Shot Practice Storyboard

This is our storyboard where we practiced different shots types and angle to help us with our final piece. There are some things that we done well and some things that we could improve on. In some of our shots, there is too much background shown and the subjects aren't always in the centre. Apart from that we have some interesting shots that have good angle, shot distances and shot types, such as, low angle, POV shots an wide shots.

Criticism on the shots helped us learn from our mistakes when we start filming our teen film. Criticism included too much space around the subject and lots of space within the shot that wasn't necessary. 

Storyboard for teen film

More ideas for final film

Props
Props needed for our final film


There are some props that are essential for the main character and will assist the representation of the character to let the audience understand the character.

These are the props I will use: 

• A Black Nike Tracksuits
• Hoop Earrings
• A String Handle Backpack

All of these props contribute to the stereotypical deprived and violent character that we are trying to portray.

Film Ideas

Film Ideas

The film that my group was initially thinking to use as guidance was Clueless which is about a girl in high school who is like a fashion guru, and she helps a new girl to her school as well as trying to find a boyfriend. This is a concept that we thought would be easy to replicate but in reality, they are rich and living in america so, we cant copy their huge houses, luxurious cars and ability to drive so we had to chose film that was more easily duplicated but us.


 

Our next film idea to take ideas from is Fish Tank, and this is the film that we are sticking to at the moment. This is a film about an aggressive girl called Mia, who lives wit her single mum and sister and she solves to dance. From out initial planning, I will be the someone like main character, Hayley will be filming it with the camera, and Gizem and Brandy will be the girls that I don't like. We will try and film in a flat and we will dress like how people who live in council flats stereotypically dress.

This film would be easier for us to be inspired by because it is set mostly in a council flat in east London, which is an ideal location for us. Also, she walks around a lot in the film which we can do very easily and the clothes and props are thing that  my group can easily get to use.

Here is a clip from fish tank that we would want to use in our short film:

Research - Sound in Movies

Research: Sound in Teen Movie openings

Sound in movie openings is very important and it does many different things. Sound can create the mood of the rest of the film, it can help tell the story of the movie and the dialogue in the sound can also help tell the story. The sound can also contribute to allowing the audience to know that a flashback is taking place.

Sound can easily create a certain mood for a film, if chosen correctly.

Research: 1

Step Up is a teen film about a boy from a deprived area in America who gets a chance to earn a scholarship in an Arts school through dancing with a ballet student already in the school. Throughout the film, he falls in love with the girl he dancing, conflict arises with him and his best friend and dancing some ballet himself, even know he loves dancing to hip hop.

The sound used in the opening of sets an urban mood and it also suggests conflict as the music is quite aggressive. We can see from the music that the movie is a dancing film because the sound is upbeat - a song that would be danced to.

Research 2:

21 Jump Street is an action comedy film where two unachieved cops are sent to an American high school and are made to blend in with the drug dealers and bring them down. This is humorous because it is unrealistic for two grown men to blend in with high school children.




This sound exaggerates the humorous tone of the movie as this song was made to be funny and it has a 'jokey' feeling and lyrics, which related to the the genre of the film.

Research 3:

You got served is a film that is based upon dance battles, conflict in friendships and conflict in morals, so it is highly based on conflict. It is mostly about two teenage boys that live in America and have a passion for dancing, to hip hop music and they need to win battles to financially support themselves and their families. 

Th sound used in the opening of this film is a urban song which relates to the style that is danced to during the duration of the movie. It is also quite aggressive which represents the dance battles and the other conflicts in the teen film.

Primary ideas for the final film

Instead of coming up with a completely new idea for our filming, we decided to take some inspiration from an existing film that is somewhat relevant to our lifestyle making it easy for us to take inspiration from. The film we decided to use is called Fish Tank. We decided to use Fish Tank especially because the film is based in a location that is easy for us to replicate. 

At one point we decided to take inspiration from the film Clueless. However, this is too difficult to take elements from as it's based in a sunny, be achy area of America which is very much different to the suburban area of London we are in and therefore too difficult to replicate compared to Fish Tank. Props are also much more difficult to replicate including the use of cars, alcohol, school lockers etc.

Fish Tank isn't a big blockbuster film like Clueless is therefore the need to not make it blockbuster worthy takes the pressure off our group. 

Fish Tank doesn't have many characters, as it mainly focuses on one character, it makes it much easier for our four-memeber group. We will all be able to act but also take part in filming and editing in a balanced way.

Ideas from Fish Tank
- One of the scenes included one of the first scenes when the main character, Mia, is seen going to the car park where other groups of girls are dancing. There is then confrontation and aggressiveness between them. We thought that Gizem and i would play as the girls who confront Mia, we will replicate the dance moves of the girls. Tee will be playing the role of Mia. 
- I also thought it'd be significant to establish all the different characters of the film especially those she has the most conflict with. In fish tank for example she has the most conflict with her mother and younger sister, this would be significant to establish in our film opening. This may be through arguments, physical violence of simply foul language towards each other but the point is to show that the family home is broken and isn't a typical or desired family environment.
- Further ideas from fish tank include the outfit ideas. I find Mia's outfit in Fish Tank perfect o

Creative Common: Sound Practice

To learn how to use Creative Common to download music, we used a scene from Higher Learning that requires four different types of music to establish characters, emotions and locations. The video we used had no music and was only footage, therefore we relied on mise-en-scene and the characters themselves to determine the type of music to use in each scene. The media department of our college had made a tutorial video for us students, so we knew how to use Creative Commons properly keeping in mind with things like licensing and copyright issues. We searched for sounds and musics that can relate to different parts go the scene and we put it in place using Final cut pro. We had to use either SoundCloud, Jamendo or ccMixter. We think that this is a good piece of work for our first attempt.

The four different pieces of music we used included:

• Elevator music (we got this music from Jamendo)
  This music could be used to represent travelling and the music shows that something may be coming.

• Old school hip-hop/RnB music (music for this was for the first male character, we shoe this in relation to stereotypes and own knowledge of the music listened to in the time period, music was obtained from SoundCloud)
  This music creates an urban feeling and represents the old hiphop era.

• Calm relaxing, bubbly music (This was the female character, music was obtained from SoundCloud)
  This creates a calm feeling are represents a laid back character.

• Hard punk rock music (this music was used for the final male character, from the clothes he wore to the wallpapers he was posting on the walls to help with the possible music. Music for this character's scene was also taken from SoundCloud)
  This represents a rough, carefree character and sets a harsh feeling.