WELCOME MODERATOR

Ryan Evans 1321

Claremont Fan Court School 64680 

Welcome to my Media Studies blog!

I worked with Alexander Allman-Varty 1301, Oliver Munday-Rowe 1346 and Milo Gammond 1323.

I hope you enjoy my blog, which contains work on the G322, the titles and openings of a fictional sports film which we named 'Nine'.

My preliminary exercise follows immediately underneath. My evaluation questions are above. 

OUR FINAL FILM

GLIDECAM

In today's lesson I unboxed the schools new Glidecam. As this was the first time I had dealt with such equipment I had to look up on the internet how to assemble the main structure. I then had to learn how to counter balance the camera and the weights. Once this was done it meant that our test shots were smooth and looked as if the camera was floating in mid air. 

DISTRIBUTION ON JURASSIC WORLD

http://content.yudu.com/Library/A3yqhi/6NEWTECHNOLOGIES/resources/index.htm?referrerUrl=http%3A%2F%2Ffree.yudu.com%2Fitem%2Fdetails%2F3690766%2F6-NEW-TECHNOLOGIES

PRODUCTION: CHOSING A TITLE SEQUENCE

PRODUCTION: PRODUCING A TITLE SEQUENCE

BEFORE AND AFTER FEEDBACK

OUR TWITTER PAGE

I have used Twitter in two capacities whilst making my film opening, first as a research tool and, second, as a distribution tool for my film. As a research tool, Twitter is valuable as it allows you to access a diverse genre of social groups, companies and people. It connects you as a brand, company or person to the people of our world. By doing this it gives people that don't have a voice in decision making a voice. It allows you to receive audience and customer feed back to produce something that will not only be successful but athletically pleasing as well. As a form of distribution, Twitter excels thanks to the interactivity of web 2.0 and the way fans can re-tweet my posts, creating viral marketing. For example you can receive new information quickly. It's an amazing human search engine that harnesses the crowd. You'll follow all sorts of movers and shakers. You can also use the hashtag to follow specific threads. You are also able to start a conversation with strangers as well as friends and share fresh ideas when you're thinking about them. I personally really enjoy the quick share-ability of the social media page.

RESEARCH: LAURA MULVEY - VISUAL PLEASURE AND NARRATIVE CINEMA

Through my research I have read an article which was written by Daniel Chandler on the gaze theory by Laura Mulvey. 'Film has been called an instrument of the male gaze, producing representations of women, the good life, and sexual fantasy from a male point of view.' This theory is essentially saying that women are there to be looked at and the men to look at them. However Mulvey argues that movies put women as 'subject positions' which 'objectifies' them. Throughout many years of movie productions women have been used for a sexual representation. For example Halle Berry is often in very revealing clothes attracting a large male audience. This is classified as the "male gaze". This theory also suggests that men are not sexually objectified in mainstream cinema. However two people argue against this theory. These two people are Steve Neale and Richard Dyer. 

DISTRIBUTING INDIE FILMS

OUR FILM POSTER

We have had very positive feedback about this poster, and we believe this poster will be instrumental in attracting our target audience and our film becoming a success. We will also put our poster on our Facebook, twitter, Instagram and our webpage. However like everything, nothing is perfect. Some of our feedback stated that we needed to include some social media advertisement logo's. For example Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Snapchat. As a distribution company we leaked another copy of your film poster showing our social media icons that we feature on. 

In order to address and attract our audience, we have used a variety of social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat. The reason for we have included these social media websites is because all of them have been used by us in the process of distributing our film. 

SHOT LIST

CHARACTER INTERVIEW

In our character interview, we used Xander as if it was in the future. We did this to show how his career had progressed and developed over time. We then used myself to question him about various aspects of his participation in our film ‘9’. The questions that were asked ranged from ‘What was your main motivation in life?’ and ‘What has been your biggest achievement in life?’ By doing this it added a sense of realism to our film by showing Xander in his representation. To showcase our character interview I used my research from ‘New Technologies’ and uploaded it onto Youtube. 

CONSTRUCTION: MY PRODUCTION COMPANY IDENT

I created our distribution company ident in 'Final Cut Pro X': in the screenshot above, the title name overlays an exploding galaxy. One of the challenges was ensuring that when the text appeared it expanded to fit its place properly. We chose to call our production company, 'ROMA PRODUCTIONS'. The reason why we chose this name was because 'ROMA,' is actually an abbreviation of all of our initials. E.g. Ryan, Ollie, Milo and Alexander (R.O.M.A). We thought that this name was simple yet effective. We then added the word 'Productions' at the end of it to give the company a sense of importance and professionalism. 

The reason why I have decided to add a picture of 'Warp Productions,' is because this is the official distribution company that we have chosen as a group. The reason why we have chosen 'Warp Films' is because they have films of the similar genre to ours. I carried our research into each individual film that they have distributed and found out general information about them. From these studies I came to the conclusion that they fitted perfectly. At my study day at the BFI, I learned from Matt Hall that the 'Warp' brand includes a lot of artist driven content and that their films are aimed at a middle ground between 'arthouse' and 'multiplex.' Warp films have distributed developing talent with very low budget production costs. These low budgets have often inspired creative freedom. 'Warp Films' have produced 'Dead Man's Shoes' (Shane Meadows, 2006) which had a great deal of improvisation, a low budget and a committed cast and crew, all of which is similar to our own production. 

FILMING TODAY

Today we filmed our last shot for our short film opening. I took responsibility as Co-Director which also involved sorting out the props. I was also in charge of finding a location to film in and getting permission to use a camera. The props consisted of:
1st XV rugby shirt
Rugby Ball

The location of the scene in which we filmed at is where the pin is in the screenshot below:

I used extreme close ups of the protagonist's face in order to let the audience share the strong emotions that the character is feeling. At this stage in the unfolding of the drama, Xander experiences conflict between his father's ambition for him to play rugby and his own developing passion for music, which he starts to look on as his preferred career path. The emotions of tensions, resignation and relief appear on his face as he plays rugby in this scene. I used a tripod to hold the camera steady and I took care to bubble the tripod before filming. This quality of stillness is vitally important in directing this scene, because the audience need to focus without interference on Xander's internal struggle.

DISTRIBUTION

I researched distribution on the FDA website. I did a case study on the distribution of 'The Hunger Games' and the 'Tortoise in love.' From this research that I carried out I decided to choose 'Vertigo.' The reason why I chose Vertigo was because it fits the genre of my film. My research was then backed up by my study day at the BFI.

OUR FACEBOOK PAGE

I took responsibility for creating a Facebook page for our film 'Nine.'  The reason for doing this is because it adds to the overall distribution of the film. Our target audience will all have Facebook, therefore I believed it was the perfect social media platform to reach them. It is a live, interactive  Facebook page, therefore I hope to receive feedback about our production. For Henry Jenkins, Web 2.0 allows what he calls 'participatory culture,' meaning that I can create work, share it on the web and receive feed back from others.

I have also included a screenshot of what our film website looks like on a mobile device. The reason why I have chosen to include this is because it shows I have taken the time to consider how my target audience will view our social media campaigns. Most people of my age and of the target demographic (15-35) use mobile platforms by choice. I had to make sure the page looked appealing and attractive when viewed on a variety of devices.