My Evaluation

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

The way in which my media product has used, developed or challenged forms and conventions of real media products is by the way that I have used genre as an economic strategy. Genre as an economic strategy is where film industry is able to use and manipulate genre to gain money from the audience. In simpler terms, genre as an economic strategy is where the film industry may re-use props, settings or even story lines that have made lots of money and it is assured that the film they remake will do this as they can see from the last film industry that used these things, whether they were in fact successful or not. The way in which we have cemented this into our media product is by the way that we have used this process in adapting two different films and slamming them together to make our genres narrative and the audience for our film. For example for our media product we have used the films Happy Gilmore and Step Brothers and combined the two to make Andrew Anderson (our media product). Using economic strategy is a full proof system of guaranteeing that you will capture an audience as you already know that the film has been successful.

In our title sequence we have used some of the main conventions that exist in real media products such as; the films title, an introduction to character, information regarding mood and tone, information about the genre and introduction to the signature theme tune. The way in which we have incorporated these conventions into our media product is through the use of the four micro elements; sound, cinematography, mise-en-scene and editing. In my opinion I feel that sound and mise-en-scene have played the two main parts in my media product as they have communicated these conventions to the audience.

The way in which we have used these two micro elements to do this is by the way we have used sound such as loud upbeat rock music. When thinking of this type of music we tend to be stereotypical in associating the sort of music with Americans and that it what I was aiming for as our film is American and the upbeat part of the music suggests to the audience that it is an upbeat film. We have used mise-en-scene in our title sequence to give some information about the character as I have mentioned in the conventions above. For the mise-en-scene, it is mostly the props that give the audience some indication as to what the character is like as he is slouching on the sofa in tracksuit bottoms, watching TV and eating pizza with plenty of food all around him which makes it look like he isn’t going anywhere soon. These props that are strategically placed in the scene indicate to the audience that this character is lazy and could also be seen as fat. Once again touching on another stereotype of American people as others seem to think that they are all fat and lazy which is wrong.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

When looking at the social groups that I have represented within my media product I can only think of one that could be seen as me representing, what is more of a group then a social group, in my title sequence. I think my representation of a group is the way in which I have represented Americans. Many people in the world see Americans as obese lazy people who do nothing and this is a stereotype as we do not know everyone in America and cannot therefore say that the whole population on America is fat and lazy. In my media product I have backed this stereotype by the way I have presented my character through the use of props and you could even say costume. The way in which I have presented my character through these two elements of mise-en-scene, is by using placing food all around the scene of my title sequence so that wherever you look you can see food within the scene and in doing this the audience are able to establish in there minds that this character eats a lot and in thinking this they would go as far as saying that the character could be American because of the stereotype that has been set in place by other. The costume also contributes to not only the representation of Americans and there stereotype, but also creates irony about the character as he is wearing tracksuit bottoms within the scene. This piece of clothing is seen as something to run in as it gives your legs space to manoeuvre however this is not how it is used in the title sequence as it almost gives off the idea that the character wants to be as comfortable as possible as he is going to be on that sofa for a long time.

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

There are two media institutions that may distribute my title sequence, one is Columbia Pictures and the other is Paramount Vantage. The reason in which I may use Columbia Pictures to distribute my title sequence is because they are the media institution that distributed the film Step Brothers and our film is a mixture of this film and Happy Gilmore, however our film is more like Step Brothers than it is like Happy Gilmore and with Columbia picture having experience in distributing films such as Step Brothers then I think that this media institution would know exactly how to distribute my film. The other media institution that I may want to use to distribute my film would be Paramount Vantage. After having research into depth about this institutions history, as well as the types of films they distribute, the amounts of budget they deal with and the awards they have won, I came to the conclusion that Paramount would suit my film a lot. I came to this conclusion as when looking at the genre history of films that they have distributed, it seemed that there was only two particular genres that they distribute which was drama and comedy and as my film is a comedy with hints of drama involved, I felt that Paramount was looking like a strong favour to distribute our film.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The target audience for our title sequence and film (Andrew Anderson) would be between the ages on 12 and 25. The certificate of the film would be a 12A as although there is minimal violence within the film, there would be quite a lot of abusive language that would not be suitable to the younger generation. We chose this certificate for the film by looking at the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) website and deciding from there what rating to use. When looking at the BBFC rules i looked more into the .language and violence aspects of their rule book in order for a film to be a 12 A and it states that in order for a film to be a 12A, 'aaggressive discriminatory language or behaviour is unlikely to be acceptable unless clearly condemned', also 'Moderate language is allowed. The use of strong language (for example, ‘fuck’) must be infrequent' and finally 'There should be no emphasis on injuries or blood, but occasional gory moments may be permitted if justified by the context'. 

Our secondary audience would be families as it could be seen as a film for a group to watch and enjoy, as well as laugh and also get that feel good feeling at the end of the film which would bring families together and spread love between one another around the room. The reason that 12-25 would be our primary audience is because the comedy that is being portrayed in this film is that of which only this age group may laugh at because of the stage that there mind is at in the fact that older people above this age limit might not find the jokes that funny. Another audience that we aim to target and hopefully have a mass appeal from is the brother audience, much like the family audience except that it is more likely that brothers would want to watch the film together as they may be able to relate to it in some way and in the end it might touch them a little and hopefully full fill the happiness and laughter that it is trying to communicate throughout the film.

We have not aimed our title sequence at a specific gender with regards to audience, however it can be seen as being aimed at a male audience by the way that our title sequence is based mainly on a male leading character who is in the sequence throughout and is the only character in the sequence. However we have tried to keep the audience open for both genders as we feel that both can and would enjoy the title sequence and film idea that we have created.

How did you attract/address your audience?

The way in which our title sequence would attract our target audience as well as other audiences would be mainly through the comedy that would be in the clip. This would be the main selling point of the product as it is what the title sequence and idea for the film is about and although there maybe a moral message hidden in the narrative that is revealed at the end of the film, I would still count on the comedy that would come from the characters in order to attract the audience to the film. The reason why comedy was such a strong choice for me as a genre for the film is because in my life I have had funny and at times hilarious experience with members of my family such as my siblings and I feel that I could introduce some of my stories into the film and hopefully get the same laughter back from the audience as I do when thinking of the things that have happened between family members.

The title sequence itself is enough to attract the audience as we have used catchy music as well as a good use of titles and the transitions that go with them. I feel that the titles alone are enough to draw the audience in as they would give the sequence that little bit of extra awe and make the audience amazed at where the titles have appeared in the sequence and the way in which they have appeared.

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

There is only one main technology that I have learnt in the process of constructing my title sequence and that is final cut pro. This technology that I have learnt and that has almost been engraved into my mind for ever which I will take to my grave has been one of the most useful and detailed programmes that I have come across in my life. Final cut pro is an editing programme for when you wish to make a movie, you need only upload your footage so that you can edit and piece it together like a puzzle. Some of the things that I have learnt about this new technology is how to add sound, add footage, cut footage, manipulate sound to your liking and as well as change the visuals of your movie to how you want it to be. This may seem like small things in which I have learnt about when it comes to a vast programme such as final cut pro as there are so many things to explore, however one of the things that I spent most time learning and doing is adding titles to my title sequence and this is one aspect of final cut pro in which I have learnt most about. Adding titles to me now is like making a piece of art, everything has to be perfect and especially with our title sequence as the way we wanted out titles to appear was taking final cut pros transitions to a whole new level by editing the transitions rotation and pace so that it matched the on screen action as it was happening. If I had to pick one thing out of final cut pro that I think I learnt the most about, I would defiantly choose transitions and the placing of titles as I spent the most amount of time trying and succeeding to make the titles as perfect as they could possibly be.

What i have also learnt in this process about technologies is the importance that they possess with regards to production as well as post production and how important they are to the overall making of not just a sequence but to a film in general. For example i learnt quite a few times in this process that it matters that you get the right shot within a sequence and that it takes more that one shooting, even two or three in order to get that perfect shot. At the first stage of production we went a re-shot the whole sequence again as we didn't like the footage that we had captured one bit and so we did it again and again, until we got the shots that we needed and that we were satisfied with. With regards to post production i feel that without the right editing programme such as final cut pro, we wouldn't have been able to produce any of the work that we have done as it was that editing programme that allowed us to do such things that we could only imagine of. Even film directors would agree that the editing programmes and tools used play a very vital part in creating a good film and that most films in the world depend on a good editor as well as the editors programme that he or she is using. The examples that i have given above of production and post production technologies that i have used to create my title sequence are equally important and play a huge role in making my sequence what it is.

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

In my opinion I feel that the creativity, digital technology and research and planning were perfect and that it couldn’t have been any better for me. For our title sequence to have the things that we wanted it to have, we needed creativity and we found that by working as a team and putting our heads together, we decided that we want the title to come in when a hand moves on when a object is lifted, we as a group decided that we didn’t want the title to be in the corner and be boring, we wanted titles to be coming out of know where unexpected like the title sequence of the film National Lampoons European Vacation and we as a group made that happen. Me and my team mate Michael put extra hours in just to make every title as perfect as it could be and we made sure that the audience would never expect it coming. For me I feel that my strongest point was probably research and planning as well as the use of digital technology, I could even go as far as saying that all three of them were my strong points as I worked my hardest in all of them, but with research and planning I defiantly shone the brightest in putting in that extra bit of work in order to make sure that all angles were covered and so that all questions were answered when it comes to the title sequence and our film, Andrew Anderson.The one thing that I felt that we and myself struggled in is the production side of things as we was unable to use our initial idea of using the dolly to film our 360 degrees shot of our main character, however we made sure not to let this bring us down and so came up with a new idea that allowed us to carry on and instead of doing one shot with the dolly, we broke it up into several different shots and I think it may have even been better doing it this way that doing it with the dolly as the audience would get bored with just watching one shot.

The two things that I feel I have improved on, as the making of the title sequence has gone on, is the post production as well as the technology side of making the title sequence. Before I started editing our title sequence footage, I had no idea of how to use the final cut pro software or how to even add a title, but now, now I feel like I can accomplish anything with the final cut pro programme as my editing skills as well as my placement or titles and transitions skills has rapidly and greatly increased in the small amount of time that we had to create these title sequences. The way in which I improved on each of these two areas was by putting in the hard work and extra effort by staying past the end of school days and making sure that I knuckled down in class and tried my up most hardest in order to bring the best out of myself and learn what seemed to be an endless programme filled with tools the like of which I have never come across before.

The things that i feel i have developed since we started thinking of ideas for our title sequence is my leadership skills as i took charge of the group and made sure that everyone pulled their weight within the group and participated well with all of the work so that it wasn't left to one person to do. I also feel like my production as well as my post production skills have improved as within the sequence i captured every angle that i wanted to for the title sequence in order for us to place the titles in. In the post production i feel like i have developed my skills with editing dramatically as i had never edited before let alone add a title but as you can see by the final product, i am now almost practically an expert in doing such things as i have listed. All the things above that i feel i have developed skills in or improved on has come down to the amount of hard work and effort that i put into making the title sequence the best it could possibly be and giving the best performance out of myself in order to show that i wanted to create a good sequence and to show that i wanted to get better at things i was not so good at, at first. i showed my enthusiasm to learn and develop my skills in order to produce the best work possible for my group and myself.

Final Version Of Title Sequence

This is our final version of our title sequence with the corrections made by the comments of the class and the teacher.

Making Corrections To The Title Sequences According To The Comments Made By The Class

The elements that worked;

• The typography come in nicely 
• The cuts are good between shots
• The music works well with the overall flow of the sequence
• The pace of the sequence and how the music and pacing of edits matches the overall theme of the sequence
• The way the titles appeared behind some things within the room
• The music connotes comedy which shows the genre of the title sequence

Things that need developing;

• The end titles (film name and production company) can come at the beginning
• Foley sound from within the sequence itself
• Titles at the end didn't work well
• Shot was too long at the end of the film 
• Bigger titles (change the size of the titles so they are easier to see)
• Final typography and transition for the title of the film looked like a PowerPoint presentation

Things that didn't work at all;

• The class did not find anything about our title sequence that did not work at all

As you can see below this is our teachers review on our title sequence, we made sure to do all corrections and make all improvements according to his feedback as it was the most valuable feed back that we received.

We will now use all of this information and feedback that we have been given from the class and go back to our title sequence and make the necessary corrections so that it looks more professional and like a much better title sequence.

Exporting Title Sequences For The Class To View

Here we have now finished the first version of our title sequences and have now exported theme to quick time movie player and i have also uploaded our title sequence to youtube so that you can see our work as a working progress and also so that you will be able to see the changes that we have made to our title sequence according to the comments that we are about to be given by our class once they have watched it.

The Difficulty With Our Titles

Finally me and Mike have now finished the titles for our title sequence, after labouring after school and during lesson for a good week, the effort has finally paid off as the titles look to be next to almost perfect within our title sequence. Our title sequence will now be exported and will be ready for class viewing in next weeks lesson, so that they can review our title sequence and give us feedback on what works, what can be improved and what doesn't work at all. We as a group feel that we have tried our hardest and put 110% into the making of this title sequence and we hope that this has paid off when it comes to the class watching and reviewing our title sequence.

The reason why our titles took so long too make even with the amount of effort put in by me and Mike is because we needed them to be perfect and not have one mistake within them. The tricky thing with making titles from scratch and adding your own transition like we did is that you can run the risk of harming some of the shots and smoothness of which they run at, also with what we was trying to do was a big ask from final cut pro but it prevailed and showed us that with a lot of dedication to the work you can come out on top even if what you was trying to create did seem impossible, me and Mike showed that anything can be made possible if you put your mind to it.

Finishing The Editing And Starting To Add Titles

After the fiasco of our first shooting and up hill struggle of getting use to final cut pro, me and Mike were now going full out in spending time after school to get the editing of our title sequence finished so that we could move on to  doing our titles, as this is what we felt was the most important thing about our title sequence. When it came to making the titles me and Mike worked hard on perfecting them so that when something moved within the frame a title would appear. When looking at where the titles should be placed within the scene we thought that it would be best if we was to place the titles so that the audience never expected to see them when they appeared on the screen, in some cases this worked perfectly however we did find it hard to do it for all.

We are halfway through finishing all of the titles now and we are still making tiny edits to some of the ones that we have already done, the tricky thing with what we are doing is that the positioning, timing and effect/transition has to be perfect on each title for it to work and this isn't easy, however me and Mike are working our up most hardest to get these titles done and looking professional for our title sequence as we feel this is what will make our title sequence one of the best. We are now going to carry on with the titles and finish them along with the title sequence to the best standard possible ready for viewing in class next week.

Re-shooting And Editing Our Title Sequence

After the problems with the first shooting of our title sequence we was very wary with regards to re-shooting it as we did not want another day of no footage and with nothing to edit as the deadline day is only just around the corner. However things turned out to be different when we re-shot as it actually went okay when we looked at the footage just afterwards.

Our original plan was to use the dolly to shoot a 360 degree angle of our main character sitting on a couch however this plan did not go right as when it came to our first day of shooting, we found that there was problems no only with the floor of the setting, but also the space in the setting. So we as a group put our heads together and came up with a new plan that involved a tripod and not a dolly and we put this plan of action into re-shooting and it turned out to be better than we had originally thought. There were no problems with the footage that we re-filmed and we even thought that this could be our final footage if we edited it perfectly. What we had shot within our group turned out to be better than we had expected and now that we have also started editing it is turning out to not be a disaster like our first day of shooting was.

Now that we have shot this footage and have something to edit, here we now begin the process of piecing together the puzzle that we are trying to create. Watching an advanced person in Final cut pro use the software looks easy, but when i came to editing the title sequence and cutting up footage and putting it together i never realised how hard it was. As i edited more and more of the footage and pieced it all together i struggled to give it that little spark that it lacked in order to give it the wow factor that i wanted people to see in our title sequence. I new when editing that our title sequence wasn't going to win people over for the amazing angles that we had used or the superb acting by our main character played by Mike. So i knew that when it came to me and Mike doing the titles, i understood that they had to be the best anyone has ever seen and that the wow factor about our title sequence would come from them.

Problems With The First Shoot

As we had expected as a group because of the tools and the way we wanted too shoot our title sequence there were a few problems with our first shooting. One of the problems that we encountered was due to the dolly tool that we wanted to use as well as the setting that we was shooting in, the problems that happened here was that we never realised just how wide the dolly was and this effected the movement of the dolly as we kept knocking into things around the scene so we had problems here with the width of the dolly and the shooting of our title sequence. We solved this by moving some of the furniture and things around in the room so that we could shoot the title sequence just how we wanted too, so that it did not bump into any things around the room.

The next problem that we encountered when filming our title sequence was the dolly is only supposed to be used on flat smooth surfaces so that it runs without it bumping up and down as it will effect the camera work. Unfortunately like we had expected before we started shooting, we though that the grooves in the laminated flooring of our setting would effect the filming of our title sequence and so they did. When we was watching the sequence over and over again on the flip cam it did not look so bad, however when we uploaded the footage and took a better look at it, we could clearly see that the camera was jumping up and down. This was a real problem for us as our whole idea was based on the dolly giving us a 360 degrees shot of mike sitting on the sofa. As a group we had to act fast as we had already wasted one day of filming and we did not want the next to go the same way, so we put our heads together and came up with new way too shoot it, this time we would not use the dolly and instead just use a tripod to shoot our footage from. This way it would stop the aggravation caused by the dolly and then we could get some footage for me and Mike to edit. The way in which we would use the tripod to film our title sequence is much in the same way as we would use the dolly, instead of the sequence being one long shot, instead we would break it up into more than one shot but would still have the main aspect of going round our main character in a 360 degrees sort of way.

Now that we have sorted the problems that we have encountered on our first shoot, we will now as a group push on and look towards our second filming of our title sequence and feel that this time things will go more smoothly and that at the end we will have some footage in order for me and Mike to edit.

How I Keep Organised

The images above show just how i keep organised with my blog in order to keep up to date with blog posts and things i have to do. The first of the the two pictures at the very top is a word document will all of my blog posts up to date so that i know which ones i done and the order i did them in. The image below it is a screen shot of my blog and my planning ahead so that i know what blog posts i am still yet to do, it also allows me to plot my path of my blog so that i am able to see where it is going. The benefits of doing these two things are that i am able to keep a smaller record of all my blog posts, it also allows me to keep highly organised with what i am currently doing, what i have done and what i plan to do. The biggest benefit would be that i am able to plan far ahead by making new blog posts that consist only of the title and label so that when i look at it on my blog, i can look at the title and know exactly what i'm doing. If when i look at the title i cannot remember what i was planning to do then i can look at my word document of my blog posts and i can look at it and read the notes that i had wrote on what to do for that blog post.

Our Progress And Problems I Think We May Encounter

So far we have struggled to finalise details on such things as the music and the setting as we have found better ideas for these two things. I feel that the problems that we have encountered so far are not just a minor hiccup in a flawless plan, i think that there is more to come of things like this as i don't feel like everything is going to go to plan and that in the end we are going to be able to properly stick to the storyboard. We have no fear of editing the idea of our title sequence in order for it to work, we as a group understand that the sotryboard is merely a plan of what we want to do for our title sequence and that this plan can be altered and changed at any time that we may please so we will not hold back if we need to change something or if there is a better way of doing it.

At this moment in time i feel that there is nothing left to plan and that we are now ready to start shooting our title sequence. We have changed around the location so that we are now more equipped with the tools that we are using and we now know that the dolly may work in this setting, however we are still cautious of it. The next thing was s a group are going to do is shoot all of our shots in our storyboard for our title sequence, the benefit of it being in one setting is that we do not have to move around and also that we can shoot all of the footage that we need to in one day.

There are many problems that i feel we may encounter when doing our first shooting of our title sequence, first as i have mentioned above although we have chosen a new location to suit the equipement (dolly) that we are using, i still feel that even with the lamonated flooring in the new setting that there may still be a problem with filming especially using the dolly as i think it will jump when moving the camera around the room. We are unsure yet on how we are going to make this better or prevent it from happening, we as a group are just hoping that the camera will not go up and down when filming and that it will stay steady, however if it does jump when filming then we may have to re-think a few of our ideas and see if we can come up to a solution to this problem. The only other problem that i think we may encounter when filming is once again to do with the dolly, but a different aspect of it this time. Until today we had never seen what the dolly that we are going to use looked like and we now realise just how big it is. The size of the dolly is a real problem for us as we are now unsure whether it will be able to maneouvour 360 degrees around the couch in the center of the room at our setting. If it does not work out then once again like the previous problem we will have to think of a new way of filming it or perhaps using a different setting that has a larger living room with a sofa in it.

Location Final Decision Change And Music Final Decision Change

As a group we realised immediately that the location we first wanted to use would not work as we were told that the dolly, we wanted to use, could only work on hard floor that is smooth and not on carpet as the wheel do not move across that surface. So as a group we had to sit down and put our heads together and think of a solution for this problem that would mean that we could use the dolly and still have a similar scene like the one that we had intended to use.  With this in mind we looked at the other possible setting that we could have used before we made our first choice on the location and we came to the conclusion that we could not use Dom's living room as it also had carpet, whereas when we looked at Mikes living room we saw that he had laminated floor and so this was ideal for us to use the dolly on and so we have come to the conclusion that we shall now be using Mike's living room in order to film our title sequence rather than my living room which we had originally chosen to use.

As a group when we came across this problem our first instinct was to panic, however as one of the calmest members of the group i decided that we ought to not get stressed out about this minor setback and to instead put our heads together and go back to square one of choosing the location from scratch and with this in mind we was able to select a better more suitable location which would mean we was able to use the dolly as well as still keep our narrative and setting idea for our title sequence.

https://audionetwork.lgfl.org.uk/production-music/yeah-yeah-yeah_7944.asp

When looking for a piece of music to use for our title sequence we found the song 'yeah yeah yeah' on a copyright free music website which we thought best suited our title sequence out of the other songs that were on the website. However even though it was the song that did best suit our title sequence on the copyright free website, the sound track included lyrics which we planned on not having in our title sequence at all but as there was no other piece of music on the website that best suited our title sequence we decided to use the soundtrack for our title sequence. When looking on the copyright free music website for the button to download the song, what we didn't realise was that there was a non lyrical version of the song posted on there and when we made our first decision to use the song we did not see this version and so use the lyric version of the song as our first decision on the music. We only found the non lyrical version of the song when we went back onto the website and so our music decision change that i am talking about here is a team choice of instead of using the lyrical version of the song to use the non lyrical version of the soundtrack as we feel that this would better suit our title sequence.

Location Final Decision

As you can see above we have decided that our title sequence is going to be filmed in my house. This is our final location decision and this is where we will shoot all of our title sequence from shots 1-22. The way we decided on this setting was through us voting of which we thought would best suit our title sequence and which we thought would have the easiest surface to film on, another things that we would be judging would also be the position of the sofa and TV in the room as well as the how spacey the room is and the vibe we get from each of the living room settings.

the decision to use this setting as our only location for the title sequence was a very strong decision by the whole group as every member of the group thought that it would be best if we filmed it at this location (my living room). One of the main reasons that we chose this location, apart from the fact that it was the most suitable location for our title sequence, was that it was close and so easy to access and get back and forth from in quick timing. Having the location so close to school is a big bonus as it would allow us to walk in to and from in a small amount of time, which would give us more time to film our title sequence.

My Production Plan

https://www.google.com/calendar/render?tab=mc&pli=1&gsessionid=9QPFpOho0_r8tWCqMr0k9g

In our calendar we have planned to start our filming on the 19th of january and as we only need one day to shoot all of our shots, then we could edit the next day on friday the 20th. The benefits of only needing to shoot all of our titlke sequence in one location is the fact that we can then get it all shot in one day and save time from moving everywhere and having to film in so many different places.

As you can see above this is our calendar for JaMiDo productions. This calendar indicates to us, when our deadline is, when we are shooting, re shooting, editing and re editing. The overall pattern of our production plan is that we have one day to shoot and then three days to edit what we have shot, we would then re shoot anything that we have done wrong or needed to re shoot and then spend the same amount of time (three days) to re edit the the re shoot that we have done. Finally we would then do one final re shoot before the deadline and do a final edit and make sure that everything is finished and that the video does not need any more editing or any more footage being added to it.

For each of the shoots and re shoots we would need the next few things in order to shoot what we need to; A pizza, a pizza box, a dolly for the camera, a tripod, crisps, a big bottle of drink, chocolate and other items of food that can be placed around a same table that the main character will have his feet up on. The only things that will cost for the shooting and re shooting of this video will be the pizza and the pizza box because the rest of the items that we need will either supplied by the school or we will get them from Mikes house as that is where we are shooting and he has most of the things that we need already in his home.

The potential issues that may arise would be to do with the camera and the movement on the dolly as the grooves in Mike's floor would effect the steadiness of the camera and would make the footage look bumpy. We plan to battle this by going slower with the dolly and to possibly put cardboard down where the parts are most uneven in order to keep it steady. The only other problem that i could think of with regards to the footage would be to do with the actor as Mike (the main actor 'Andrew Anderson') is unsure of when to move and eat the things that he needs to as we planned in the title sequence storyboard, we are going to counter this by talking through out the video by giving Mike instructions on what to do. Then once we put it in final cut pro we would then remove the sound and just have our music placed in the background of the video like it is planned in the title sequence storyboard.

Storyboard Overview And Storyboard Animatic

These pictures above are the storyboards for our title sequence that i have scanned in on to a computer and then put on my blog. I have done this so that everyone is able to see our full storyboard idea, such as the sound/dialogue we may be including or the shots we are planning to use. I drew most of the storyboards in our group however Mike and Dom did contribute to the work that i have done above so i cannot say that it was just me who done this by myself.  

The video above is the anamatic the me and Mike created on IMovie. An animatic is a series of photos that you have taken all placed together in a timeline which play consecutively one after another. When deciding on how long one pictures takes before it changes, you get to decide but editing the time limit on that specific image within he timeline. The reason we have created an animatic is to show an image version of our title sequence with the music that we are going to use in the background. We have done this to see if our idea for a title sequence works and whether it looks good or not. Mike took all the pictures of the storyboard's shots and then we both sat on IMovie and placed them together in order and changed the times to match the times on IMovie. We then added the music to the video and had to cut and edit the music in order for it to fit the title sequence and then we had to place the music specifically on the time lime so that it plays halfway through the first shot and also so that when the drumming and electric guitars really kicks in, it would be just moving on to the first shot. We found that moving the music to the specific points the hardest part of this as we had to make it inch perfect.

Sound/Music Final Decision And Locations We Could Possibly Use

We encountered a few problems when it came to our sound/music final decision as we had originally agreed to make our own music in garage band. Mike is currently studying the subject and has training in the software. However Mike had coursework due in for music that same week that we was due to make the soundtrack and so we was unable to make the track that would play in the background of our title sequence. As we couldn't do what we had originally planned, instead we had to use our back up plan which was to get our sound track from the copyright free music website. At the time of writing what we could do as a back up plan seemed pointless to me as we were certain that we wanted to do our own music from scratch and thought that we wouldn't need a back up plan, but now when we found out we couldn't make our own music, i was relieved that in fact we did make a back up plan.

The sound/music final decision wasn't a very hard to decision as we only had to search through a few tacks and we found the perfect piece to suit our title sequence. The music is from the american rock genre of music that uses electric guitars and drums to good use. When me and Mike started to look on the website we didn't expect to find the piece of music so soon and so was very happy when we found the track that we did. When we started looking for music we were going to use an instrumental soundtrack but we couldn't find any from the sort of genre music that we were looking for and so instead settled with a piece of music that uses minimal lyrics but still suits our title sequence that we are trying to create.

For the locations that we could possibly use i decided to not make it difficult in our group in finding the setting that we need for our title sequence and so instead of going out to find the perfect setting for our title sequence, i told Mike and Dom to take pictures of their living room and to then post them on their blog so that we could look at all of the rooms and look at which location would be best for our filming. In the group we will have a vote on the settings as to which one we think we should use and in each of our heads we will be voting for the one that is best for our title sequence, is in good distance for us traveling and if there is anything that could prevent us from filming our title sequences in the setting.

Locations We Could Possibly Use

These are some of the possible locations that we may want to use to film our title sequence in;

This is Dom's living room.



This is Dom's living room from a different angle.

 

This is my living room.

This is my living room from a different angle.

This is once again my living room from another different angle.

These are some of our possible locations that we would use because they fit the setting that we are trying to create in order to film my pre title sequence. We are only using one setting to film all f the title sequence in and one of these settings above is going to be the one that we will use. The setting that we are mostly likely to use would be the first setting show at the very top, this would be the best setting to use as it is at a good distance for Mike and Dom to get there and the room is exactly what we are looking for to use, however there maybe a change in opinion of the group and we may opt to go for a different location, so we haven't made a final decision just yet on which of the above locations to use.

Sound/Music Final Track Decision

https://audionetwork.lgfl.org.uk/production-music/yeah-yeah-yeah_7944.aspx

This is our final track that we are going to use in our title sequence as the background music. Recently there has been some controversy over what piece of music to use as Mike was going to create a piece of music for us in the programme garage band for our title sequence. Mike was unable to do this as he has had coursework deadline dates set for his music that are due soon and so he couldn't make this piece of music for us and so our group had to look for different ways in order to gain copy right free music. 

After searching for a long while me and Mike found a copy right free website that provides music from many different genres and it is on this website where we found our piece of music that we are going to use for our title sequence video as background music. Although we did want a soundtrack that was instrumental but we have had to settle for a piece of music that has lyrics in. The link to the music is at the top of the page and this piece of music is copy right free with no strings attached so we are able to use this soundtrack without having to ask for permission.

The music we have found is just like how we wanted it to sound, in fact i think finding this piece of music is better than making our own piece of music and i think the end piece that we now have would have been much better than if we had made it ourselves as this soundtrack that we have sounds professional and will mix in well with our title sequence vibe that we are going to create.

Lesson 15 And 16

Lesson 15 mostly helped our group with its storyboard as we was given feedback regarding what we had drawn so far. The criticisms about our storyboard were that there weren't many shots and that there had to be more title communicated through the storyboard as we had only 7 when we drew it for the first time. This lesson helped us a lot as it gave us a chance to make those necessary changes to the storyboard in order to correct that feedback we was given in order to make it the best and most detailed storyboard possible. We as a group thought that doing a photo animatic of our title sequence would be the best idea for us but as we couldn't get to our setting at that point, we had to do the photos in a different setting with different props and costumes . The animatic did not go well and so we decided to get rid of the idea of doing an animatic as it wouldn't work unless we had all the props and the setting and costume that is required for our storyboard. Instead i think we shall just photocopy the whole storyboard and transfer it to our blogs so that we have a version of it on here and i also think we should attempt to perhaps do an animatic but instead of taking pictures of our real life character, i think we should go back to the original idea of photographing the storyboard and adding the soundtrack that we are going to make in behind it to get an idea of what our title sequence will look like. The reason we didn't do this type of animatic before is because our storyboard didn't have enough detail and shots in it before but now we have drawn the more detailed one we can photograph this and possible make the animatic.

In lesson 16 i re-drew the storyboard for our group with more shots and more detail, including 4 extra titles on top of the titles that we had already made. I used the comments that we got back on our storyboard as positives as i thought that not many comments were given about the storyboard lack of quality or the idea in fact and so i used that as a good point and made the needed corrections to the title sequence storyboard. This lesson helped me very much as it gave me a chance to make those vital corrections to the storyboard and finish the storyboard in that lesson so that we are ready to film our title sequence. We then made a Gmail calendar which helped out a lot with organising our work and making sure that we all know the deadline dates for specific pieces of work so that we never get behind. The calendar helped out with many different aspects for example, it helps by get the group organsied and having a deadline date for pieces of work, makes the work get completed that all more bit faster. Also have deadline dates set shows me if the group is doing the work and if they are concentrating on the tasks that are due in. Finally with this calendar it shows you who is making creating the events and deadlines on it so we can see who is contributing to the work and who is not.

Re-Drawing Storyboard And Making A Gmail Calendar For Deadlines And Other Important Dates

In this lesson we re-drew the storyboard that had corrections to make it look more neater and professional. Re-drawing the storyboard didn't take long as we already had a version of it with corrections on it, so when i was drawing it this time all i had to do was include the corrections that needed to be made and then that would be our final storyboard ready so that when we had dealt with all the other aspects of a title sequence we could then go out and start filming our title sequence wherever it needed to be filmed.

In this lesson we also looked at how to make a Gmail calendar for our title sequence group. A Gmail calendar is an online calendar that each member of the group have access too and are able to change any dates as they please. The reason why we are going to use the Gmail calendar is so we can record our deadline dates in the calendar if ever we get some and then we can use this to stick by so that we do not get behind with the work and so that we meet the deadline date that is set for this title sequence.

The idea that we had for our Gmail calendar was to call it JaMiDo Productions after the company and logo that we created. I then thought in order to tell apart which deadlines we had each added to the calendar i thought we should colour code it and so each deadline that person had added it to the calendar, they would change the colour so that the group could see who added what and then we can see that everyone is participating in the groups work and taking this title sequence coursework seriously. Mike is the colour red, Dom is the colour Grey/Blue and i am the colour green on our Gmail calendar (JaMiDo Productions).

Editing And Making Corrections To Storyboard And Possibly Doing A Photo Animatic

In this lesson our group was given feedback on the storyboard that we had drawn for our pre title sequence. The feedback that we was given was that there had to be more shots included in the storyboard and that there had to be more titles communicated in the storyboard to the audience. So as a group, in this lesson, we went back to the drawing board and made the neccessary corrections to our storyboard so that the feedback that we was given had been altered in order to make it better.

In this lesson we was also given the task of possibly preparing an animatic version of our title sequence idea in order to show it to the class to see what they thought of our title sequence idea and to see if it fit in with our film. An animatic is a photogrpahed version of your storyboard that runs from on frame (shot) to another and the time that you have at the bottom of that shot determines how long that shot is on the screen and then you add any dialogue or music that you plan to have in your title sequence to the animatic so it is like a drawn version of your title sequence. You would usually do an animatic to see if your storyboard idea works and it also gives others a chance to review your idea and give you any feedback on how to improve it.

When it came to preparing to do an animatic for our title sequence idea, there was a problem as our title sequence was just one shot which was a 360 degree angle of the main character sitting on a couch with his feet up, this was a probelm for us as the storyboard that we had drawn up didn't have the qualities that would be need for an animatic so we resolved this problem by deciding to do a photo version of this animatic. So instead of taking pictures of our storyboard we would take pictures of the actual scene with a person acting like our storyboard states. Once again we encountered another problem as at first we thought of having the titles appear on actual paper in the scene, meaning that the titles were propps in our title sequence but after doing a mock up of these titles it turned out that doing them on paper looked very cheap and you couldnt quite see what they said. Also as our title sequence would be shot in a living room of a home, it didnt quite look right being shot in a school without the propps that we needed and so the animatic didnt quite look right and when this happened we decided not to do the animatic any more as it was hard for us to accomplish this.

Typograghy, Music/Sound, Film Production Company Logo And Film Production Company Decisions

The Final decision on our typography was between our group (the three of us) and we based it on our opinions of the typography as well as what the class thought of the questionnaire that Mike put together. The questionnaire had about 10 different types of typography on the piece of paper and we printed enough out for the rest of the class so that they could tick which one they thought best suited our title sequence and the aspect that we are trying to communicate to the audience. As you can see in my previous blog post there was one specific title that everyone took a liking to and with a debate between our group about the different titles and which would look best in our title sequence and which would communicate the theme of comedy to our audience, we decided that the one the class liked best would be the one that we would use in our title sequence as we agreed that this title fitted with our idea for our film and what we were trying to communicate. There was no difficulty in the lead up to finding which titles to use and there was also no problems with the final decision of which title to use. The only difficulties that we may have encountered was the fact that we had to make sure we did a thorough search of the website we used (Dafont) to make sure that we had not missed any styles of font that we could have possibly used as the final decision for our title sequence but this difficulty that we came across was more of a good thing to under go as it made sure that we had found the best style of font to fit our title sequence and that we was happy with what we had found and what we are going to use. As you can see below this is the font style we will be using for our films titles.

For our music/sound we encountered quite a few problems with this aspect of our title sequence as we were unsure whether to use copyright free music or to make a music track of our own. As a group in the end we decided to make a music track of our own as it shows we have put more effort in to making this title sequence but as a back up if making the track of music falls through we will use a copyright free piece of music from a website.

The sort of music that we will be using for our title sequence will be an upbeat american rock theme of music. It wont be hard rock that we use but it will have drums and electric guitars as the main instruments in the peice of music. The music will not have not have any lyrics and so will be instrumental, we have chosen to do it this way as we feel that having lyrics to the music may make him seem like a guy whos into music and perhaps has a career in music and this isnt what we want to communicate. What we are trying to communicate through this use of instrumental american rock music is that this guy is like the stereotypical lazy american who just plays xbox all day whilst eating non stop and listening to rock music. In my opnion i think that the making of the music will fall through as i think that there will be a disagreement over what the soundtrack should sound like and so that is why i have come up with a back up plan so that if plan A goes wrong, then we can go to plan B which is get a copy right free piece of music that sounds how we want it to and that matches in with the title sequence video that we are trying to create for our film. Below, from 23 seconds on, this is the sort of music that we will be trying to create, this is a bad exmaple as we would be looking to have more drums and a little less electric guitar so that it evened out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1w6gMgZeb9c

Creating our own film production company and logo would be one of the funnest tasks that we have done so far as it we each had fun attempting to create one that looked like a proffesional film company. There were no difficulties in doing this apart from deciding on the font to use and making it look proffesional enough for it to be considered as a film company. The reason why we struggled so much with deciding on the font was because we had to search for a different font other than the font that we had already used and the font that we had to find had to suggest that we were a company that dealt in American comedy films but was owned by three british people and so myself and Mike came up with the idea to once again look on Dafont (font website) and find a font that we liked and then we would change the colours of the writing to red white and blue much like the American flag but can also be seen as the British flag and so in doing this we changed the colours of the logo to match the plan that we had come up with and then we decided to add a cartoon comedy feel to the logo by putting louds around our title of the film production coompany that we had come up with. The name of our film production company was mostly thought up by all of us as we decided to use the first two letter of each of our names to come up with 'JaMiDo' and we all agreed at the same time that this was a good idea and that we should follow up on this idea by creating a logo with the name on the image somewhere. Below this our film production company logo that we have created.

Deciding on which Film Production Company to use was not hard as we had each done reasearch on several different film studios and companies so we was able to select out of the three studios we had researched into which one best suited our film. Once we had looked at all of the studios we found that infact the film studio that i had done research into was the one that best suited our film. Paramount Vantage (the one we chose) linked in best with our film as in its past it had dealt with many low budget American comedies and so our film fitted perfectly into the film productions companies criteria and so with this in mind we as have group decided to use Paramount Vantage as our distributor as well as our Producer and we will include their logo at the beginning of our Title sequence as i have stated in my previous posts. This is the logo of Paramout Vantage which will be at the beginning of our title sequence.

Film Studio Research And Who Will Produce/Distribute Our Film

Paramount vantage

One of the main reasons why we have chosen Paramount Vantage as our film production company is because of the types of films that this studio deals with and we as a group feel that when looking at the history of Paramount Vantage and the films that they have dealt with in the past, we can clearly see that this production company would best suit our film as this studio has both produced and distributed films of the same genre as our film which is comedy.

We as a group have decided to use Paramount Vantage as our producers and distrbiutors of our film for the main reasons that this studio deals with our films genre and also looking back at previous budgets that this studio has dealt with, we can clearly see that our film would suit best in this production company.

Now that we have chosen the distributor and producer of our film, we will now make sure to include Paramount Vantage in some way in our title sequence video. We as a group have decided to include it at the beginning of title sequence and we have included this in the first shot as the production company will shown on a black screen like it is above and then will fade away to the second shot of the back of Andrew Anderson's head, with him sitting on the couch watching tv.

Film Production Company Logo

This is our Logo that we have created to indicate to our audience that the title sequence was created by us three; Mike, Jason and Dom. We will include this logo in our pre title sequence video as it is our trademark logo that we have made this piece of filming.

Mike made this piece of work by himself with input from me and dom. The reason why Mike made it instead of me or Dom is because mike is one of the best at photoshoping and so we felt that if we gave him ideas then he could put them ideas into place with possible changes of his own added to the process. We all came up with the idea for this logo as we were throwing a few ideas together and we first though of 'DMJ' for the first three letters of our name but then we decided that this wouldn't really look like the kind of logo that we each had in our heads, so then one member of our group suggested we use different parts of our names to try and piece together this logo and that is where we came up for the idea of 'JaMiDo'. 'Ja' for my name Jason, 'Mi' for Michael and 'Do' for Dom. The reason why we put capital letters at the beginning of each name in our production company logo is because it is the beginning of each of our names so we thought that it would be best to justify our title sequence even more by putting capital letter where we needed to in order to indicate to people that those are our names and that this is our logo.


The reason we used this typography and the clouds around the image is because it looked unique and we new straight away when we did it that it looked like a real logo for a serious film production company. The specific reason that we used this typography was because when we first saw it we all pointed it out at the same time as it looks like a comedy sort of writing in the way that it is styled and thats what we believe we are, a comedy company and so we need a comedy logo. The colours in the writing also suggest that we could be a British company even though we are making an American film and this could be as that but the way that we see it is that the American flag also has the colours so i think that we could show through the colours of the title that we are possibly British people who make American films and that is where the colours come from. There was no particular idea for the clouds, i said to Mike that we need to have some image either behind it or underneath or perhaps around it and thats when he found the clouds on the internet and though that they looked like cartoon clouds and stuck it around the logo and when we saw what he had done, we agreed that it did in actual fact look quite good and so that is how we came up with the image at the top of the page and this is how we come up with the film production company logo 'JaMiDo'.

Sound/Music Research And Final Track Decision

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1w6gMgZeb9c

From 23 seconds onwards in this music video, is the sort of music that we will be making in Garage band for our pre title sequence video. We have currently made the piece of music yet but will in fact be making it next week after school one day. This is the sort of music that we will be using in our pre title sequence, but our will be with more of a balance of electric guitar and drums as then the music will be synchronised and will mix in with the visuals that will be displayed in the film. The reason why we are using this piece of music is because the film is set in America and this piece of music used in the title sequence will indicate to the audience just what type of film Andrew Anderson is and what the audience should expect when it comes to watching this film.

It was not hard to make a decision over the music within our group as the three of us new specifically what type of music would suit best for our title sequence and which piece of music would communicate to the audience best, the different themes of the film. Also we as a group chose the piece of music mainly because when we film it will fit in with the idea of the titles as well as the actions that are happening on screen which we will be filming.

We have chosen to use a sooundtrack within our title sequence video as we as a group think that it will fit in within our title sequence and whole aspect of where it starts and where it ends. The sound track will play throughout the title sequence but as it gets to the end it will cut out as dialougue from the main character will come in and when this happens the music will cut off automatically.