evaluation

This is our recorded evaluation, we decided to do it in a podcast form as we felt it showed our creative side and allowed us to get across all the information we needed.

feedback evaluation

Feed back by user4290811

This is our second podcast consisting of feedback from peers taking about our film, giving both strengths and weaknesses about it.

Feedback for Final Film

We have received some professional feedback for our film from one of the other media teachers, he has expressed that he likes the idea of our film and likes that we have chosen and followed a certain style of film (film Noir) that not a lot of others did. He commented on our editing and felt that the black and white style that we chose was very effective to to time era we were aiming for with the music linking it as well to the time era.

When discussing what we could do better next time for improvement, he explained that some of our camera shots and edits could of been improved, for example, we cut out certain body parts (cutting out someone's head) and the shot wasn't in the right angle and we lost some of the meaning, to improve this, we will have a look at our film and maybe cut the scene down before the camera error or re-film those specific sections of the film. Another weakness mentioned was that he felt that we rushed the story and should try and slow it down to build tension and not rush through the story, for example, when the hustler realizes he can play snooker and plays well all happened too quickly, he suggested that we should slow that down with a different choice of shots or story to get the full effect of the story and build the tension up as much as possible.

Final Film

Reflection of Work: This is our final film which we have fully edited and added all the music too and made corrections to, in our view going with the feedback given from our sample and first drafts of the film, making it as good as we possibly could. This is the final product of nearly half a year of working, researching and planning. personally feeling that it had paid off and we were able to show off the skills and development that we had made over the last 2 years, using everything we had learnt in both in side and outside of lessons to produce our project.

Facebook Feedback

We uploaded all of our tasked (Film, Poster and Trailer) on to facebook to get feedback from all of our peers,we did this by creating a page allowing people to both comment and like our projects, this went down really well and was successful, getting comments such as :great Film :)" and "I enjoyed watching that". so looking back at these comments was really nice for m,e and lucien and the feed back that we got back was mainly positive so we were happy. Uploading our stuff onto facebook was a good idea as it allowed us to get an even broader range of comments for our film and other tasks.

Trailer

Reflection of Work: This is our first draft of our radio trailer, there are a couple of things that we want to change and feel could be improved, but overall, we felt that our trailer was very effective in using sounds from the film with he voice and the music from added in as well. This was a result of the research that we put in, and that helped and made our creation and creativity a lot easier when producing it. Allowing us to show off all the skills that we had learnt and developed.

poster

Reflection of Work: This is our final poster that we edited in Photoshop, using our own photography and editing the colour and size of the picture. we made the red ball stand out to show the emphasize of the hustling and also to show off our own skills when using Photoshop. I felt that the poster was a success and is good compared to real life posters and fits all the conventions that a trailer should be targeting. This was the result of all our research and planning coming up to deigning, all the sketches and planning, allowing us to have a complete visualization of what we were doing when creating the poster.

Film Poster on bus stop

For Further Advertising, we got our film poster onto local bus stops to make sure our film would get full viewing. Doing this gets our film out into the public for all to see so our target audience can see when our film is coming out.

Trailer Research

Refeltction of work: Looking at these two trailers helped me get some ideas of how to use sound and timing in our trailer, helping us choose what kind of sound we needed and whether we needed certain sound from pour film and the type of music needed in our trailer, we used these two trailers as they were both linked to gambling and were in the same category as our film. Looking at these film trailers gave us further ideas for our on trailer, but most importantly, gave us a full understanding of the conventions that were needed for our own radio trailer. but we had to take into consideration that the trailers we looked at were not radio trailers but we still could see the conventions needed.

Poster Sketch

this was our original sketch of our film poster, we will use this as a rough guide to help us decide and produce our film poster. We found that having this draft of pour poster made creating our poster a lot easier as we could work around the initial ideas made and be able to be creative with what we have and make the poster as good as we can. Looking at our draft, I feel that it was very successful in the fact that it showed a clear view of what the type of theme and genre we were going for. We wanted top make sure that our poster could portray the message without using much text and we felt that it has done that with the use of colours and imagery used.

First Draft

Reflection of work: this was our first draft of our film and from this we have received some further ideas of what we are going at add to it, we are aiming to add more music in and also edit some of the scenes, whether that involves shortening them or even adding a transaction, but overall, we felt that our film for a first draft was successful, but still needs some work. From the feedback and watching the film ourselves, we have learnt a lot of what we have to improve and also what we would do next time. It helped us with our development and for our future filming we are going to refer back to all our plans and other research work to make sure we cover everything.

Ancillary Task 2 (group meeting)

For our second Ancillary task, we decided to go on another route of advertising and produce and radio trailer. During our meeting we made a rough draft of a script for our radio trailer with another page of brainstorms for types of music and effects we would have in the trailer, we will aim to use these notes as a guideline for making our film trailer (radio)

Group Meeting

After re shooting with our new actors, we found that we were able to get more filming done with a lot more quality footage, this is due to our decision to change our actors. Our new actors were more flexible and helped a lot more with behind the scene issues as well such as setting the scene an getting everything sorted.

Overall our second shoot was so much better, s we got all the filming we had set out to done with no problems, and each scene didn't take so long to film, with the 2 new actors being a good decision by us two.

poster creation

Here's me on the design of the poster, me and lucien sat down and talked with brainstorms of what the poster should look like, thinking about the colours and the design, because we needed the poster to fit our theme but, we also came to the conclusion that we didn't want lot of text on the poster, so we had to make sure that the imagery used on the poster was clear enough to help tell the story. the picture shows me working on the poster, using the colours and the designing idea that we were going for. planning to use this as guidelines for our real poster, referring back to it as much as possible.

Creation Progress

Reflection of work: this is a print screen of Final Cut express, showing our progression during the creation of our film, showing, the sound, clips and effects used in our film, this was the main editing part of our film.

ACTOR PROFILE

Here is a basic Profile of our 3 main actors with images of them

Tomas Noad

Age: 17

Height: 5 ft 10

Lewis Fincham:

Age: 17

Height: 5 ft 5

Richard Cartwright:

Age: 17

Height: 6 ft 1

communication

Me and Lucien would communicate through both text and blackberry messenger (bbm) so we could always make sure we both new what was going on and neither of us ever forgot what we were suppose to be doing.

Trailer Script

"I used to be known as the hustler...

going from bar to bar...

playing the game the way i felt it should be played....

but it wasnt all easy sailing, coming to a sudden end...

cos sometimes even the best...

get played"

An Epic Drama staring Tom Noad....

shows the story of a guy, that thought he had it all....

but lost it...

"No Please...

I can get your money back"

In cinemas Summer 2012

This is a rough idea of what we want our script to be for our trailer, we will use this as a guideline for when we are recording the soundtrack. The Italic font in quotation marks shows the quotes from the films that we are planning on using, and the other text shows what the main voice over will be telling the audience. we wanted to use quotes from the film as we felt it engaged more with the audience and told more of the story, getting the attention of the audience to want to come and watch the film.

Group Meeting

After viewing our sample scene and also starting the filming for our final draft, Lucien and I got together to discuss the situation of our actors. we came to the conclusion that our current actors (Bill Cooke and Connor Barclay) needed to be changed as they didn't work to our needs and expectations, so decided to get 2 new actors in (Richard Cartwright and Lewis Fincham) that would meet our needs so we could re-film.

working progress

This is me working on our film, going through some of the photos we were considering to use for our film poster. we did all pour work on the Apple Macs as they have all the best software to create our project.

Ancillary Task 1 (group meeting)

For our Ancillary task, we desided to make a film poster and a radio trailer for our film, after we had sat down and talked about our poster, we decided to make notes and a first initial draft of our poster, using these ideas and the draft as a guideline for when we come to making our poster

Research and Planning grade: 19/20

Targets:

• Upload sample scene
• Upload music/sounds from Garageband experiment to soundcloud and embed

Media Poster Analysis Research

Media poster analysis research

Reflection of Work: This piece of work is part of our research section, this involved us looking at posters from selected films similar to our own, to help us see the conventions needed and to also help us get ideas for our own poster. we looked at placements of Titles, Names, Images, Slogans and other items added. then going into more detail by talking about these conventions and how they all complement each other into representing the meaning and also the genre of the film. I felt that this was a very helpful task as it gave me an incite into the conventions used in film posters, giving me ideas of colours and fonts to use when making my poster, to make sure that I make my poster match my genre and my target audience.

Pitch Presentation of our work

Untitled from Tomas Noad on Vimeo.

Reflection of Work: When performing our pitch, we talked about a number of things, first our story board and the basics of our film, then showed our sample scene as seen earlier. We got some feedback from this, that we will aim to work on, such as making sure that we get the microphone on the camera working to get the full use of the sound, plus the criticisms of not having enough reaction shots, involving the view of our actors face within the scenes, we will take aboard these comments and make our final film better by using these points as an advantage. However, we also had a number of positive comments, saying that they liked a lot of the shots used within the scene, and the general idea of the film, suggesting that even without the dialogue, they could still get an understanding of the film and the meaning behind it. This helped with our planning and basic media skills s we could get further ideas from peers and also share our own ideas with everyone.

Props

The above is what got so that we were able to shoot. These were available when we went to the place that we wanted to shoot at. This meant that we could save money in order to purchase other essential props. I feel that being able to use these props for no cost was very helpful because then it enabled us to use costs for stuff such as costume. This also allowed us to have money for emergence purposes in case something was to go wrong during the course of production.

Prop List

• Camera (Sony HD)
• Tripod
• Lights
• Costume (Suit Trousers with white shirt plus tie)
• Pool and Snooker balls
• Pool and Snooker Cues

Sample Scene

Reflection of Work: Our sample scene was shown to our class and we got some feedback that you will hopefully see in our pitch. we had great pleasure in making our sample scene, but had some problems on the way that we will have to make sure don't happen in our final film. We didn't have Dialogue or any on screen sounds because we didn't set the camera to the correct setting but we covered that up my using our music from Garage Band to play over the top, giving our scene an up beat tempo, however this is an area we will cover when creating our final film.

Because of the problems that suffered in our sample scene, we are going to focus on these and do many trial runs before we film our final film. This was a big part of our development as we learnt how to use all the equipment.

Contract For Actors

This is a contract that me and lucien devised as a mutual bond between us and our actors so we could have full trust in them and rely on them to be there for us whenever we needed to film. We felt that this was needed as some people we considered could be unreliable and we wanted to have actors that would be there for us.

Garage Band Experiments

Our Garage Band music for sample scene by user4290811

Reflection of Work: During preparation for our short sample scene, we got some time to practise using the software Garage Band, this is a music software that allows us to create and use a lot of music of our choice that fits our film. We found this a great help and experience as we could experiment with lots of ideas to fit our film. Finally creating a piece that we liked and felt suited our film, that we plan to use in both our sample scene and also our final film. We will also aim to come back to Garage Band and use our experience to create more music and sounds for our final film. What made this experience, was the ability to not just create music but also ambient sounds that can be used in our final piece.

Digital 10 shot Story board of our film

Story board for our short film

Reflection of work: This is our first draft of our 10 shot story board, in this we looked at all the possible shots we were thinking of taking for our film, showing the audience the type of shots and conventions we would be using and describing these shots in detail to give readers and full understanding of the film. We got some feedback from this, suggesting that some of our shots didn't show exactly what we were intending too, and we will capitalize on this by making sure that in out final film we will use clearer shots and descriptions to portray our meaning. we also got some positive feedback, saying the shots used were very good, and that they were looking forward to seeing the final film, as they felt we presented our film in a way that would appeal for all.

This piece of work is similar to our Proposal as it holds a lot of the information we will need for our final filming, setting guidelines for what the film should have and shouldn't have in it. But we wont just use this, we will also use the feedback that we got from the class, using their ideas in our film as well as our own.

Team Meeting Before Photoshoot

Me and Lucien met up a couple of days before our first photo shoot, here we decided on a time and place for all of our actors to meet with a prop list list for both us and them.

Me and Lucien:

• Camera
• lights
• Tripod
• Spare Costumes
• Pool and Snooker Balls
• Cue

Actors:

• Suit Trousers (Black)
• Tie (preferably black and skinny)

Planning and evaluating our Digital story Board

This is me and lucien working on our Digital film poster, we would go through our draft, putting posttest notes on the things we felt needed to change and also the things that we felt were good. Also on these posttest notes, we had feed back from other members of the class, having things that we could improve on or do differently in our actual film. I felt that this was a great success as it gave us an in depth understanding of our whole film and what we needed to do step by step, knowing what had to be improved for the real filming and what we would make sure we would do. this was a good part of our planning as it helped us develop our skills for the real filming.

To Do List

1. Complete our digital story board ready for filming
2. get actors together and text them all the details
3. collect camera and equipment ready to film
4. Call the destination asking permission to film (pool hall)
5. Meet and film scenes required
6. Edit scenes
7. Receive feedback then edit or re-film of necessary

Mood Board of Inspirations

We created two mood boards during our preparation, we looked at all the things that we thought would inspire us and help us produce some ideas for our final film, first of all looking at images from other films and also images from the time era that we are aiming at. We used these as inspiration to help us make sure we can get our costume and scenery as accurate as possible.

We then looked at film posters as inspiration, looking at films that we felt complimented our genre, and would give us ideas about what our film poster could incorporate. Giving us such ideas of the black and white effects, suggesting the time era that we are aiming for.

10 still image analysis on "The Hustler"

10 still image analysis

Reflection of work: For this task, we were all asked to find a film of our choice, similar to our own ideas of a film and analyse 10 still shots. I used the film 'The Hustler', I chose this film as I felt it complemented my own ideas in what I wanted in my own film. During this task, I looked at specific conventions such as camera angles, setting, characters, lighting and some others, looking at how these films used them and how they used them to signify a meaning in the scene (E.G. Using lighting to suggest an importance of one character). From this we gained the knowledge to go and shoot our own scene a use the conventions to portray a meaning for the audience. This helped in our own development as it gave us ideas for what to do in our film and this is the film that inspired us to chose the genre that we did.

Proposal

Treatment for film a2

View more documents from Tommy Noad.

Reflection of Work: With our proposal we did half each. The overall view of our proposal is to give the audience a clear first draft of our film, explaining everything character to setting, style costumes and a rough draft of the story its self. This is an important piece of work as it lets readers grasp the overall idea and meaning of the film. When doing this, I made sure I mentioned everything, making sure that the film was described as thorough as possible, making it easy to understand and also easy for us to understand so we can comeback later on in filming to help us. This piece of work is also very important in a development stages of our project as it will keep us on track and has a list of all the props and other things we will need in our film. we will use this as a guideline in every thing we do throughout the film as it has every piece of information on it from all our planning process and it the final version of a planning film.

Short film narrative notes

Reflection of work: As an extra, I felt that it would be handy to make a quick diagram of the basic narrative structure to use in our film, setting out the titles that we will follow throughout our film, with a short time limit at the bottom, showing where each action should take place. I feel that this was nessasary because it just helped us get a further understanding of our film and what conventions we needed to follow to make our film a success.

Planning for film

Reflection of work: This piece of work is continuing on from our mind map, but here we are breaking down our fully chosen idea and breaking it down into a simple story line, showing the middle, beginning and end (equilibrium, disequilibrium and equilibrium). Branching off to explain the story in brief so in future lessons and planning we can come back and use this as a rough draft to make our film. I felt that doing this diagram was very useful as it let use go wild with our idea, branching off to have ideas of our film, this was also a easy but productive way to do a first plan as it let us sit down and talk about the film and the story as a whole.

Target Audience Profiling

Typical Viewer:

Demographic:

Gender - Male
Age - 14 to 24

Social class - Middle class, they would be educated at least up until A- levels or otherwise further. In their free time they would be interested going out and socialising with others much like them selves.

Psychographics:

Music taste: jazz as well as hip hop.

Hobbies: Watching films, listening to music and going on social networking sites.

Our target audience are interested in modern type films however are still open to past production. Other films that they would watch consist things like The Hustler:

Our audience being such a wide range means that we appeal to a lot of people. However, we predict that the bulk of our audience will come from the ages 17-20. Being attracted to hustle type films, our audience will be looking for certain conventional things within the film so this is where research becomes key.

Film Ideas

Reflection of work: In this lesson, we were in our partners making a mind map of film ideas of our own, splitting the sections into genre, characters and other areas to give ourselves a wide range of choice. we started off my choosing an area that interested us such as gambling and then used our mind map to branch off into other sections that link to gambling as ideas for films. I feel that this helped a great deal as it helped break down ideas individually so we could have clear views on films, but also have real examples of films and directors to look at for ideas in those certain areas of our topic.

First Team Meeting

This was our first team meeting, so during this first meeting, me and Lucien sat down and talked about rough idea about what we would consider doing, and then started brainstorming some of our notes, with sub headings such as Genre, so we could come up with lots of story lines and initial ideas about what our project will be on.

Short film analysis: 'About a Girl' Notes

Short film analysis, about a girl notes

Reflection of work: This piece of work is another version of the mind map used before, but this time in note form, taking notes as we watched the film of any thing we deemed important to mention in other work, and felt was relevant to the task ahead. From this piece of work, we saw all the different type of shots, effects and messages that go into a short film. Doing this piece of work was a ,massive help for our development as it helped us see the thought we needed to put in to our shot list. making us become aware that we need to incorporate into our own film. This work was a success because it covered all the conventions and had so many hiden messages so in our own film, we will use this as a guideline to making sure we have all the correct conventions.

Drama: 'About a Girl' shot analysis.

Drama about a girl mind map

Reflection of work: During this lesson, we were viewing a film called 'About a Girl' and looking at the type of shots used. seeing whether this short film used the conventions correctly. One of the main targets of this lesson was see how the director represented the characters and the meaning of the story, we made a mind map of the many meanings and clues of what we could see from the film. From this film, I learnt several ways of portraying certain characters and meanings within a film, whether it meant using specific camera angles or language within the film itself. From this we are aiming to use all the conventions that this short film used, referring back to it as we go to make sure that we are using the conventions correctly. The three main conventions we learnt from this short film was Age, class and gender, we will use these notes to make sure our film shows all of these conventions in the correct way.

Genre and Media Language Essay - "The Insane"

The insane

We also looked at another short film which was the "insane", this is a short horror film which showed the conventions of a different type of genre an gave us a lot of different ideas for when thinking of our own film, we are planning using this film as a reference for conventions as it shows many different ways to frame shots and portray signs. For this essay I got a Grade A, to get the grade A, I made sure I improved and used the skills I achieved from the last essay, making sure I used all the key concepts when necessary, but also making sure that I keep the analysis clear and easy to understand. when doing future essays, I will make sure I use all the skills used in this essay, but then expand on that my making points more detailed and in depth, further securing the A grade level.

Media Language Essay - "Smashed"

Media Language Essay

Reflection on work: Over the first draft and my final draft, I was able to move from a Grade C to a Grade B. I feel that during my essay writing my description and my analysis is very clear but still in depth. But however when reflecting back on my first draft, I had realised that I didn't use key concepts, so when redrafting, I made sure I used all the key concepts necessary such as "Signifies" to make my work better. when doing future essays, I will make sure that I use all key concepts from the beginning, hopefully being able to get as higher grade as possible from the first draft.

"Smashed" Film

This is a short film we were asked to analyse so that we could look at how the film was shot and how the producer framed everything. We wrote an essay about the short film to be able to understand the different technical things used with in the film. The essay allowed us to look in the film in more depth and see how the director portrays his message to his target audience. As well as this we also looked at the technical codes and hidden meanings behind them. In terms of our own film, looking at these films will help us have an understanding of the type of shots that we will be using, and not just shots, but the type of sound both diegetic and non diegetic sound. From looking at smashed, I learnt a lot from the poster and the opening scene, learning how to show messages through objects in the film, such as the "egg getting smashed" in my film i will try to incorporate messages such as that in to my own project.

The Beginning of A2 Media

This is my FIRST lesson as a year 13 media student and as i enjoyed AS, i am looking forward to a successful year and my projects that lay ahead. During AS i looked into many new ways to develop my thinking in order to produce my project (website). This year i will be working with new people to create another Project (a short film) with the aim to pass media with a high grade with my developmental and creative thinking being improved and pushed to a new level.

Like i says above, this year i will be producing a short film within the space of a 5 minute time period. during this year i will look to show all of my developmental and creative skills from planning the production to filming. I will explain my working progress throughout using this blog.

Welcome Tom!

Congratulations on your place on the A2 Media course. I look forward to working with you this year and supporting you in achieving your goals.
Mrs Ward

Grouping up

This is me and my partner Lucien Abou -Zied, we will be completing this project as a pair, making the decisions together separating the work equally ti make sure we both get the best grade possible for the project.