Jayesh Mohane

Notes on slides in evaluation

Slide 2: As part of our AS Task, we had to create a media product that would appeal to our target audience which we chose as teenagers The members of my group were Krishan, Mark and Shyam. We each had individual roles in the group for example, Krishan took on the role of being a director and the main editor of the clips, Mark had the role of creating the music, Shyam was the writer who would come up with the Script and type it up before we go out and film and my role in the team was to make sure I keep the blog up to date with posts and everything we do and I was one of the main actor for our opening scenes and helped Krishan edit the clips and create bumpers. I think that as a group we all put in effort and have worked hard to get the best outcome, which I will tell you later. We had two tasks that we had to do. Firstly, the preliminary task. In this, we had to create an opening scene for about 2 minutes to get started off with where we were told to have a close up shot of the character opening the door, a shotreverse-shot and over the shoulder shot to meet the criteria given. Therefore, Shyam in the group along with Krishan came up with the script and we filmed it. In the Main Task, we had to create another opening scene to get better marks, which meant we had to have a good script. Slide 3 For our Preliminary Task, we decided that we will do a Teen Drama. Therefore, for our Main Task, we did a Teen Comedy. As a group we decided that, but to confirm it, we did an audience survey to ask the audience we intended to target on what they prefer. I will show this survey results later in the slides. Slide 5 This is the timeline for our Wordpress blog that shows how we managed the blog and what we posted. We created the timeline but were unable to post it to the blog because we spent a lot of time editing the preliminary task final cut. Furthermore, because of this, we missed the deadline on Wednesday 12th December 2012, where we had to get an audience feedback on the rough cut. Slide 6 These are the four films that Me and my group members did research on since they are all Teen Comedies and we researched the films because they have the similar genre and it gave us an idea into what we could include in our opening scene. Slide 7 21 Jump Street also relates to our sequence because it begins of with hip-hop rap music and the credits. This relates to my sequence because it starts of with guitar beats and the credits. Another way in which our sequence relates to 21 Jump Street is because of the school bell. 21 Jump Street uses a school bell sound to alarm and inform the character; in our sequence the school bell sound is used to inform the character as well about break time. The opening scene to 21 Jump Streets introduces the two main characters to the film, which my sequence does

Jayesh Mohane so as well by introducing the nerd and the badman. In 21 Jump Street, the scene ends with the two main characters sitting on different sides of the wall and they look at each other and walk off after. Our sequence relates to this but in my scene the two main characters come into contact as the badman shoulders him. Furthermore, the name of the film is shown after the main character is quickly introduced which in my sequence is related since the title comes after the introduction of the nerd. On the other hand, my opening scene is different to 21 Jump Street because my sequence starts of with the company name and the production name whereas 21 Jump Street starts of by introducing the main character as he walks towards the college then the credits are shown. My sequence uses a voice over which is not used in 21 Jump Street as they use diegetic sound like dialogues. Slide 8 Shaun of the Dead (SOTD) Our sequence relates to this film because our opening scene begins with music similarly like this film. Furthermore, our sequence followed the ways in which Shaun of the dead displays the credits and also, the psychedelic 60s music that it starts of with is continuous and becomes faded into the background as the character talks. Similarly, in our opening scene we have the music that we start of with fade and play slowly in the background during the voice over. On the other hand, our opening scene is different to Shaun of the Dead because SOTD starts of by having a track shot to introduce different characters compared to my opening scene, which is different, because we start off with establishing shots of the surrounding suburban areas and use ken burns which is an editing technique to zoom into them. Also, the main character is introduced with a tilt shot. However, in my opening scene, the main character is introduced with a long shot and the use of ken burns editing to zoom into him. Voice over is used, as he talks which is not used in SOTD since there is diegetic sound. Slide 9 Superbad is another film that our sequence relates to. The character uses a mobile phone, which is a convention of teen comedy. Similarly, in my sequence the characters in the classroom are using their phones. This meets the convention of a teenager comedy. It also starts of with music like our sequence does. There is background music that is played while the characters are talking which relates to my sequence. On the other hand, it is different to my sequence because the main character is introduced as driving a car and on the phone which is one popular convention or type of films that are usually associated with teenagers, is a sense of danger, and a less-caring approach to rules and regulations, something that using mobile phones while driving falls into. In my sequence, the main character is introduced with a voice over and him standing alone. Slide 10- Conventions of teen comedy Voice Overs/Narratives Main Character Soundtrack Setting

Jayesh Mohane Fast Paced Editing Some of the conventions that are associated with teen comedies that I have noticed in the films that related to m sequence are voice over's and narratives, main character, soundtrack, setting and fast paced editing. My group and me decided to keep to the conventions because it makes our opening scene feel and behave similarly to the professional films. For example, the convention of a main character is seen usually as awkward (like in Superbad) or unpopular or not liked as much as others (like in 21 Jump Street). In our case, the main character is standing lonely as he waits for lesson to start while other people around him walk by and have group talks without noticing him. Furthermore, we have kept to the convention of the soundtrack because like 21 Jump Street, our scene begins of with rock sound such as guitar, which is followed by drumbeats. This makes our scene look like professional films such as Shaun of the Dead and 21 Jump Street. Another convention we have kept to is the Voice Over's and Narratives. This conventions makes my film behave like a teen film and meets the genre just like Superbad where dialogue narrative is used to introduce the characters which the audience realizes in the first instance because of the language they use. Slide 11- Conventions Challenged Narrative/ Dialogues Voice over allowed us to challenge the convention because it made the opening scene more entertaining and also, it made it look more of a comedy. We decided to use this because it is a very typical convention of teen movies and are seen a lot in the opening sequences instead of long, slow dialogues which is unattractive to a typical teen since they would get bored. Therefore, we have challenged this convention. Slide 12-Representation of particular social group Asians Nerd and clever Asian who gets an A Black Ethnicity Brandon who gets a F on his paper Stereotype Different Social Groups In our opening scene, we have chosen to represent different social groups as independent. In our particular opening scene, we have used represented different social groups in different ways. One social group we have decided to feature in our scene is females. Having females in our scene shows the mixed group of people in the sixth form. This representation of the social group was chosen because we wanted to have different ethnic people as our cast and not the typical ethnicities we would see. Another social group represented is black ethnicity. This social group is represented with a stereotype since there is only one black student in the class who gets a low grade. We chose to represent this social group as a stereotype because we wanted to portray the social representations of black ethnic groups. Another stereotypical representation of a social group is that we used an Asian character as the Main Character who is represented as the clever nerd in the scene.

Jayesh Mohane

Slide 13- Representation of Particular Social Group Positive Stereotype Asian character is a positive stereotype because the main character in our opening scene is an Asian who is the only student in the class to get an A in the paper while the others get a grade F This meets the sociological stereotype of Asians being smart. However, despites the main characters, the other characters that are Asian do not get a good grade in the paper. This subverts the stereotype and shows that not all Asians are smart. We intentionally did this because one sociological stereotype is that female Asians achieve better grades then males. Therefore, we purposely did this because we want to use different stereotypes in our opening scene. Furthermore, using a wider range of social group would allow us to get a wider audience. Negative Stereotype Black student shown as a failure A negative representation and stereotype used is the black ethnicity character who is shown as a failure. This representation is negative because it is a negative stereotype about black ethnic people who are seen as lazy and usually involved in violent things. Furthermore, the character is the only black student in the class, which is another negative representation as it shows how others are mainly Asians, but he is left out. But, we have portrayed this character in a stereotypical way which meets the stereotype of not caring because we have showed the character playing games on his phone and shrugging his shoulders after getting his paper and pushing it away. Slide 14-Social Groups we have studied EASY A Main character- Olive Prendergast Olive Prendergast is a leading character in Easy A. We studied this social group of teenagers and how they are represented in films. What I learnt from the character of Olive is that she is represented in a negative way in this film as the girls think of her as a horrible person. She has gained bad reputation until the end where everyone realizes that she didnt sleep with anyone and was lying. So the main character, Olive is represented by a negative stereotype. Similarly, in our opening scene, the main character is represented as having no friends and getting bullied by others. Slide 15-Media Institutions to distribute our product and why? Universal and Columbia Pictures I think that one of the major independent distributors that would distribute our media product would be company such as Universal and Columbia Pictures (a Sony Pictures Home Entertainment company) This is because these companies are big and Universal is one of UKs top 5 distributor which means that our media product can be easily distributed to our targeted audience without having to fear about things like money because Universal will back up our production company since they are well-known. Furthermore, our sequence is to do with Comedy because it is our chosen genre which companies like Universal and Columbia Pictures like to show their

Jayesh Mohane audience. Columbia Pictures distributed 21 Jump Street and Superbad, to its audience. These two movies got a wide audience internationally because of the distributors who are known around the world and can easily distribute the film. I also think Universal can distribute my media product because, during my research into other teen comedies, I found out that Shaun of the Dead was distributed by Universal and had made a huge profit at box office, which, in my case means they can distribute my media product to the right audience. Slide 16-Another Distributor? YouTube Another route, which we can take to get our media product distributed, is to use YouTube. YouTube is an online site where people upload videos. It has a service where we can pay to get our film uploaded onto the site and they can distribute it to the audience and other users. The profit made is shared between the maker (us in our case) and YouTube. To get acknowledgment and recognition, we can take this route. Furthermore, an advantage of YouTube is that it is a popular site that is really well known; therefore we can guarantee lots of views. YouTube is an alternative to Universal and Columbia Pictures, because for example, if our company is low on budget, then we know that they might distribute our media product. Slide 17-Why Not? Why not Walt Disney Pictures? Well, we decided that Walk Disney Pictures might not distribute our media product or we may decide not to use this distributor because they mainly deal with animated films, which they release. Furthermore, the targeted audience for Walt Disney Pictures if usually children's because films like toy Story 3 and Alice in the Wonderland have been distributed by Walt Disney which have been hits at box office, however, our film is not animated and the targeted audience is teenagers. Walt Disney have, however, distributed films like Pirates of the Caribbean and The Avengers, but we still do not intended to have them distribute it for us since we prefer the big companies who can back us up, if we fail to make profit. Slide 18-Internationally or nationally? Internationally I think that this film would be produced internationally because of the storyline which is quite broad and the representation of social groups and characters, despites that fact that the main character is Asian. It relates to an international audience because of the positive and negative stereotypes just shown in the opening scene. DISTRIBUTION AND RELEASE? I think that our film will be released in Cinemas in Britain first. At the same time, I think that we would release on copy of the film which will have no colourful effects (reduce contrast) on the Internet to get it out to our audience internationally at the same time. This is beneficial as it would allow people and the targeted audience to get an insight into the

Jayesh Mohane film and also help prevent the issue of PIRACY, which is a major concern for all media institutions. Advertising it using the Internet and social sites like Facebook is beneficial because Facebook is a social site where more than half of our target audience is and it is easy to promote and distribute our film online and get it to the audience. Slide 19-Audience for Media Product 15+ Both genders: Males and Females Students who go college or Sixth form People who have interest in comedy movies Love comedies and would laugh their heads off 15+ is the chosen age of our target audience because the since we are teenagers, we know what our target audience would want, therefore we decided and scripted the opening sequence. Therefore, we had an insight into what our target audience expected and what they would like to see in films. Furthermore, being a teen, I have friends who usually talk about comedy, so therefore, this film would relate to them. Since the chosen audience is the age of 15 or above, we have also targeted people who have a keen interest, especially in comedies because we want them to go home and think about the film after they have seen it and maybe watch it again in the future. For this age group of our audience, we wanted to make a comedy film because we as a group have seen many comedies like American Pie and Shaun of the dead and we have realized that these comedies do not show what our targeted audience would want to see and relate to like characters and the storyline that might relate to teens in today's generation. Therefore, we carried out a survey and went out to teenagers in Sixth Form and filmed them while asking questions. We also carried out an online survey which I will evident in the next slide. The demographic primary audience is just teenagers and not older people because the characters in the sequence are teenagers and old people are not the right audience for this as they can get bored and might not understand the storyline properly. Slide 20-Before Starting
www.surveymonkey.com

As I mentioned before, Using SurveyMonkey, we created an online survey before starting the Main Task which simply had two questions. What is your age? And Do you prefer a Comedy film or Drama Film? We sent this survey out to the audience who we intended to target our opening sequence to and we ask them to fill the survey in and submit it. Therefore, as you can see on the board, the data collected by SurveyMonkey shows that our audience is aged above 15+, which is the audience we as a group intended to target and the pie chart shows that majority of our audience prefers a Comedy. Therefore, we decided to create a Teen Comedy and give the audience what they wanted and not what we want to give them. This is because it would allow us to know our audience more and if we give them what they want, and then we are most likely to have a wider audience coming to see the film.

Jayesh Mohane

Slide 21- What does our audience feedback suggest? After the final cut was published onto the website, we created another online survey that was sent to the targeted audience. The questions that we asked them were: 1. Are you male or female? 2. What was your reaction to the opening scene to An Educated Sentence? 3. Considering what you knew about the opening scene to An Educated Sentence before the Final Cut, how did the opening scene compare to your expectations? 4. How would you rate each of the following elements in the film? 5. Which of the following words or phrases best describe the film? (PLEASE MARK AS MANY AS APPLY) We received the answers to the survey and we analysed the results. The result suggested that we did successfully produce the right opening sequence to our film An Educated Sentence for our targeted audience. After the final cut was published onto the website, we created another online survey that was sent to the targeted audience. The questions that we asked them were: 1. Are you male or female? 2. What was your reaction to the opening scene to An Educated Sentence? 3. Considering what you knew about the opening scene to An Educated Sentence before the Final Cut, how did the opening scene compare to your expectations? 4. How would you rate each of the following elements in the film? 5. Which of the following words or phrases best describe the film? (PLEASE MARK AS MANY AS APPLY) We received the answers to the survey and we analyzed the results. The result suggested that we did successfully produce the right opening sequence to our film An Educated Sentence for our targeted audience. Slide 26- Technologies used, my skills and what I learnt? Mac and iMovie During the coursework, we used different range of technologies as a group to help us get the best opening sequence we could make. We used iMovie on an Apple MAC to help us edit and put the clips together. At the start of the course, I was not good at using Macs since I am used to a laptop and Windows computer. Therefore, using iMovie was a hard task and complicated. However, our main editor Krishan had experience with iMovie therefore, I learnt how to edit from him and watched him as he edited our Preliminary Task and Main Task videos. I used iMovie to put together the clips from the audience feedback and helped Krishan to edit. The advantage of using Mac and iMovie is that they are high tech which allowed us to edit our movie in a professional way. The down side which I think is that if you have no experience with the technology then it is hard to start editing. Camera

Jayesh Mohane Another technology we used was a camera. I am good at using cameras because I have used them in my free time. However, during the course, I have learnt that working in front of the camera is a hard task because you have to make sure that you get the right shots done and for that, you have to film one shot few times. Also, because I was an actor, I didnt use the camera much, however, I have learnt that using the camera is not as hard as it is. But then this is my opinion because the camera we had was a small handheld camera, but we had tripods to place them on. The advantage of the camera we had was it was easy and light weight which allowed us to carry it around and film the shots we needed. However, the camera was not a professional one so we couldnt get any HD shots and it didnt allow us to focus the camera on one object properly. Overall, my experience with the camera has been really good. After Effects Create bumpers, introductions and credits After Effects. This is software that I alone used in my group with the help of Krishan to make bumpers, intro and credits for our opening sequence. At the start of the course I did not use After Effects, however, when it came to the Main Task, we decided to move on from the same old simple animated text and credits to professional ones. Therefore, I used After Effects and used tutorials from YouTube to create bumpers for our sequence. At start it was not really simple to use but within a week, I learnt how to use it and I was able to create the right bumper with good effects, which you can see, in our opening scene. After Effects is hard to use if you do not have a clue where to start from, especially when it comes to adding the effects to your text because it takes a lot of time to get the right effect on the text and to make sure it plays correctly with other effects. Soundation Soundation is another technology online that I have used in my group. At the start of the course, I didnt use this technology because this technology is to create free music online. Because we had to use our own music or copyright free music, I used Soundation to create a music piece for the sequence. I started off with adding in random guitar and drumbeats and realizing after it didnt sound right. So I took time to edit the pieces together and put them in place so they sounded right. This took me ages to get the right piece. The advantage to my group of using this software was that we were definite that we wouldnt have any copyright problems since the music is created by us from scratch. I have learnt that Soundation is a good piece of technology that my group and me can always go back to for music, because it has built-in beats ready for us to put them in the right place with other beats. Slide 27- Improvement? I think that one thing we as a group may need to improve on could be the effects we decided to use for the credits and title introduction to the sequence. This is because we chose to have a smoke effect go past and text comes after with dark lighting. This makes the sequence look more like horror from the title however; we tried to reduce the effect by using bright colours. Therefore, we can improve on using After Effects to get a professional outcome. Editing can be improved as well so that we get a professional sequence made. In general, the audience survey that we sent online shows that the target audience rated editing as Excellent and Very Good.

Jayesh Mohane

Slide 28-Preliminary Task During the preliminary task, we didnt take the coursework as serious as we did in our Main Task. Before filming our shots, we had a synopsis, storyboard and script to our scene. These three things allowed us to film easily when the time came without having to stop. However, when were filming the actors would mess around or other people not part of it would walk into the camera shot as it was filming purposely or accidentally. Therefore, we spent more than a week to film. We managed to film for preliminary task after school as it was quite and no one was around besides my group. We had to re-film the shot quite a few times so we could decide on what shot to use. The retakes where actors messed around was used by us in our bloopers which was an advantage for us. Slide 29- Planning and preparation was made effective by When it came to the main task, we made a plan before the task started so that we knew what we were doing. Therefore, we created a Shot List which we didnt have for our Preliminary Task. Have a shot list was really effective when it came to filming because it was easy for us to get the right shots done by following the shot list. Also, it gave us an insight into how to film properly. Compared to the preliminary task, we as a group put in more commitment into the Main Task so that we could get the filming done within the deadline, which we did. Despites the fact, that we had to change the script because of weather problems and other factors, we still managed to film and edit a rough cut and final cut before the deadline for the Main Task. Sticking to deadlines was also another factor that made shooting more effective for us because in our Preliminary Task, we messed around and were relaxed thinking we would get it done, but then we realized that we didnt because we took a lot of time into editing and filming. Therefore, we stuck to deadlines by creating a shooting schedule as you can see on the board which meant that as a group, we had to stick to it so that we were ready with the audience feedback, final cut and rough cut before the deadline. Slide 30- Improved quality of footage and edited piece by Compared to our Preliminary Task, we have improved the quality of our footage in the Main Task. To do this, we made sure that we used a better Tripod. So we got a tripod from the Media Room and the Tripod was in good condition. This improved the quality of our footage because it prevented unsteadiness of handheld camera and also the shots were still. We used a tripod when filming the time lapse. The use of tripod here improved the quality of footage because it allowed us to leave the tripod on its own with the camera with the main character in front of it as it films. This prevented it from shaking and made it steady. In this way, the quality was better. Another way we improved the quality of the footage was by using different angles and positions to film the same shots. This allowed us to get the best scene/shot when it came to editing. Furthermore, we filmed each shot like 3 times to make sure that we didnt make any errors.

Jayesh Mohane To improve the quality of the footage we chose the right timing of when we were going to film. This allowed us to get the shots done without any other people walking in to the scene or creating noise. Another way in which improved the quality of the footage and the edited was by using better online technology and software to create the music for the sequence. Without music, the opening sequence would look boring and the audience might not watch it. Therefore, creating music on Soundation to prevent Copyright issues and to make the sequence look more exciting and interesting. We improved the edited piece by using more features within iMovie compared to the Preliminary Task. In Preliminary Task, we stuck to basic features of iMovie and made the sequence look simple. However, in the Main Task we used more features like audio and video effects to change the look of the atmosphere of the scene. We used audio effects to make the pitch of the voice over high so that the outcome at the end was better.