Story lines and Plot blog

how are binary oppositions established in the beginning of teen movies?

in the movie 21 jump street the story line in the opening scene many binary opposites are presented, one of these is is the binary opposition of stereotypes "jocks" and "nerds" which is popular and relatable within the teen audience. another binary opposite present is the idea of relationships as the nerd asks out a popular girl, but gets turned down and made fun of by the jock.

Question 6

Question 4

who watches teen films?

teen films are generally watched by teens specifically as they are created to appeal directly to them. however in some cases teen movies reach a wider audience through not following standards set by the genre. an example of this is Kidulthood which instead of creating characters which teens can relate to and therefore be entertained by, creates an extremely compelling and entertaining narrative. this is something we aimed for when creating our film, rather than making a "teen film" we aimed to make a film by teens, involving teens but not have it narrowly directed for teens. 

The genre which we aimed to appeal to is very wide, for we attempted to create a fleshed out character portrayed completely by visuals rather than dialogue, and make the film focus directly on him rather than a group. this meant he could be described to the audience visually in much greater detail, and through this character steering away from most teen stereotypes we hoped to draw in a much larger audience.

Question 5

*only watch the first video

In order to reach our audience we created a facebook page and encouraged people to like and share it, in an ideal scenario however i imagine bus posters and movie trailers being created and distributed in order to promote the movie, however due to us not having any real budget that was impossible.

Question 3

Question 2

Evaluation Question 2

 The social group that ‘Safeguard’ is targeted at is urban teenagers that live in the poverty regions of the UK, especially London. Our movie may interact with male teenage boys that somehow witness a joy of sport and a fear of death.  Our main character has been through many things as growing up in the east side of London with part of North in him.

He had witness his best friend being stabbed who was mistaken for another rival gang member. He had been robbed numerous times and beaten up few times. Being brought up by a single mother, he constantly saw eviction letters and letters from the High court. Life was an absolute struggle for him. Post traumatic stress had gotten him. He was no longer the kid that grew up playing with toy cars. Surrounded by gang members, police brutality and drug dealers, he chose to reach success through legal ways. So desperate, he has the mentality of “to fight to survive”. 

Others in his mindset and past, would possibly end up in prison at the age of 18 (on average) as they were the victim of revenge. Not everyone chooses the right path to survive, that's why our character will reveal the positive side of life...to win.  Therefore, I  believe we have portrayed him in a positive way that may change many teenagers choices in life. 

Our character was partly inspired by the elder brother and main character of ‘My Brother The Devil’.  However, he takes another approach to live his life in London. As seen above, the hold of possession of illegal weapons, use of drug and problems with gang members put both himself and his younger brother at great risks.  The elder brother was also a training amateur boxer, who also released his tensions in the boxing ring and not outside. Although, some situations that evolved around him were unstoppable.  Both the character in my brother the devil and safeguard are stereotypical of teenagers identified in London.  Both give a clear message that its not what others want to see in you, its what you want to see in yourself. 

Evaluation Question 7

Evaluation Question 6

We have used a variety of technologies to bring together the masterpiece! Below are different types of technologies and i will be stating what we have used to do with it.

First of all Safari was the best way we would've access the internet. Online we found many examples and done a whole load of research on to making our movie at its possible best. With Safari, we accessed YouTube to look at other teen movie openings such as Breakfast club. We then use Prezi to present our pitch which was pretty easy to put images and text together and to give it that unique approach. With the use of Blogs, we were able to record our step by step process to the full opening of the movie. We were able to research different variety of ways to make the opening better. To give my blog a more attractive look, i decided to use 'Gif' images (moving images) that relate to the post.  Also final cut pro was the main source of editing program used. We used final cut pro in our preliminary film to allow us to understand and take in the basic ideas of editing skill required for our final movie opening 'Safeguard'.

For the title sequence, we used Time-toast to remember when what titles comes before and after to give us the most accurate title.
Garage-band was used to create our opening soundtrack in the remake of Breakfast club.
In relation to music, for our final project, we used soundtracks from CrativeCommons as we found the great song that was copyright free.
Motion was used to create the production and distribution ident. This took roughly 45 minutes to discover and complete the final product that we used in our movie.

Evaluation Question 5

How did you attract/address your audience? 

Mise en scene; the props used certainly do appeal to the teenage community within the UK. The clothing such as hats, hoodies, and baggy clothing certainly do interact with the youth despite it being stereotypical. As soon as a elder man or women see a youth thats wearing a hat and hoodie, they suddenly assume they're up to no good. However, this is usually false as its simply what typical teenagers wear from the "ghetto". 

Actors; our main actor is a 17 year old from east London. Him being mature teenager and young adults appeals to both the teenage world and adult world of the targetted audience. The struggle he witnesses may be the same or similar to those whom also witnessed similar experiences from first person point of view. Therefore, the audience are able to put their self into the actors 'shoes' to understand the movie which also has an emotional side.

Storyline; A 17 year old from the ghetto sides of East London who witnesses struggle from an early age. Living with his mother, he had no male role model as the father had left after being an heroine addict. The mothers only mission was to provide a good life to her son without him getting gin to trouble. As a result our main actor had deprived primary socialisation years. Constantly facing eviction letters, and the mother working 3 jobs, he had to find a way to survive. He also found a part-time job, as things were getting better…things got worst as it ever been. His best friend was a victim of a knife attack by a rival gang member that mistook him for another youngster from the same area. Our main actor was left traumatised. Trying to find legal ways to survive, he took on what his best friend loved doing…boxing. Being an amateur, and sparing with the clubs best boxer, he takes on some heavy blows in which he reminisces the memories. This enables him to take on the clubs greatest as he releases his anger. He takes on his first steps to reaching success. 

"The pain won't last but the memories will" 

Genre&Location; the genre is drama, crime and action. There would also be some parts that are funny which consists of a character thats personality is simply cheering. Our genre does appeal to the teenagers as they could relate to this, real life events. The location is in a ghetto urban area of East London. Partly having some of the highest crime rates in the area, many local youths would relate also from north and south London. In the Uk, wherever you are, someone would always dislike you if you're reaching success. Therefore teens from all over the Uk could have a sense and understanding of the movie. 

From our feedback from the rough cut, despite us not being finished with editing and the full movie, we had got some feedback for the sound effects that were used. The sounds were too loud which didn't go with the force of the punch seen. It also seemed to be exaggerated, therefore, to give it that realistic effect we decided to decrease the volume of the sound effects used, in which the outcome was much better. We didn't complete our rough cut. We didn't film our final flashback scene, no edits whats so ever including colour grades. Therefore, we couldn't get much feedback as it wasn't a completed rough cut with a missing scene. However, the first scene was too long. As a result we decreased the time by 2-3 seconds.  

We have reached our audience through Twitter, FaceBook and Youtube. The movie was specially viewed at the cinema aimed at students. From the feedbacks we got, it was a huge success. This tells us that we have met our target audience who interacted with the movie. 

Evaluation Question 4

Evaluation Question 3

Kino films from Babos Sumbul

Evaluation Question 1

Conventions in teenage drama movies that are filmed in the UK take a very mainstream approach. For example, in the opening, the audience is highly likely to come across London red buses, the tube and the building in which surrounds the urban area. However, although we don't use any of these shots in Safeguard, we still know that its a teenager on the streets of London.

For example, as our production and distribution itent is introduced in our movie, there is absolutely no soundtrack. Pure silence is revealed as we wanted to draw the audience straight into the movie and theme of the movie; boxing.Whereas, if we look at the conventions and how its really done, well witness sound. In reference. 21st century Fox productions has a soundtrack that gets the audience ready for the movie, which is too mainstream, therefore we wanted to do the unexpected  and put no sound.

The opening scene is pretty fast paste and striking in terms of editing. We would also witness a slow scene which will be the flashback scene. Therefore, we had many shots in a matter of 2 minutes with over 15 different shots. However, in other movies such as My Brother The Devil, we witness a slow paste opening that gives the audience a slow understanding and a more depth introduction of the characters.

The props used were pretty common with boxing movies; towel, mouth guard, boxing gloves, vest, boxing shorts, trainers, boxing bags, boxing ring. The reason why we identify the main character wearing a vest is to show that he is a amateur in  the club fighting against the strongest in the club. As a result, we try to make the impression that no matter who you are, to be the greatest, you have to take out the greatest.

The amazing make-up work done by our makeup artist Buse Yilmaz, certainly states the fact that we wanted this opening to be great with the hours and effort we put in as a group. We used Vaseline to show sweat and ordinary female makeup for the bruises and cuts on the actors face after the beating.

Also, no use of weapons or drugs were experienced, this is because we wanted to show that for this to be a teenage movie, we don't need all of the equipment because not everyone's passed involves a knife attack etc.

Variety of teenagers would think of danger first, if they hear the word 'alleyway'. Therefore, in one of our flashbacks we used a alleyway in brick lane, London, to show how we could relate to a typical London youth. This is how its usually done through other movies as well. As a result we have followed the conventions of filming in alleyways in London.

As revealed above, we have challenged the conventions only through not possessing any weapons and few camera-shots of London, for example, tubes, buses and so on.

Question 7

Evaluation question 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media productions?

Convention: The way in which things are usually done. An example of a convention is that conventionally humans walk on two legs, upright.

In comparrison

I have choosen to compare it to a conventiona teen drama called "Adulthood"

One large differene in comparrison with our movie is the amount of drama happening on the scene. There is a lot of drama in that trailer whereas, our video has 2 dramatic 7 second flashback and most is focussed on the boxing. We choose to use boxing as our main focus so that our film could be part of a much wider audience. This means that in comparrison the film is less conventional as it does not focus just on teen life.

Camera
Another point worth notocing is the lack of establishing shots in both. This is done deliberately in our film as we felt that the enviroment did not need to be established, it also allows the aduience to feel closer to the charaters and the scene developing.

Mise en Scene
Our mis en scene is fairly minimal and does not feature any stereotypical teen drama props ( e.g drugs, guns and knives), this unconventional. By comparrison Adulthood has a lot more of these props and follows theses conventions.

Editing
 The editing is fast in both films but for different reasons. Our film has a quick pace due to the boxing, which is quite a fast paced sport, whereas Kidulthood has it pace because it is dramatic and the quick cuts heighten the drama.

Sound
 Our music is very theartricl whereas Kidulthood uses rapping. We choose theatrical as it means we are adapting for a wide audience, not just teenagers.  Kidulthood is purely a teen uraban drama therefore they used their music to appeal to their audience.

Summary

 

We challenged conventions by

• Not using Establising shots
• Focusing on the life of a young boxer as opposed to a young teenager who boxes
•  Not using stereoypical props for an urban teen drama
• Minimalising the amount of drama.
• No sound for production or distribution idents
• Use of theatrical music as opposed to Hip-hop rap etc.

We stuck to conventions by

• Conventional teen film title sequence
• Conventional urban backdrops
• Conventional dramas/conflicts

To summarise, our film is more of a british urban drama  because it expands out to a wider audience due to the challenging of conventions.

Evaluation question 2

How does my product represent different social groups?

Evaluation question 3

what kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Big talk productions are a British film distributor company who publish quite a few art house films. They sometimes enter movies into film festival and are attracted to British films made by small production companies that make exceptional films

Lionsgate are a large American distributor they big budget Hollywood movies such as The Hunger Games

They never really distribute small indie films at all.

Revolver Entertainment are another British Film Distributor. They specialise in British drama films and have

distributed quite small films in the past.

Here is a comic that I made

Evaluation question 4

Who would be the audience member for your media product?

Captain Safeguard has all the answers

To summarise my audience is

• Indie cinema viewers because of the low budget filming and the adult feel to the film
• Boxers because they may relate due to the fact that this a film based on boxing
• An urban teenager between 15-20 because the urban backdrop and teenage characters make it relatable to them.

Evaluation question 5

How did you attract/address you audience?

An anonymous news reporter has some very unsurprising and mediocre news coming in...

Evaluation question 6

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

  Here is an "E-mazing" presentation on what I have learnt in terms of technology

If it does not function it can be found directly at:
http://app.emaze.com/267580/as-media-evaluation-question-6-pharez-vitalis-2014

Evaluation question 7

Looking back at you prelim task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

The large thing for me was the variety of shots. Although the objective of the prelim was to experiment with the camera in order to develop skills, I felt that we did have a wide range of shots from the start but there are still far more shots that we used in Safeguard (final product)

The shot above had a really bad problem with the sound, because some of the sound picked up is through the camera, it added a strange effect to the sound. This would never happen in our final product because my director (Yuksel) was far too fussy and also because we used pre-recorded foley sounds and music to create a sound-scape in comparison with this fairly basic one.

Most of our camera shots in this prelim we also not well thought out, this one is an exception where we used a low angle to show that some dodgy business was going on. But again this is nothing in comparison with our  final product which used very effective angles to show how the character currently felt and status changing, where at the begin he had a high angle at the flashback to show how small he felt and at the end of the film the camera was at a low angle to show how triumphant his rise was.

This picture was a section of really bad editing. The section flips really quickly between me holding the ID card, putting it away, putting it away again then my arms being suddenly crossed. This can be compared to the fast and snappy flash back scenes in Safeguard that really took advantage of editing to tell the audience quickly, what was happening and most of all, had no editing mistakes.

One feature that stood out from our prelim and remained consistent was the framing, the framing, even in our prelim was very good and obeyed rules like the rule of thirds and 180 degree rule. The 180 degree rule is a rule of thumb in media where the camera does not go past what it is focusing on and does not cross this imaginary point across the character. However in Safeguard this rule is frequently broken during the boxing scene. This is because the sport is fast paced and the characters are clearly identifiable. The thirds rule is simply using thirds of the screen as main focal points. Our skills have allowed us to be comfortable with these rules and know when they are not needed.

A final comparison point is that our location here is a bit lame. Really? Only filming in college. The boring location really removed any hope of interesting Mise en Scene completely and was replaced with quite mediocre settings. one big thing was that we could not control the lighting at all in our footage and it meant that basically our prelim looked mundane and uninteresting.  

overall I feel that my skills have greatly improved. There has been a vast improvement in framing , editing and sound largely. The difference between the prelim and Safeguard is huge and it has been a really steep learning curve for me. Everything in the final product feels a lot smoother and transitions better even though it jumps between locations. Also there is a lot more experimenting in this one. If you noticed from our Behind the scenes vlogs there have been a lot of finishing the shot list and then experimenting below is one of our most experimental shots and it really paid off. I think that our final product had a lot more freedom to do shots like this which was the main cause of improvement as well as the skill development.

Evaluation Question 1

Convention: The way in which things are usually done.

IN COMPARISON

I have chosen to compare my movie to 'My Brother The Devil'.

CAMERAWORK:
The film My Brother The Devil have used a couple of establishing shots at the beginning to show the gritty surroundings and the ghetto environment. This is what most teen drama's do. However, we went against this convention as we haven't used any establishing shots and this is because I wanted the audience to feel closer to the character.

Editing:
The editing on 'My Brother The Devil' is at a quite slow paste. However, it does speed up when the action scenes get involved and because most of my film is based around action, the editing paste is fast throughout.

Mise-en-scene: 
Our mise-en-scene is un conventional for a teen drama. However, My Brother The Devil has conventional mise-en-scene because they have used props such as knives, guns and drugs.

Sound:
Our music is much smoother and more mainstream to what typical teen drama's use. For example in 'My Brother The Devil', they have used a rap song whereas we have used a theatrical instrumental. This draws a larger target audience to our movie as our music isn't selected and aimed at a certain set of people. I did this because I wanted to make my teen drama different to what you would normally see in a teen drama.

Evaluation Question 2

Representation: Is the action of speaking or acting on behalf or the state of being so represented.

The social group that my film is focusing on is urban teenagers. However, my main character, and the concept of my movie does not follow the urban, gritty teenager stereotype. We have our main character who was born and raised in a ghetto area and has been in many difficult situations throughout his life. A person with his mindset, in movies anyway, would be a corrupted drug addict who intends to severely injure or even kill his enemies or that who stands in his way. Our main character however, is a calm white male who has chosen to go down the path of boxing. He intends to make his way up the ladder and become the greatest due to all of the incidents he has been in the past. He takes his anger out in the ring rather than outside.

My brother the devil is similar to our movie to a certain point. The film then starts to change a little and it start's to steer away from stereotypes a little. Like the older brother in the film, he finds what he truly desires the most and sticks with it. The same with our character, whereas our character loves a sport and so he sticks with it and leaves what his behind him in the past. The older brother in My Brother The Devil also leaves his past behind and basically starts a new life. His younger brother on the other hand, carries on the stereotype of a teenager movie to a certain point as well. This is because he follows his older brothers footsteps as he was before because he realises that his brother has left his old ways.

Evaluation Question 3

We invented our own distribution and production companies. However, if another media institution was to distribute my movie, it would be a media company such as 'Legendary Pictures' because our film suits the sort of films they distribute.

The companies we created were 'Kino Films' and 'Bearded Pigeon'. They are both small independent companies like our movie itself and that is the reason why they have distributed our movie. They would be the best at distributing our movie because they can reach our audience better than any other company. This is because they know how to get to our audience, and because they are a small independent company, most teenagers watch movies from companies like this as it reaches out to them and it is what they're looking for.

Evaluation Question 4

The audience for my media product would be teenagers. However, my film could easily attract a wider range of people. I would say the target for my movie is 16-30 year old's simply because everyone loves boxing and occasionally it doesn't target a certain group or race of people. In fact, I would go even higher with the age group of the target audience for my film if I could. My film is suitable for both males and females and of different colours and races. My film isn't targeted at a certain group or set of people.

I believe older people would actually enjoy my movie more than the younger people because of the actual storyline, but on the other hand, the violence and the teenager actors are the reason why teenagers would really like my film and go to watch it. Teenagers can really relate to my movie and i did this on purpose because I love it when I can relate to a movie and put my feet in the main actors shoes! 

The unique selling point of my movie is that I have a young teenager living in the ghetto who does boxing but has had a very hard past. Normally, boxers in fighting/boxing films tend to be older people from the ghetto trying to make it out. In my film however, I give some hope for the younger generation and attempt to motivate them more than the older people.

Rocky

Fighter
















Raging Bull

Here Comes the Boom

They are all movies that involve fighting and they all have a target audience for a wide range of people. However, like I said, the characters involve older/middle aged people and most of them fight and make a living out of it to make some money. My character on the other hand is fighting because he loves it and because he is taking his anger out in the ring from all the things that has happened to him in the past.

Evaluation Question 5

The violence is what appeals to my audience and this is what attracts them as soon as the movie starts. The opening scene involves a young teenager punching a boxing bag. Straight away this attracts the teenagers because most male teenagers like boxing and violence overall. The mise-en-esene that attracts my target audience are the boxing bags and the grey hoodie. I dressed the main character with a grey hoodie because this brings the stereotypical teenage feel in to it. This attracts my audience because teenagers can relate to what he is doing and what he is wearing.

The location is clearly at a boxing environment. You can't tell exactly where the character is. However, you are able to tell yourself that he is most probably near a boxing ring due to the amount of punchbags that you could see in the first shot. You could see a bit of the ropes on the left of the frame but the audience does not focus on this at the time because it is covering a tiny bit of the frame and it is not in focus. 

The sound does not attract or address my target audience. In a teen movie you would expect to hear some sort of a rap song coming up. In my movie, it is an instrumental that involves soft instruments which is against teenagers completely. The song is not aggressive at all. The sounds of the punching however, impact against the instrumental and it makes the sound feel slightly violent rather than soft. The instrumental has a urban/ hip hop feel to it but this comes in when the camera shot changes and we get closer to the main character. 

My films name definitely addresses to my audience because it just feels urban and gritty. It's the type of name you would get in a fighting or a prison type film. 

Link for the presentation:
http://app.emaze.com/268305/evaluation-question-5

Evaluation Question 6

I have learnt many things about technologies from the process of constructing this product. I have learnt more about teen movies and how they are made to reach the target audience. I ave also learnt how to make my teen movie effective and powerful.

Evaluation Question 7

Looking back at my preliminary task, I feel that I have learnt a lot and I have progressed from it to the full product. I have fixed my lighting, camera shots/angles and simply the way I tell the story visually.

For the preliminary, I didn't bother planning at all because we already had the storyline and I had a brief view of what I wanted. However, we did storyboard but we didn't put much effort into it. On the other hand, we planned very well for our final film. We put maximum effort into the storyboarding as well as group conversation on what we wanted. We decided on the props and clothing we were going to use along with the mise-en-scene way before the stage of pre-production. 

I used my own camera for my final movie instead of using the college’s camera's because my camera has a higher quality and more options when it comes to selecting the frames per second. We spent much more time on set and we filmed a scene more than 10 times if I thought it wasn't successful or if I simply didn't like the look of it so we could pick shots out in the editing process. I used my directing skills to lead the actors and got them to act to the best of their ability even though we are all media students and none of them have studied drama before or have no experience with acting in front of a camera what so ever. 

There were so many mistakes in the post production of the preliminary compared to the final movie. The main problem was that the editing was unprofessional and there were several mistakes. Whereas, I spent days on editing my final movie and looked for any tiny mistakes.