Shamedia Productions has put a lot of effort in the short opening of our movie “Aftermath”. First of all we tried to compare our opening to other openings of Hollywood movies. Why Hollywood movies? Because they include a list of points that makes a good movie attracting a big number of audience because of its “mainstream-like” build-up. While filming we took notice of the points that have to be in the opening, such as the story line and the different camera shots/editing that affect the whole movie. Our final result is very good and we are very happy about what we achieved.
Our opening is very experimental, the genre is a mix of two genres that do not really fit together and the storyline is very extreme compared to other teenage dramas. We tried to make the opening really special so that the people can tell, 'this isn't just and ordinary movie'. The filming methods are very important in this case, we try to make the pictures/shots tell the story and not through the actors.
For example the movie 'Irreversible' (2002) by Gaspar Noé is very special in the way that the movie has been filmed. The filming technique is different than ours but the shots tell the story as well sometimes, for e.g. a person is being filmed in a bizzarre way and you can actually characterize this character only while looking at him and at the way the camera shot is taken and the movement of the camera while filming. It is really difficult that filming method that's why I embed the trailer of Irreversible. It is a very violent and bizzarre movie, it has been played at the 'festival de Canne, and a lot of people went out of the theatre while the movie was played because there is a lot of violence and other scenes that are relied to perversion. The movie is really good, because of the special filming method and storyline, it is really realistic and shocking at the same time, but that is the special aspect of this movie and through these aspects the movie becomes very special, like a piece of art, everyone has a different taste and criticizes the artwork differently. The storyline can't be compared with our opening/movie, the comparison is just to show how the use of filming methods is shown in 'Irreversible'.
I couldn't embed the video because the link has been disabled. Here's the URL to the opening of 'Irreversible'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gsz_sPTshk&ytsession=XAGEHK7Oa6QQMvcc-p2Y_fPTlW0PJs-m6pKTT204nBEnaVKPV3MrQwVxCDFoGBxwj6dQRfjXpq-_HOl0T9WuUU8K7f9jGdMqdrjUQ7zesIt37M0nUR_2A3z6Q2lWWfIiiSJkcs4dRG6CuB3H0fLveo8fTlBigJpGqFa0OF3loC9RtWscA5yi2Lfe0YBx4byOXUDZisMM1s85bCsHdVGYJJOgKk7kfPeGsqWhxJQ-yuBgS0X8pcq75eHwC8vyvoyeMNDb56A1E6M
· How does your media product represent particular social groups?
First we wanted to do a horror movie, but after a while we noticed that it wasn’t as easy as it looks. In horror movies there is often a lot of sfx etc. So we had to find another genre. We decided to do a teen/love drama because it was easier to represent different situation with camera shots and/or props, they would make the story interesting/thrilling while in horror movies often sfx are the main characteristic that makes a horror movie scary/thrilling. So we started to film and we achieved the representation of age and situations that teenagers confront, very well. Our opening contains a love story with normal teenagers, wearing normal clothes and acting like normal people while confronting different situations in their daily routine. The story might be a little bit exaggerated, but we think that is more of a positive aspect, it brings the little extra that should be in every movie.
The opening can be compared for e.g. Twilight etc. it is not a copy of it and there are no fictional creatures in our opening such as vampires and werewolves, but it can be compared with the dark ambiance that is constant during the whole opening, and that this ambiance is created by the misery of one young adult character.
On this picture you can see the young actor wearing clothes with a brand, that represents as well the fact that this is a stereotypical teenager.
In this screenshot, you can see a teenage couple holding hands what is really common in this age. Again a stereotype of youth, young couple in love holding hands.
A good comparison for our opening could be the teenage horror/drama 'Twilight'. The story has nothing to do with our storyline but the representation of the characters is nearly the same as in ours. The main characters are normal teenagers, their clothing can't really define their social class and neither can their way of acting define which class they belong to. That's a big plus for the movie because every single teenager is able to identify themselves in the movie through the different characters, that means it will attract and address a lot of people all over the world, and will even attract the adults because it might remind them of their youth.
· What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
There is a lot of choice of different media institution, all of them are good in different categories of marketing/image.
We’ve chosen 20th century fox because it is one of the leading media institution, it would give our movie a big push because of its popularity and it’s good distribution. First I thought it wouldn’t fit the genre because 20th century fox publishes almost only mainstream/Hollywood movies, what contradicts our movie genre, our movie isn’t really mainstream, but we are success oriented so that’s why we picked 20th century fox. For a starting movie production company we want to push our image to the maximum and try to attract all different class and age of people.
Today it is nearly all about business and image, as you can see 20th century fox have got their own interactive homepage that looks really good, and it contains a lot of publicity for movies coming out, another big plus for big media institutions, it shows that their movies “always” have a lot of success even if it’s not one of the best movies, they’re still played in a lot of theaters.
For example “Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief”, who would like to watch this kind of movie? The storyline is more than weird and it doesn’t seem like it would be a good movie, but this movie is actually played in more than 85% of the cinemas in the USA, why? First of all because of the adverts and publicity for the movie, as well as the actors that are well known, another point to attract a lot of people. When you actually watch the movie you’ll understand while this movie will be a big success even if might not be that good. The special effects and the whole scenario of a movie is very important as well to attract and address different social groups, that can actually be addressed as well through the website -> Adverts.
· Who would be the audience for your media product?
I think our movie won’t be suitable for children under 12. There is practically no violence in our movie, but the situations that the teenagers are in might be difficult to understand for most of the under 12 year olds. I think everyone above this age would enjoy the movie because of its realistic storyline. The main target audiences are teenagers because the story talks about teenagers and their life and problems, this kind of movie is very popular because the teenager might be able to compare themselves with the teenagers in the movie, while they are confronting similar problems and teenagers of every class are target audience.
· How did you attract/address your audience?
First of all the actors are very important to be able to attract and address the target audience. We tried as well to tell an important part of the story in the opening, using shots, music, editing to explain what’s going on. There is not much talking in the opening because it would tell too much; the opening is already pretty packed with the introduction of the story.
Our blog contains as well a lot of information during our production that may attract a lot of people.
But the main attraction is this very special kind of genre that we mixed together to get our “own” genre. The actors can be identified and categorized into different social groups that may address different people such as teenagers, upper/middle/lower class. You can’t really define the class of the actors, that might as well address a lot of people through the unspecific representation of social classes.
This screenshot shows how "Lisa" slaps "Henri" because they "Henri" did something that hurt "Lisa's" feelings. This is a stereotypical situation that is very common under teenagers, so that nearly every teenager is able to identify themselves with the characters. In principal it is the genre and the storyline that should attract the people and as well the actors that can be classified as the "average teenager" what balances everything out, so that nearly all social classes are able to identify themselves with the characters and/or the storyline.
· What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
I already knew about editing and creating a title on photoshop, but I learnt a lot about filming for e.g. camera angles and how to make the shots interesting and meaningful. I also learnt about target audiences and how the movie should address/attract the people, obviously you can’t do a movie trying to address/attract every single social group etc. that wouldn’t work respectively the movie wouldn’t be very good.
Here for e.g. is a screenshot of our production logo "Shamedia Productions" through our knowledge that we already had before starting the media coursework we where able to make a simple but at the same time professional logo with photoshop.
We put as well sliding titles in the intro of our opening, that makes it look really professional and also introduces the different actors, editors etc.
· Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
The preliminary task was a great introduction to media, we learnt a lot about filming and camera shots so that we where able to use it in our movie opening. Even if the preliminary task was an easy task, we learnt a lot from it. For example we had apply shot/reverse/shot and all the important filming methods that we needed for being able to make our film opening or even a whole movie. We also learned how to make simple shots meaningful without people talking, only through filming from a precise camera angle. The shot would then explain to the audience what’s happening, for e.g. filming an important person coming out of a car -> starting filming the bottom of the car, while the important character is getting out of the car, only his foot is being filmed (the camera might zoom out at this point).
Through the different aspects of filming we learned how to do "proper" filming, even the preliminary task was a great basic start for filming.
Here's a screenshot of the program (Adobe Premier Elements 2.0) I used for our preliminary task and as well for our coursework. We had not a lot of problems using it because I had already some experience using editing programs from the past, but there where still some minor problems we had to deal with.
· How did the feedback you received, help you to make a better film opening?
Here are some feedbacks that we took in account while editing our opening:
Lisa Mitchell: Really good work guys. The music is really effective and the shots are all continuous. I thought the whole clip had a lot of walking in it which can make it seem a little boring but for a movie opening the editing is very good and precise and it was interesting to watch. Well done guys :)
Mrs Downes: Graphics- GREATOpening- GREAT Too much black and white, try to add some saturated colour instead. Need to be exactly 2 minutes
Jenny: needs to have less walking and more colours. Otherwise it's very good. I loved the aftermath with the bright red flower.
Kim: needs more info about the girl (Lisa), the rest is all good.
A lot of people talked about how our opening contains too much walking bits, we the feedback in account and cut quite a lot of walking even though we wanted to make the walking bit "meaningful" by making it very special through editing and the additional background music.
Mrs.Downes told us to shorten the opening so we had to cut a lot of walking bits.
Mrs.Downes mentioned as well that our opening contains a lot of black and white parts and less colour, that's what we wanted to achieve, the ambiance shouldn't be happy at all and the black and white effect should represent the sadness of the main character. It is more of an experimental opening than the ones of "mainstream-like" movies.
Except of that we didnt change a lot, we left the opening how it was because we think it is pretty good how we managed the whole task.
Written by Henri Yueksel
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