Post 12 - Draft Script and Feedback

1ST DRAFT

FEEDBACK FROM REBECCA KNAPP

A TV and film producer from the media industry called Rebecca Knapp had looked into our first draft of our script and then gave us the following feedback:

One of the first things Rebecca had noticed in the front page of our script was the general information which included the date it was written, a contact number, number of drafts and finally the name of the people who had written the script. Rebecca had explained that it is vital to have these information in front of the page so that the writers and directors can say, for example, if anyone needs to get in touch for whatever reason, the contact details is very vital. The number of drafts is also very necessary that the writers and directors can tell the difference between the new improved script and the final version. Rebecca has also noticed that the characters name had to be in the centre of the page and in capital letters once the names had already been seen at first.

She also mentioned that in the media industry each page had represented one minute of the film, so we had seven pages altogether so this meant that our film would be around seven minutes long which is roughly the ideal duration for a short film. Rebecca’s final comment on the layout of our script is that it had too many acting directions and not enough of actually showing on what the characters should actually do and also the introduction of each characters weren’t descriptive enough.

After Rebecca had read through our last scene, in the second shot, James who appeared to be looking at his phone when receiving a text, Rebecca mentioned that instead of filming the mobile phone when he receives the text which may seem very unprofessional and unsteady instead she suggested that it would be better to have a message appear up on the screen using the editing software like dramatic TV programmes use nowadays.

Another point that Rebecca had mentioned was our title, She didn’t like the whole thought of the title ‘Concealed’ as it sounded too obvious and it would give the plot away. So then we had to think of some title names and the suggestions we came up with were ‘Popular’; this was because our main character who is a popular ‘football lad’ and liked by everyone, doesn’t what to put his reputation at risk. Finally we came up with the title ‘Status’ this was to suggest James does not want to put his ‘status’ at risk.

Rebecca also felt that the characters personalities had to have more of a build up to outline the big shock at the end and so that the audience can get a sense of emotion from James’ point of view. So she suggested to ways of doing this and these were as follows:

-          Have other characters saying nice things about him, Roxanne [his girlfriend] for example saying ‘you’ve got a heart of a gold you have’.

-    Or by developing the character to make him look as if he's a nice person, we decided to do this by  adding another part to scene 2, another young student walks past James with a load of books in his hands, Roxanne who deliberately bumps in to him which results in him dropping all the books on the floor, James then feels disgusted in Roxanne and so walks back towards the young boy to help him pick up the books. This will bring out James' character and will show the selfish side of Roxanne and so the audience would take a dislike on her and also make the audience feel good that the gay couple are happy together even if he left his girlfriend for his 'true love'. 

Rebecca also felt that it needed something more to it, a tension between James and Ashley so that it makes it harder for James to choose between either his happiness or his status. The idea we came up with is that may be James used to be best friends with Ashley and then for the reason on why there is tension between and and why it has to be kept as a secret.

2ND DRAFT

FEEDBACK AFTER 2ND DRAFT


This is the second draft of our script made after Rebecca's feedback. It is now in the correct layout and the characters have their own individuality outlined. To make sure that there weren't any more mistakes or need to be further developed we asked for further feedback from our teachers and peers.


For Roxanne we purposely did not want to mention her name in the film as we want it to be a surprise to the audience this is because we want them to assume that Roxanne's name is Ashley and so there will be a big shock at the end as they will find out and the secret will be revealed about his homosexuality and his relationship with Ashley. In the narrative we decided that we wanted to the audience to take a dislike on her and not feel that she is the 'victim' in this film therefore we decided to make her be seen as selfish character, with the incidents such as Roxanne bumping into the vulnerable young student, talking about her own life and what her mum bought her, everything revolves around her own world and nothing else concerns. even James' feeling, whether he's happy or not, she doesn't take any interest in him apart from knowing that she is the school's favourite popular James' girlfriend. 


For the location we decided that we wanted it to be in a school as homosexuality would be seen as wrong and young people like to make immature and harsh comments about anything that is 'abnormal' and so in homosexuality terms it would be seen that students would most likely shout physical abuse such as 'bell-end' or 'gay prick'. We also had the extras already wearing their school uniform and therefore established about the fact that it is a school environment.


For Ashley we decided that we wanted him to be liked by the audience and also make the audience feel sorry for him especially when he gets beaten up by James' football friends also Roxanne being in the same shot, staring at the fight and just laughing at him and accepting the fact that there's nothing wrong with the boys beating him up suggesting the insensitive side of her and therefore the audience would much prefer Ashley and have an dislike effect on Roxanne.


Lastly we felt that we wanted our film to be as natural as possible, following the style of French New Wave, having natural lighting, natural extras with their usual uniform, and sound dropping in and out to illustrate the emotions and concentrate more on the characters facial expressions.

Post 11 - Script Influences

Dogme 95

Dogme used strict guidelines and rules when film-making. Some of the goals are that the film must not contain any superficial action such as murders and weapons. Dogme believes that by refusing expensice and spectacular special effects  and concentrating more on the characters performance creates a more effective film.

French New Wave


The French New Wave were a group of French film makers influenced by Italian neorealism (national film movement characterized by stories set amongst the poor and working class filmed on location and usually using unprofessional actors/actresses). They also use a very clever approach which is dropping sounds in and out throughout the film to create a sense of tension and so that the audience will question themselves about the film and drawing the audience's attention to the characters expressions.

Italian Neoralism:


We have been influenced by Italian Neorealism due to the characteristics used in this approach, one of them being the real life social realism that happens in society and the other characteristic is when instead of using extras, just use the characters who had happened to be in that scene even if they weren't suppose to be there, this creates a sense of realism.

Post 10 - Script Writing

This video explains the groups thoughts and idea about the short film:

This video explains the analysis of our title:

Feedback

Feedback

Post 9 - Short film research

Task A: Why make a short film?'

The long history of short films'
Films started of being short and gradually started to become longer during the 20th century. The very first films were presented to the public in 1894 through Thomas Edicson's Kinetoscope [a peepshow-like device for individual viewing'. However in the early 1900's, improvements in recording and editing technology allowed film makers to produce longer. The very first foremost was filmed during the time were films were presented to the public audience in late 1984 through the theories kuleshov effect, the improvements that had been included were by far the furtherest way in which it may be capable of the reason on what it will have to say about it. Also the improvements may be fine by the fact of its persuadence in to it as it may be opposed to be the roughness to it.

Task B: Who is the target audience for a short film?

The target audience for short films are normally aimed at peope from the age of 18 to 34 this is due to mainstream broadcasters this is becasue as connection speed increases and file compression improves, distributing and presenting films on the internet is becoming increasingly viable.
The target audience for our short film is aimed at both teenagers and audience's aged above 20 years old this is because this story tells a story about a young boy who is unaware of his sexuality and since he is aged 17, we thought as a group that it would be best to relate the audience at the same age range as the characters are in our short film

Task C: How are short films distributed?

'International films of very shorts' is a film festival created in 1999 and held each year in dozens of cities simultaneously. The festival aims to promote the promotions of films in the very short format (3mins maximum, excluding titles and credits). Productions comes from all over the world. The festival is managed by Paris, in each city local companies govern their festival. Each year approximately 50 short films are selected from over
1000 viewed, from all continents.
 First Light enables young people between the ages of five and 18 to write, act, shoot and produce short films. To support digital short films, the UK Film Council launched the New Cinema Fund in 2001. Films made under this scheme have a budget limit of £10,000, can't be longer than ten minutes and must be shot using digital technology. The First Time It Hits is one of the films made within this scheme.

Task E: Independent research


Here is a video of what I have researched to help put ideas towards our actual short film:

- This film consists of 2 'lads' were no way would anyone assume that they are actually gay
- Both of the characters are portrayed as very 'manly', drinking, pushing and shoving each other
- In the background the sun starts to set which gives a really nice romantic setting and to also establish that they both like each other.
- Near to the end the one of the boy gets a knife out and grabs the other boys hand and places it on top of his hand, stabbing the knife on the floor between the both of their fingers and gradually getting faster.
- They both have a pause as they actually realise that their hands are touching, unaware that they actually like each, they soon tighten their hands together and then share a passionate kiss together.

Post 8 - Media Language

My own understanding of the term 'Media Language'

Media language is the way in which a 'typical' short film is constructed. The film it self is a language and it uses a certain layout to design and illustrate a film such as the mise-en-scene, sound, visuals and editing and then considering the other elements such as genre, representation, narrative and audience.

A man called Hitchcock describes what the Kuleshov effect:

This is a very clever approach in media terms when talking about media language because as Hitchcock said that if there were a women sitting on the beach of a child and then you have a man staring at them, smiling it would straight a suggest that he is just a nice ordinary old man however if we change the shot with the women with a child and replace it with a women in a bikini but still have the same shot of his face of the exact same expression (smiling) it would therefore then straightaway suggest that he is a dirty old man.

How can I use media language when producing my film:

I will make sure that I have the right micro elements to produce the film and so that it makes sense together and suits the genre that I pick. After looking at Hitchcock's video about the Kuleshov effect, it helped me understand that when it comes to filming I will have the right feature of understanding when filming different scenes and so that viewers don't become confused and know why that certain person is making that facial expression.

Post 7 - Audeince Theory

Audience theory has the follwing four sectors within the media industry and these are as follows:

- Maslow's hiereachy of needs
- Dyer's Utopian Theory
- Uses of gratification theory
- Hyperdermic needle theory

Maslows hiereachy of needs in a theory in psychology, it is proposed by Abraham Maslow, he represented the needs that consists of; self actualisation, self esteem, love belonging, safety and phsychological, this is presented in a triangle where the physchological needs as they are 'more basic' are at the bottom and the self actualisation is at the top of the pyramid. This can be linked to the idea that consuming partical media texts fufils self esteem as does by certain products.

Dyer states that people will respond to a media text if it offers them compression for the inadequaces in their own lives through the media audiences can vicarously live their lives and fulfil their wants and needs leading them to strive to a Utopian life.

Uses and gratification theory suggests the understanding of why people actively seek out specific media outlets and content for gratification purposes. it also discusses how users proactively search for media text that will not only meet a given need but enhance knowledge, social interactions and diversion

The hyperdermic needle theory suggests that the mass media could influence a very large group of people directly and uniformly by 'shooting' or 'injecting' them with the appropriate messages designed to trigger a desired response.

Stewart Hall - Dominant-hegemonic Reading (also known as preferred reading)
The position of a viewer who can identify with the hegemonic position and receive the dominant messages of an image or text in an unquestioning manner.

Analysis of three short films



Pop Art

One of the short films we watched as a class was called 'Pop Art', this film was about a young boy who is struggling with life until one day a new 'blow-up' boy joins his class and so he starts to make friends with him as seen on the picture above. The plot of this film is about the blow-up who gets bullied by his class friends, he is unaccepted in this film and therefore the audience can relate to him as at least one time in a person's life, someone has been bullied or they have seen someone who has been bullied. This is shot in a school and therefore their mise-en-scene is school clothing. The language used here has some foul words such as 'shithead' which is conventional as most children tend to swear in a school.



Tender

 Another short film that we watched was called Tender, this was about a young school boy called Liam, who lives in a council flat with his mother and her boyfriend who is shown to be very aggressive gets a hold of a bundle of cash, later on a classmate of his who suddenly becomes interested in him just for his money tells her that he won it from a scratch card, and so takes advantage of him and tells him to buy this, that and the other for her.



Jade

 This is a short film about a life of a young teenage girl. The first scene starts of with a swimming pool which in fact has no relation to her however it is later found that the swimming pool was a sign of symbolism, to suggest that 'being blue' is a sign of unhappiness and also getting a positive blue sign pregnancy test suggests that she is unhappy about it. This film raises an enigma of why this girl is dating a man who could be old enough to be her dad or even grandfather. However Jade has no choice but to turn to him as she is going through tough times and has no one to turn to.

Post 6 - Representaion Theory

Representations is a key concept in Media Studies, much debated and discussed. Some critics highly rate the way media representation affects our world:

Social groups, gender, age, class, race
- Intuition; commercial TV
                Sky TV
                Sell time to advertisers
BBC is not for [didactic-emotional]
Profitable organisation- can go against stereotypes.
- Audience [Expectation]- Susan Boyle; 'we laughed'
-Technical codes; Camera editing
                            Mise en scene
                            Rich represent Gender/class
Genre; Archytype representation
           Narrow structures a women
All media texts are created in a particular institutional context.
This context will modify the representation.
There is an interplay between the target audience, the institution and the generic conventions.

Representations of three existing media products:

Representation of gender in Doctor Who

Doctor Who

Doctor Who represents men as having more power than women. The main female character, Rose, is shown to be Blonde and attractive, her mise en scene in costume wise is set to be sexualised because her clothing seems to be very tight fitted such as fitted trousers and a fitted bright red top however although she may seem all 'pretty' she is smart enough to figure out where she is whereas her boyfriend is the 'not so tough/strong' one who faints straightaway as he sees that their out of space. The main male character, The Doctor, however is shown to be very clever, The Doctor is shown to have authority over Rose because she is like his 'personal assistant' so she does anything he says or in other words following his orders i.e. "off you go".

Representation of Race in Coronation Street

Coronation street today has more complex of representations of Britishness as before with a range of multicultural and working class people. One of the characters was seen cleaning a window which is not a very highly paid job, some of the women however were portrayed as a bit 'chavy' their mise-en-scene consists of large hooped earrings, bright hooded top and very tight fitted clothing and one of the smoking a 'fag' yet they're both mothers which suggests them being irresponsible whilst having an argument in front of their children. 

Feminists approaches on the representation of gender, these consist of Susan Faludi 'backlash' theory [a series of Hollywood films in the late 1980s/1990s featuring very negative representations of career women: Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct
another feminist called Annette Kuhn 'The industry wants to let everyone have their ideological cake and eat it too. In other words you'll see deliberate ambiguities structured into every film to come about strong women.  and finally Gammon and Marshment in the Female Gaze contested the determinism of Mulvey's views.