616 Amy and Tilly

1) You seem to have split this post into multiple posts. What you have written is very good 2) Excellent post on representation of middle class white children 3) Very thorough post on institutions 4) Good understanding of BBFC and the primary and secondary audience. No audience profile 5) You've described similar films but not what they did to attract an audience. Fine on addressing audience but didn't really deal with attracting 6) Good on tech 7) The generalised evaluation doesn't address the prelim but does chronicle in some detail the journey that the girls went on while producing their film Level 3 12–15 marks • Proficient skill in the use of digital technology or ICT in the evaluation. • Proficient understanding of issues around audience, institution, technology, representation, forms and conventions in relation to production. • Proficient ability to refer to the choices made and outcomes. • Proficient understanding of their development from preliminary to...

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? Technologies we used: Panasonic Video Camera Canon EOS1100 Tripod Sony Vegas Pro 13 iMovie Blogger iPhone Adobe Photoshop YouTube Google Research and Planning: When researching and planning our film the main two technologies we used were Google and YouTube. Google was used numerous times for looking up information about our influence films, looking up filming permits for filming in parks with the general public. We also used Google to look up any events that could have been happening on the day we wanted to film. YouTube was used to look at other people's work from previous years. This aided us when we had to work on peer marking other peoples work. Blogging: The main thing we used during blogging was blogger, we did have a few videos from things like the focus group however, due to technical difficulties we were unable to edit it and upload it to the blog. Blogger however wa...

How did you attract/address your audience? We had a number of influences from films as mentioned in our post named 'Influences'. The ones we mentioned were 'Ramona and Beezus', 'Bridge to Terebithia', 'Shark Boy and Lava Girl/The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl' and 'Justice'. Ramona and Beezus was a huge influence for our characters. We really wanted them to come off as real and childlike, Ramona is very much like this and therefore become someone we based the character 'Amelia' of off. She has such an overactive imagination that it sometimes comes off as bad but she is just living her childhood to the fullest. Bridge to Terebithia was a big influence in terms of imagination, this film has a huge emphasis on creativity and learning through play. The main character in the film loves to draw and creates his own world through drawing, this was something we wanted to include, it gives it such a great childhood feel, with imaginati...

Who would be the audience for your media product? As mentioned in the post about BBFC ratings we metioned that a s a genre, family films are most often aimed at a younger demographic, so therefore are usually rated at PG or a U. Our project would be leaning more towards a PG however, rather than the U rating, due to the more serious content later in the film, as shown on the 'Main Project Pitch' post. The rating would have to consider the mild violence we were hoping to add to our opening, in which the protagonists pretend to fight with bamboo sticks. Other than that, the language is clean and suitable for children, the worst thing said in the script is "shut up", which is considered rude to some parents. We have both a female and male lead this helps appeal to both the male and female genders of our childhood demographic. It allows both genders, boy or girl to have someone to identify with throughout the piece. It also means that both genders may want to go and s...

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? There are various production companies that produce and distribute the family film genre, but in particular Walden Media is notable for their contributions to the production and distribution of children's film. Walden Media has assisted in the production of 'Ramona and Beezus', 'Bridge To Terabithia', 'Because of Winn-Dixie', 'Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium', 'Water Horse: Legend of The Deep' and various other live-action, heart-warming children's films from their foundation in 2001. The type of film they specialise in is almost a sub-genre of family film: live-action family films with child actors, often animals and homely-aesthetics. their most recent film being 'A Dog's Purpose', a film about the journey of a dog and reincarnation. This company would be best suited to our film as it follows many of the conventions of the existing films associ...

How does your media product represent particular social groups? Amelia/Midnight The characters of Amelia and Midnight represent a middle class, white family archetype. Amelia is of White British decent, has blond hair, green eyes and is a child aged eight. This type of family and character archetype is most often presented in the media in American film, such as Timothy and Theodore Templeton from Boss Baby,  Kevin McCallister in Home Alone,   or Conrad and Sally Walden from The Cat In The Hat. Much like in these examples, our film, to an extent, perpetuates the stereotypes of white middle class families in the sense that the characters are well-dressed, conventionally pretty and appear to have money. Their family also can afford to effectively care for more than one child (total three, but only the two primary characters/siblings are shown in the opening). However, the characters diverge from the typical expectation by exhibiting intelligent ...

PROBLEMS Throughout the production of the film opening, there were several problems that occurred over the course of the production. Many of these problems were as a result of poor pre-planning, but a number were also extraneous, unfortunately. The crew took various actions and made compromises when faced with these hurdles, providing experience for the future and knowledge on what to do if the same problem happened next time. For example, the day of the shoot was picked for a number of reasons: to adhere to the actors’ schedules, for the bright sunny weather that would allow effective filming and the fact that it was a Tuesday in the middle of half term meant that not many people made the journey into the woods to find the park, instead preferring to stay at home. This meant for the early hours of the day, there was hardly anyone at the park, leaving the set virtually clear, which was the ideal situation, as the plan was to film Sadie and Vinnie (the actors) without accidentally...

Camerawork The camerawork used in the opening is varied and makes use of various angles and techniques. There were some issues however, as some of the establishing shots that we had hoped to film were filmed handheld, as t he tripod that was provided by the sixth form was, unfortunately, very short and only reached an approximate height of 60cm, so most of the shots it could have used it for would have been low-angle shots. Low-angle shots are only used in the family film genre to establish POV or a villainous character, and close-ups, mid-shots and establishing shots were needed, so the tripod was not used often for this reason, and the fact that the uneven ground made it hard to balance the legs without constant attention. As a result, many shots that should have been stable were not as steady as originally intended, which could have been improved by a taller, more malleable tripod. The crew were, however, forced to compromise by using more handheld and POV shots due to the lack o...

Narrative The full narrative is outlined in the 'Main Pitch' post. The opening starts the narrative relatively effectively. The narration gives hints to towards the plot and the personalities of the characters, whilst also raising elements of enigma. The characters being in costume and being in regular clothing shows the audience that there is a divide between the characters as themselves and the characters as their hero personas, though it could be debated that the simplicity of the costumes makes this slightly unclear. The dialogue of the characters gives reference to other characters within the story and establishes their sibling relationship and the dynamic within it. However the opening does neglect to give concrete reference to the universe of the story and secondary characters, instead only focusing on the two main characters. Genre The opening adheres strongly to the family film genre. The main characters are of a similar age to the target audience,...

Costumes The costumes used in our film were a blue cape with a hood and a red cape with a hood, with some home-made attachable buttons. These capes were a little too long for the actors at times, as they tripped often but did not fall over. The buttons too caused issues, as they would occasionally fall off if not secured correctly. This meant that the actors had to lift the capes when moving between shots, which was uncomfortable for the actors and lowered morale. The length of the capes was considered and though there were mentions of shortening the capes with pins or scissors, in the end the decision was to leave the costumes as they were, as the current style allowed dramatic shots with the cape billowing behind the actors as they ran or jumped. The buttons were from this point on secured by the crew, as the pins could have spiked the actors and it was quicker this way. However, the costumes would have been improved with added aspects, such as masks, matching bo...

Setting/Location The setting we chose for our set was a park within the woods. We chose this setting for aesthetic, symbolic and convenience reasons, as well as the fact it was deemed the most suitable option for our opening. We also considered various other parks to use as a set, but found that they were either too spacious or didn't provide the equipment we wanted to use in our opening. The options we considered were Thundersley Great Common, Hadleigh Country Park and Hockley Woods, but the final decision was to film in Belfairs Park, due to the play-park itself being imbedded in the woods, which created an atmosphere of nature and adventure that we wanted to reflect in our opening. The setting, or rather the way we utilised it, could have been improved if we had been able to film more time-effectively and if we had found a way to use the constructs to film more interesting shots. The setting is shown throughout the opening through variou...

The Crew Our Actors: Sadie Thwaites  Photographed by Fay Andrea in July 2016 Aged: 8 years old Begun modeling and acting at the age of 4 in 2013, some of her work includes: London Fashion Week 2016 (wearing Julien MacDonald) Cannes Fashion Week 2016 (wearing Nancy Vuu) Kids Fashion Runway 2017 (wearing Loud Apparel) IKEA Austria TV Ad 2016 Smyths Toys Superstores TV Ad 2016 Harrods Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique Print Ad 2015 GUCCI Print Ad 2014 Vinnie Thwaites Aged: 10 years old Begun modeling and acting at the age of 6 in 2013, some of his work includes: Cannes Fashion Week 2016 (wearing Nancy Vuu) Kids Fashion Runway 2017 (wearing Loud Apparel) Trotters Back To School Print Ad 2016 Thompson Holidays Print Ad 2016 FG4 Print Ad 2016 A group shot of our 'crew' from left to right, Vinnie, Sadie, Tilly and Amy. Location/Setting: Ultimately, our location ended up being Belfairs Park but originally we had many different ideas and suggestio...

Here is a list of websites we used to assist us in our work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Production_company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_conglomerate http://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-ethos-logos-and-pathos.html http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/guides/zy24p39/revision https://www.youtube.com/ https://fitzwimarcsch.sharepoint.com/sites/sxithform/media/_layouts/15/WopiFrame.aspx?sourcedoc=%7B8DF70DC3-BEE8-4230-898C-D83357EC1E22%7D&file=Blog%20entries.pptx&action=default https://blog.hubspot.com/insiders/marketing-psychographics http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/demographic-factors.html https://www.blogger.com/profile/00374604801742289441 https://www.slideshare.net/spingwoodmedia/iconography-in-film-and-television http://www.artofthetitle.com/ http://shenfieldmedia61.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/blog-post_3545.html http://smallbusiness.chron.com/develop-questions-focus-group-1248.html   http://www.bensound.com http://www.b...

Originally with the music we wanted to more down the slower and more scenic seeming music however once we had seen the footage we decided that it wouldn't really work so we decided to use a more upbeat and fast paced song. The original influence was a song called "Welcome Home" by Radical Face. We really liked the opening instrumental of it.  After we realised that couldn't work, we moved on to something more upbeat to inspire us like the famous "All Star" by Smashmouth. It is a song that everyone knows mainly because it is the main song in the movie Shrek. We thought our song choice matched the genre well. The music we actually ended up using was: Happy Rock: http://www.bensound.com/happy-rock 'An uplifting positive and happy rock royalty free music track featuring drums, bass, hand claps and electric guitar catchy riffs.' Actionable: http://www.bensound.com/actionable 'Action/sport rock music track. An overdriven classic p...

Editing Diary Did you have any problems? What went well? What went wrong? At the beginning of the filming, we made the mistake of thinking that we were filming for the first 15 minutes only to find out that later when in the editing stage that we hadn't actually filmed anything from the very beginning of the day and it was just clips of us all talking and discussing ideas whilst the camera faces the ground. We did at one point, surprisingly, manage to film in a public play park with no interruption from the general public. We expected to be asked about what we were doing and were ready to be told not to film but nobody seemed to have an issue with it. Despite this, we made an effort to keep most of the other children in the area out of shot as it wasn't too much hassle. The child actors we had starring in our film, Vinnie and Sadie Thwaites, were absolutely incredible. They followed direction amazingly and knew almost all of their lines whilst only being sent th...