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Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our Opening Sequence:
Our Film is Titled A Sight for Sore Eyes, and is a mockumentary focused on Toby, A boy who suffers from invisibility, and his first year away from home at university.

Our film mostly sticks to the conventional forms used in film openings in style, narrative struture, genre conventions, and general conventions of film openings:. I created a mind-map to show this:


Use Ctrl Mousewheel to zoom in and out, and drag to move.
Theorists we used when creating our sequence:

• Todorov:
• In terms of the classic narrative pattern the opening sequence of a film usually makes up the equilibrium at the beginning of the film, with everything relatively happy and stable before the disruption.
• We can see this in What we do in the Shadows as the opening sequence shows the vampires living happily together before Nick comes in and disrupts their usual lives.

What we do in the Shadows Opening sequence

• In terms of the classic narrative pattern our opening sequence represents the equilibrium at the beginning of the film. In this equilibrium Toby is happily living at home with his mum and brother.
• Barthes:
• Our film mostly uses enigma codes to create suspense and humor. For example The sequence starts with you knowing Toby has a genetic disease, but you don't find out hes actually invisible till a few shots later. This quick pay off creates humor as the audience expect it to be something really bad, but instead the outrageousness of it helps to create humor.

• Propp:
• In our film we didn't really apply Propp's character roles much, however our characters do slightly conform to the archetypes created in the character roles in some respects:
• Toby, the Protagonist. Toby is the main character of the film, and although not particularly heroic or brave in any way throughout the film he goes on a mental journey, and learns to be more outgoing.
• Joyce, the Helper/ Mentor. In our opening Joyce works as a mentor to her two sons, even though she doesn't focus on Kenny he still sees her as a role model.
• Kenny, the Antagonist. Although he is not particularly a bad person Kenny's jealousy of his brother leads him to slightly bully Toby.

Joyce Lerone

Toby Lerone

Kenny Lerone

Question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our sequence:
In our opening sequence we have represented a quite stereotypical white middle-class family in the form of a single mother, and two very contrasting teenage sons. Our opening sequence also positively represents disability.

Viago from What we do in the Shadows

Toby Lerone:

• Toby is very socially awkward, and has been home schooled his whole life.
• For him we tried to represent him as someone who hasn't had much communication with the outside world. For inspiration for his character we looked at Viago from What we do in the Shadows.
• To emphasize Toby's awkwardness we tried to give him very awkward dialogue in the same style as Viago.
• Toby represents a large group of teenagers who feel that they don't really fit in, and the invisibility emphasizes this, as it helps to connect with teenagers who feel like they are invisible, and don't really have a place to fit in in society. However through the film we see Toby finding a place that he fits in to.

Kenny Lerone:

• We chose to have Kenny's character contrast greatly with Toby's character by being very outgoing and a more self-obsessed character.
• For Toby we wanted to represent someone that hasn't really experienced much motherly love, and tries to cover up his insecurities by acting out, as he thinks it will get people to like him. We wanted Kenny to seem really self obsessed, as he is trying to be like how he believes his mother to be. An inspiration for Kenny's character in our sequence was J.P. from Fresh Meat.

Clip of J.P. from Fresh Meat (only the first half of the clip is relevant, and please excuse the rude language).

• We tried to create this character for Kenny by making him turn every question around to himself, and through the inter-title to show that he hardly ever stops talking about himself.
• Kenny very much represents the stereotypical rich teenager in our sequence.

Joyce Lerone:

• We tried to make Joyce the "fitness mum" type of character who favourtises Toby.
• Joyce very much embodies the single-mother character, as she is very much independent and hates her ex husband. To represent these characteristics we really emphasized the fact that she is single, by showing her on Tinder, and creating comedy through her hatred for Toby's father.
• a big influence for her character is Aunty Angela from Outnumbered. We really liked the passive aggressive new age style of Angela's character, and felt that she really connected with the character of Joyce.

Aunty Angela from Outnumbered.

• We really wanted to show Joyce as someone who has just left a long term relationship, and is enjoying her new single life.

The Family Unit:

Our film opening contains representations of the family unit. Here is a diagram I created of common representations of the family unit in the media:

Representations of the family unit in the media.

In our sequence the representations of our family are slightly different to these as the family has a slightly different make up. In our family Joyce plays the role of the Mother and Father from classic representations by being the main "breadwinner" and being distant to one son, whilst being close with the other. Toby takes on some aspects of the role of the son by not being comfortable in social situations, however he is more awkward and nervous than standoffish. Kenny takes on aspects of the daughter and son representations as he is extremely conscious of how he looks, but also suppresses his emotions and doesn't particularly like other people much.

Disability:

Another key area of representation for our sequence is disability as Toby is invisible. We hoped to positively portray disability in our sequence by showing that even tough Toby has a genetic condition that affects his life, he is still able to live a full and happy life, and is even going to university.We wanted to show that Toby's disability does affect his life, but he is able to deal with it and not feel like he is missing out much.

Toby talking about how his disability affects his family

Question 3:What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Our Film's Model of Ownership:

• For our film we chose to follow the independent model of film ownership. We chose to do this purely as we wouldn't be able to realistically create the film opening of a large budget, Hollywood film due to our budget and time restrictions.
•  To this end we chose to have one distribution company, but a group of different production houses working together to create our film.

Our Distributor:
To present information about our distributor I created a Prezi:

We chose focus features as they are successful in marketing and distributing British Independent films. Their marketing techniques have also worked really well on other films similar to ours. For example American Honey:

How Focus Features marketed American Honey and how this connects with our film.

Our Production Companies:
To illustrate our production companies and information about the I created this Prezi:

Question 4: Who would be the audience for your media product

Our Audience:
The primary audience for our film is fans of the genre with secondary audience groups of fans of indie films in the 15-25 age group with a worldwide spread. To further illustrate this information I have created a Prezi:

By going for a more niche audience group of younger fans of indie films who enjoy this style of humour we have to be very specific with how we attract them.

What our audience want in a film like ours:
A side-by-side comparison of our film with another film our audience demographic like, and what they enjoy about it:

Question 5: How did you attract/address your audience

Attracting our Audience:
We used specific techniques to attract our Target demographic:

• To attract fans of the genre we used many conventions of Mockumentary films, for instance the intertitles, or the hand held camera. This helps to make the film seem recognisable to them.

Examples of intertitles from our sequence.

• We also used lots of awkward comedy very common to mockumentaries. This also helps to attract 15-25 year old in general.
• By using comedy in our film in place of large spectacle we are gratifying the audience's need for entertainment.

• By focusing the films story on an invisible boy, but also setting it in a contemporary setting with many recognizable themes and Toby acting how you would expect an invisible boy to realistically act we are allowing the audience to suspend their disbelief. This allows them to better get caught up in the filmic diagesis that we have created gratifying their need for escapism.
• Another upside to setting our film in a contemporary society, and focusing on realistic (if slightly exaggerated characters) is that the audience can better connect with the characters and their themes. This allows for the gratification of them to get a better sense of their personal identity by watching and identifying with the characters in our film.
• To make the film appeal to a worldwide audience we made our film focus on universal themes, of coming of age/leaving home for the first time. 
• As well as helping to attract a global audience using this also will connect specifically with the age group[ of 15-25 year olds, as they are either on their way to leaving home for the first time soon, or have already left home for the first time quite recently.

Throughout our project we made sure to get feedback from our target audience on how they thought the film went. We also got qualitative feedback from our target demographic about the final product of our film:

Analyzing our Feedback:

Our final feedback was very good, as it shows that we had succeeded in creating the type of humour enjoyed by this audience group. Our feedback was overwhelmingly positive.

• It demonstrated that we accomplished the main function of an opening sequence, as the audience were able to absorb the information we presented them with in the opening, for example the title, and the main characters' names as all but one were able to recall their names and the title of the film.
• The fact that Lilly couldn't recall Toby's name without prompting shows that there may still be a balancing issue in the sequence with the amount of time and effort put in to make Toby's character memorable, as he is the main character of the film, and the least time is spent on him. This problem also pops up later as no one picked him as their favourite character, with Kenny being the overall favourite.
• Our feedback also showed that we accomplished our goal of creating the humour that our TA would enjoy, and would gratify their need for entertainment, as they all seemed to be entertained, and there was a lot of laughter throughout, especially in Joyce and Kenny's scenes. These scenes were also memorable, as the group were able to easily pick their favourite scenes, for example"Joyce drinking on the Wii board" as picked out by Sian.
• One critique we received was about the "I'm excited but nervous, still excited, but still nervous." line. This is a line in the trailer both me and Noa felt skeptical about as we did consider changing this line during Production, however we couldn't think of a better line for this scene.
• It also demonstrated that we were extremely successful at creating an opening sequence that was recognizable as a mockumentary, and was even very much recognizable as in the style of one of our greatest influences What we do in the Shadows (2014) as Sian and Meera even said it was very reminiscent of "that mockumentary about the vampires" which is reffering to What we do in the Shadows.

Question 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this project

Our Kit:
I was very happy with the kit we used. It was provided by the school and each group got the same kit, but could ask for additional items if needed. To demonstrate the Kit we used in our project and their pros and cons I created this table:

The Kit we used and the Pros and Cons of it

What I have learnt Throughout this project:
Whilst constructing this project I have learnt and honed lots of new skills, and improved upon skills I already had from the Prelim and GCSE media studies.

Pre-Production:

• Blogger:
• Blogger was a completely new tool for me when we started planning this project. It was a useful tool when setting out my planning and research and allowed me to easily present my ideas, whilst still being able to go back and look at my previous posts for inspiration and information I may have forgotten.

My Blog

Production:

• Framing:
• Framing is somewhere I have really improved throughout this project.
• At the beginning of this project I could frame a camera, however I would leave way too much empty space around the character than there needed to be. For instance in the shot below.

My Framing at the time of the Test Shoot.

My Framing by the end of the Project

• By the end of this project I have greatly improved in my framing skills as can be seen in this shot. The camera is much more level, Joyce is right in the middle of the frame, and the surrounding area is minimal for thetype of shot we wanted.

• Lighting:
• At the beginning of this project I had never really thought about the lighting of the shots, as we didn't use the lighting rigs in the Prelim or before that.
• For the test shoot we used the lighting rigs, but only as props in the background. However whilst editing we could see the problems that not lighting the shots caused, for instance characters' faces being in too much shadow to make out their expressions.

My Lighting at the time if the Test Shoot.

My Lighting at the end of the Project            

• As you can see in the main shoot Joyce's face is still in some shadow, but you can much better make out her smile, whereas in the test shoot you couldn't make out any facial expressions at all.

Post-Production:

• Grading:
• At the beginning of this project I had never graded before, and doing it for our sequence was a real learning curve for me.

Grading one of our shots on Adobe Premier Pro

• I found it very enjoyable to grade, however it is not one of my strong points, so Noa graded quite a lot of our sequence with my input as she worked.

• Sound Mixing:
• Something I found myself excelling at in post-production was sound mixing. I found this part of the editing process really enjoyable, and am very happy with the way the song fitted together in our final sequence.

Me Sound Editing

• One part of our opening I was particularly proud of is the end sequence, and how all the cuts in the video match with the chords of the music.

Improvements I would make:

Overall I am very happy with the way our sequence turned out, but if I could do it again there are a few changes I would make:

• Try and fix the sound issue in Toby's interview. This was something I really struggled with when sound editing. Because of the way our sequence fitted together there is a slight jump in the music. It is almost inaudible, and only noticeable if you really listen out for it. However if doing this project again I would try and fix it, if not just for my peace of mind
• Toby's skin. In the interview shots you can see some of Ray's chest. It blends in quite well with the bandages, however he is meant to be invisible and, even though small, it makes it harder for the audiences to suspend their disbelief.

Ray's visible skin

• Toby's Dialogue. I was very happy with the dialogue overall, however during our feedback we were criticised for the line "I'm excited but nervous, still excited, but still nervous." We did consider changing this line during Production, however we couldn't think of a better line for this scene.
• Kenny's Grading was another thing I would definitely spend more time on if we could repeat the project as it just doesn't work with the rest of the sequence as it is too blue and unsaturated, and feels quite jarring when watching the opening.

Kenny's Grading Issue

Question 7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full project?

How I have Progressed Across the Project:
Throughout the whole project I feel that I have really improved in my use of techniques for planning, filming and editing. The standard of my work has much improved, and it is nice to look back at the Preliminary Task and see how much I have improved since then.

A Timeline of Our Project:
Here is a timeline of our project from start to finish with all the videos that we created for it:

The Planning Process:
I created a mind-map to demonstrate the timelines of the planning process for the Prelim and the Main Project:

As you can see the planning process for the Main film project was a much more intricate and diverse process than what took place for the Preliminary Exercise.
It is also worth noting that we only had a short amount of time for the construction of the Prelim compared to that of our main project.

The Filming Process:
The Filming process for the Prelim and the Main Project was very different, as they both had to focus on different things.
The Prelim focused on continuity style editing and filming, whilst although this was also important for the main shoot, we had to focus also on translating the target audience of our film across using Media Language.

My Filming Improvements:
Most of the information on how I improved is covered  in my previous post about my technical improvements, but I will summarise here on how I improved from the Prelim to the Main Project:

• Framing:
• An area I really felt I have improved in throughout the course of this project, as back near the beginning of the project at the test shoot this was very bad, and has improved to what it is now.
• However looking back on the Prelim, the framing was better there than in the test shoot, probably due to the large gap in time between the two, leading me to forget some of the skills I had learnt
• Lighting:
• We didn't use any lighting rigs for the Prelim.
• However with the lighting we were able to produce a much better looking final product, especially compared to the test shoot. I feel that I have really gained good experience with the Ari Lighting Rigs.

Lighting in the Main Shoot

Lighting in the Test Shoot

The Editing Process:
The editing process for the Prelim was very different than that for the Main Project. As we had a much diminished timescale for the Prelim our editing process was a lot less involved. For the Prelim we didn't do any grading or sound mixing, and these are things that I have definitely improved on throughout the project, and have helped to improve our final product.
Like for filming most of the information on how I have improved is in the previous post, but I will summarise it here:

• Grading:
• At the beginning of the project I had had no experience at all with grading, and I feel that i really know how to do it now. It is definitely not one of my editing strong point, but I am competent enough at it to grade a shot well.

Grading a shot on Adobe Premier Pro

• Sound Mixing:
• I didn't really have any experience at this before the Main project and really enjoyed it, especially trying to get the cuts on the beat.
• I was very pleased with the end sequence as the music fits really well with the cuts in the shots.

Construction Post 10: Looking back - reflections on our final outcome

Reflections on our final outcome:
Looking back at the project as a whole I feel that it has gone really well. Me and Noa work really well as a team, and manage to get the work done, whilst still having lots of fun whilst doing it.

I am extremely happy with the final outcome of the project, and could not think how it could be better. Everyone who has watched it so far has really liked it, even though I have seen it so many times now my view may be quite skewed.

I feel that as a team me and Noa have managed to work really well together, as the only group of 2 in our year its quite impressive we haven't driven each other crazy yet, but that just shows how similar our comedy is, and how well we can bounce ideas off of each other. I hope that our comedy and attitude towards this project have translated well into making a great final product.

My favourite parts of this project have been the shoot days, as they really allow you to see the ideas you have had in your head really come to life in front of you. I also enjoyed the initial planning of this project, as it was really interesting researching such a niche genre, and felt good to just let your creativity flow. I also found myself enjoying the sound mixing whilst editing, something I hadn't really done before, but I was extremely pleased with the outcome.

Noa and I have come a really long way with this project, and it has been a great experience. I feel like the sequence we have created is the best that we could achieve with the time and resources we had available, and whilst it may not be perfect, it is something we have created as a team and that we have put a lot of work into.

This project has been great and I feel like I have learnt new skills along the way which I will be able to transfer into my future endeavours outside of media.

A picture I feel encaptures the spirit of our project.

Construction Post 9: My technical learning curve

My Technical Learning Curve:
At the beginning of this project I was already competent in the use of the camera and continuity filming from our Preliminary exercise, however i was able to really consolidate and improve on certain aspects of my media skills:

• Framing:
• Throughout this project my use of framing in shots is something that has greatly improved. For instance in the shot below you can see how much my framing for the interview shots has improved.



Framing in the test shoot



Framing from the main shoot

• Lighting:
• You can also see in the above shots how my use of lighting has improved. The Ari Lighting rigs are something we haven't really used before in Media, and I really enjoyed getting to grips with them throughout this project and learning how to properly light a shot.

• Sound Mixing:



Me Sound Editing

• Throughout this whole project I have really enjoyed editing the music for our sequence. This is something I haven't really done before, but I really enjoyed the opportunity for me to experiment and create a really good sounding final product. I am particularly proud of the ending of our sequence, and how the music ties into it.

Construction Post 8: My personal contribution to the Edit Sessions

My personal contribution to Editing:
Me and Noa worked really close together when editing, this allowed us to make big decisions relative to our sequence quickly, and to not leave the other out of the loop.

Me and Noa editing together

We did this by leaving each other notes when editing separately and by meeting up at least once a day to edit together.

One of our notes

Me Sound Editing

Personally I excelled at editing the music for our sequence, and remixing it so that it would be the right length for our opening, and that it would work with the shots. One part I am particularly proud of is the end sequence, with each shot change on the chords in the music.

Me and Noa shared the rest of the editing with each other, and this allowed us to constantly work and improve on each other's work, and create comedy through cuts and pauses.

Construction Post 7: My personal contribution to Shoot Sessions

My Personal contribution to Filming:

Me filming with the camera.

As a pare me and Noa shared most of the work equally between each other. When it came to filming I filmed some of the stationary shots and helped to set up the locations and equipment needed for filming. 

The set-up for the interview shots that I prepped before hand.

Most of the time I was making sure everything was ready for Noa to film in each set-up.I enjoyed setting up each shot, and getting all the equipment needed ready e.g. the clapperboard.

Me applying bandages to Ray's head.

 I also helped with the costume of Toby (Ray) by applying the bandages for the main shoot session. I enjoyed getting Ray's costume ready.

I also starred in our sequence as Kenny, Toby's twin brother, which was something I enjoyed, and allowed me to try my hand at acting in front of the camera again (The only time I've done this before was in the prelim,)

Construction Post 6: Reflections on Edit Week 2

Edit Week 2, the editing continues:
Our second week of editing went really well. Off the back of the back-up shoot we were really able to improve on our sequence, and add in the shots we had created over the weekend. From this point forward we were in the home straight and just had to add the finishing touches to our sequence.

In our second edit week we focused quite a lot on the grading and sound mixing. I really enjoyed mixing the sound to fit our project, whilst Noa had a lot of fun grading. However we both did do both of these jobs when need be.

Grading shots

Grading really allowed us to polish our sequence, and helped to pull the whole thing together as a working unit. Lots of our shots were too yellow, and this lead to us having to grade them quite a lot, but they came out really well, and we were able to create a good final product.

Construction Post 5: The Back-up Shoot

The Back-up Shoot:

The cast and crew getting ready to film a shot

The back-up shoot was great, and was a good book-end for the filming needed for our project. We were able to re-shoot all the shots that we needed to do and get some new bonus shots to add to our sequence.

Me and Noa filming on the day

We didn't change much from the main-shoot, and were merely just improving on shots we had already filmed.

Back-up shoot-board page 1

Back-up shoot-board page 2

Back-up shoot-board page 3

Changes we made:

• We yet again changed Kenny's character so that he could have more relevant dialogue to the sequence, and that it would create humour without being too over the top.
• For all of the interview shots we asked the actors to try and stay in role as we asked them various questions. This worked really well and allowed us to get some really good natural feeling dialogue for each character. This also allowed us to fill the gaps we noticed when editing, and make Toby's interview a bit longer as he is the main character.
• We improved upon the lighting for shot 16 by closing the curtains and turning on the main lights. This meant that Joyce wasn't a silhouette in the shot, and we could see her expressions.

Improved Shot 16

• We also filmed bonus shots of Kenny, and Joyce that we could cross cut into their interviews, e.g. the tinder shot and the homeschooling shot.

Construction Post 4: Reflection on Edit Week 1

Edit Week 1:
Our first edit week was really enjoyable, and it was really fun watching back through the improved shots we had taken in the main-shoot.

Me Editing our sequence

Even at this point our sequence was much better than the rough cut. However our first week of editing did allow us to pick up on small improvements we needed to make in the back-up shoot and overall decide if we needed the back-up shoot, which we did.

Improvements we picked up on:

• We still had some issues with the lighting in shot 16 as Joyce was still silhouetted against the windows.
• There were still balancing issues, as even though Toby is the main character, he has the shortest interview time.
• Kenny still didn't feel quite right, as the dialogue we wrote for him felt much to over-the-top even for our project, and didn't really feel connected to the rest of the sequence.
• Joyce was mostly fine, but some of the dialogue needed a bit of tweaking.
• We also needed some more shots to cross-cut in with the Joyce and Kenny interviews.

Construction Post 3: Our post-production kit

Our Post-production Kit:
We only used one piece of software for the post production stage of our filming:

• Adobe Premier Pro:
• This is a really great bit of technology for editing. The different tracks for both audio and video allowed us to use multi-track editing, this helped us to maintain control over our project and allowed ease of editing for the editing of shots. We were also able to see the rushes of all our raw footage, and pull clips straight from there onto the timeline, this allowed us to easily pick the best takes of each shot and use just the audio, just the video, or both from our raw footage. Premier Pro also allowed us to create titles. as we hadn't planned to do anything complicated for the graphics we decided to just use Premier instead of any different software, and we were really happy with how our graphics turned out.

Adobe Premier Pro

Construction Post 2: Our Main Shoot

Our Main shoot:
After our test-shoot we had the main-shoot, this was to create the footage needed for our finished product, and improve upon the problems we picked out in the test shoot.
For our main-shoot we didn't change much shot-wise from the test shoot. The only shots we completely changed were the walking around the house shots, the first shot, the end sequence, and we also added some bonus shots.





Main-shoot board Page 1

Main-shoot board Page 2

Main-shoot board Page 4

Main-shoot board Page 3

On the day me and Noa worked really well together and were able to finish the shoot in relatively good time.

Me filming a shot of Ray as Toby

Our Improvements:

• We fixed a lot of the shots by completely eliminating the puppet from our sequence. Although it was a nice idea, it was just too clunky, and felt out of place with the rest of the sequence. We did consider purely having the puppet for the interview shots, but this just made what was meant to tie the whole sequence together, the interview shots, feel out of place.

• By recasting Toby a lot of our acting and dialogue problems were fixed. Ray was a massive help to our project, he bought character to Toby, and was always happy to assist us if we needed a hand.

The Cast and Crew sitting down to a healthy lunch

• We were also able to fix the other character issues by completely rewriting all the Kenny scenes in our sequence. This allowed us to create more humour and fix the character balancing problems we picked up on in the test-shoot.

• Both me and Noa were particularly happy with shot 5, the opening shot. By having Joyce entering Toby's room and the camera follow her fixed the whole narrative and believably issue with the shot, that we picked up on in the test shoot.

Our new opening shot

• For the interviews we improved the lighting and framing. we did this by better positioning the camera and actually using the lighting rigs. This made a hugely noticeable improvement to our footage. The interview shots also worked very well in general with all the dialogue and characters working really well. Joyce really embodied the character we had created.

An improved interview shot

• The bonus shots were very useful as they allowed us to add in humour and good character moments that we could then cross cut into the sequence where we feel they were needed.

One of the bonus shots

Another bonus shot