Evaluation, Question 2..

How does your media product represent particular social groups?


First of all, our project is based in a school environment, so social groups is very important for our opening sequence. In schools, there are different stereotypes and labels which we wanted to show; we have done this by dressing our actors/actresses appropriately according to their label. Our main influence was the film Mean Girls, which is all about the different groups in school and the way each group is treated, according to their status. We wanted to reflect their idea in our own project to achieve our audiences' attention, being a light-hearted comedy, but also focusing on some teenage issues that everyone goes through.

This is our first similarity to the film Mean Girls; they have a 'Burn Book' with pictures and labels of all the girls in their year. We have made a yearbook which has the same content. It's iconic for the movie as well as for our project.

Just like in the film Mean Girls, we portrayed girls in the typical view of being obsessed with makeup and their looks. They are both looking in the mirror and being overly conscious about the way people see them. We specifically fitted the music with this clip because the lyrics relate very well; 'all i see, when i look in the mirror, you're looking at me', is a line from our song which is played when the girls are putting on their makeup.

In the film Mean Girls, there is a zoom into a map of the different stereotypes at the high school; Our project is only slightly different as we zoom into the yearbook, but we still have the different groups before  going into a clip.

Just like in Mean Girls, we have considered and been very careful when it comes to the rule of thirds and the 180degrees rule. As you can see above, the girls in the clip are positioned in the left and right third. This is the same in Mean Girls, as you can see. Both groups are sitting at a table showing the isolation against the other groups (in the cafeteria) and in our clip it is set in a study centre isolating themselves from others on different tables.

In this picture, we have taken a still frame from the film Centre Stage. In both pictures, there is a lot of space around the dancers and the lighting is very good. It relates well to their character and the shot gives them a lot of space to be able to move around freely, and still be in the frame. Both characters are wearing appropriate clothing which clearly tells the audience that they are dancers. 

First of all, these are both wide shots; you can establish the setting giving the audience an idea of who they are. Both are set in a gym, and they are both gymnasts; you can tell this by the way they are positioned and by their clothes. The comparison we have used is from Bring It On, which is another typical teenage comedy movie.

This is from the film Goal. We researched what would be appropriate for the shot. We knew of a friend who is very skillful and who already had his own costume which helped a lot. In the clip, he performs a few tricks which shows that he is a footballer; also, the surrounding is at a football pitch.

We have compared the band clip to the film Bandslam. We tried to fit all of the characters into the frame and trying to show their instruments too. We have a drummer and a singer, just like the film. Both scenes are filming a rehearsal which also makes them quite similar.

This is our main character (on the right). We based his geek like character on Napolean Dynamite. The clothes they're wearing are very similar; they're both wearing school uniform (smartly dressed), glasses, and have curly hair! In the clips, we have also tried to make our geek act and sound like Napolean Dynamite after watching many clips of it.

Overall, we used Napolean Dynamite, Centre Stage, Goal, Bring It On and Mean Girls to represent particular social groups in our opening sequence.

Evaluation. Question 1..

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

Titles..

As we came to the end of our two minute opening sequence, we decided to use LiveType to make our credits and titles more interesting. In previous lessons we had been practicing and playing about on it and we really like some of the fonts and animations that were on there and thought that they would look good on our opening. We had to import the still frames we wanted into LiveType to add the title; we also changed the colour, font and added an animation. However, when we imported it back into our opening on iMovie, the quality of the still frame had changed and it looked very unprofessional and it was really obvious that it didn't fit in with the rest of the opening. To get around this, we realised that we had to import the clips before and after the still frame into LiveType. Even though this took us quite a long time, we managed to add exciting titles to all of our freeze frames before the deadline! In addition to the titles, we decided to create our title in Live Type. The title of our film is 'SnapShot'. We chose the font 'Manic', which looked really cool. We used bright colours, orange, red and yellow to make it feel fun and upbeat, which reflects what our film is like.

Re-filming..

When we uploaded the footage of the zooms in and out of the book, we found that they were a little wobbly; this is because it was really hard to try and zoom in, without moving the camera to fit the frame of the picture. So we re-filmed it and this time we put the camera on a tripod, and on some tables, as we did before, but instead of zooming into the book, we started with the frame that we wanted (the camera zoomed into the picture), then we zoomed out. After we imported the clips, we reversed the zooms so that it looked like we were zooming in. It looked a lot smoother than before and it was a lot less wobbly.

Filming Session.. Geek..

This was the last bit of filming we needed to do. We filmed it in the Art Room in our school because we liked the desks in that room and we were able to use it after school. This was the longest filming session as we had to get everything filmed; we had to film the Geek (Luke Groszewski) turning the pages of the book, gluing this down into the book, writing our names, and also the only bit of speech in our opening. We took several different shots of the 'And That's Me' shot because we wanted plenty to choose from. I think we're going to have a hard time choosing which one as they were all very funny!
I'm pleased with what we filmed and I think we have everything we need to start editing!

Ideas..

Recently, Cindy came up with a very good idea; she suggested that we speed up the beginning of the clip. This will work really well because otherwise it would be very boring for the audience to spend a very long time looking at the geek stick pictures down! Also, it means that the opening sequence won't be really long and we can get more in.
In addition to that, she also thought it would be a good idea to create still frames of the short clips we have taken and have writing popping up with a funny sentance about each one.
All of us agreed that they were really good ideas and we're including them in our final sequence; we will do this in our editing stage.

Filming Session.. Football & Showoff..

Football:
We had originally planned to film our school football team, however, they didn't want to be in our project. So, in the half term, we met up to do some editing and borrowed a camera from school. I volunteered to film the Kent County Under 18 Football team, who my dad manages, as they were playing against London FA. I got permission from both teams and filmed it on the Thursday evening of half term. The lighting was really difficult; it was filmed in the evening so the floodlights were on. But i think that some of the film has got some good lighting.

Showoff:
Whilst at the football, I asked my dad to choose one of his most skilled players to be our 'showoff'. Ben Lockett volunteered himself and he did a few skills for me. He's very talented and I only needed one shot as I was very pleased with what he did.