Final Product

My thoughts and improvements

When looking back at the final product, I am very happy with the overall outcome and think that we were able to get across the genre of our opening well. The range of shots that we used worked effectively and i really the like the mix of shots that we tried to include for example i thought the mix between the normal shots and the point of view shots at the beginning as i thought these were effective and allowed you to see through the point of view of the character.

If i were to do the opening again i would definitely focus more on the rehearsing with the actors in order to get the best performance possible and also the lighting as in some shots we had a problem with a distorted image due to lack of quality lighting. If we had had more time to focus on this then it may have made the final product look a lot more effective and professional.

Feedback of final piece

• 'Not my cup of tea, not one I would want to watch and didn't capture my imagination.'
• 'Really wanted to know what happened, had a feeling something terrible was going to happen.'
• 'Very girly, had a strong mise en scene and realistic.'
• 'Liked the bouncy feel of the slowed down make up shots, was upbeat which matched the mood well. The final shot could've been a bit punchier.'
• 'Didn't get across the point of the night out.'
• 'Was lively, colourful and matched a young team movie really well. Wanted to see more to see whether it was upbeat or whether there was going to be dark twist.'
• 'Was quite cheesy! The picture shot worked really well but i didn't know whether the car shot was relevant or it could've ended on the camera shot.
• 'Looks fun!'
• 'Looks nice and fun and a good girly film. Like the lip shot and the camera shot a lot! Looks swish.'
• Excellent! Lots of suspense.'
• 'Has lots of potential.'
• 'The camera shot was effective.'
• 'The colouring look good and effective.'
• 'Had the wrong feeling for it's genre. Could tell that it intended to be happy/positive but felt negative.
• 'The camera on camera was a good idea.'
• 'Good fun, more lighthearted and had an upbeat pace and feel.'
• 'Really good opening.'
• 'Loved the shots of the close-ups.'
• 'Looks fun!'

Overall the comments were very positive and it seems that most people got the feel of the opening and understood what was happening. The points about it not being their cup of tea were equally relevant but I don't think they are something to worry too much about as they may not have been our target audience and we were never going to please every single person with the opening.

Evaluation

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

In our film we used a lot of the classic 'chick flick' film conventions, for example our main characters were all girls who are interested in boys, going out and having fun. We didn't use spectacular camera angles that much because we thought that this would make the opening seem more like a trailer and not have the effect that we wanted. We used a range of different music in order to set the mood for the whole film, we started off we silence at the beginning, and then whilst they were getting ready we picked up the pace of the music and then as they were leaving the music was fadin away. This happens in a lot of films but not always in chick flicks and this is something in our film that challenges the normal girly film genre, the fact that the film has an element of unknowing and devastation to it is something that challenges the 'normal' conventions for it's genre.

Every film has costumes and props so in this way our film was sticking to the convention, although on the other hand not many films involve fancy dress costumes, but we thought this was a good way to further enhance the characters personalities by just looking at them. Also with the costumes the first shot of our opening is the gloomy area and the main girl, Ella, with her hood up. Although it's raining this may also present a slightly 'bad' image and suggests the area that the girls are in and the lifestyle they live. We decided to mix this with a dress underneath to show that she still is 'one of the girls'.

The fonts that we included in our product varied throughout the opening. We kept an ongoing theme with a font called 'Didot', which we used for the main title and also mine and Justine's names, but on the other hand we also used a more cartoony, fun, font for the main characters. We also put their names in bright colours to make them clearer on the screen, and imply the fun element that we wanted.
The title of our film is presented on a white background which lasts over three frames. During these frame the title crosses over from the freeze frame of the girls in the camera, to a blank white screen, and then to the girls coming out to the car. Having the title on the blank screen represents the passing of time between the two shots and also makes the title more predominant than if there was a scene in the background. We chose the font 'Didot' for the title and made it bold so it stood out and was definitely clear as the title, but at the same time the curves in the font made it appeal to our target audience; females. The purple as the colour scheme also represents the girls that we are trying to draw in. The font used for our title is fairly stereotypical of 'chick flick' and similar fonts can be seen used in films like 'Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging' although the boldness of ours gives it a slight edge.

The area that we chose to have as the setting was my friend Bee's house as she lives in a compact area of houses and we wanted to create the impression of an 'average' girls life, and most people live in terraced houses with a front and back garden. The main party of the scene is set in the office room as this is where the girls would be able to play music and get ready with plenty of space, rather than Bee's bedroom which would've been too small. The colour scheme in her house was warm oranges and pinks which makes it feel homely and comfortable and very pleasing to the eye. All of the setting and location are aimed to make the opening feel normal so our audience can relate to it.

For the costumes, we looked for inspiration on the internet deciding what our characters should wear. As girls are pretty conscious about how they look when going to partys, we thought we would keep the fancy dress not too daring so no-one felt self conscious in front of the camera and this would reflect how the characters would really dress. Having four girls wearing stereotypical fancy dress is a factor that is often used in these genres and a lot of the time they use girls dressing up as an excuse to look good rather than have fun, for example in Mean Girls when they are getting ready for the halloween party; instead of dressing scary they dress quite revealingly.

With our camera work we wanted to keep it fairly simple as lots of mixtures of different shots may have been confusing for the viewer and not look smooth flowing. With the editing we trimmed and added transitions to clips such as fade out, blur out etc as these show the passing of time as the girls are getting ready.

The first shot of our opening shows the location and sets up the whole scene, which is a common feature used in lots of films in the same genre. Our main character, Ella, is shown walking up to the house and into the room where she meets all her friends. The rest of the opening shows them getting ready for the party which shows that this party will be relevant to the rest of the film.

Our genre is suggested in the opening by the characters who are the same age as our target audience. During the opening we see the girls getting ready which suggests further the genre of the film. Our genre is not neccessarily shown in the first shot of the film but when we are introduced to all the girls together in the room this comfirms the genre.

In the first shot we are introduced to the main character in the film, and then she meets up with her three best friends, who are other main characters in the film. By having this first shot of Ella the audience can tell that she is who the story will follow and predominantly be about, especially in the first half of the film. We also showed this by the shot of the camera, Ella is right in the middle of the girls instead of on the edge which shows that she is again the main focus. When the girls are doing the finishing touches to their costumes we show them individually on the screen which allows the audience to get to know the characters more and see their personalities.

• How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The setting of the opening gives a feeling of a less well off area, as it is rainy and gloomy, which represents a typical middle class family. Also the first and main character that we see is wearing a hoody, this is a typical stereotype of a teenager and can be seen as slightly 'thuggish', this style is more modern and appeals to our target audience. This stlye can be seen in the tv programme 'Skins' where one of the main characters, Effy, is seen as dark but yet still very glamourous. Our main characters are a bunch of young girls who have a range of personalities, they are interested in boys and looking good which reflects todays youth. By having the girls getting ready and showing them doing their makeup etc, this shows the typical bubbly girly girl which is what we wanted to base our characters on. Within the group, there are different degress of their personalities, which we reflected in the characters fancy dress costumes.

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

Big companies like Walt Disney, and Time Warner have been around in the industry for years and are extremely well established. This means that they are a reliable source and if they were to distribute our media product this would be a better outcome than a low level production company. By having a big name behind our film would get more audiences and give us more recognition, which would be a good opportunity and enable to share our product with more people. On the other hand, trying to get big coorporations to distribute our media would be very difficult as they don't seem to interact with amateur productions because they are less likely to make as much money. This is why a more local and low profile production company such as Abacus Productions in Norfolk may be better as they specialise in independant film makers.

• Who would be the audience for your media product?

Natalie, Ellie, Lisa, Katie and Nicky are 17 year old girls. Ellie and Natalie are nearly 18 and all of them are in their final year of college. They spend most of the hours of the day in each others presents, at both college and outside. In the group there are a mixture of personalities, Lisa is a very intelligent girl and very wise when it comes to boy issues and drinking. She still shares the common trait of having a good time with the rest of the girls, yet she is definitely the most sensible out of the five. Next there is Nicky, who is a bubbly and chatty skinny blonde haired girl. She isn't your normal ditsy blonde but can sometimes play up to this stereotype; especially around the boys. Ellie and Natalie are both brunettes. They are your ordinary type of girl and don't wear amazing clothes to college, but if there's a party to go to they scrub up pretty well. They like listening to a mixture of RnB and pop mostly and always make sure that the radio station is tuned into Kiss or Radio 1. When the girls get together every month for a classic film night, they always enjoy a comedy or a 'rom-com' because they can have a giggle and relate to the situations that are happening. This is why i believe these girls would be the main audience for our film as this is what we have tried to incorporate within our film, with maybe a bit of an edgy on the side for the more 'rock chick' of the group like Katie as she is not so into the 'lovey dovey' stuff.

• How did you attract/address your audience?

We addressed our audience by trying to make our opening seem younger. For example the script was mainly about boys and passing your driving test, which appeals to the younger generation as these are the things that they are currently dealing with. These concepts wouldn't appeal so much to the older generation. During our opening we tried to use a range of camera angles and shots in order to keep the viewer interested. We wanted to make sure that the script involved something they could relate to which is why we decided on boys especially. The editing on our film gives it an extra attraction as the slow mo and fast forward sections mix up the filming and also correlate with the buzz of getting ready to go out, which our audience can relate to. During the scene the viewer meets the main character, Ella, and the scene follows her through arriving at the house and getting ready with her girls. At the end of the scene they all pile into her new car and are very excited, this hopefully makes the audience want to watch out and find out what will happen at this party and how the story will progress. From the title of the film 'One Night' you know that something is most likely to happen at this party which will effect the rest of the film, and this will intrigue the audience to make them watch further. The title 'One Night' will make the audience ask what is going to happen later on in the night? How will this effect the girls?

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

One of the first things that we learnt about was the basic camerawork skills. Before this i had no idea how to approach a camera let alone make my own opening. By practicing and doing our preliminary tasks helped me to develop my skills using the camera, and setting up a variety of different shots. This involved using a tripod and a dollie at times to make shots more stable. I also learnt how to change to camera settings in order to get the best possible take. The other main piece of technology that i used when producing our opening was iMovie. This was where we put all the pieces together ready to edit and make our final product. When using iMovie i learnt how to add transitions and credits into the piece and also on top add special effects to make the whole piece look more professional. The special effects were added to pieces of the opening that we considered to be significant. We added a mixture of slow motion shots and fast forward to the parts when the girls were getting ready in the 'mirror' as we thought this created a sense of a buzz that the girls would get going to a party. Other types of media that i used were online, and mainly consisted of Google and Blogger. I used Google to help with the majority of my research for tasks and information. Before constructing my piece i had never used a blog in my life so this opened up lots of new ways i could express the journey. Learning how to embed videos etc into youtube so i can then use import them into my blog was another useful skill that i learned along the way. There were also other online websites that helped a lot throughout the process. Facebook allowed us to stay in contact with each other easily and also enabled us to get audience feedback through polls etc. The website 'dafont' also helped with the making of our production company logo as it offered loads of amazing and interesting fonts. I didn't use photoshop much during the production of our piece, but we did make our production company logo on it and i had learnt new skills on it earlier in the course. This was a very suitable piece of software to use especially for our production company logo and also was easy to use as we had a workshop on the basics along with other knowledge that i already had of it.

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

The main thing that our preliminary task helped us with is the techniques involved when using the camera and iMovie as the actual content was nothing to do with our piece and would've made no sense. By making the preliminary task it helped with setting up scenes in our final piece as we knew where to place up the camera and were more experienced on how to work it. It was beneficial in the editing sense as it helped us to see how the cuts fit together to make a smooth scene and how editing can make the difference to a piece. This has become evident in our final piece as when we had all the rough cuts they didn't fit together very well until we had edited them and trimmed them down properly.

The Shoot

We came up with a number of ideas for our opening and then discussed what would be the most achievable and made the opening most effective. We had to use someone's house for the opening as the girls were getting ready for a party. We decided to use my friend Bee's house as she has a corridor leading to the rest of her house, the colour scheme is nice inside and she lives in a middle class area.

We did not account for the weather when we shot the opening as on the day it turned out to be raining. This made some changes to our opening, for example the shot of Ella walking into the house is played with the sound of rain creating a gloomy eery feeling which is not neccessarily what we expected to had. I think that we worked well round this and still created the effect that we had hoped.

When filming throughout the day, we had problems with lighting as the sky cleared, but this was easily solved by using the 'day into night' effect on iMovie. Also, as the room we were in was so bright we had to shut the curtains to make it feel more like an evening, this made the picture distorted as the camera was having to use poor quality lighting. This was one down side to our filming but we tried to edit out as much of the poor quality parts as we could.

Lastly, due to the fact that we had not written a script, the characters were not able to get fully into the role by just reading a character description that we made. We didn't think that this would make too much difference as we didn't expect to put as much diologue into the final piece, and the pieces that we did use did not last for very long and were only minor bits in the storyline.

Here is the character description that we gave each of the actresses to read before shooting:

Izzy and Emily have been friends for as long as they remember, and when Hayley and Ella joined their school in Year 11, the 4 girls became best friends and are now inseparable. At schools the girls aren't the most popular but at the weekends they like to go out and have a good time, especially when there's something to celebrate.

Izzy

She is 17 years old and quite self-confident. She has pretty good fashion sense although it looks effortless. Her part-time job is in Topshop where she works as a sales assistant when she's not at sixth form during the rest of the week. She's not a girly girl but not a tom-boy either; she's just an average normal girl. At this point in time she is single and takes her mind off her ex by street dancing in her spare time. She has a younger sister and also an older step-sister from her dads re-marriage.

Hayley

Hayley is 18 in a few weeks time. She is an energetic cheery girl who can talk for England. She's also really interested in clothes and always wears a splash of pink. She doesn't have her own job but gets the money to go out from her parents who both have fairly highly paid jobs. She is an only child but doesn't notice it most of the time as she has her best friends around her acting like sisters.

Emily

Emily is the only 18 year old in the group of girls and often plays the sensible role in the group as she's used to looking after her two younger brothers. She earns her money by babysitting as well as a job waitressing in a local restaurant. Being sensible she saves up her money so she is ready for a new life at uni in 6 months time as she is determined to do something worth-while with her life.

Ella

Ella has been learning to drive for the past 3 months and just passed her test on the day of the party. She can be quite temperamental and often has mood swings. Her dad left her mum when she was 12 years old and since then she finds trusting people difficult, except the girls.

Initial planning

When coming up with our first ideas for mine and Justine's opening, we made this storyboard as a rough guideline of where we wanted to go with it. Although a big percent of it has changed in our final product, some of the basic shots and ideas are still the same.

Initial Audience Research

Below is the responses that i got from a questionnaire that i posted to people via facebook. The purpose of this was to find out the different types of film that people wanted to see and what drew them in when watching a film, this meant that we could use some of their points to use in our idea.

Ina Strathausen 24 January at 20:09 Reply

1. When watching the first 5 mins of a film, what draws u in to make u want to watch more?
hmm, probably some sort of action or a mystery, where you have to keep watching to find out the rest :D

2. What genre of film do you prefer?
action/thriller/comedy type thing

3. Why do you like this kind of genre?
has a bit of everything, i get bored of chick flick things, all the saame

4. What sort of main characters do you like to see in a film?
well ;) someone funny?/ i can relate to i guess/ hot ;)

5. Would you rather watch a film opening that shows you how it will end in the first two mins or would you rather be left in suspense and have no idea where the film will end up?
depends! i think both are a good idea, but if you start with the end, it needs to leave you insuspense too ;)

Mollie Williams 24 January at 20:51 Reply

1. well, being a boy at heart i ike a good shoot up or explosion or a bit of mystery of some sort lol.
2. i like horror/thriller/action
3.very exciting and a thecant look away, edge of your seat factor
4. bit of lento looka t for a couple of hours is always a bonuslol, but then you always want the funny guy and the one yo can relate to.
5.NO IDEA all the way, if you know the film in the first few minutes, whats the point inwatching the whole hour or so of it!!

Rachel Botwright 24 January at 23:25 Reply

1. When watching the first 5 mins of a film, what draws u in to make u want to watch more?
Some action! Otherwise I get bored, and lose it completely :)
2. What genre of film do you prefer?
Big actiony films, but you've got to love the rom-coms too.
3. Why do you like this kind of genre?
Because I don't get bored, theres nothing like a few explosions to keep me interested :) and theres nothing like a rom-com on a cold afternoon.
4. What sort of main characters do you like to see in a film?
Someone I can relate to, a normal person! Preferably a nice looking person though :)
5. Would you rather watch a film opening that shows you how it will end in the first two mins or would you rather be left in suspense and have no idea where the film will end up?
I think an element of both, I like twists and turns, but I don't like it to the extent where I have no idea what's going on!

Megan Cole 25 January at 20:45 Reply

1. I like a bit mystery myself. :)
2. An action/thriller or some good old romance!
3. Because its exciting, keeps me on the edge of my seat! And who doesn't love a bit of romance??
4. I defo agree with Bee... a hot guy!!
5. It has to be, being left on suspense until the very end.

Amy Childs 26 January at 16:17 Reply

1. Definately a mystery like meg said, or action or like when the film begins with what happened at the end of the movie, it makes you wanna know what leads up to the ending!
2. Well I like Action or Romantic ones! Kinda both! hahaa.
3. Because its exciting & I love it when the boy saves the girl :P
4. I agree too, a hot guy! Mmm Mmm :)
5. Well I like both but usually when the film shows you how it ends in the beginning it shortens it so it doesn't give it all away!

Amy Moore 27 January at 18:03 Reply

1. some action and some mystery
2. Action / Thrillre but you have to love a Romcom!!! :)
3. Because it put you on the edge of you seat that makes you want to see what happens that second!
4. Someone like me but the definately has to be a hot guy within the fist 2 minutes!!
5. Don't really mind as long as if you see the ending at the beginning you ca'tbe showed too much and you are still realy confused as how you gat to that point.

Alice Lane 30 January at 12:41 Reply

1. something to intrigue me like wat bee said a death, or like the others some mystery :)
2. love, comedy and action/thriller but nothing corny or unrealistic
3. makes me laugh errr i like to see hot guys running around and .... its not boring :D
4. two good ones but with secrets and a bad one or characters who are judged my first appearences but r different once you get to kniow them and hot!!!!
5. suspense i would prefer but i like the idea of knowing the end and seeing how it gets there :)