Questionnaire results

All the particapants we asked were aged 16-21 years old as they are our target audience. Almost all of the particapants said that their favourite genre was either comedy and horror. This helped us as it is reasonably easy to put elements of comedy and horror into a social-realism film. Not very many of them watch independant films which makes it harder for us to promote it as it is unlikely that many of them would be interested. A lot of people go to the cinemas at least once a month but they always go to mutliplexes which isn't helpful as ours wouldn't be shown in one. They all feel that teenagers are portrayed in the wrong way in the mdeia so we are trying to change that by showing them as strong and independant.

Questionnaire

Who are you?

1.    Age      16-21         20-40         40+

2.  Gender   Male  Female

3.  What is your favourite film genre? (And why?)

4.  How often do you watch independent films (college films)?

5.  How often do you go to the cinema a month?

6.  What cinema do you go to?

7.  Who do you go with?

8.  What is your favourite music type?

9.  Do you watch films online (illegally)?

10.       Do you disagree with the way teenagers are portrayed in the media?

Film pitch

Story board

Analysis of film posters and mood boards

This mood board represents the codes and conventions of social realist culture. For example at the top the teenage pregnancy . This relates to our film as teenage pregnancy is in our story line.

Audience

Our target audience is 16-18 year olds from a typical English working-class background. We looked into various aspects of their lives, including what music they liked etc. We have done a mood board to represent all these things. We have chosen this target audience as we feel they will be able to relate to the film i.e the domestic feuds. We handed out a questionnaire to see what they expected from a social-relaism films and which ones they liked.

Film Poster

The photo we used for the film poster in is black and white to show that the truth is being hidden and hard times, things are slowly fading etc. We have placed the tagline 'Love Will Tear Them Apart' inbetween the three main characters to emphasise the meaning. Danny is looking down at Jack (his brother) to show his supremecy and look intimidating. The critic used is from our film magazine 'Down 2 Earth'. We also used British Independant Film awards to rate the film as it is very prestigous and would help raise number of viewers. Also our film fits into that category. The link in the left hand corner of the poster is our production website. Certificate 15. The actress in our photo for the poster is a different girl to the one in the trailer/film as she was unable to be there for the filming.

Film magazine

The film magiazine which our front cover will be on is called 'Down 2 Earth'. It is a film magazine that focuses on British social-realist films. We have chosen this name as it a magazine that relates to social realist content and real life matters. 

The finished product!

This is our fiished teaser trailer. The trailer lasts exactly a minute, however when we were editing, we couldn't cut the music where the clips ended. Therefore all we could do is silence the music, but it means the clip above lasts 2 minutes longer. This isn't part of the film we just couldn't do anything about it.

Analysis of this is england trailer.

Number of shots: 107
Length of trailer - 2 minutes
No voice over
Music in the back ground.
Editing tehniques - Mixtures of fast editing and slow editing. The clips of more positive moments were fast editing and slow editing was during emotional moments. Establishing shot - Car driving past a block of flats. Shows this is a social realist film as its on a council estate and there is people doing day to day stuff, walking down the street etc.
You can automatically tell its a  British social realism film as the establishing shot is on a British council estate with people living everyday British lives.

Progress!

We have almost filmed the whole trailer now, we just need to add a couple of more quick close ups to bring the full product together. Filming issues will be posted shortly, we have also started editing. We are hoping to have most of the editing completed by tomorrow. We are also taking more photos for the poster to pick one out.

Definition of social realism

Social realism is a realistic style of filming that became a very famous style in communist countries. It is a style that realistically portays aspects of social concern through films. Most social realism films are low budget. They are all a slice of life and are relatable to its audiences. Film makers such as Shane Meadows and Ken Loach very dominant in the social realist film genre.

Social realist film conventions consist of things such as:
Violence
Real life situations
Drugs
Sex
Council estate life
Love
Family life
Crime.

This relates to our film as our film consists of the majority of the conventions above.

   Ken loach

Progress.

We have filmed half of the trailer now, we have created the music and put together a final agreement on the last shot.

The bbc movies review of "this is England"

It's hard to describe Shane Meadows' latest film without making it appear a great deal less interesting than it actually is. It's a semi-autobiographical tale of a young boy adopted by a gang of skinheads in a grey seaside town. And on that basis, This Is England sounds, in short, like typical grimesville British filmmaking - concrete, rain and misery. This couldn't be further from the truth. In fact, the film is fizzing with energy and humour, powered by brilliantly engaging performances.
Chief among these is newcomer Thomas Turgoose as Sean, a put-upon 12-year old who finds unexpected friendship with a group of local skinheads led by the sweet natured Woody (Joseph Gilgun, another stand-out performance). These skins are a far cry from the image of racist thuggery that the movement became known for in the 80s. It's all about the music, and of course the clothes - although Sean is too small for Doc Marten boots, he still gets the haircut, the plaid shirt and the braces. For a while, everything is sweet in Sean's world. He even shares his first kiss with a Boy George lookalike with the charming name of Smell.
"A FUNNY AND DEEPLY MOVING PORTRAIT"
But soon, conflict arrives in the form of Combo (Stephen Graham, also superb), an old mate of the gang whose time in prison has left him with a strong sympathy for the National Front. Combo's racist agenda splits the gang and Sean, tragically, finds himself turning to Combo as a substitute for the father he lost in the Falklands. Meadows is an exhilarating filmmaker and This Is England is his best film to date - an honest, emotional, funny and deeply moving portrait of growing up. Don't miss it.

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

We have used mobile phones to take pictures of our work. We found this useful as we didn't need to do all of our work online. This is effective as our mood boards can be bigger on paper and it is clearer. We used Apple Macs to edit our trailer which helped us greatly as it is very self explanatory and easy to use. We used the editing software called "imovie" to edit the film and "iDVD".  We found that using photoshop for our film poster and magazine helped us aswell as it is very detailed and advanced. However, we did have problems as the battery life of our camera's was very short so we could only do little bits of filming at a time and then we had to keep charging it up. This delayed our filming. For the planning we used microsoft word and pen and paper. This helped as we didnt need to have internet to write our planning down. We used the internet for our research, we used mostly British film websites as we were working on a British film. We did use abit of wikipedia, this was good but also slightly un-reliable as anyone can post on it.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

We had very positive feedback to our trailer from our peers and teachers. We found that the music we used gave the trailer a lot more emotion and helped them empathise. A lot of people commented on the tagline 'Love Will Tear Them Apart' and found quite clever and intruiging which I think would help boost viewings.We were also complimented on the fact the camera work was very steady even though we didn't use a tripod which shows that one isn't always neccesarily needed. Also we were told that we never had a static shot, the camera moved in every scene which made it more entertaining and more realistic. We were also told that without the text they would still have a brief idea of what the storyline was due to the dialogue and enigma's. But the text however is still important so the audience know the story line, text also creates tension.  However, we have learned that we should film our shots for longer to allow space for cutting and still have a lengthy shot then we actually need to as we found that the final shot would have been more effective if it had been longer.

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

The three main characters are present in all three tasks which helps the audience have familiarity with them. However, there is a different actress in the film poster and the magazine to the film as we has difficulty as we found she wasn't reliable enough. We have used conventions of social-realism films in all three of the tasks; the film poster is in black and white to show depression which links in nicely with the film as thew colours arevery dull as a lot of the filming is on the streets. The shot for the magazine portrays the boys to be quite laddish as those pose is quite promiscous. This will help atrract the audience as we hae found that this is what they look for. The production website link is present on all three of the tasks which is good way of advertisement.  The tagline (Love Will Tear Them Apart) is present in the film poster and the trailer which we have used to attract the audience because of the link to Joy Division.

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

I have broken down a couple of movie trailers. I beleive our trailers challenge the average trailer as we've done many things to make ours seem more individual. Our trailer is a little like the shane meadows film "this is england" trailer. For example every trailer i watched had a narrator as a voice over to talk about the film. We havn't included a narrator over our clips, we included instrumental that i made inspired by a piano piece. This music is inplace with no vocals. so it can play over our emotional clips even more emotion to draw the audiences attention.
Here is the this is england trailer. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0jkv2bRFgQ. As you can see, the establishing shot in that trailer is a shot of a British coucil estate, which shows social realism, people doing there day to day thing, walking the dog walking to work etc. Our establishing shot shows a modern day British family life, a teenage boy with his girlfriend and his older brother all together watching t.v. This also shows social realism as it is a British realistic family setting. We challenged the codes and conventions of our film with colours also. For example, Danny in the film is the antagonist of the film. He is made out to be the bad guy, so therefore you would think he wears dark clothing, black clothes to symbolise how sly and dark minded he is. But we decided to change his colours and wear colours such as white and grey. The white usually shows purity and grey usually shows dull, dark, sad. This represents that he has two sides. Also shows that the white represents how he is putting on an act as a loyal and pure person, but the grey represents his other "darker" side. Also there is a shot of me up against a fence looking out into fields. We have used symbolism here as it suggest that he is trapped because of the baby and he is looking out into the open world.

Music

I have created my own music for this trailer. The music i have created is a piano hiphop style instrumental piece of music. I was inspired to use a piano piece by yan tierdsen called L'Après Midi. This piece inspired me because the mood of the soundtrack sounds like a sad/anger type of piece of music but has alot going on, just like our film. If you havn't heard of yan tiersens stuff, here is the piece that inspired me. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqOJv0bAA-U

Filming

Today and on thursday 17th of november we got our main filming done, we filmed some of the key shots to our trailer and our final shots are being filmed on thursday 24th and friday 25th. we have also taken some location shots which will be uploaded shortly.

Social-realism posters

Social-realism posters are often very blunt and simple pictures, usually, of the main characters with plain expressions on their faces which can often represent suffering. The colours are often dull; mainly blue. This denotes coldness and hard times. The posters here relate to our film in many ways. The first picture reminds me of the character jack plays, the young timid boy. the look the boy on the picture is giving looks like hes lost in his own emotions and doesnt know where to go, just like the character Jack plays in our film. the second poster shows the young boy in this is england throwing the English flag in the water. This shows the boy throwing away something that meant alot to him, similar to the story line in my film, Jack in the end lets go of his girlfriend who has caused alot of problems despite how much she means to him. The third poster, the movie poster for quadrophenia doesnt really show much relation to my film, however the quote "a way of life" on the poster relates to the background of the characters. All of them living in a working class estate with not alot of money, then the two brothers had to change their way of life from having a working class family life to living on the streets and having to steal for food etc.

Binary oppositions

Binary oppositions are characters/things that go against each other through narratives.

For example

Good vs evil
White colours (showing purity) vs Black colours (showing darkness)
Cowboys vs indiands
Masculine male vs less masculine male
Law vs criminal

Example in film - Gandalf (good) Vs Saruman (bad)
If you have seen the film you will notice saruman is a bad reflection of Gandalf. This relates to my film as the two boys are brothers and the younger brother is the good sibling and the older brother is the bad sibling.

Ideology and stereotypes in our 3 main characters

Girl - Teenage pregnancy, sex before marriage, cheating on boyfriend etc. All these characteristics Go against the traditional views we have on stereotypical teenage girls and even women.

Younger brother- Caring, timid, sensitive, however smokes cannibis - Not particularly masculine characteristics.

Older brother - Ladies man, thinks he's a hard man, likes to stand out and be ahead of other males. smokes cannibis, drinks alcohol most weekends. Aggressive, angry, strong - Very masculine properties.

Younger brother and older brother are binary oppositions.
      

Todorovs narrative theory in visual

ideology

Ideology is the system of belief in our society  These beleifs dominate our media. This is called dominant ideology. Dominant ideology is ideology that is accepted and understood by most of our society as part of our expectations in our culture. For example getting married before children. These examples are not always realistic beliefs in our society due to development in our culture but our media still potrays these beliefs. Children before marriage beleif relates to our film as the main plot is about an underage girl becoming pregnant. Teenage pregnancy is looked down on majorly in a modern day british society, however it has been a popular thing over recent years. Here is a more detailed explaination of ideology by Stuart Hall discussing racist ideology. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ot-LpRVQog

Codes and conventions of social realism

Friendship groups

Urban estates/slums

Police & Law

      

Riots

Marriage

 

                                                         

Towns

    

Racism

Drugs

Protests

Pregnancy

Drugs

Violence (family and on the street)

  

Family

Government

Government and law

Story line

3 main characters.
Two brothers - one 15 one 18
one girl - 15 - Younger brothers girlfriend.
All working class.
Older brother goes behind younger brothers back by having sex with his girlfriend.
The younger brother has always been the favourite sibling out of the two, older brother was jealous, always put down by feeling not good enough, so he had it away with the younger brothers girlfriend to get revenge.
Girl finds out she is pregnant. tells the boyfriend.
Younger brother (boyrfiend) notices his older brothers jewllery at girlfriends house. finds out the girl has had sex with him.
Brothers have a huge fight at home about it, breaks family apart, brothers get kicked out of their house. living on the street, sometimes at their freinds. stealing food from shops.
Brothers meet in the street, have a second fight and grow apart.
TWIST - Girl has slept with another guy but hasnt admitted it.
None of the brothers turn out to be the dad. The other guy is, family squash their differences and are happy families.

Narrative theory's

Their are two types of narative theory's. Here they are

 

Todorov's theory

TODOROV’S THEORY – Todorov proposed a basic structure for all narratives. He stated that films and programmes begin with an equilibrium, a calm period. Then agents of disruption cause disequilibrium, a period of unsettlement and disquiet. This is then followed by a renewed state of peace and harmony for the protagonists and a new equilibrium brings the chaos to an end. The simplest form of narrative (sometimes referred to as ‘Classic’ or ‘Hollywood’ narrative).

Propp's theory

• PROPP’S THEORY –Vladimir Propp’s theory was formed in the early twentieth Century. He studies Russian fairytales and discovered that in stories there were always 8 types of characters evident. These are: the hero, the villain, the donor, the dispatcher, the false hero, the helper, the princess and her father. He did not state these characters were all separate people e.g. the provider could also be the helper. There are only 8 different character types and only 31 things they ever do. Once you have identified the character type (e.g., the hero) it’s easy to guess what they will do (save the maiden, defeat the villain, marry the maiden or whatever) because each character has a SPHERE OF ACTION. This is easily relatable to films and programmes today.

Narrative theory

Narrative theory

In media terms, narrative is the organisation given to a series of facts. The human mind needs narrative to make sense of things. We connect events and make interpretations based on those connections. In everything we seek a beginning, a middle and an end. We understand and construct meaning using our experience of reality and of previous texts. Each text becomes part of the previous and the next through its relationship with the audience.

Representation in the media

Representation is the message something portrays. For example a picture of a woman in the kitchen could represent that stereotypically women are always in the kitchen. Sometimes representation of some things are questioned as different people would interpret things in a different way.

Here is a professor called stuart hall talking about representation and the media.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTzMsPqssOY

Intro

I will be making a social realism film with Jack Lord and Danny Hegarty about life in working class britain for teenagers. Our main story line is based around two 17 year old boys who get them self in some life changing situations. One gets a young girl pregnant, the other gets involved with drugs, they both end up homeless with no money. We were influenced by films such as:
Quadrophenia
This is england
Kidulthood
Adulthood
One day