Tuesday 10 December 2013

Words associated with 'Fantasy'

I thought in order to get some ideas for setting, characters, mise en' scene and various other micro aspects it would be important to brainstorm the various words associated with our newly chosen genre 'Fantasy' Here is a word cloud i created...

'Fantasy/ Fairytale' setting

In a typical 'fantasy' land or 'fairytale' setting, the place is 'idealistic'. There are bright colours, and white  or pale cream like colors are often present. The colour white has connotations with purity and innocence, which almost works as a parallel for the 'innocent' mind of a child to believe in these magical, 'fantasy' like creatures or lands. Here are some typical 'Fantasy/ Fairytale' like settings...





As you can see, all of the pictures above have various similarities, including:

  • Green space
  • Woodland
  • White (colour)
  • Long dresses
  • Magical lighting (light and mysterious)
  • Old fashioned furniture/buildings/toys
  • eery look
We will have to look at this when deciding on our various settings for our film.

Wednesday 27 November 2013

Fairytale research

After researching various fairytales, it has become apparent that the female protagonist almost always falls in love, which is the basis of the whole storyline.  The girl always finds her 'prince charming' or she falls in love with somebody who they shouldn't, for example a beast. The stereotypical girl is slim, pretty, either brunette or blonde and well presented. The male 'prince charming' often has dark hair, looks incredibly smart, slim, athletic and bright looking. Here are two characters i created using an online software, they conform to the stereotypical conventions of what a 'prince and princess' should be. Whilst casting, we must look for individuals with a similar appearance.

Exploring genre- fantasy

Fantasy is a genre that commonly uses magic and other supernatural aspects as a primary plot element, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place imaginary worlds where magic and magical creatures are almost always present.

Friday 22 November 2013

CHANGE OF STORYLINE!

We have decided although we know it will be highly time consuming, and we are limited for time, we are going to add a fairytale twist to our story.

Twist idea two -terminal illness


'Twist' idea one- 'Murder'

'Murder'

Although this idea provides a gripping twist to the piece, and enables it to conform to the stereotypical 'drama' conventions,  it will be verging on the genre 'horror'. Therefore inappropriate for our 'family film' target audience. Also it will be challenging to create a lifelike murder scene without it looking unprofessional or tacky, as we have a minimal budget, it also will be challenging to find locations such as..
- A court room
- A 'murder scene'
- A hospital
There are more limitations with this idea then positives, but myself and my production partner will have a meeting at a later date to discuss whether we are to continue with this idea or select another.

Drama influences- shots

I looked at a drama ident 'itv-where drama lives'. It simply shows the most emotion provoking scenes, i assumed this may give me ideas for the 'twist' we need to add to our storyline.

Thursday 21 November 2013

Influences- what occurs in 'drama' themed pieces

I looked at an ident 'ITV, where drama lives'. It is purely a minute long sequence of 'dramatic' scenes from drama sequels. The shots i selected i believe to be the most emotion provoking of all scenes. I think it is highly important that we select the aspects that work well in other drama based productions and translate them into ours, so we can ensure that it will be appropriate for our target audience. We must ensure it meets the stereotypical conventions of a media film.

Tuesday 19 November 2013

Deciding on our 'event'- meeting minutes


What main event should happen in our story?

We weighed up the pros and cons of both of our ideas to amend our story-line. We decided we would add to the story we already had, and create a main event within the story, the event will either be, a death, a birth, a marriage or a terminal illness of one of our protagonists. 

In the future, if making a 'drama' film, we would like to create a 'period drama', as this opens up the opportunity for interesting mise en' scene and various other elements throughout the production process, making it far more interesting and exciting to complete, due to extreme time restraints on us now, we simply do not have the time to amend our story-line to fit in with the era and gain ownership of any of the props required to complete this task.

Thursday 14 November 2013

Reconsidering our idea...


Researching 25 word pitches...

KATANA- “It’s KILL BILL meets BUFFY, about a teen girl who discovers she’s a reincarnated samurai, but would rather be breaking hearts than breaking bones.” This pitch is concise, it simply tells the audience the names of the protagonists and the main theme of the story, it is short snappy and keeps an audience.


Charlie And The Chocolate Factory- "Everyone wants the secrets of the reclusive Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, but only one courageous boy will get them during a wild and hilarious adventure".This pitch is more intriguing. It doesn't give to much away, and words such as 'secrets' make the audience feel important and as if they are part of the storyline.  Descriptive words such as 'wild' and hilarious' set the entertaining, comical genre without giving too much information away.

Shoeless Joe- A holiday of a lifetime across the desolate heart of the Australian outback turns into a living nightmare for five friends.This pitch basically outlines the 'what and when', it also tells the audience about the relationship between characters, naming them as 'friends' It doesn't give too much away, but tells you of the the 'living nightmare' that they are to encounter, this somehow introduces some of the possible themes such as action, horror, drama or family.Storage- Terror stalks a storage facility. Survival for those trapped inside depends on the secrets in those endless units. But some doors are better left locked. The lexical field 'horror' introduces the films genre. By saying "some doors are better left locked" it gives the audience space to think and wonder as to what could happen if those 'doors' were to be unlocked. It makes the audience for intrigued to continue reading.


After looking at these pitches, it has become apparent that it is improtant to use descriptive language in order to set a scene, you can begin to either introduce characters or introduce or hint about the key events that happen throughout the film, without giving away to much infromation.Shoeless Joe- A holiday of a lifetime across the desolate heart of the Australian outback turns into a living nightmare for five friends.This pitch basically outlines the 'what and when', it also tells the audience about the relationship between characters, naming them as 'friends' It doesn't give too much away, but tells you of the the 'living nightmare' that they are to encounter, this somehow introduces some of the possible themes such as action, horror, drama or family.Storage- Terror stalks a storage facility. Survival for those trapped inside depends on the secrets in those endless units. But some doors are better left locked. The lexical field 'horror' introduces the films genre. By saying "some doors are better left locked" it gives the audience space to think and wonder as to what could happen if those 'doors' were to be unlocked. It makes the audience for intrigued to continue reading.After looking at these pitches, it has become apparent that it is improtant to use descriptive language in order to set a scene, you can begin to either introduce characters or introduce or hint about the key events that happen throughout the film, without giving away to much information.







25 word pitch ideas...


What should a 25 word pitch include?


Friday 25 October 2013

Influences- We Are What We Are

The thing i find most interesting about this trailer is the use of different angles. Although the genre is somewhat different to our selected one, i find that some of the high angle shots are effective and almost make the characters appear more authoritative and this use of a high angle shot would work well in the representation of 'Rob', the father in our film. As we want him to seem somewhat intimidating and have a profound position of hierarchy. 




Wednesday 23 October 2013

Influences- 'Little Children'

Some of the shots in this trailer are inspiring and will help us with the making of our trailer.
- This image almost looks as if the girl is playing with another person, but she is alone. Simmilar to our protagonist lucy who will be playing 'alone' but chloe will be 'there'. This would be a good shot idea.

- A shot like this represents a normal family setting, this is essential in our trailer as our target audience wished for a family setting to be presented, and it also would make our trailer conform to the stereotypical 'drama' genre conventions.


- The shot of a concerned mother would be essential for the 'drama' aspect of our film. The audience would be able to connect with jenny (the mother) properly and relate to her emotions. 

- Genreal shot of children playing would make the trailer more believable, the audience need to see chloe to beleieve she is real.

- The emotional shot of a distressed mother cradling her daughter makes the audience really connect with the characters. A shot like this in our trailer would be essential for the drama aspect. We are determined to capture our target audiences attention effectively by creating emotion-provoking scenes like this.

Tuesday 22 October 2013

Characteristics we are looking for whilst casting

I created a word cloud to present the various characteristics we are looking for when casting our actor(s). It is important that they have at least three of these traits to make themselves suitable to be part of our production. The most important characteristics on this mind map i believe are...

  • confidence- because it is important they can stand in ront of a camera without being nervous.
  • reliable- to attend rehearsals/filming dates on time
  • likeable- so that they are easy to work with and go down well with the audience.

What are we looking for when casting?

Although these are the desired characteristics whilst casting, we are open to changes/alterations throughout the casting process.

Main character profiles


Friday 18 October 2013

Casting

We are now going to begin the casting process, once we know the capability of our actors available to us, we will be able to storyboard to create scenes that they will be capable of performing to a high standard. In the professional industry, the casting would be completed by a casting team, a casting director would contact an agency and the agent would send forward a few selected professional individuals who fit their casting brief. They would then go to the audition where they would be put up against various other individuals from other agencies and the casting director would continue to shortlist the actors throughout a series of recalls where they would do screen tests and possibly even meet the director, and eventually the team will pick one of the actors to fulfill their role. In our media project, we do not have the budget/funding to complete the casting process in a  professional manner, although, we can find some amateur actors from local drama schools or friends we have that work in the performing arts industry who have some experience.
click the link to hear the audio version of this post- http://192.20.225.36/tts/speech/e88594d718f998262e2c6e6646b85e4c.wav

Wednesday 16 October 2013

Visual treatment- Characters

Written treatment

This is the written treatment that my production partner and I have completed. Now we have a set story line, we can begin to cast, storyboard and look at location.

Friday 4 October 2013

Location Inspiration

We needed to decide of our initial setting before writing our treatment...

Thursday 3 October 2013

Character ideas

Inspiration for our written treatment

inspiration for our treatment

I collected a selection of images to inspire myself and production partner before writing our written treatment, not only will the pictures give us ideas for characters but setting, mise en scene and cinematography.

Tuesday 1 October 2013

Assessment for progress- Current grade and target setting

From this teacher feedback i have learnt that i need to develop more visual means of presenting my work, although i already use various ways of presenting, it's beginning to become quite repetitive. Therefore i will now research different methods of presenting and i am also keen to use 'Sound Cloud' and video (Mp4) format. This should enable me to reach my target and achieve the highest grade possible if i continue to work at the level i have been awarded.

Our updated pitch

We changed the name 'My Friends' to 'Imaginary Friends' although this is still likely to change again throughout the production process. I will keep my blog updated of these developments.

Thursday 26 September 2013

Pitch

Our final initial idea

After hours of genre, target market and trailer/film research, we came to the decision that 'Imaginary Friends' were to be the most adequate idea to complete, not only does it take into account the expectations of our desired target market, it fulfills the stereotypical conventions of the genre 'drama'. The main characters would be human, instantly making it engaging to our chosen audience, with a lot of emotion-provoking scenes. The story-line offers a variety of twists/turns to take place therefore opens up the opportunities to using several different locations/venues to film. Which offers a wide variety of mise-en’-scene and keeps the trailer visually engaging.

Choosing our initial idea

We selected our favorite two initial ideas, 'disaster' and 'imaginary friends', we decided that we would weigh up the pros and cons of each in order to help us select our final initial idea that we shall continue with for the rest of this academic year.





Monday 23 September 2013

Meeting Minutes


Date: 19/9/13
Time: 1pm
Present: Charli Honnor& Georgi Honnor

Objective: Discuss and finalise initial ideas and choose an adequate, most appropriate one.

In todays meeting we finalised our initial idea, we are yet to come up with a title, but here are some notes we made throughout the meeting about the initial idea that we came up with and developed throughout the duration of the meeting.

Further Initial ideas


Tuesday 17 September 2013

Initial ideas- continued

After analysing my target market research, i have come up with a further nine initial ideas that conform to the audiences expectations, wants and needs. Our next step is to have a meeting with my production partner and our teacher to select the most appropriate idea, we will then write a pitch.

Target market research- Questionnaire


After identifying our target market as individuals in their late teens and older, i decided to create a survey in order to gain some understanding of what the audience for our chosen genre 'Drama' would expect and like in a film. This should help myself and production partner to choose our initial idea more effectively, and create more initial ideas based upon this feedback we have been given. I used Survey Monkey to create an online questionnaire and distributed it via the social networking site Facebook. 54 people were asked to participate, and 50 people did so. Here are some pie charts outlining my results.

Just 10% of the audience believed two characters to be enough for the main film, therefore i will go with the majority and ensure there are more than two characters present throughout the film. Although we will not exceed 8, as we still want to respect the minorities opinion.

60%, so just over half like the idea of the story telling a tale of friendship, so we believe that friendship, or relationships between family members should be a key part in our 'drama' film.

'Adult drama' meaning something which children may not be able to understand at a young age, so serious life situations such as illness, death or breakdown. We believe that a major adult event should occur in our film, which will be the main part, this will be the backbone of the film. We will respect the minorities opinion again, by not making the drama to harsh or horrific, as we must stay inside the genre conventions of drama.

80% of the people questioned said they wanted the story to be about family issues, we believe they choose this because it would be a story line that they may find easier to relate too. We will therefore now include some sort of family relationship/setting in our film.

The answer speaks for itself, 100% want the film to be realistic, therefore we will not have any fantasy or make believe aspect so to speak.


90% of the audience like the idea of children being present in the film, therefore we will ensure that at least one child stars in our film. It is vital that we still respect the minorities opinion, so we will ensure that the children do not overtake the film.