This Blog is Now Closed

This blog post marks the end of an era, a sad moment indeed. The last you will ever see of my amazingly witty and informative posts about filming, pop culture and all things Media A-Level. No long good-byes or teary eyes but I will leave you with this: it was great having you, and I will see you in A2.

Evaluation Q7

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Evaluation Q1

The Jungle Book Review

Jungle Book (2016), directed by John Favreau is a beautiful retelling of the original Rudyard Kipling book of the same name. Starring the vocal talents of Ben Kingsley, Bill Murry, Idris Elba and others with the talented Neel Sethi. 

This film uses computer generated images to illustrate the beautiful jungle settings that encapsulate the audience, with the animals just as stunning and realistic with their movements and even the way they speak seeming natural. The voices match perfectly with their animals as Murray gives a brilliant performance of Bear Necessities alongside Sethi and Idris Elba's gives a powerful performance as the ferocious Shere Khan. In addition the fresh faced Sethi gives and amazing performance as the caring and loveable protagonist, Mowgli. You can imagine how difficult it must have been to be the only actor on and to act off puppets, Sethi gives a convincing performance that brings the whole film together.

Overall this is a feel-good and beautiful film that will bring you back to the childhood version of the film but in a picturesque and imaginative way leqaving you in awe and with Bear Necessities stuck in your head. 

Iconic Moment

We have chosen this moment in our film opening as the overall most iconic and one that the audience will remember the most. 

Evaluation Plan:

For my evaluation I have made a small plan of rough notes  on what I plan to say for each question:

Evaluation

Questions:

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

2. How does your product represent particular social groups?

3. What kind of media institutions might distribute your media product and why?

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

5. How did you attract/ dress your audience?

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of construction the product?

7. Looking back at your preliminary task what do you feel you have learnt in the progression of it to the full product?

Mark Scheme:

Level 4 16–20 marks 

• Excellent skill in the use of appropriate digital technology or ICT in the evaluation. 

• Excellent understanding of issues around audience, institution, technology, representation, forms and conventions in relation to production. 

• Excellent ability to refer to the choices made and outcomes.

• Excellent understanding of their development from preliminary to full task. 

• Excellent ability to communicate.

A Comparison

A comparison of how my groups film making skills have developed throughout the year:

Finished Film Opening

Titles inspiration

For our opening titles we took inspiration from many places. We wanted to keep the titles simple and minimalistic as not to draw the attention away from the action, this style has appeared in many films and TV shows over time in different styles for example:

Taxi Driver (1976)

Mulholland Drive (2001)

Drive (2011)

All of these films have the title sequence come over the action which allows the plot to progress quickly without being overshadowed. The first two minutes of the film are so important that we did not want to waste time on not progressing the plot or introducing characters to the audience. We wanted to jump straight into the action without cutting the shots with titles as we think it will work well with our opening and save time. Furthermore our opening sequence requires you to focus on the action and if you were distracted by the titles, then you would miss important things that are pivotal to the story.

No Sound

We have decided to have no non-diegetic music in our film opening. The decision stems from the fact that we wanted the tension to be raw without any sound distracting the audience from the action, for example in the film "Back To The Future" (1985) a lot is revealed through the opening sequence of the character Doc Brown, even though it is not obvious that you are learning about the character it makes you want to watch the rest of the film. The diegetic ticking of all the clocks is all you need to be hooked into the film and intrigue you as the camera pans through the room.

We want our film to have a similar effect but in a different sense as we want it to be thrilling and intense and we wanted it all to be natural to add to to the eeriness and make it more relatable to the audience and resonate with them more, which is what we aiming for.

Peer Feedback

My group showed our film opening to our class to see what they liked about it and what we could improve to make it better:

To improve the audience suggested we add a scream to increase the scariness. As the last shot cuts to black abruptly and the only sound is a mug braking they thought it would be better if a scream was also layered over just to see the effect it adds. They also suggested revising the title we have used was not memorable and the fonts we have used did not fit in well and were boring compared to footage as they were not clear.

The feedback was overall positive but they did have some things that they would change to improve our final product, this exercise was very helpful as it allowed us to see what an audience thought about our film opening so far and is was also insightful to see what people said we could improve. I feel that once these changes are added it will make our film opening better.

Editing

As the due date draws nearer our film opening is beginning to look more like a film opening, as we have a complete timeline and just need to tidy up the cuts and add things that our peers told us would make our product better.

We have almost finished and have played around with sound but settled for nondiegetic sound throughout as it alone creates enough tension. It will all be complete soon... Hopefully.

Spotlight

Directed by Tom McCarthy this is the true story of how the Boston Globe uncovered the massive scandal of child molestation within the Catholic church, and it is absolutely brilliant.This film touches on one of the most shocking pieces of news in history, a scandal that was covered up for years and it depicts the story about the struggle of getting the truth out to the nation.

It is compelling and beautiful, not only the story but the cinematography and the acting performed by a brilliant cast brings the story to life. Not only do you feel the struggle but the absolute magnitude of the time they had spent on this story, the effort and raw emotion put into  it keeps the audience gripped throughout.

The story itself is so interesting and unbelievable it makes you lose faith in the church and partly in humanity for keeping it a secret for so many years, however faith is partially restored when you realise that there are people out there willing to uncover the truth no matter what it takes.

For me it was totally nerve racking and just brilliant as I was only a child when these events were happening so for them to be relayed in such a fantastic manner is truly moving. Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams and the rest of the cast breathe life into this story. The emotion is so real from not only the main cast but the entire ensemble as they tell the story in a way that makes the audience feel close to the story.

Personally I feel this is an important film that everyone should watch at least once, it is a new age masterpiece (no wonder it's up for an Oscar).

It is incredibly important that you watch this film, not only to learn something but also to experience something.  

Snow Problem

We recently reshot some of our opening because we came up with a few new ideas that we thought would fit beautifully in or finished product, we also made some changes to the things that we had previously shot. Unfortunately the day we decided to shoot there was snow everywhere, but we were lucky as the things we had already decided to use in our opening you could not see the ground, and the few you could we reshot in the snow.

We changed the appearance of The Figure to make him seem more menacing in a subtle way, it also generalises him so it makes the audience can associate the fear from watching this to anyone they see on a daily basis, adding to the scariness of our over all film.

Luther

In a recent episode of Luther the story follows a new murderer that sneaks into a woman's home under the pretence of pretending to be her husband. This opening scene is interesting to my group as it has an uncanny resemblance to our two minute opening for our final product: 

The man enters the house, whilst the woman is none the wiser as she thinks it is her husband.

The man speaks. The woman turns as she realises this is not her husband.

The man takes his chance and lunges at her, knife in hand.

Sound familiar? Maybe because it is the exact plot of our opening almost shot for shot. No worries though this just means our idea was so good Luther used it in their show. The important thing is that we thought of it first.

Behind The Scenes:

After hours of filming we finally finished (mostly), and here we have some behind the scenes footage and pictures.

That's A Wrap!

Filming was finished on the first days of the Christmas holidays. I felt the days were very productive as we re-shot the scenes that were not up to the standard we wished and we also shot the scenes with "The Figure".

Many things did not go as planned, for example; Jimmy The Dog was quite hard to work with as we had to stop and start frequently as the he did not cooperate as planned, however after many trials we managed to get the product we wanted. Another hurdle was the mask for the figure, as the first one we had was misplaced and we could not replace it in time for the shoot, instead we had to compromise but I think the item we used is s effective as the mask that would have been used.

During this re-shoot we went slightly off our original storyboard because we shot a few different shots that we thought would work well when edited in, we also removed a shot. Overall I think the shoot was productive as we managed to get everything done. (I'm quite proud).