connotations

Connotations

Here, the over the shoulder shot presents some connotations of the "college" atmosphere, i.e. the own clothes, the locker - we did this in relation of our teen genre. The positioning of mise en scene, frames and emphasis our main character's situation, this forms the urgency of knowing (hence the shot's effect of a second person peeking) within the audience. We don't clearly see what is in the locker making this the just of our climax (an enigma). We were inspired to make a homage of a shot on the back of another shot from "not another teen movie" which shows two teens conversing. However our shot is more focused, it subverts the typical use of a convention in a teen movie because the dead bird creates an intense mood for the audience instead of making light of the situation and we also made a contrast of colour using dull colours which has an effect of creating seriousness. Knowing this is just a 2 minute opening of our movie, we manipulate different levels of tension to grasp our target audience aiming to maintain them watching till the end.

Post by Sam Kitondo

character

Our main plan for the character of daniel was to make sure he was an 'average teenager', the side fringe and modern brand-name clothing helped to create this image. However we didn't want to show a representation of a steryotypical hooded teenager, because this image has many negative connotations and would distance the audience from sympathising and bonding with the character.
We also didn't want our audience to think the main character was being bullied due to his popularity, specifically how 'cool' the other students thought he was: this is why we didn't fall into the trap of making Daniel a nerd sterotype, because this would have also distracted from the message behind the film and from the audience's emphathy toward the character. However there is a specific part in the film opening when Daniel is dressed in young children's clothing spcifically designed to make Daniel look 'uncool' adding a bit of humour into our opening sequence, but also emphasising the psychological bullying taking place, humiliating him rather than hurting him physically.


post by shona ☺

Distributor

We thought Pathé Would be an ideal distributor for our film; one of the major distributors for the Uk, Pathé not only distribute specialised films but also mainstream blockbusters like the enormously successful 'Slumdog Millionaire'. We thought it would be a good choice of distributor because they are very well known and are an experienced and trusted distributor, who have distributed a wide range of successful films.

Pathé website

"Lolita" is a film distributed by Pathé about the relationship between a teenager and an older man. Similar to our production, this is a gritty drama, and though not a teen movie specifically, the main character is a teenager, like ours.

Another gritty film focused on the problems of teenage life is "The Virgin Suicides" which shows how the struggles of teenage life can damage a person physically and psychologically, just like our own film opening

post by Alex Bayo Shona & Sam ☺

Technology

During the course of making this film opening, we have had to use a variety of different technologies and programs in ordre to succeed.
One of the most useful tools we have used is the internet on our Mac computer, specifically two websites, Youtube and Blogger.com, the site on which we have documented all our progress.

Youtube was particularly useful because we could easily research genres and film openings by searching through the video clips and watching them. This made our research quick and easy to complete, and gave us more time to complete our filming.

Blogger.com made it possible to easily record our progress simply and made it possible for us to keep all our information in one easy to access location, which made it easy for us to look on what we've done well and what has yet to be improved.

We've learned to use the technology available to us, and how to use it to make our workload more managable and easier to complete. The technology around us is there to help us, and that is what we should use it for.

Post by Shona ☺

Feedback from Thurs 19th

On Thursday 19th, we presented our film in progress at an audience screening and got a lot of useful feedback both positive and negative:
the general concensus was that the opening credits, displayed on everyday items, were inventive and well portrayed although some of the shots could benefit from being shorter. Our variety of shots and the editing was well recieved by the audience as was the script in the voice over, and the cliffhanger ending; however the sound editing of the music left much to be desired and we need to re-record the voice over to make it clearer and so it matches closer with the transitions. The transitions were thought to be good although the ripple effect we added was generally disliked, and is something we need to improve in order to make our final product flow more.
This feedback will directly influence our work in the weeks to come and will allow our final product to be as well thought out and professional as possible.

post by Shona ☺