Location

For our High School Drama our main protagonist will be in three locations (during the title sequence) - at home, on his way to school and in school.

The location for his house will be one of our group members' house, where we have filmed him coming home, waking up, making tea etc. and bringing it to his sick mother. The area we are filming in is very suburban.

Furthermore, we will re-shoot our scenes of him in school tomorrow where we will be introduced to his friends and his girlfriend. We will use the area around Angel for filming and City and Islington College.

Motion Tutorial

Motion Tutorial

I initially aimed to create my production company a ident.

I then began to attempt a title sequence for a movie trying to include the main titles; the

Blogging Task 21 - Blog Post Evaluations

Blogging Health Check

Since the last blogging health check, though i received a 15 (on or above target), this term i determine to reach 18+ so i cant attain an A*. To do this I should improve each blogging  task and complete all extension task. I should also try to include more technology into my blog.

Blogging HealthCheck

Blogging Health Check

Since the last evaluation I feel like I am just on target, because I am lacking a variety of technology which I could add in, such as more gifs and edits. If I do this to my posts then I will hopefully be aiming for a A*. Because I received an overall 15 on my previous Health Check I want to bring my grade up to a 20 to ensure I am securing a high grade.

Reflection of progress

Three weeks ago my progress was at a D grade. Since then, I've improved on my attendance and punctuality, however I still need to improve it more. I've been attending more lessons and completing my tasks. I'm now at 21 blog posts, and I've completed all tasks - I just need to improve them a bit more until they are at the stage I would like to be. At the moment, I feel like my blog is at a mid-B grade, and I still feel like I need to do more to push it up to a B grade, such as doing the two extension tasks (5 & 9) and putting more time and effort into my posts. Since this blogging health check, I feel that I've improved by a lot.

Blogging Task 18 - Motion

Garage Band Tutorial

Garageband Tutorial

In learning to use Garageband I am now able edit over music and sounds onto a piece of film. 

During the tutorial we were given the opening clip of "10 Things I Hate About You" where we removed all sound that was over the clip originally and attempted to replace it with our own. 

I began by focusing on the two cars that represent the two types of girls in both cars. The original music portrayed both groups of girls into rock music, but the first group are more pop/rock and the second car is more rock/punk, so through this analysis I used different types of bass and drums and vocals to show this type of contrast to the audience. 

Costumes

The main character will be wearing a jock-type of outfit to suit the idea of him being the popular jock/football captain in school. It would be something along the lines of what we've seen in The Breakfast Club in order for him to stand out

We will also have the cheerleader girlfriend of the main characters, who's outfit will be inspired from Mean Girl and Clueless

Research into Clueless

Clueless (1995)

Clueless is a 1995 teen-film, written and directed by Amy Heckerling. It's based on the 1815 novel Emma by Jane Austen. It was distributed by Paramount Pictures, with a budget of $20 million - it's box office was $56.6 million, making it a huge success globally.

Target audience:

The target audience of Clueless is generally that of teens, but may so interest young adults around the ages of 20+. It was rated 12 in the UK, and PG-13 in the USA due to it's sex related dialogue and use of alcohol and drugs.

Genre and sub-genre:

• Teen Comedy 
• Romance 

Themes raised in film:

• Relationships - Cher becomes over-obsessed with finding Tai a boyfriend, as well as making Christopher hers. There is the relationship of Dionne and Murray. We see Cher trying to set up two of her teachers together. 
• Sex, drugs and alcohol - We see the usual high-school parties, in which there is alcohol and drugs. The issue of sex is raised in a few scenes during the movie. 
• School - There is a lot of school participation in the movie, such as events. 
• Shopping - Shopping is a very main part of this film, as it's what relates around the stereotype of Cher. 

Stereotypical characters:

Charlotte "Cher" Horowitz [the rich popular girl] - a very sweet, spoiled girl who lives in a mansion in Beverly Hills. She has blonde hair and blue eyes, and not very stereotypically of her popular girl persona, she is very intelligent and orientated. She plays the matchmaker on two of her teachers, in order to boost her grade up from a C+ to an A-. She takes on the mission of giving the new girl, Tai, a make over and finding her a boyfriend however in the mean time finds a love hopeless interest herself (Christopher).

Dionne Devenport [the other popular girl] - Best friends with Cher. Like Cher, she is rich and beautiful - they both have very similar personalities and once again, unlike their stereotypes are very caring and smart. She is always fighting with her boyfriend (Murray) and they always seem to be in disagreement, although Cher somehow admires their relationship.

Tai Frasier [the ugly duckling, transformed into a beautiful swan] - Tai is the new girl, and is given a makeover by Cher and Dionne. Cher tries to set her up with one of the popular boys, Elton to boost her popularity and eventually Tai threatens Cher's popularity. She ends up liking Cher's step-brother, Josh.

Josh Lucas [the annoying older step-brother] - Cher's step brother, who goes to live with them over the holidays. The two don't really get along at first, but begin to form a bond afterwards.

Melvin "Mel" Horowitz [the caring, over protective widowed father] - Cher's father, who is an expensive litigator in Beverly Hills. Throughout the film, he is working on a big case. He comes off as very protective of Cher, and also shows his love and concern for his daughter.

Christian Stovitz [pretty boy] - Cher's love interest. She seems to do everything she can to get his attention however fails. In the end we find out that he isn't interested in girls.

Setting up social media accounts

We have set up an Instagram where we will be posting photos of our filming sessions

Garage band tutorial

We learned how to use garage band, and created the first minute or so of "10 Things I Hate About You" by creating our own sound track and adding Foley sounds and FX. I mostly used bass and drum for my project and found it particularly difficult to create the contrasting music in the scene with the two cars. In order to do this properly I feel like I need much more time and a lot more concentration to be put into a project like this. 
Seeing as it was my first time creating something like this over a movie I feel that I did quite a decent job on this particular project, however if I was to do it again I wouldn't start with the 'car' scene but do it bit by bit and pay much more detail to what was going on in the scene.
I definitely think that the scene with the cars was a mash-up of the sounds and you couldn't really tell the contrast between the two different personalities in that scene, and that's something I need to improve on when creating an actual soundtrack for our title sequence.

Blogging Task 19 - Garage Band Tutorial

10 Things I Hate About You Soundtrack- Garage Band

Creating Sound Tracks On Garage Band

Editing our remake of The Breakfast Club

Editing our remake of The Breakfast Club

We began by editing together our shots in order of appearance and referring to The Breakfast Club to convey a similar occurrence. 

As we proceeded to add more of our shots we sieved through some unusable filming of us laughing or making a camera mistake and made sure we did not use them in the final cut.

Once we put the shots together we began editing in the Titles Sequences including the distinctive opening of a Universal movie which through Camtasia 2 we filmed over and exporting into Final Cut Pro and used it for our opening of the film. 

We then voice recorded an over voice like in The Breakfast Club and added it over the image of the college like they do over the image of Shermer High. 

We then edited in text of a quote from a popular 80's pop performer like David Bowie and added it in at the beginning of our film. 

We then began to edit in the Titles for the Title Sequence, looking into the order of big US blockbusters such as a 10 Things I hate About You and began to create production companies "Rising Entertainment" and directors "Kim Joyce". 

The last thing that we did was add the title of the film with titles of a blank screen to emphasise the the name of the film, using orange, simplistic, capital writing.

A summary of our complete editing.

Evaluation Of Practical Activity - The Breakfast Club

Re-Make Of The Breakfast Club

EDITING

During the editing process, it brought to light many bad shots that we hd taken, i.e. shot of stairs is out of focus and fig rig visible in on of the shot. the rest of the editing was relatively easy as majority of it was match cuts of the school. We included non-diegetic car sounds and voice over, mimicking the original film. We also used cantasia to import the universal studios clip into our own film.

EVALUATION

On the day we filmed not all members of our group were present, this had a huge affect on the making our film as it meant that there would be less characters; only 3 instead of 4. Timing was also a big issue with our group as we exceeding our limit of filming which was supposed and hour, and even then we couldn't finish our film properly (Teacher at the end). At the beginning of our film we were unaware that we were using a faulty tri-pod, which meant that some our our shots were slanted and at some point our camera was on manual focus, leaving one shot out of focus
. Though when we had realised it was faulty, we did not have enough time to re-do the shots when we changed the tri-pod, this decreased the quality of the first part of our film. Though not a drastic mistake, it is still noticeable when watching our film. All these factors meant that in the future we need to have a more in-depth plan in order to stay within the filming time. Better communication with the other people in your our group and heavily inspect all equipment before filming.

 1) In this shot, we would need to improve it by removing the fig-rig that is visible in the bottom left corner.

 2) As you can tell in this shot and the one below, the character in the grey coat has moved positions, this would be the factor that we would improve. Remember the placing of all the character and keep the camera in the same position when carrying on the same shot.

3) This shot is slightly slanted due to using a faulty tri-pod. In the future i would inspect all equipment before filming

4) This shot is out of focused as the camera setting was on manual focus, again i before any filming i should inspect all equipment and make sure settings on the camera are all correct

Motion

We started a tutorial of Motion, to learn how to create production company idents and title sequences.

Here are screenshots of the process I went through doing my ident.

Individual Evaluation Blog

Individual Evaluation Blog

Beginning the task for our spin on the remake of The Breakfast Club Title Sequence, we were one team member short which made us unable to do some scenes from the film, including the introduction of the "jock" and the "geek". We would have been able to portray them through costume but it wouldnt have been possible to have all characters presents in the hall scene of the opening, so we made do with what characters we could portray, being the "brat", the "fruitloop" and the "bad boy". 

I feel we have portrayed the opening of The Breakfast Club to best of our ability, shooting some really good replacas, such as the clock on the wall and the cafeteria, also adding our own additions of the newspaper like in the original movie, but calling it "Islington High" to appeal more to the area we are in and therefore our audience. 

If we were to re-do this task I would think to bring it alot more destinctive props and costume to portray the characters to the best of our ablity to the audience. As well as this I would take into full consideration of the filming location and film the scenes that require as little as no one else present in the room first or before it could become busier. For example filming the scenes of the students walking onto the school premasis and them all in the "detention room" as apposed to the still shots, that required no sound, ie the board of information. 

After this process I have learnt that when filming Mise En Scene is the most difficult to control without organised help, including lighting. Natural lighting can not only be very unflattering but uncontrollable, ruining shots by causing unwanted shadowing. 

Evaluation Of Practical Activity

Evaluation of Practical Activity: The Breakfast Club

Throughout the our rendition of the Breakfast task, we used many similar quotes and props as in the original film. This included writing the words "IF YOU OPEN THIS YOU WILL DIE" on the lockers within the media corridor, just as they do in the actual Breakfast Club. The first 40 seconds of the film is our match cuts of the school; lockers, classrooms, clocks etc. We tried to include different aspect of the school just like in the film i.e. graffiti, honor roll and empty classrooms. This gave the same affect in which the film did as it being a school filled with a range of different pupils. 

We then proceeded on to film our characters entrances, in their cars with their parents and entering the building of the "High School". In order to make it seem as though the cars of the students are "there" we filmed mini toy cars, driving into the shot, before we switched to filming the actual characters using over the shoulder and medium shots. After the car shots we filmed each of our characters entering the building of the college, using track shots to show the character coming inside from outside

Individual evaluation of Practical Activity - The Breakfast Club

Editing

Whilst we were editing it became clear to us that we had take taken. For example, a few shots such as the shot of the stairs is out of focus. In some of the other shots, the camera is visible and in some cases such as when all of the students are moving in we've had to fade as our character had moved places. Apart from these mistakes which we'll take note of in our title sequence, we didn't have a hard time editing this remake.

Evaluation

Unfortunately on the day we were filming we only had 3/4 members of our group, and we were not able to include all characters of the breakfast club in our sequence. Leaving out 2 students, and the teacher we tried our best to remake the sequence. Furthermore, we went over the limit we had to film which was only supposed to be one hour.
At the beginning of the shooting we had a bit of trouble deciding how we were going to fit all of the characters in when we only had 3 people and decided to only use 3 of the students and be recurring characters for their parents. For about 15 minutes we didn't realise we were using a faulty tripod and some of our shots were wobbly and out of focus/angle
Evidently the fact that a member of our group wasn't here and that we didn't have a lot of planning preparation done in time meant that we went over time and that people were missing making it harder for us to do a sequence to the best of our abilities.
In the future, attendance of all group members and planning will need to be noted.