Take the next step

This is my final prodcut, 'Take the next step' i hope you enjoy the film and can see the hard work and effort which was placed into the production of this film from Reka Samuel, Jessie Anim, and i David Sanni. Thank you

Interview with Faith Production crew

This is a video we made with ourselves the makers of 'Take the next step' through this interview you can gather a sense of what went5 well, what didn't go so well. Also you can find out a lot about our film. I feel this video is very useful for us and the viewers and helped me with my evaluation questions.

Evaluation Q.2

Q2 How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary?

The main colours in my series of posters were various shades of blue, white, and grey. The colours best represents the themes within my film which was manhood, pride, and heartache. The white represents purity and good which comes through via the main character John who helps to save his mothers life by donating a kidney. As black normally represents bad and white normally represents good, I though the mixture of grey would be key interpretation of the good and bad moments within the film, for example when John is being ignored by his mother.

The main figures and objects in the poster are clouds and a few of the main characters. The clouds were instilled graphically whereas the pictures photographically. The clouds represent brightness, and moving from the old into the new as they float along. This is how the main character is, and how he is feeling through the storyline so I decided to incorporate this into my poster. All the messages on the poster are visual, meaning you have to look into what the story means through the poster. The thought bubble of the mother and son hugging points the audience in the right direction into working out what the story is about, what genre it is and so on. As we you can see joy and happiness on the character faces as they are hugging, this could also suggests to the audience there is some sort of happy ending, I feel this just proves how good the combination of the main product and the ancillary because in the film it ends happy, and this shown through the poster. In the second billboard poster the main character has his head in his hands suggesting there will some sad or emotionally connecting moments within the film which great for drama lovers who like to build an emotional connection with characters, this is something which happens in the film and has been shown in the poster which again shows how well the film is linked with the poster. The third poster has two male figures that are of similar skin tone which could suggest they are brothers or family members. It is visible to see some sort of relationship connection and I thought this was important to show in the poster since it is such a key part of the film. We knew it was a great choice of actors as one of the viewers said “They really look alike”. This may also attract a larger audience has it has a strong reference to family and everyone can relate to this.

The target audience for this poster is from 15 to 35 years of age, due to the content of the film, and the emotional element which may be too advanced for younger viewers to grasp. I feel the colours on the poster relate well to the audience gap. One member in our audience said that the poster “really represent drama … and would be appealing to 15 – 40 of age”. This shows that the combination of the main product and the ancillary has been successful. All the colours are mature enough for the older audience members we want to attract. The poster appeals to families, kidney problem patients, boys, girls and many other audience groups this is mostly due to the content of the film although some of these things are portrayed through the poster i.e. the blue will tend to attract males, the clouds stereotypically would attract females as they tend to find these sorts of things pretty, and beautiful. The white also appeals to both sexes due to its mutual element. The persuasive techniques I have for my posters is just simply, how it has been laid out, looking professional and formal with an informal element which relates to younger and older potential viewers. Many pf the viewers said it was very “professional” and looked like it was done by a “professional marketing agency”. Personally as I was graphically making the clouds it almost took me back to another world of when I was younger and free, if viewers can relate to only halve of the memory of being free then the poster will be a complete success. This is reflected through the main character John, he feels free and simple as he realise he has saved his mothers life; a huge weight had been lifted off his shoulders this again shows the combination between the main product and the ancillary. The genres referred to in my posters are drama and fantasy.

This fantasy illusion I have seemed to conjure up through using the bright clouds was not a target of mine and may confuse the audience has the poster has some codes and conventions of a fantasy film poster. As a film maker next time while I’m making a promotion poster for my film I have to be careful and not make unwanted genres overlap within my film poster.

 Drama in my film is created through the look of the characters, and the general layout of the posters, I feel this is very important because this will help bring in the right kind of audience and will reduce disappointment. Many critics viewed our film but the most noticeable one was The Guardian who said it was just “Simply amazing” and rated a very good 3 stars, this was put on my posters as a unique selling point, making our film more attractive to viewers. Attention for the poster is gained by the visual element of presentation quite simply, and through this hopefully potential viewers will view my film, and see the work we put into it and the reflection of the film through the posters. The tagline is very simple “Size doesn’t make a man” which again attracts boys who are may not be as popular, cool, or even strong as the average boy. This story could easily change some bodies life and give them confidence to be who they are, even they are not as strong and cool as everyone else.

I feel my posters have put across the themes and narrative of our film very well; this is done through picture of the main characters like John and Linda, the layout, graphical imaging and the colour scheme which I used. The shade of blue on my poster really represents the different emotions in the film, sometimes happy sometimes sad. These subliminal messages have all been placed to attract the audience and make them see the film in the poster. The only thing which makes my project not as effective collectively is the slight misconception of genres you get from the poster because it could be portrayed as a fantasy. Although besides this I feel the combination of my mina product and ancillary is effective.

The value of a magazine review can never be denied, it helps create buzz around a new film which is going to come and it helps to take your film to a new professional level. The success of a magazine review is reliant on how many people read it, which is dependant on what magazine it is for example if it was Empire or Total film it would be more successful due to the large multitude of followers they have, although if it is a smaller magazine provider like Gorilla film magazine it wouldn’t be seen as much meaning minimal amounts of Acknowledgement for your film. I chose to do a film review with Total film because it is an extremely successful film magazine provider with an average circulation 0f 85,301. It is also a British firm and as my film British I feel it will have a similar target audience as my film which makes the campaign more ideal. In relation to my film the article had many components which helped promote my film such as the Q and A section which helped our target audience and potential viewers get closer to the cast and crew and feel apart of the project in general. The review also had a lot of persuasive language to make potential; viewers view the film such as “This is a truly epic tale of love and pain” this language really sales the film and use of words like love and pain will grab interest as it is something will all go through, young or old which makes it relative and current. The use of the word ‘epic’ paints a picture of something being good or big which suggests that the film is big and good, this will again attract viewers. I also received feedback from a viewer saying “I like the way you used colours and how you added a Q & A section as it gives the audience a chance to get closer to the cast and crew” This again shows how the product and the ancillary tasks worked together to make a great combination. The three star rating also helped to promote my film, as it underlines how professional and critically successful it is especially as it was from The Guardian a hugely recognisable newspaper in Britain which again is the target audience for the magazine.

Evaluation Q.1

Q1. In what ways does your media product use, develop, or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

A short film is “an original motion picture which has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all credits”. This is a quote from the Academy of Motion picture arts and sciences. My short film ‘Take the next step’ follows the basic codes and conventions of a short film or a “short subject” as it was made by independent film makers, for no profit or very little profit and also had no real budget like most short films. As short films are very short in duration the amount of action and creativity in normally intensified and compacted into a small piece of time. This is similar to my film in how it is quick moving, and has various shots such as tracking, and close ups shots to portray the narrative. We also have a lot of content within my media text in a sense that the narrative is very emotional which follows the codes and conventions of a short film. In comparison to other short films we had a very small cast, this is one of the ways we followed the codes and conventions of a short film.

My film ‘Take the next step’ is a short although because there are very few shorts with the same themes as my film I looked into various feature length which tackled my themes.

The main theme for my film was rising to manhood; this for me was a great theme because it was not too broad or too specific which gave us room to be creative. First we had to undertake some research to see how other directors portray manhood in there films. This theme is not very popular in the world of short films as most shorts are about love and general conflict, although the theme of love crosses over into ‘Take the next step’. In regards to our themes, they subvert the codes and conventions of a short film. The narrative of my film is very emotional, heart touching and this combined with the element of manhood and a brothers feud was very successful although this film theme has been touched on before. One example of this sort of film was Thomas carter’s ‘Coach Carter’ where a basketball coach benched his entire squad of underprivileged college kids, and was scrutinised for this. This was one of the films gathered some sense of direction from with the theme manhood especially with the use of male actors, instead of female, my narrative subverts this with the use of a sickness to create disruption, compared to an educational matters. Also in ‘Coach carter’ you get to the effects of the disruption in a few families and how they all react differently i.e. one of the players fathers spat on the coaches window and threatened him. In my narrative we see the effect in one family those gave a chance to give an in-depth analysis into the families feeling, emotions and how they have all changed after the disruption into a new equilibrium.

In ‘Take the next step’ we had three main characters John, Colin, and Linda Mc’Gininingham. They were interesting characters to work with and change to bring out some stereotypes of brothers, and a single mother. We kept the stereotype of the elder brother being stronger, cooler, and the more dominant figure, in this case it went with our narrative very well. We also kept the character of the mother Linda who was played by Joyce Anim very stereotypical as she was a single she was struggling with a sickness and was not very wealthy. I feel this helped show our narrative because if Linda was rich and very proud we would not have got the same emotional connections. In the sense of characters in the film ‘Take the next step’ we developed the codes and convention of roles in this sort of film. Ideally we wanted to a white family which would have challenged the codes and conventions of characters choice in this sort of film on manhood, but we couldn’t find the right actors in time to play the role of the family.  In the film ‘Seven pounds’ by Gabriele Muccino starring Will Smith they is a strong emotional connection you build with character, the connection is so strong you tend to feel sorry for his character, you may even cry. This how I saw John and this is the sort of connection I wanted the audience to gain with his character. Perhaps not to that extent but as a film maker I wanted the audience to say “aww”. I also watched a short film called ‘Clocked out’ by F.C Rabbath where there was two excellent characters who were partners, and acted as good cop bad cop. This relationship reminded me very much of Colin and John. There was the dominant one being Frank and his side kick which acted like John, in the short everyone knew the bad cop Frank and was very popular.  Although later one in the narrative the side kick became a dominate force as he turns a gun on his partner which reminds of how John dose the deed for his mother, and becomes more a ma than his older brother. I learnt a lot from this short film and I used it to develop my characters within my film, I also developed the codes and conventions within this genre and film.

This is how my use of characters develops the codes and conventions of the roles within a drama.

The sounds in our piece really helped to portray our narrative is the film was suppose to be a silent one. We used whispers to create the illusion that people was talking about the main character John as he was leaving his house for school in the morning. This was complemented by the visuals of Colin’s friends pointing and making jest of John. These whispers related to the genre of drama, and reminded me of the soap ‘Eastenders’ and the sort of gossip you hear in the show. I thought this would be a great element we could add to create suspense and emotion from the audience. This is one of the ways I used sound to develop the codes and conventions of a drama. In regards to the music we used audio which would compliment the emotions of the character the music also changed as the narrative took a positive turn, this is like in almost all films short or feature length. An example of this ‘Lovefield’ by Mathieu Ratthe where you can really hear the use of music to build tension and supplement the images, then the change as you find out that a new baby was born at the end.  Stereotypical we used rap music for a black family, as Colin went to meet his friends at his happiest moment of the film, and at the end as John proves he is man at his happiest stage. I did this on purpose because I wanted to show the change in power because when Colin was happy John wan not, and now John is happy Colin is not and now the music is used to represent power and strength which John ends with, this makes John the strongest character. This something I have not seen or heard, and is one of the ways I challenged the codes and conventions of a drama, and more specifically the theme of manhood.

For mise en scene we made sure we placed tablets and crutches in the shots to get across the fact that Linda was and is extremely ill. This with her costume of a nightgown displaying she may not be in work, or have any sort of motives. This is follows the convention of a sick person in a drama, as dramas tend to be realistic and have props. From the look of the house and the mise en scene you can see that the family is from the working class, this classing has a big link with the portrayal of the characters, it helps to build a picture of their backgrounds and leads the audience to stereotype things like their ethics, or even their educational backgrounds. This is common in most movies who are aiming to portray working class England, an example of this is in ‘One day’ a British film based in Birmingham where we see the types of houses people from the lower and working class live in, and there are many similarities between the two. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1268158/(IMDb page on the film)This shows how we developed the codes and conventions of a British home in a drama from the lower or working class.

Evaluation Q.4

Q4. How did you use new media technologies in the research, planning, construction and evaluation stages?

Media technologies are the electrical components used to make our film through pre production, production, and post production. These technologies consist of things like Adobe premier for example.

For the research stage I went into in-depth analysis of past materials which related to my theme ideas manhood. I used YouTube get clips from films which deal with this issue i.e. I found a clip in the film Baby Boy where a man get’s attacked by youths, then he returns to restore is manhood by beating them up, the clip is so emotional and gave me a real sense of direction and made me build the link between manhood and emotions which I feel made our film a success. I also used Google to look for news articles and song lyrics which relates to manhood and I made this into a little poster which you can see. I also looked at what provokes testosterone levels to flair, finding some very interesting stuff like i.e. a male protecting his family if he thought they were in eminent danger. These are the sorts of things which we gather inspiration from and put into our final product making the internet very useful. I also took a voice note on my blackberry and asked a couple males within my family what they though manhood was about and how dose it effect the modern. They came back with some interesting feedback which has really helped me in the creation of my film, giving me a

 insight into how people react when your manhood is being tested, and how the idea of manhood has transformed over time. This use of technology has helped me move one step closer to making a realistic filmed based on manhood.

As we moved on to planning of our film we used various technologies to perform our task, one of the main things we had to do was find a cast due to the fact we had quite a number of characters. To find these actors to play these roles I first went onto social networking sites like Facebook, and posted this add various times with know serious responses. I then looked into sites like star now a great website for finding actors and actresses, we got some replies but one for one reason or another they couldn't play the role. Instead of continually trying these unsuccessful sites, I used my phone and quite simply asked close reliable friends to be my actors, and for the role of Linda we used the director’s mother which was also simply arranged. So the first pieces of  new media failed me although in this sense but with technology there are always faults, and I still got to find my actors in enough time conveniently using a slightly older piece of technology; the mobile phones. For the construction of the storyboard I use a basic 2.0 megapixel blackberry camera to record the pitch of the storyboard. This was a great way to show our work on the blog using new media technology, it is also quite ideal to look back on it and write about what we did. Also the use of the blog is a new media technology which is extremely important through this whole media course, because it is were we store all our work and as media students gives us new ways to be creative technologically. We also used a basic software called Microsoft Word which is relatively old although was very helpful in the planning stages of my film, we did a lot of work on there such as making our call sheet which is very important because it has the cast details on it. We also used it to create our script. This is how a very basic technology was used in the making of ‘Take the next step’.

Various new technologies was used in the construction of the project as you could imagine, when shooting we used a Cannon XHAi camera and a Libec tripod, which had various tools to make filming advanced like being able to change the focus this was used near the end as Linda was sitting watching T.V the purpose of this was to create an illusion we was going into her life, and dim and brighten the shots whilst filming this helped in the house scenes as there was minimal lighting within the house. We also used tracking poles to create a tracking shot at the Upney walk in centre to make the shot look like we was going into John’s head.  This helped create more exciting and “extraordinary” shots. After shooting ‘Take the next step’ we filmed some extra material of the cast and crews reaction to the whole project, to collect high quality audio we used a microphone to improve the clarity, which just improves the overall quality of my work and puts across to the examiner that I really spent time and cared about the project; which of course we did. During post production we used Adobe premier we first digitised the shots, and then began cutting them into a basic run, after this we began to tighten the shots. We then used fades and used the sound control to make the music flow in and out. After editing we rendered the images to make it into a compatible file, so we could watch ‘Take the next step’ on various software’s like Windows media player. These are the new media technologies used whilst in the construction and post production stages of our film.

Prezi’s was another way I transformed my work into a new media technology, making it easier to view my work with pictures and videos I used it when discussing potential film magazine for my film article. This has helped work on presentation and creativity; I enjoyed using the software so much that I used it many times through the media academic year. Here is a shot of the work I did on the new technology.  Separately we had to make 3 posters for the marketing campaign of ‘Take the next step’. Although before we could do this we had to undergo some research into how is a film poster of our genre drama is made. That was done mainly by using the World Wide Web which has numerous amounts of information on countless things across the globe, this form of technology was useful and was the most influential and important technology I used for the project. When making the posters I used Photoshop using both graphical and photographical imaging. This with the advanced tools on the software like cropping, duplicating, the magic wound was key in cropping the characters faces in poster 3 so I could fade them into the clouds., adding fades, filters and many other useful devices. After creating the posters on Photoshop I had to convert the images into a J.PEG to make it compatible to go onto the blog. This new media technology helped me to make my posters look professional and gave space to be creative and create almost anything you wanted.

To conclude during the project of ‘Take the next step’ we used many forms and verities of new media technologies which made the project exciting and different, in the research, planning, construction and evaluation stages of media the A2 course.

Evaluation Q.3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

The value of receiving productive feedback at various stages of film making is fundamental in constructing a film which meets the demands of your audience, and subsequently makes it a successful film. As we worked in a group it was important to make sure that anytime we were receiving feedback we was writing it down, so we didn’t forget it, and miss out on the audiences needs.

We first started to construct our piece by coming up with different themes such as manhood, teenage heartache, war, crime, and so fourth. We began to break down what would work and wouldn’t as a group. As time passed by we chose manhood and war as our themes. We then formed a story idea were a weak male joins the army to gain his manhood at this point we really liked the idea, but as we pitched it to the audience they began to ask “how are we going to portray war”? And “will this be practical and realistic”? After this crucial information we thought twice about the idea. The importance of this feedback was imminent because we may of went into the final stages of production and realised we could not create a successful film due to practical reasons. We then changed the story and made him gain his manhood through saving his mothers life which was much more practical. From this as a group we learnt that we have know real budget limited resources and time and we need to be realistic even though we all wanted to make Hollywood quality films.

To my left is the second treatment for our film and was the part which had most feedback and measures for improvement. The audience really liked our treatment calling it original, and creative although one person said “steer away from bullying” which was course for concern for us, because we didn’t want to create a bland basic film on bullying. We took this on board and changed a few sections of the second scene to reduce the bullying element and bring out the favouritism from the mother towards Colin.  We then reconstructed the treatment and changed the age of the characters to 16 and 18 so we could base some of the narrative in a school this meant finding a location was more practical and accessible when it came down to filming. So are treatment was much shorter precise and practical due to the feedback we had received which I feel made our film better.

A storyboard is very important in any film because it maps out the project and will save a lot of time whilst shooting, so I felt it important that it received a lot of constructive criticisms and tweaking to make it really efficient and effective. Our first story board was unprofessional and didn’t flow well from shot to shot and lacked continuity, so as a group we changed it to make it a freer flowing we did this by adding mid shots, and long shots between different scenes to add continuity. Even the presentation of our storyboard was under par so we had to improve this so we could get our message across to our actors and our audience. Eventually when we started filming it was more convenient for us the crew, to get our actors to do what we envisioned to make our film a success. As a film maker I have learnt the importance of making a storyboard.

                           

 As our task brief was to make a “minimal dialogue” film when making the script we had various issues using this small amount of speech, and the layout of our script. The feedback that we had was that we should show the mothers illness much more, add a few more scenes to show the relationship of the brothers and we needed to show the favoritism between the mother and the elder brother Colin. We took this information on board and added another scene were Colin’s friends wait for him at the front door to show how popular Colin was. We made the mother look more poorly by adding tablets, and crouches within the shot. We thought these changes would make our piece stronger and show the large contrast between Colin the elder stronger brother and John the weaker younger brother. From this I learnt you have to portray what you see in your head and convert it into a finished article because your audience may not understand your vision even if you do.

As the shooting had taken place when then digitised the footage to begin editing our film, on a personal note I didn’t feel the shooting went as well as it could of so it was crucial we spent a lot of time editing, and then improving our film. As a group we spent a lot of time tweaking our film and critiquing it ourselves being very forthcoming with new ideas and various shot we could install into our piece to make it better. In the first viewing to our audience they all commented on our sound saying the voiceovers was not clear and that are sound levels kept ascending and descending randomly during the film is very unprofessional, they also said our shots need to flow better, we took this on board and went back into editing our film. But first of all we left our film for a while so we could come back with fresh minds and look at our work from a different perspective; I feel that this was a great way for us to improve our film from a professional point of view. The changes we made like fading in our sound, and cutting shots down and cleaning it up really has made a positive effect on our work this was evident because in the final viewing we received a lot of positive feedback like “the tracking shot of John outside Upney walk-in centre was really effective” and “your rotation spinney shot around John was very good and the film is much better” and many others. Although they still gave us further improvements like we still need to work on improving the sound levels, and the amount of titles we had. These things were addressed but we couldn’t add more dialogue which was another hindrance as members of the audience wanted more dialogue to help tell the narrative. This was because when shooting ‘Take the next step’ I was telling the actors what to do whilst they were acting, because I thought we wouldn’t need the audio. As an amateur film maker I will endeavour to make sure I catch all the dialogue even if it was meant to a silent film because it may be needed and could be used as a back up plan. We also had to change apart of our music within the film because it didn’t match the emotion and genre of our piece and made it sound silly and unprofessional so people said, to combat we instead found some more copy right free music with the same genre of rap, this sounded better and had suitable lyrics which complemented our film in comparison to the lyrics of the first artist which was “Fly like a butterfly sting like a bee” and sounded like a joke. This has taught me that you can also make improvements even if it means changing the music or a few shots as long as you have a purpose for doing it. We also had to work on reducing the length of our film by using one shot to show something instead of 4, this limited the vary of shots although it reduced time, and made the shots flow better. This became a problem as one of the members of my audience said it was too long. The shots we took out mostly were the ones near the beginning of the narrative as John was walking into school; these shots consisted of a low angle tracking sot, a point of view shot and a close-up. The editing process went well and made our film what it is, in my opinion all this feedback we took and implemented into our work was very crucial and important because the audience know what they want, and we needed to provide this in a stunning way and I feel we did this due to there reaction.

Like any financially successful film marketing is a key part of its plan, we marketed our film by making 3 film posters and one for a billboard; this was all part of one campaign. It was important that during the creation of it we got feedback so we could make changes which would make it appeal to my audience more and get us more viewers. They said my first was a great success and was the most popular one and some people went as far to say “it looked like it was done by a professional marketing company” which was a massive compliment to my work. The second poster was a billboard which I had less to time to create, the audience was much more critical saying it was not as good as the first one, and “the font is different in comparison to the others, you should change it”. This feedback made sense as all the posters are part the same campaign so I changed it and tidied it to make it as professional as the first one. This is an image of the improved version.

This has taught me to be more cautious when making posters, and look out for mistakes which could have been avoid, these lesson has improved me creatively.  The third poster which was most different in contrast to the first also received criticism saying it looked “cheap” which spurred me on to make improvements which was changed the colour of the titles, to make it match up with the others and maintaining the same colour of the cast names. In addition to this some house hold improvements to bring the quality to a similar level of the first two posters. I have really enjoyed making these posters and improving them through feedback. All in all even though feedback is sometimes hurtful as you become emotionally attached to your work which have been doing for so long. Although it is very important to get this feedback to make your piece better, and also I have learnt as a film maker that you make a film for an audience and if you don’t carter to your audience your film can not be successful to anyone but yourself. This whole experience of making a film has shown me how much hard work it takes to make a quality piece of work and how important feedback is. This something I will take with me through all walks of life to make me not only a better film maker but a better person and I feel this is very important.

Interview with our cast

This is a video we made for our cast after shooting 'Take the next step' it is great feedback into what they thought of the project, and how it went. This interview is agreat form of feedback for me as a gilm maker because it gives me an insight into how i did, and how i can improve in casting and ina production as a whole.