Letter . .

We have produced a letter for the people that we would like to include in our media text just to make sure we knew how many people we would have for definate.

This is letter provided -

'14/12/09
Dear Sir/Madam,
As part of our AS Media Studies course for 2009/2010 we need to produce a film opening. To ensure that we have the best opening possible we will need many extras, we would be delighted if you would take part in this with us for the filming of our first scene on the 18th December at approximately 1.00pm at Sheldon Heath Community Arts College (for address see below*). The clothes you will require will be smart casual as we are hoping to get the effect of an incident at a place of work.

If this is of no problem you may also be required to film for our second scene at a later date for the “Wedding Scene” we know it will be taking place at some point over the Christmas half term. The venue for this scene is by Sheldon Country Park, but if you are able to come we will arrange a meeting point for all cast. For this you will need to bring smart clothes as if attending a Wedding ceremony. E.g.: Boys in suits and girls in dresses - weather permitted.
Bring umbrellas to both events.

Scene 1 – Incident Scene - 18th December 2009
Attending
Not Attending

Scene 2 - The Wedding Scene – Christmas Half term
Attending
Not Attending
Unsure until date is arranged

Best Regards,
Jodie Mills, Carlaina Breese and Remarni Miller.
If there are any problems please get in contact with the 3 of us through Sheldon Heath Community Arts College.

*Sheldon Heath Community Arts College
Sheldon Heath Road
Sheldon
BirminghamB
26 2RZ
0121-464 4428 '


We are hoping that most of the people we have asked will be able to come and join in because it will make it easier for us and make our opening look more professional.

Rating for our film . .

I have been looking at ratings of films that are of a similar genre to ours, films such as;
The Notebook - 15
P.S: I love you - 12a
Titanic - 12


So our rating would be around this age, depending on weither we would decide to add sexual content and foul language. Up until now I hadn't thought of this but I'd probably suggest that we did use these because things like this attract different types of audiences. So if I were to include these I would say the rating would be a 15. Obviously the films above have used these factors and have been very succesful so I think that is a good reason to use them in ours.

I found the above peice of information on the offical BBFC website so I know this is information I can rely on. To make sure I wasn't incorrect with the rating I would give our film I thought I should check with official rating charts.
Things that are on this such as; Sex, Language, Nudity and Maybe violence.
There will be a lot of things like this included because we would be showing both of their lives and the troubles in it.

Song . .

After much diliberation I think we have finally chosen a song to put on our opening, we did prefer our first options but obviously they were copy righted so it has become apprent that we have to find something that is lacking in copy right. We used a website that we found through google which had many links to sites that would provide us with what we were looking for.

On this we found this website - http://www.joshwoodward.com/music/

It fits the genre of our film and the words fit with the situation our Lead role is in.

The song we have chosen is call "I'm Letting Go"

We can download the song for free which is also usefull.

Health and Safety Checks . .

Location 1
Back of School

Risks -
1. Car Park near by
2. Falling down stairs
3. People throwing items from windows above
4. Its now unused

How we will prevent the risks -

1. To prevent any risks from happening by the car park we will ensure that we stay away from it but if there is any need to go into the car park (only if there are no cars around) we will make sure we have a couple of people looking out.

2. When running down the small stairs we will make sure there is nothing on the stairs that they can trip up over such as water and loose stones.

3. We will film out of school hours so classrooms will only be in use by teachers, it also means there will be less cars on the car park as a lot of teachers leave as school ends.

Location 3
The Wedding Scene

Risks -
1. Cars
2. Falling over on gravel
3. Animals

How will we prevent these risks -
1. Have someone looking out at all times, on a path ready to tell if a car is approaching and at the top of the road.

2. Make sure people wear sutiable shoes for the unsteady ground and may be slippy so make sure there is also grip on the shoes.

3. Just ensure that the children don't go out of view also as it is winter time hopefully the Anmials will but put away.

Location 2 -
The House

Risks -
1. When she throws bottles off the dressing table
2. Initially smashing the Photo Frame
3. Throwing the Photo frame at the wall

How we will prevent these risks -
1.Make sure all the bottles on the desk are soft plastic such as moisteriser bottles, but if we need something to look like a perfume bottle we will use a harder plastic but put something soft on the floor out of shot and make sure they land on that.

2. When smashing the photoframe we will wear goggles, gloves (the photoframe will be plastic) and wrap the photoframe in a cloth to ensure none of the shards of plastic fly out.

3. Throwing the photoframe at the wall could be dangerous because it could fly back in the direction it was thrown, so we will make sure that as soon it is thrown she will move out of the way. Also we will smash the picture before it is thrown and therefore she ill not have to throw it as hard/fast and would probably mean that it wouldn't bounce back as easily.

Who is needed for each day of Filming . .

Today we worked out between the three of us who we would need for each day of filming;

Location 1 - The Tragedy Scene.

Actors We Will Need/Would like to have but need to finalise:
Stephen Mills
Jessica Bradley
Ellis Osborne
Karina Miller
Remarni/Jodie/Carla - MAYBE if short on extras.
Amy Gamble
Suzanne Young
Jade Tolliday
Aaron Collins
Ashley Wager
Baljot Randhawa
Maybe Teachers if there are some near

Location 2 - The Weeding Scene

Actors we will need/would like to have:
Stephen Mills
Leanne Hilton
Rebecca Osborne
Ellis Osborne
Jessica Bradley
Lauren Bradley
Grace Mount
Daniel Hammond
Suzanne Young
Matthew Gibbs
Aaron Collins
Karon Breese


Location 3 - House Scene.

Only Actor Needed:

Leanne.


There will probably be actors added or taken away but these are the people that we are hoping to use, any more would be a bonus. But we just need to finalise agreements with them x

Mood Board

This is an image of our mood board, I think it represents the mood of our film well. The use of the black and white pictures shows that the majority of our opening will be quite sombre. Also the images we have chosen show the story of what happens to the characters in the opening.
e.g; a woman crying and wearing black obviously mourning which is the same situation as in our opening.

Storyboard !

We have now completed our storyboard but have not yet put on the timings of each shot as we are unsure how long each shot will be.

I have took pictures of the story board as a whole and then individual photos:

Sheet 1.



Sheet 2.

Sheet 3.













Sheet 4.

Romantic Films . . .

I have been doing some research into other Romantic films, I thought I would go onto the BBC website to see if I was able to gather some information which we could possibly use to our advantage.
I found this survey that showed peoples favourite Romantic films in Northen Ireland, I thought this was good informantion and that I would maybe research a selection of the different films on the chart and find what similarities and differences there were with our film opening and the other film openings.



http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/winter/valentines/films.shtml

Better version . ..

This is just a better version of the song I had previously put on here, this one isn't live so you can hear it better.

Although we are unsure on weither we can use this due to copyright restrictions so we will have to find this out. If not we will have to make some music on the apple macs garrage band and use that xx

Preliminary Task . .

We recorded and edited our Preliminary a while ago, but we had been unable to upload it to youtube because of some of the effects we had and it said it would of have to have got rid of them. So we uploaded them in a different way and that worked.

I think that our preminlinary task works really well, I think that we have done our door shot well because we made sure that Remarnis had was in the same place as it was in the last shot and the door in the same place.

We wanted to give our preliminary task a bit more of a story line and some humour because we didn't want it to be boring, but still needed to included the shots and we thought that by just doing a "thumb war" it was an easy way to do this.

The random bit of squeeky voice at the end is because in normal voice it sounded a bit wrong, so we thought that we'd change it to this. Although looking back it probably would of sounded better if we'd have just left it.

I think that our use of the 180 degree shot and continuity shot worked really well though over all xx

Locations..

We finally have pictures of a possible location, be we are unsure if we'd be able to use it because it is outside a church. And we haven't been able to get in touch with them yet when we've phoned.

Although we do have another location for the wedding in mind which is just near here.




xx

Plot Has Changed . . .

The original plot to our opening has now changed. In our first idea the wedding would happen first and the incident would happen last. But we have now switched these round as we thought it would make more sense this way.

How the Plot now runs;
- Incident with man running from the building (Maybe phone call over the top)
- Lead Female in her bedroom crying and throwing picture at the wall
- *Relective here* Wedding scene (Maybe black and white)



Things I need to add to my blog are:
- Picture of Mood Board
- Example of Questionnaire
- Storyboard
- Peliminary Task
- Heath and Safety Checks for our locations
- Filming Schedule (Including actors, props and locations for differents days)

x

Maybe A change of song . . .

Although I haven't wrote on here we have still been working, we have filmed at edited our preliminary task which we still need to upload when it has been put onto youtube.


We've also thought about a new song for our opening but it is still not definate, I think it will be easier to slot in a song once we have got the images together and what song gives it the best feel.

This is another possible song we could use;



xx

Update on Progress ....

We have now finalised our lead male - Stephen Mills
We have 2 definate extra's - Suzanne Young
Matthew Gibbs


And have chosen a song to be in our opening -


Although this is a live version so you cannot hear it aswell, but ours will be a clearer version

xx

What we've done...

We have now finished our Storyboard, Moodboard and Questionnaire so we're making really good progress :) xx

Change of plan ..

As our opening was starting to seem like a trailer we have decided to change the layout of it,
instead of showing the accident last we are doing it first
and having the wedding video last.

although this doesn't make sense, it will when it all comes together !! xx

Update..

Since I last wrote in my blog we have come up with 3 targets for this week;
1. Finalise the Lead Female, Lead Male and Extra's - We have finalised the Female Lead.
2. Look at Locations -We have been to look at different locations but have nothing finalised.
3. Finish Mood Board and start story board - Have finished mood board, and started story board :)

So we're pretty much on track but still have got alot of planning to do,

took some pictures of a couple of possible locations and will upload them soon !!

Our Leading Lady..

As we'd finalised who our Lead role was I decided I would put a picture of her on my blog !

The Plot...

The first idea's to our 2 minute opening ..

1. Start with the Institution Image.
2. Have an old looking wedding video with no sound with a phone call playing over the top telling a women (the women in the wedding video) being told their has been an acciden involving her husband. (also at this point there will be actors names)
3. Line goes dead and screen goes black showing name of the film (which is still undecided)
4. There will then be the same women asleep in bed looking ditressed.
5. Zooms into womens face to show "dreams"
6. Flashing images of people running from a building (from the accident) also flashing images of the husband and wife arguing, and possitive pregnancy test.
7. Women shoots up and a wipe will come up saying "earlier that day"

We think that will cover the 2 minutes, but we need to make a story board to cover all the shots we will need.

Looking at other similar media texts

We now have our groups - Carlaina Breese, Remarni Miller and myself.
Our film genre - Romantic/Tragedy

and we also have our main actress and few people that are willing to be extra's.

But to get an idea of film's like ours I'm going to look at some openings on youtube and analyse them, and maybe get some idea's of what works and what doesnt.



The Notebook.
(Only first 2 minutes)
The first two minutes of this film doesn't give much away, and is slow moving.
But like other openings they have the name of the institution and the names of the actors and the film.
Although this opening is nothing like ours will be I like it because it uses interesting lighting and I like the slow music in the background.