Off Set Fun ;p.

What Have You Learnt About Technologies From The Process Of Constructing This Product?

The MAC had alot of programs that I've never used before, which made it a learning experience and some programs made life easier for the editing part of our project.

The editing part of the project was pretty straight forward however the process was rather loong at times. Using the iMovie program on the MAC we were able to cut, paste, trim, add effects and even extracts sounds, cool aye! That was my favorite part of the project, as it was quite relaxed also, even though I got a bit stressed at times when things went a bit crooked.

Oh Lord help us!

Then we used another program to make changes to our logo soundtrack.. which was very tricky, but we got there in the end..

So from this process of creating our product we/I have learnt how to edit i.e. extract and move sounds from clips, import clips from the video camera and making sure it does not LETTERBOX (jheeez), we've also learnt how to include transitions, sound effects, video effects etc..

All smiles aye! Genius..
Programs & internet helpers..
1. iMovie - used to cut and trim clips, import sound etc..
2. Garageband - used to edit our soundtrack
3. Google - used to find images
4. iTunes - used to import music
5. Facebook - used to contact members of the group
6. Photoshop - used to edit pics
7. Blogger - used for planning and keeping up to date with our project

Aren't we proud?

Who Would Be The Audience For Your Media Product?

This is Beatrice Simpson. She is 17years old, and she lives in South East London. She follows the high-street trend i.e. Shoe-boots, Jeggings and Jeans Jackets (shown above).
She enjoys chilling with her friends, and shopping at the weekends with her pocket money. She shops in places like H&M and River Island, New Look, Primark and Topshop.
She would be a Facebook addict, and would definetly enjoy raving with her girls.
The type of music she would listen to would be mainly R&B, Hiphop, Pop & Funkyhouse.
She enjoys watching British (youth/street) films such as Kidulthood, Adulthood & Shank.
I think our film would appeal to this girl because she is your average teenage girl from South East London, who enjoys street lingo and therefore if this film was screening at her local cinema this will appeal to her, as she watches British dramas like so.

Immediately from the first character seen in the first two minutes of the film, most viewers may agree that the product is targeted at youths/young adults just by glancing at the first 5seconds, especially with the first sentence "I never thought i'd lose the most three important things in my life in one day..." from this sentence the viewers are instantly aware that it is a real-life issue (drama) and the characters image and voice also instantly gives the viewers the sense of ages they may be looking at i.e. 17/18.

This is Shola Sho. He is 18years old, and lives in South East London. He enjoys chilling with his friends round the blocks. He's interested in his educatio, making money, his looks and girls. He shops in places like H&M, Topman, Uniqlo, New Era, Gap and he very rarely visits outlets where he purchases his designer gear. He enjoys raving with the lads.
The type of music he would be interested in would be Garage, R&B, Hiphop, Grime and Funkyhouse. He would watch action films, Britsh drama and maybe horror when he visits the cinema. I think our film would appeal to him because it is based on the issues faced in everyday life within the society of youths, and it is similar to the type of films he would view at the cinema i.e. Kidulthood etc.

How Does Your Media Product Represent Particular Social Groups?

Although Christina is nothing like the character of Shaniqua we chose her because she is quite good friends with Olu and she would be the perfect person to do the bedroom scene with Olu(Ashley) and because she has the potential look that would suit Shaniqua's character. Christina plays a similar character (Shaniqua) to Antonia Thomas (Alisha) in Misfits, who is quite promiscuous and in other words 'Slutty', they both like drawing attention to themselves, they wear tatty, however clingly clothes and both play the innocent act.. They are girly girls, however will not back down when it comes to business and they certainly go for what they WANT.
They both fit the stereotypical promiscuous teenage girls of modern society.

In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop Or Challenge Forms And Conventions Of Real Media Products?

Setting/Location - the reason why we chose the park and Ashley's (Olu) house as our setting/location was because the park went really well with the fac that Alicia was pregnant as there were children playing in the background.

Then we also used Ashley's house in the sense that it was a good effect to have Alicia catch her boyfriend & Shaniqua in the act, and yes! that turned out well.

Costumes & Props - although I was the stylist on set, there weren't much things I could style. On the day of our first filming session I just worked with what the actors/actresses had and added a few extra touches. However many props were used:
1. Pregnancy Test
2. Fake Blood
3. BB smartphone
4. Trophy
All those are little props compared to the bigger ones used on set i.e. Swings in the park, Bed etc.

Camerawork & Editing - This is shot is showing the whole running sequence from the park to Ashley's house, as soon as Jermaine shouts at Alicia "No, Wait" the music begins and plays throughout the running scene. As the running is going on you can see the follow up of both characters, i.e. the reverse shot of Alicia's feet to Jermaine's. Then as Jermaine is approaching Ashley's house it goes into slow motion which is a great effect and then speeds up just before he enters the house, amazing!

Title Font & Style - We went for a more army/street type of look for Font and decided it'll make the fact that our genre is drama stand out. The framing at the beginning is just the spelling of each characters name as they'e being introduced subconsciously. Then at the end of the 2minutes the sound of the jailbars brings the 'LOVE' & 'LOCKDOWN' together aggressively.

How Characters Are Introduced - At the beginning Alicia is the lead of who introduces the characters as, as she is talking and addressing the situation their names are written across the screen.

Special FX - We used a slow motion effect to enhance/exaggerate the intense moment of when Jermain is running after Alicia to Ashley's house, it really made a good effect on the running sedquence.

If The Prezi does not show up Click on the link below (the Prezi) for the Prezi ;p.

In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop Or Challenge Forms And Conventions Of Real Media Products? on Prezi

How Did You Address/Attract Your Audience?

Unfortunately, it is difficult to read the questions shown in the titles at the bottom of the screen due to the dimensions of the video screen so....

Listed Below Are The Questions That We Asked Our Audience.

1) What Did You Think About Love Lockdown?

2) Are There Any Particular Scenes That Tickled Your Fancy?

3) Are There Any Characters That You Can Personally Relate To?

4) Are There Any Scenes In Love Lockdown That Caused You Any Confusion

5) What Changes, If Any, Would You Make?

Looking Back At Your Preliminary Task, What Do You Feel You Have Learnt In The Progression From It To Full Product?

What Kind Of Media Institution Might Distribute Your Product & Why?

Love Lockdown Opening Sequence

Enjoy ;p.

Designing Process Of The RLNC Logo - Part One

Here I will now take you through the step-by-step designing process of our RLNC Logo, used at the beginning of our film (shown below),

The idea for this logo came from my profile picture on Facebook (shown below)
Coretta then suggested making cartoon characters of ourselves and putting them into one image, with our initials being the name of our production, great idea aye?

(1) The first step was creating a background, which was very easy (below),


(2) Then I had to create our cartoon characters, many changes were made to our characters and I will take you through each characters change.

Above is myself (Nickie), initially I had red hair, but then wanted to make it a little realistic in then sense that i would never dye my hair that colour and black would not have shown up, so I went for a honey blonde/brown and got the perfect result (Shown Below).

Lydia - had quiet a few changes made to her character, however i shall only take you through some changes for it'll be boring to go through every step.

This was Lydia's initial design, reason why I gave her red hair was because at the time she had dyed her hair red, so I thought it would be significantly realistic to give her red hair. However when analysed by Lydia herself she disliked it and wanted brown hair instead the cheek.. (shown below)

Then Lydia hated the fact that I had left out her flower, (woops) she also decided she would prefer a bob instead of the hairstyle I had given her, taking all these points into account I created her final cartoon as shown below,

Coretta along with Lydia were the two picky ones out of our group, I was extremely please with my design for Coretta's cartoon character (below)

But Coretta wasnt please with the WEAVE, and wanted a bob also, the cheeeek! So I pimped her hairstyle out and kindly took her want into consideration and gave her a bob (shown below)

The process for Rula was very straight forward and no changes were made with my initial design (shown below) :).

(3) With all characters designed and finished, it was then time to add all elements together, the background the characters and moosh'em together, shown below:

Analysis - On First (Draft) Opening Sequence

This clip is the produce from our first filming seesion. Although we thought it was successful we made a few mistakes which then came apparent during the editing stage. In the first shot it jilts causing the shot to jump from one shot to another. Also these two different shots have two different background noises so the shots do not flow. The next shot shows a close up of Alicia (Juliet) and the sound goes fuzzy. This close up is proficient but the shot gets hazy and loses focus. The two shot which comes after is good but it jumps to quickly to the close up of he mobile phone.The next couple of shots flow but the background noise changes from each one. There is then a quick jump to her facial experession where she is suppose to hear Ashley(Olu) and Shaniqua (Christina) giggling and making noises. We then she a mid shot of Alicia (Juliet) putting her mobile in her pocket and taking out the prgnacy test this transitions really quickly to a shot of her looking at the test and walking off with no reaction. This is not affective as it doesn't clearly show what is going on and the shots jump to quickly making it difficult to follow. Alicia (Juliet) then runs out of the park and the camera follows. There is then a zoom in of the pregnacy test which is focused and clearly but it zoom in two quickly. The shot then jumps to Jermaine (Toba) getting up from the swing and running after Alicia (Juliet) as he sees something is wrong. The shot the focuses on Alicia (Juliet) when she stops running and turns around to Jermaine and tells him whats wrong. We felt this shot was not good because the dialogue was falsified and not really realistic whereas in a urban drama things have to be pragmatic otherwise it defeats the objective of a urban drama. There is then a shot of Jermaine bursting through the park gates screaming at Alicia to wait then there is digetic music playing whilst the credits come in. We felt this was quite effective as it acts as a pre-credit sequence which is used in many films and sometimes in TV Dramas. Overall we feel that this could have be improved and we could use our skills to produce a better quality piece of work so we decided to start again and use this as a exemplar opening sequence to helps us see what areas we need to work on.

Fake Blood Recipe

Whilst Alicia washes her hands in the bathroom, we see a transition from clean to bloody hands once she becomes panicked.

When we came up with the idea of Alicia washing her hands and blood appearing, we thought it would be easy to just use halloween blood, however we soon realised this was not the case, when we went to film the 'blood scene' the halloween blood didnt look as realistic as we had hoped. The colour was not right and the consistency was extremely runny. We then had to find new recipes in order for us to get exactly what we wanted.

Here Are Some Fake Blood Recipes We Used :

Method 1

1 c. Karo Syrup
1 Tbsp Water
2 Tbsp Red Food Coloring
1 tsp Yellow Food Coloring

Mix together in a mixing bowl and you're done. Try adding blue or yellow for a different shade


Method 2

200ml Water
5 Tablespoons Cornflour (corn starch)
300ml Lyles Golden Syrup (or Corn Syrup)
2 Teaspoons of fresh cream
5 Teaspoons Red Food Coloring
2 Drops Green Food Coloring

Just mix the water and cornflour together, then add the rest of the ingredients. It looks fantastically spooky in itself and is great for bleeding scars and vampire mouths. It doesn't taste wonderful but is totally harmeless for vampires and ghouls of any age and even washes out of clothes well.


Method 3

Or There Is The Conventional Method Of Buying Store Bought Halloween Blood, although we had a few problems with this.

Music

As the exam board strictly prohibits us to use any copyrighted music in our opening sequence we had to choose another piece of music which was not copyrighted which still ,ade the opening sequence effective. We was originally going to used Kanye West number 1 hit Love Lockdown as it is where we got the idea of the name and we thought it would go well with out media piece. We found out it was not allowed so we started to research songs that we could use. We looked on youtube but we couldn't find any music that wasn't copyrighted. We then remembered we had friends who produced beats for their mixtapes and we asked our friend Jerome whether he could make use a beat. We used influences from Kidulthood and Adulthood like the ione used in the running scene and also other peoples mixtapes to formulate out theme song. Nickie was the assigned to remake the theme tune for our openeing credits and our logo. She used software such as fruity loops and I movie on the Mac computers to do so.
Below are some of our previous ideas and our influences.

Kanye West - Love Lockdown


Jstar entertainment- we liked the begiinning of this because it has the sound of jail bars and sirens in it and the beat reflects today's youth culture.


Akon- Locked up
This reflects the prison life and urban life not only in England but in America which may appeal to viewers in other countries.

Screenplay

Here is our original hand written screenplay. At times this was difficult to script as there were many rules to abide by but we managed to get the gist of our story detailed inside.

Next, we wordprocessed our draft....

Unfortunately after filming according to our screenplay, the Love Lockdown opening scene was failing to appeal to us. We were shown the opening scene for a film called "Trainspotting" in which a voiceover was used extremely effectively. Instead of a script, the story could have been told from Alicia's point of view making our flashbacks more coherent.

Here is our version of a Voiceover ( our little doodling =] )


Recording Our Voiceover from the Apple Mac was a simple task and went perfectly...now the task came to match the voiceover with the appropriate scenes...Ohh the joy :(

Location - Images & Description

In order for us to film a proficient opening sequence we need to find suitable locations for each shot. In our opening sequence we have a variety of different locations to exemplify the different set used to set an atmosphere. We decide to take pictures of the location we are filming becuase we needed to see whether they were appropriate for different shots and also for us to establish which areas we are going to use.

This is a long shot of Forrester park's playground

This is a long shot of the woods Alicia (juliet) and Jermaine(Toba) run through

This is a shot of the road Alicia (Juliet) and Jermaine (Toba) run down when they exit the park.


Swings where Alicia (Juliet) and Jermaine (Toba) converse


Area where Alicia (Juliet) calls Ashley (Olu)

Casting - Images & Description

The Main Characters

Juliet Ayisi - Alicia

We chose Juliet to play the character of Alicia because Juliet is quite attractive and she also has experience as an actress as she is currently studying perfoming arts. We felt her acting skills were suitable as the character of Alicia needed to be portrayed by somebody with experience in acting so the emotions of Alicia can be conveyed to the audience so that people ca relate more to the character.

Olu Oladokun - Ashley

We decided to use Olu as he comes across as a confident, assertive person who is a bit of a player although he appears to be a practical joker. We thought he would fit perfectly for the role of Ashley as he has simialr characteristics and looks a bit like a lady's man.

Christina Adedeji - Shaniqua

Although Christina is nothing like the character of Shaniqua we chose her because she is quite good friends with Olu and she would be the perfect person to do the bedroom scene with Olu(Ashley). Also she is also a media student so she understands the importance of the filming stage so she would be a good person as she would take it serious whereas others may not be as reliable.

Toba Folaye - Jermaine

We chose to use Toba because he is a warm hearted person who is quite innocent and he seems like somebody who would do anything for a friend which is similar to the chracter of Jemaine as Jermaine is the type of charcter who would even kill for somebody he loved.

Analysis - On Filming Session Part Three

Friday 26th February 2010

After looking at everything that we filmed the last two sessions, RLNC decided that we had a few things that we needed to re-film as some shots didn’t turn out how we expected and also the lighting in the house was too dark. We also had to film the fighting scene and the washing of hands.
Originally RLNC and the cast planned to start filming at 6pm, we planned on getting everything completed by around 8pm, as we didn’t have a lot to do this was a realistic target. Unfortunately a few people were running late, causing us to have to start filming an hour later, this meant we would finish a lot later than we planned. Once everyone had finally arrived, it was time to start filming.
One of the main problems we had at our last filming session was lighting, as Olu’s house lights were extremely dim when we watched what we had filmed it was too dark and we could hardly see what was happening on screen. This time we wanted to make sure our lighting was perfect, so in order to achieve this we used tea lights and a lamp to make the room a little lighter, this also helped 2 create romantic effect for the phone call scene.
After the last filming session we realised that the camera was a bit tilted during some of the filming, so this time we ensured that all shots were aligned straight and that all shots were steady. As we were now more experienced with the camera we were able to get alot of different shots for each clip.
In previous filming sessions we had problems with the camera battery going dead, so this time we made sure we had a spare battery with us. This worked in our favour, as our battery did die but thankfully we had the spare one, so we were able to carry on filming as normal.
We managed to successfully film everything that was needed by around 9:30pm. We are all extremely pleased with what we achieved in our last filming session, and also relieved that we have now completed all of our filming. Thanks to all the help, time and cooperation of RLNC and the cast.

Saul Bass - On Titles

We were advised by our Media Studies teacher to watch a documentary on titles by Saul Bass to give us assistance on formulating our credits effectively as this will be another aspect that we will be graded on. Although the video was extremely outdated, Saul Bass still managed to enlighten us to the much thought that must go into the credit process referring to font and symbols.

Saul Bass informed us that we must break away from the traditional unattractive titles used for 'popcorn time'. Audiences must be attracted to the film from the very first frame of the film in order to create the necessary climate for the film. As our film is an urban drama, it is also advised that we use a symbol within our credits that can be associated with our film. Handcuffs would be a reasonable symbol as it is assumed that someone may be arrested in our film and Saul Bass repeats that the content of the film still remains a big issue in the credits.

Saul Bass mentions that metaphors can also be used in the credits to set a scene for what is to come. The metaphors must be simple and direct eye catchers such as a baby in a prisoners uniform to symbolise the possible consequences of Alicia's aggressive behaviour. She may have her baby in prison.

Titles should be long enough to catch the viewers eye and accomodate the film. The font used should also be appropriate to the film, a typewriter font or a cell broken font will be ideal to symbolise the prison aspect of Love Lockdown. This title Love Lockdown will as Saul Bass advises help to establish a prologue for the motion of the film which is the prison sentence for Jermaine which he takes due to his love for Alicia.

Finally, Saul Bass advises to use ordinary objects and take them out of the ordinary in order to achieve another understanding of them. For example a baby crawling around in a prisoners overalls in a cell will put an ordinary baby in a strange environment (prison cell) allowing the audience to later understans why this metaphor was in fact used.

Saul Bass' documentary allowed us to understand that there is more thought put into the process of Titles that one may think. We must use an appropriate font to connote our film and if required, a reasonable metaphor that establishes the mood and attitude of Love Lockdown.

Analysis - On Adulthood Opening Sequence

We previously mentioned that Adulthood was a significant influence for our opening sequence. Adulthood begins with Titles and then moves on to silent flashbacks of its prequel Kidulthood. This allows memebers of the audience who have watched Kidulthood to be reminded of how the story ended and informs new members of the audience of the last major event. Although we are not reminding our audience of a previous film, we would like to inform our audience of the events that have taken to land our characters in their current state.

The shots used are short and often flash from scene to scene, this is an excellent idea for us to ensure that our flashbacks establish the main scenes of Love Lockdown. It is vital that we establish our characters in our opening sequence with shots focused on their faces to signify their importance. Characters such as Jermaine and Alicia must be shown clearly to identify their importance whereas short term characters like Shaniqua do not need to be shown as clearly.

The opening scene of Adulthood not only introduces us to the characters and their urban setting but immediately it informs us that the film is based around violence. It begins with a harsh encounter with a male and the boyfriend of another. There are a variety of effects in the opening scene of Adulthood with split scenes to show different areas of the club and the occurances within and speeding and slowing down of pace to echo the club like atmosphere in which many are intoxicated and therefore disorientated like the effects used.

The flashbacks in Adulthood not only give a brief history of the story line but establish the main characters, setting and mood of the scene. We must ensure that we mirror this effective use of flashback to ensure that we obtain the best results.

Analysis - On Filming Session Part Two

Monday 15th February 2010 - 11am
The time had come to start some serious filming. The cast were at Ashley (Olu)'s house, the whole of RLNC were present, the props were ready but where was the screenplay and storyboard? I had left it at home. Luckily, I only lived 3 minutes away from the park. RLNC, Jermaine (Toba) and Alicia (Juliet) and a few extras walked to the park leaving Shaniqua (Christina) and Ashley (Olu) home to get ready for filming later on.

We arrived at the park and as it was quite early in the morning, there were not as many children in the background as our last filming session..What would we do? Leaving my team to improvise and set up, I ran home to collect our Filming Folder including the necessary paperwork and a few treats for our cast. I ran back to the park to see my team fully set up with our extras in the background posing as children.

From our last filming, we realised that again framing was a problem and often the tops of heads were cut off. To ensure that this did not occur again, we did practice shots with the movement to get our camera in the exact correct place where body parts would not be chopped off unnecesarily. We then began to film.

Surprisingly, we managed to get through filming a lot quicker minus a few distractions (hunger) probably as we were now "professionals" with the camera. Following the storyboard, we did point of view shots, close ups, mid shots. Definitely a good range.

We switched off the camera when it was not in use so managed to do our running shots which went well although our cast did get quite tired running back and forth in the same spot. Finally we had finished our outdoor shots so we walked back to the house.

It was now time to use Ashley (Olu), we filmed a scene of which Alicia ran through a crowd of girls and barged into Ashley's house, Jermaine soon followed and punched Ashley to the ground. Although the punching scene was especially humerous, we managed to get the filming for this short part done quite quickly. We used our fake blood to zoom in on the unconscious state of Ashley.

Filming inside was difficult as the lighting was not as good as natural sunlight. We managed to film the running up the stairs and barging through the door. Filming from the bedroom was challenging as the room was cluttered and finding space to film was almost impossible. We experimented with handheld shots for birds eye view shots and a close up of Alicia's incoming phone call.

The majority of filming was now complete but unfortunately the camera battery was low and the charger was no longer working. We could not film anymore. All that was now left to film was the fighting scene and the washing of hands. It had been a long day but worth the hardwork.

We left the house around 6pm pleased with what we had achieved. :) Wooop Go RLNC

Own Comment: Again we were pleased with what we had done that session, we managed to get soo much done and only had two scenes to film. Although my mother had given me money to treat the team to lunch :), however that plan failed because we had over 5 unexpected guests, Ashley's (Olu) house was like a mini festival and I was not ready to feed 5thousand Lool, so that plan failed. Instead I treated myself and Jermaine (Toba) to some snacks from Tesco Express around our area, Yummy!
On the whole the session was a BLAST :)!

Analysis - Running Scene in Adulthood

This running scene in Adulthood shows a character running away from the police. As the chase begins, non-digetic sound in the form of music is used to reflect the intensity of the scene. This mirrors our running scene as the neginning of the chase is the signal for our music to begin. Unlike our running scene of which we include many different angles and points of view from the characters, Adulthood remains in an angle keeping up with the pace of the character running with us as the viewer able to see him running at all times.

Analysis - On Filming Session Part One

Saturday 7th February 2010 - Midday
We arrived at the venue of the character Ashley's house and discussed where we would begin our filming. We had our props ready and prepared for filming. It was now time to decide where we should begin filming.

Due to the fact that our filming was to be done in the daylight, we thought it best to film our park scenes first of all. We took a considerably long journey to Forster Park and to our luck the swings were available with happy children playing in the background. Perfect.

We set up our tripod and referred to our storyboard to begin our filming. We planned our shots and gave our cast the screenplay to learn their few lines. Filming began, the sunlight was perfect although we soon became freezing cold. As we shivered through the scene, we managed to get to grips with the camera and experiment with different shots and zooms.

Becoming more familiar with the camera was especially helpful as Coretta was able to grab an excellent zoom shot of the pregnancy test displaying the Positive icon. We also managed to film a little bit of Jermaine (Toba) running after Alicia. The battery was running low and so we began with our running shots. This required the most concentration as we wanted to have numerous angles and lengths. Unfortunately we only managed to gilm a shot of which Alicia (Juliet) filmed her feet as she ran. We did not manage to see the success/failure of this idea as the battery soon died.

We left the park to Ashley (Olu)'s house proud of filming but disappointed that we did not manage to get as much done as possible. Thankfully, this allowed us to come up with the following aims for our next filming session:

1)Switch the camera off when not filming
2)Bring gloves to set to avoid frostbite
3)Film quickly and effectively
4)Continue to work well as a team

Own Comment: As this was our first filming session, I have to say we did well (shockingly), however after the session Lydia did an evaluation and came up with some aims (as shown above) inorder for us to overcome mistakes, obtactles and challenges we experienced etc in our next filming session.

Animated Storyboard

StoryBoarding

We will do a storyboard to act as an initial aid and a guideline for when we are filming our opening sequence for our film 'Love Lockdown'. It will show the different camera angles we will use in each frame, character movements and camera movements; which we can use to organise the actors and save time. It is a general plan of how we will film the different shots so we are clear about it and we don't have disputes whilst in filming process because it has already been set. The drawings will include any sounds/dialogue we require, the shot durations, any camera angles and character movements. We will look at different types of storyboards e.g. animatic storyboards and we will decide which one suits us more.

As you can see below we have done an imagery storyboard to illustrate the different shots and camera angles we plan on using in the production process of Love Lockdown. It was a tedious process as all of us do not have artistic experience; but luckily Nickie (Myself - The creative artist) had amateur drawing skills. Although we have to many shoots we feel as though it is more beneficial because whoever said less is best ;).
This is the first draft of our storyboard: