Our Ongoing Coursework

We have now finally though of a second idea to add to our options. We went back to the paper with the rough ideas on and managed to think of another crime, action, drama piece.
Instead of kidnapping, we came up with a robbery crime whereby a gang of teenagers...rob a bank. The story will unfold and the audience will learn that the gang members never got caught, and years later interviews take place to reveal the mystery of the robbery.
The two frames we chose to draw that conclude the whole idea, was an image of the bank and then an interview with one of the gang members.
We had quite a few pros and cons about this idea. Firstly, it would be intriguing to find out why they got away with this crime and why they did it which is the main aim for a film opening. However it will be hard to film in a bank or in town at night. Then getting older actors will also be hard.
Despite this, we have had some positive feedback on this particular idea and the probability of choosing this one is very likely.
Hopefully our coursework will go to plan!
Phoebe

Thinking Maps of Initial Ideas

So last week we started to develop some ideas for our AS Media Coursework.
We got a piece of paper and wrote down all of our ideas on the plot, location, the characters, the mood and so on.
From this we started to enhance our first idea. As you can see below, our synopsis is about a kidnapping in a village after a girl goes out for a walk. She encounters him during the walk but thinks nothing of it. As she walks home, a van corners her and the rest is history. Our mood board helps establish the feel we want to achieve from this idea. We wanted suspense as well as a dull tone to the film. Our two clips were of the van cornering the girl and then the dog by itself to portray the kidnapping further. We them came up with a list of the pro's and con's of this idea. We thought it was be a great idea to grab the audiences interests and intrigue them to want them to watch more. However there were some con's. For example there is quite a lot of resources need such as the van, the dog and getting an older actor. It would have also needed to be filmed at dusk which does not give us much of a time gap to film.

Looking Back at the Preliminary

So after filming, editing, and re-watching our preliminary task a thousand times over, we thought it would be the right decision to re-film. 

There were multiple things wrong with our filming to cause us to re film. Firstly, there were some shots missing that needed to be included such as shot reverse shot. To do this we had to re film several minutes of the footage. We decided to include this shot during the conversation between the two characters after the phone call. This did not take too long due to us being familiar with filming and we knew exactly what to do. 

Secondly, there were several parts of the filming where the filming skipped to another place at another time. We thought we should add bits of filming to show to transition to each place. For example when the character put down the phone to wear she arrives at the lockers. We filmed her walking to show the audience where she was going. 

Thirdly, some shots were shaky and did not look professional. When we re-filmed we used a tripod and then used handheld for effect, such as when we were walking behind the character to add an effect of being followed. 

So after re filming we have finally finished it!!

Watch it using the link below :)

Phoebe

Preliminary Exercise

Hello!

This blog will be an update of my course of Media Studies AS.

So this is our preliminary task – We were given the brief to create a short clip or film on anything we wanted. However it had to include continuity, and we felt the easiest and most effective story line would be based at school and about a school girl, seeing as school was the only place we could film. Furthermore, the stalker gave our story some tension and so making it more interesting and exciting to watch.

We based it on a young sixth form school girl who is being stalked by another mysterious girl. The stalker follows the girl around whilst constantly calling her phone. As the girl picks up, frustratingly the stalker does not answer, causing the school girl to be confused and worried. However she carries on with her day until the stalker finally introduces themselves…

Before filming we had to create a story board. This helped us plan out the clip and make changes which would make filming easier and less confusing. Our story board including photos and timings, as well as the type of shot etc. This really benefitted us when it came to recording.

To emphasis the tension we used music and camera shots which aided us into making it more interesting. Few words were said throughout the filming which we found effective and inviting for the audience to watch.

There were several uses of continuity within our short clip which you will see below when you watch it. The walking footsteps, bumping into a friend in the common room, walking to the new building and up the stairs. This continuity makes the filming smoother and allows the audience to follow the story line as well as the characters, without having to jump to different shots. This can be confusing and disorientating.

Thank you for reading!

Phoebe