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

As I didn’t make much contribution to the editing of the preliminary task I feel I have learnt just how much work, time and effort is needed to ensure a high standard. I also think because we had to write our own script and come up with an idea from scratch rather than just act and film what we were told to, made it a lot harder as it meant we all had to agree on the same thing. At times it proved difficult to reach an agreement however we managed to get through and complete our project.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

I’ve learnt how hard it is to ensure continuity and realism within a film. When one little thing is different you have to shoot the scene all over again and it takes so much time overall to get all of the clips together. Also, editing takes far longer than I expected as once you have edited, it may not be how you first thought it would be and therefore if you don’t think it is good enough you have to keep editing to make sure it is perfect. I have also learnt if you want big effects you have to spend a lot of money which we obviously didn’t have to use so our project didn’t look as professional as we’d hoped.

How did you attract/address your audience

Our project shows the real life issues of some drug using teenagers in the UK as it almost defends their drug use and doesn’t discriminate them because of it. However it also shows the danger of drugs and how serious the consequences can be. We feel this will appeal to our target audience as we ourselves are within the age group and we felt it was a good plot for a film so hopefully others of our age would too.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Our production company “HEC” would distribute our media product as we feel this would be the easiest and cheapest way to do it, rather than pay another company to do it for us.

Who would be the target audience for your media product?

I think the target audience is either gender, and in the 15-26 age group. This is because we believe our film would be classified as a “15” and therefore no younger could see it. I think 26 would be the top end of the target audience as not many people older than that will be interested in the story of a teenage drug addict.

Who would be the target audience for your media product?

I think the target audience is either gender, and in the 15-26 age group. This is because we believe our film would be classified as a “15” and therefore no younger could see it. I think 26 would be the top end of the target audience as not many people older than that will be interested in the story of a teenage drug addict.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our project represents drug users however not in the stereotypical view that all drug users are “scruffy” or “chavs”. The way our characters dress would have them labelled as “normal” and definitely not “chavs”. The only time within the sequence either of the characters could show part of the stereotype  is when Callum is walking to the gravestone with his hood up, however this was only done to show the regret and remorse his character was feeling at the time.

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

Our project challenges the stereotype that drugs are only used by “chavs” and shows that “normal” people also use drugs. By having a couple in which one person does drugs and has for a long time, and the other has never done drugs before, it shows the contrast between two people who otherwise are very close. I feel we also challenged the stereotype of teenagers being violent and irresponsible as we see when the male character visits the grave of the female character.

Evaluation

Today I am preparing my answers to the evaluation questions. Once they are finished they will be posted on my blog.

Final Video

This is our finished sequence.

Tonight

Myself and Hannah stayed behind after school for 2 hours as the final touches and rendering we did at dinner didn't save. Therefore when we came back we had to re-do all the work we did during the lesson and render and export our project. Thankfully after 3 attempts we have finally managed to export our project.

Final day!

Our project has to be in today and all we have left to do is add credits. After we have done this we are going to export our project ready to hand in. Fingers crossed all goes to plan.

Rendering

Today Hannah has set our sequence rendering as we have all the effects added to our videos that we want. After rendering we plan to watch our video through to make sure it look professional. The final thing we need to do is add the credits and ensure our video runs smoothly and is a believable opening sequence. We are definitely on track to meeting the deadline.

Gravestone

Today I edited the picture of the gravestone Callum is visiting.

 

This is the gravestone before I edited it. This would make Hannahs character 71 when she died which obviously isnt true as the storyline suggests she dies soon after taking heroin when she was young.

This is the gravestone after I edited it. Now it says Hannahs character was 21 when she died which is much more believable and fits with the storyline.

In the end we didnt use the still shot of the gravestone anyway.

Today

Today we edited the clip by taking out the inter-titles to make our sequence look less like a trailer and more like the opening of a movie. We then replaced the inter-titles with a voice over with some background music which was so much more effective. We also added dates at the start of each scene because our sequence changes between different times of the year so hopefully this has made it more clear. Also, we made the conversation, which is in the past, in black and white with a rough border around it. Hopefully this will also help distinguish between the past and present.

Progress

Today we changed the order of our sequence around to see if it would be more effective in a different order. We decided it looked better when we had moved it around so we are going to stick with this order. Also, we thought the titles we are using made the sequence look like a trailer so we are going to try and find a way to use the voice over we originally wernt going to use to make it less like a trailer and more like the opening sequence to a film.

Music

Oliver managed to create the music last night so today myself and Hannah tried to add the music to the video however when we added it, it said there was no audio on the track. Therefore we are going to try to fix this at a later date. Tonight we are shooting a few more clips that we realised we needed after we did our rough cut.

Music

We realised that our film opening lacked  a mood so we have asked our friend, Oliver, to create a piece of music that will set the mood. By asking our friend to do it, it means we dont have the issue of copyright and we can make it exactly how we want it. Hopefully this will be done by Monday

Rough edit

This is a very rough edit of our film