Survey Analysis 4.

The survey question here shows that most people watch TV shows over movies. This means that people may be more used to the techniques used in TV shows rather than films. For example the use of free hand filming and free hand zooming in and out is something that is usually found in TV shows rather than films. The fact that my project is a film and not a TV show will hopefully not affect the audience too much.

However there is a large proportion in my audience that watch an equal mix of both TV shows and movies. This will mean people in the audience will still be interested in a film not a TV show as films are shown to not be fully left out entirely.

Survey Analysis 4.

This survey answer shows that the majority of my audience would prefer to watch a comedy film. Despite having already chosen the genre based on my AS project review, I think that it will still attract an audience as the second largest genre preference is action which is a sub genre for film. As action is the second largest favoured genre, I feel that my film will still be viewed by the audience despite not being a comedy film.

It was debated in my group whether we should add a comedy aspect into the film due to the results of the survey. However it was decided to not include one so as to not change the atmosphere of an action thriller style genre.

Survey Analysis 3.

This question was asked in order to determine whether the audience watched a lot of TV Shows. This information will help me when deciding how and what to film. Because a lot of my audience watch TV most of the time they will be used to the aspects of filming and they will be harder to impress as they would have already seen a lot of filming techniques and therefore making it harder to come up with something original for the audience to enjoy.

Survey Analysis 2.

From the results of the second question, I can see that the majority of people in my audience are aged 17. I will therefore have to implement this into the filming for my project. Filming my film for a specific age group can be quite challenging as it requires additional research into the general tastes of that specific age group. However, my survey includes questions that will help narrow down the preferred tastes for the audience, making easier to film for them.

Even though the 17 year old age group was the highest percentage, the 16 year old age group consisted of just over 30% of the audience, this means that that age group needs to be addressed as well in filming as they consist of too big a percentage to just leave out of the research filming. It would be more beneficial than costly to include them in the target audience.

However the below 15, 15, 18 and 18+ age groups are the minority and are not worth altering the film for that audience age group.

Survey Analysis 1.

The first analysis of the first question in my survey clearly shows the majority of my audience is male. This means I will have to take this into account when producing my film and tweak certain aspects towards a more male audience. 

However, despite there being more males, it is not a landslide difference between the two. This means it would be better to not exclude more female aspects of the film because it isn't the case that there are very few female viewers. It would be better and much more professional to bear both genders in mind when producing the film, thus reaching a wider audience and a more varied response in reviews.

Medis Questionaire

As part of my audience research, I conducted a survey on film media that aimed to get a better understanding of the things our audience would want to see in our short film. I posted the survey on the social network site twitter, and was able to collect a range of answers form a good range of people. The answers from this survey will help me get a more detailed grasp of what people are looking for in a film and their preferences on them. A test of my Media Survey can be found which will give a preview of the questions asked.

Youth Culture Theories 2.

One other theorist is Hebdige who puts his theory on the youth culture forward. His theory focuses on  the reality of youth cultures and the idea of subcultures, youths to express themselves and to challenge hegemony. His theory is that the representation of youth is very limited as they are either shown as troubled or fun and there is no inbetween. He also argues that the medias representation of young people is not reality.

Therefore this would effect the representation of youths dramatically. Due to them either being shown in two different ways of being in trouble or having fun. In the media it suggests that we never get to see the good and hard working teens of society who just fade into the background, being seen by the media as boring. By looking at this theory we are able to see that the media in society tends to ignore the good and hardworking and focuses on the fun and the trouble. This therefore makes adults believe that all youths behave in this manner.

One more theorist is Cohen. Cohen's theory studied the medias response to the mods and rocker riots in the 1960's and the idea of moral panic to occur in a society which reflects the anxieties at that time in Britain. The effect of moral panic is to reinforce hegemony by the media making it clear what values society do not accept. This shows that when youths try to express themselves in a way that adult have not seen before, they try and stop it by showing it as a negative aspect. Therefore this would effect the representation of youths as it shows that they are not allowed to express themselves within a different way that society does not see as acceptable.

Therefore this places a more negative effect on the youths as everything they do, out of the norms of society, is seen as bad. By looking at this theory we are able to see that the media places the blame onto the youths seeing them as an easy target. This causes the moral panic cycle to happen in order stamp down hard onto anything that youths try to do that is out of the norm.

Youth Culture Theories 1.

I have learnt that there are several theories put forth by different people about youth culture and how they are effected as well as the effect they have on society, these people are: Giroux, Acland, Hebdige, Cohen, Gramsci, Greg Phil and Gerbner.

Firstly, Giroux theory is about how the youth are mistreated within the media. Describing them as an 'empty category' explains that adults do not really understand what it is like to be a youth in this generation. Therefore they just put their own ideas into the empty space of what they believe the representation of young youth is.

The effects of this representation is the media involving just adults, therefore greatly effects these representations of young people. The adults do not want their generation to look bad therefore use teenagers as a scapegoat to place the blame on.By looking at this theory we are able to see that the representation of youth is moulded together through what adults think and believe. This then leads to uprising of stereotypes through the media and also cause moral panics. When all of this has just been created through hegemony and the media raining their ideas down onto adults.


Acland is another theorist who put his theory forward on youth culture.  His theory is about media representations on delinquent youths. The idea that the media's representation of young people allows the state to control them. This is known as 'Ideology of protection' the idea that youths need to be constantly watched and how youth is the time where young people learn about social roles and values and that the state needs to confirm these values.

This therefore effects the representations as the adults see all youths as being bad and reckless and they have to keep enforcing that these actions are bad. This is to enforce the hegemony of how they should not behave when they reach adulthood. This means that there will be more negative stories in the media. By looking at this theory we are able to see that adults believe that it is necessary to show youths in such a disastrous way. This is so that they can tell youths how to act anyhow not to act so they can enforce middle class hegemony.

Film Techniques

Film Techinques

In todays lesson, me and my partner did some research on horror film techniques and looked at how existing horror films use different camera shits and methods of creating a tense atmosphere. We looked at behind the scenes for films such as: The Boy, The Conjuring and don't Breath. We looked at how the director used camera angles and shots to give audience a false sense of security, which the directors used to their advantage to scare the audience even more with techniques such as jump scares when the atmosphere is supposedly calm and quiet.

The behind the scenes also showed us the type of special effects that they used in filming. Although we can't use special effects, especially at the level of professional film makers, it gave us an educated insight into how we could try and alter our film to adjust our limited resources. This allowed us to us to use what he had as we knew we couldn't match modern special effects, such as picking a location that meant we didn't have to change the back ground while editing

Pre Production

My group has finalized our locations for filming the project. The first scenes will be set in the girlfriends house with her texting her boyfriend. after a few shots the scene will transition to a pathway where the boyfriend is also texting the girl back and walking to her house.

There are only two main locations that we will film in which include the girlfriends house and the remote pathway that the boyfriend will be taking to get to the house. This makes filming slightly easier as we only have to worry about shooting from two different places and we don't need to jump around multiple locations which will save time.

Although we are only using two locations, that doesn't mean the film will consequently be less entertaining. We will be using  a range of shots and techniques that will make the film just as entertaining as opposed to if we used multiple locations.

Media project basic plot

Today we began finalizing the characters for our media project. We have 3 characters in total for our film, these are the boyfriend, girlfriend and the mystery stalker. Our plot is also nearing completion. So far the basic plot goes as follows: the boyfriend is texting his girlfriend whilst on the way to her house. The boyfriend is full of happiness and can't wait to see his lover.

 However as his journey to her house goes on he quickly begins to believe that he is being stalked by something. By this time we decided to have him in a field to add a sense of fear and uncertainty. We will have multiple shots of the stalker but never showing their face to the camera. Eventually we have the stalker catch up to the boyfriend and do something to him. The stalker then proceeds to take the boyfriends phone and continues to text the girlfriend giving a false sense of security.

As the stalker approaches the girlfriends house the texts to her become obviously less and less like the boyfriends texts. By the time the girl realizes something isn't right the stalker is already out side her house. She still opens the door however, and it is then too late.

The final scene consists of a brief and tense game of hide and seek as the girl attempts to hide from her attacker. Being a horror film we expect to put techniques like jump scares and shaky camera movement to emphasis the severity of the situation.

The Inbetweeners

In today's lesson we started looking at another youth representation film called the inbetweeners. The film is about four young boys who travel around Australia supposedly having the time of their life. The film is full of youth  representation from crude humor to degrading each others parents, there is a lot of stereotypical male teenage humor used to represent the youth of today.

The film makes the representation of the young teenagers mostly about their crude humor about sex and women, the way they talk and joke about women and sex as an object and something that they don't value shows the lack  of maturity that young people are stereo typically see to posses.

Analyzing this film in terms of its representation includes looking at the language that they use. Terms such as "Banter" and "F*** off" show the level of immaturity you would expect from a group of teenagers. As these terms are used very early on in the film, it quickly shows the audience the type of characters that they are without having to progress through the story too much.

Fast Girls

Today we started watching the film "Fast Girls" Fast Girls is a 2011 British drama film directed by Regan Hall and written by Jay Basu, Noel Clarke and Roy Williams. The film follows the story of two women as they become professional sprinters and join the British relay team for a World Championship event.


The film aims to portray the difference in back grounds from London. The character Shania being from the poorer areas of London with troubled family backgrounds and Lisa being from a posh area in London having all her privileges that comes with money.


Theories such as Acland and Gramsci can be linked to the film as they both talk about how the youth is pictured being very rebellious and aggressive and quick to act rather than thinking about it. The film shows both Shania and Lisa arguing for the majority of the film and having 'teenage fallouts', however at the end we see a redemption of feelings between them as they seem to forgive each other and go on to win the big race. This showed the bit of resilience and maturity that the youth is seen to not hav and as a result are seen as constantly childish and unprofessional.

My Brother the Devil

Today we finished the film 'My Brother the Devil', and we started to analyse it and look at the stereotypes and qualities of  gang life. We looked at how Rash and his brother and how they were portrayed together and what the director wanted us to see between them. The stereotypes of the youth culture in this film are of the young people being thugs/criminals as a part of their everyday life. We saw the struggle that the younger brother had of trying to keep up with his older brother and looking up to him as a role model and someone to aspire to be. The film follows both brothers and the way they choose to go about their life, whilst unknowingly affecting the other ones life.

Gang life is portrayed as something to be desired as they can grant you protection and a sense of family. However the film shows its other side with lots of violence, friends losing friends and no rules of combat, making the gang life show for what it really is, scary and unsafe, especially when young people get dragged into it.

Wes Anderson

Today we looked at several film clips including Fantastic Mr Fox and The grand Budapest Hotel. We looked at formal composition used by Wes Anderson and how the different films used it to portray the characters and shift the audiences focus onto the point of focus. We also looked at how Wes uses ordering to set the importance of characters for the audience. For example in the Fantastic Mr fox clip, Wes introduces the farmers in order of how mean they are. Despite it not being really profound and clear to see, we analysed how Wes used the background and colors to express the level of power for each of the farmers.









The Grand Budapest Hotel

 Fantastic Mr fox

My brother the devil

In today's lesson we began watching the film 'My brother the devil' and began thinking about how the film represents the youth culture in Britain.

 The film is about a young man from a traditional Arab family who runs with a gang that rules the streets of Hackney, a particularly ethnically mixed neighborhood. Rashid's younger brother Mo, idolizes his brother who seems to be better than him in every way. The younger brother wants to follow in Rashid's footsteps into gang life, however Rashid doesn't want him to follow him, and wants him to stay in school and carry on with his studies. When Rashid forms a bind with Sayyid, an older man of similar background who is now  successful photographer, he is introduced to a world he never knew existed. But just as he wants out of his gang life, Mo decides he wants in, and starts doing drug runs behind Rashid's back.

We started thinking about the different characters and how they're representing gang life in London, and how difficult it is to get out of it once you get involved in gang life.
















 My brother the devil trailer

Pre-Production planning

In today's lesson I sorted out my group for my media project, and we started brainstorming ideas on what we could do. We had many ideas ranging from a radio advert to a music video. Eventually we were tied on whether to do a music video or a short film. However, due to us doing a short film last year, with our new experience and techniques we decided it would be better to continue with the idea of a short film.

With the type of project decided, it came to deciding a genre for the short film. Having done an action style genre in AS, we decided to try something new. We decided to do a thriller to change it up from AS. We have a rough idea of the film plot. It will involve a boy that is visiting his girlfriends house, but gets into trouble and ends up getting killed with the murderer going to the girlfriends house.

We have already set up a number of dates and deadlines that we are aiming to meet in time in order to make the film in time and not be panicking towards the end with not enough filming.

The location is still an issue for our film as we have yet to secure a public area that we would be allowed to film on and also be the right environment for the film, as well as props, seeing as the murderer will have to have some kind of weapon, finding a time and place to walk around with a weapon could prove challenging.

AS course work analysis

Synopsis

The main purpose of our opening sequence was to portray and highlight the two stereotypes between foreign and British people to recognize how often people easily make assumptions and judgments based on looks alone.  For our foreign characters we chose people to act that had the basic stereotype looks of foreign people. This helped get the point across on how easy it is to make stereotypical judgments on people. We used a typical white British actor to play the British character to emphasis the stereotypical feeling, a look that proper movies might of employed.

Areas of success

One of our areas that was particularly successful was the editing effects halfway through the opening sequence where we used a faded effect to emphasis the passage of time. The effect flowed very smoothly and joined perfectly with the following shot making the whole scene much better. Another area of success in our opening sequence was the use of different camera shots. We used a range of shots from a pan to a close up to a reverse shoulder shot. This helped our film flow smoothly and gave it a more professional feel to it and meant the transition between shots was much smoother. I think another area that went well was my groups ability to improvise and use what we had to its full effect. We managed to use what props we had, from binoculars to cars enabling enabling us to make our film without any drawbacks.

Areas for improvement

In terms of improvement I think my AS project showed that more time was needed to be spent on the actual story and plot of the opening sequence. The whole story was quite rushed due to timing in AS, which is something I would like to improve meaning we will have to start thinking about the project much earlier to give us more time to think of a story and plot. One other improvement I think is needed after looking at my AS project is the choice of costume. From looking at my AS project I think that much more time and thought needs to go into what the characters should wear, with my AS it looked quite last minute and rushed which is not he feel we want to go for. This means we ill have to, again, start brainstorming ideas much earlier into the project to allow us ample amounts of time to think about what costumes t give the characters.

Audience feedback

The audience feedback we received on our project was mixed, there were plenty of comments on how well we used our camera with the different shots and angles we used to give our project a smooth transition, as well as the recognition that, being students in full time education with limited resources, we used what we had to very effective use. However there were comments on how the story seemed to lack a thorough story and plot, with many viewers getting bored towards the end. This is a reminder on how we need to spend ore time thinking about the story to make the audience keen and interested in the film. There were also concerns on the lack of dialect in the film which brings to our attention the importance of a well scripted dialogue, making it another priority for the next project.