of an exclusive interview.
• The advertisement for a free poster at the bottom of the cover has also been arranged more centrally and now features an outer glow to help improve its visibility on top of the background image. This was because of criticism previously that readers could not clearly read all the text.

Roles:
Produced By: Stephen Norman

Uploaded By: Stephen Norman

Evaluation- Luke Payne

Question 1:In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Question 3:What have you learned from your audience feedback?

                                          

Question 4: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Evaluation of Film Poster

Roles

Written & Produced by Luke Payne

Uploaded by Luke Payne

Ancillary Task 2- Magazine Cover Second Draft

Feedback:

• Text stands out well. Title is bold and stands out against background.
• Mention of free poster is harder to see on hand. Maybe make it bolder if possible.
• Film world could be bigger or stretch it across the screen. Spread across the page. Add colour block along the time and put the tag line there.
• Move the puff out more into the image so it doesn't blend with the image. Move left so its not over characters face.
• Move the plus down so it fits in with the bullet points.
• Needs month or issue number for added information for readers.
• Have the M and W different colour or font to create a brand identity for this magazine.
• Photo has good lighting and the gradient from black to white works well as the photo has a white glow around.
• Put Six String and liberty closer together as to not distract attention away from advertsisng the magazine through its title and slogan.

Roles:

Produced by Stephen Norman

Uploaded by Stephen Norman

Ancilarry Task 1- Final Film Poster

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Produced by Luke Payne

Uploaded by Luke Payne

Planning- Costume and Props

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Written & Produced by Luke Payne

Uploaded by Luke Payne

Planning- Sound Design

The structure of our trailer will consist of two different situations in which our character will be placed in. His first situation will be his desire and ambition to reach the top of his musical profession. Due to this, I believe it will be best that an instrumental piece of music which implies hope and passion should be used to create a sense of excitement for audiences watching this individual risking everything he has for fame and glory. The second situation our character will be placed will be his struggle to maintain his position as the best, which will lead to frustration and confusion over his future but above all else; fear of losing everything he has worked hard to achieve. Due to this, the second piece of music we will use will be dramatic and thunderous, implying unpredictability and tension. This will increase the pace of the trailer to keep viewers on the edge of their seats. I believe this structure will help set a mood of many highs and lows the viewer will feel if they decided to watch the full film.

Voice overs will also be used half-way through the trailer. The first voice over will consist of both dialogue from myself and Luke, interpreting radio DJ's. We have decided to use this as a way of conveying contextual knowledge that at this current point, the main character was highly popular around the country due to success in the charts (which the DJ's will explain). The second voice over will be of a female voice speaking as a news journalist over a clip from a BBC news presenter. This will be used to emphasize the crisis the main character had now found himself in, due to national news covering the story. Both will be mixed on to images using 'Sony Vegas' once they have been recorded using the audio programme, 'Audacity'.

Roles:
Written and Produced by: Stephen Norman
Uploaded by: Stephen Norman

Research into Software and Editing Skills

We did learn one new skill when we edited our film this time round. We learnt how to adjust the colour of our clips. For example, we learnt how to adjust the brightness or make the colour of the film look more blue or red, For some clips we had to bring the brightness up so that the video clip looked brighter to match the rest of the clips that were filmed on brighter days.

We also learnt how to add a black border at the top and bottom of our clips to make our film more 'cinematic'.

The last thing we learnt how to do was Chroma Key. We used this to add a sparkle to our production logo to make it more interesting for the audience.

Roles
Written & Produced by Luke Payne

Progress Update- January

In this month we re-filmed the shot from the garden and changed it to a concert scene where we decided the school stage was a suitable area. We also used the back stage area which I thought was very effective. We have also re-edited this month and plan on showing a final cut of our film in February.

We completed first drafts of our ancillary tasks using online editing software called Pixlr express. Also, for this we didn’t use photos specifically designed for these photos they were just quick snaps taken in our spare time. This led to framing not being completely right so we struggled with spacing for titles and title blocks. We decided that for our actual ancillary tasks we will take photos with the view of having enough spacing to add titles. We will also use Photoshop to edit them so that we get a full range of editing tools and if we find ourselves struggling then we will be able to find tutorials on how to film magazine front covers or film posters.

Roles
Written & Produced by Luke Payne

Progresss Update- December

In December we added a few extra scenes in to help the continuity of the trailer so that people understood what was going on in our trailer. We then started editing our trailer together.

Once editing a rough cut of our film together we showed this to the class to see if they could understand what was happening in our film and the plot of our film. This helped us establish that some of our locations didn’t look professional enough for our film. For example we filmed a music video in a back garden which wasn’t very professional looking.

Roles
Written & Produced by Luke Payne

Progress Update- November

In this month we finished our final bits of research and planning such as location shots so that we knew our locations and any troubles we would encounter with these locations such as background noise from traffic.

As we now knew our locations and had our film scripted we could now start filming. We filmed over a couple of weekends and a few days after school to finish our film. Filming took slightly longer than anticipated due to the amount of locations that we had to film on.

Also in this month we found one piece of copyright piece music and we also found someone in our class who could give us a piece of music for the first part of our trailer.

We started looking at similar magazine front covers and posters to gain conventions of what we wanted our ancillary tasks to look like. We then annotated these to help us decide what to put in our own magazine front cover and poster.

Roles
Written & Produced by Luke Payne

Progress Update- October

In October we started the research and planning tasks. After showing our influential trailers to the class we realised that we had to really try hard to portray fame in our film because the trailers we researched into all could portray fame easily because they had big budgets where as we had a smaller budget and so we would have to try and portray fame in different ways.

We also started scripting our film so that we could get an idea for the dialogue we would be including in or film. Another thing we did was do a storyboard animatic for our film. This helped us see what our film would look like and what order we would put our scenes in. This also helped us establish our music and where it would go.

Roles
Written & Produced by Luke Payne

Progress Update- September

In this month we came up with initial idea's for our film trailer. Our first idea was a rags to riches idea where a boy called Leon has been kicked out by his father and is trying to follow his dream of becoming a rock star. Our second idea was about two guys who have just robbed a bank and have to escape its heavily armed defense's.

We decided to use the first idea because we realized it would be too difficult to try and pull off a gun fight without proper guns. We also realized that we would need quite a big cast to try and show how the odds would be stacked against the two criminals. We also found that we were able to quickly think up locations for our first idea and would be easy to film locally which made the film more of a practical option.

After deciding on our idea we looked into influential films that we could relate to our own film and therefore get trailer conventions from these films that we could use in our own film.

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Written & Produced by Luke Payne

Main Task- Six String Liberty

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Produced by: Luke Payne and Stephen Norman
Uploaded by: Luke Payne

Skills Development/ Progress- Six String Liberty (Rough Cut)

Action Plan:
Take out the music video scene and research a new location within a more musical environment. This is due to the location of a garden causing confusion for the viewers over why exactly a famous pop star would be located there. As a result, we are going to enquire about the use of a school stage to achieve a more performance and musical-style feel to the trailer.
We will also lower the volume of the music slightly so that all dialogue can be heard clearly.
The length of the final clip must also be shortened using the editing tool on Sony Vegas as the clip is too long, and slows down the pace of the trailer.

Roles:
Produced by: Luke Payne and Stephen Norman
Action Plan Produced by: Stephen Norman
Uploaded by: Stephen Norman