Thursday 17th November 2011

Today me and Hollie, did our focus group, we got all of the class around a laptop and created a podcast using GarageBand. By doing this we could listen back to the research we found out so that we could bring in the ideas of the focus group people. The questions we asked were...

1. Our genre is comedy, would this be a genre that you would go and see?
2. Why does this appeal to you?
3. [SHOW THE STORY BOARD AND SCRIPT] So from what you can see, what do you think about our short film?
4. Our short film is mainly silent, do you think this makes it more comical?
5. Silent movies were popular in the early 20th century, do you think it is something that could be added to present day?
6. Do you think the tension built at the beginning of the film makes the rest of the film more comical?
7. What do you like best about our film?
8. If there is anything that you would change, what it be and why?
9. From what you can see would you come and see this film? Would you find it funny?
10. Thanks! You've been wonderful.

On top of this, we went over camera angles and movements again and also looked at mise-en-scene and how to use it effectively. In the second part of the lesson we looked at different media theorists and theories such as the two step flow theory, the hypodermic needle theory, the uses and gratifications theory and the reception theory. We looked at how each theory explores the ways in which people take in the media and how they interpret it.

Thursday 10th November 2011

In this lesson, Mrs Williams wanted us to do another presentation on an example of our genre. She gave us some tips on how to do a proper presentation, and how they can look professional. So taking this on board me and Hollie attempted to create a proper PowerPoint presentation. For the presentation we focused on silent films and Charlie Chaplin, one of the most iconic silent movie actors in the world. And we showed how it converted and subverted to our production.

This is our presentation...

Thursday 3rd November 2011

In this lesson, each group from the class presented a PowerPoint presentation on the genre that we had chosen to do. This was a task we had to complete for this lesson, we did this to show our understanding of the genre and how we can interpret the codes and conventions into our productions. Each group presented their presentations in front of the class and we gave them negative and positive feedback. A piece of feedback that most of us got was that we were adding too much information onto each slide and that we should add one or two words to a bullet point and then speak more with our voices, instead of reading.

This was our presentation....

Thursday 13th October 2012

Today we continued with our focus group research and made sure we had enough questions to ask, so that we would get enough evidence to make our production the best it could be. We also went over our storyboard and made any appropriate changes, so that the focus group would see clearly what was happening and there was no complications. I also took part in Katie and Alice's focus group which gave me some experience on how focus groups would work.

Thursday 6th October 2011

Today we continued to plan our focus group, we wanted to do a focus group so we could see what people thought of our production and to see if they had any other ideas to make the piece funnier and more effective. We thought up 10 questions that the group would be asked openly and they could answer with whatever they wanted. We chose to use qualitative data as you can get the true feelings and opinions of the people being asked, which is the opposite of quantitative data where you just get a simple answer.

Thursday 29th September 2011

In this lesson, we continued to draw up our storyboards, and made sure all our ideas and plans were wrote down on the piece of paper so we wouldn't forget anything whilst filming. After this we decided to create some simple questions that we would ask a focus group, to see how they would feel about our production and if they would watch it etc. Our storyboard would come into this focus group so they could all see a visual of how we wanted to present the final short film.

Thursday 22nd September 2011

Today we began to plan our storyboard for our short film, so when we started to film, we knew what shots to take and how long they should be for. We drew out a basic template and started drawing out the scenes, prior to this we created a script, as the short film is silent, the script just basically contained camera angles and motions, so when it came to creating the storyboard it was much simpler. We drew a simple drawing on how the camera angle would look and then underneath wrote what was happening in the shot. This is done for filming reasons. We tried to put in many different shots to show our understanding and knowledge, and also to create different feels, like Point of View (POV) shots, to show what the character is actually looking at.

Thursday 15th September 2011

In this lesson we continued on planning our trailers, such as planning out a storyline of what our trailers would look like and what we would want it to contain. As me and Hollie went through this, we realised that we didn't have a passion for the chosen subject and we were told to do something that we are good at and would find interesting. So as a result of this advice we chose to do a short film, that would be a comedy. We would make most of the film silent, to add suspension and drama. Our new production would be called "Run!"  and our slogan would be "One mans race against time". We thought that this was short and snappy and people would remember it easily. After this we went and revised previous short films that have been created by other students and also looked on youtube for any professional and amateur productions.

8th September 2011

The first decision in A2 media was to decide if we was going to work in a team or as an individual, and from this I decided to work with Hollie Smith. After this Mrs Williams showed us what types of portfolio we could do, there was Trailers, Short films and more. Me and Hollie decided to do a Horror trailer, as we thought that we could produce a pretty good outcome. We also had to produce a film poster and a front cover of a magazine to go along side the trailer itself. We then started to look at possible story lines, target audience, characters and any titles of the film, and together me and Hollie got a bunch of ideas together that we would test and then come up with a final outcome. We decided that it would be a 15+ as most horror films are this age range as more can be shown within the film, such as gore, blood and violence. The name we liked the most for our film was "The Lumberjack" and we would base the story about a mad axed murderer and we'd make sure we would follow the codes and conventions of a typical horror trailer.