Evaluation of Preliminary Task

Evaluation

We were set the task of creating a preliminary piece. The piece had to show a person entering a room and conversing with a second person. It had to be less than 2 minutes long and include the 180o rule, match on action and shot reverse shot. We decided to use a job interview as the situation as this would be fairly straight forward to film and would allow us to include all of the criteria requested.
We began creating a very short script for the piece. Initially our script was quite complex but we ended up discarding it as it would take up to much of the filming time and lost focus. We only needed about 2 minutes of filming so no more dialogue than a couple of lines for each character were necessary. The script involved some mild humour which was executed well by Grace by her use of facial expressions and body language in filming. We all agreed as a group that this script was suitable for the task and didn’t come across any major problems in writing it.
When storyboarding, initially we were very ambitious with what we wanted to create but were advised by our teacher to keep it simple and concentrate more on getting all the criteria in. So we simplified our storyboard. We planned to incorporate the 180o rule, match on action and shot reverse shot, we each had our own storyboard which was helpful in case any of our group were absent from a lesson but luckily no one was. We all contributed towards and agreed on the content in the storyboard.
We did however have to alter our first storyboard due to problems when filming. We had filmed some of the content but were restricted from improving it as the location we had decided upon became unavailable for further filming. Luckily, this worked to our advantage as we were able to secure a better location for filming. The new location was a teacher’s office so had all the props that would make our job interview storyline more realistic. We re-did our storyboard and second time around it went almost perfectly. When it came to filming we did shoot every scene exactly as it was on the storyboard. However, we did have some trouble with the tracking shot as the room was very small so we had to do a number of takes to get both characters in the frame. The actors who played the characters in our piece were members of our group so we knew that we wouldn’t have any problems with reliability, the standard of acting they gave and how professional they were when filming.
We experienced some technical difficulties with uploading our content onto the macs which was very frustrating as we knew how we wanted to edit the shots and that it would not take a considerable amount of time to do so. After hours of attempts on several machines with different cameras we were finally able to upload the filming and begin editing. Editing went as predicted; we knew what we wanted to do and stuck to the storyboard. We only omitted two shots because they reduced the flow of the piece, these were the close-up of the door handle as Rachel (who played the interviewee) opened the door and the medium long shot of the door as she approached it.
Although we kept the piece simple I feel it did meet all the criteria and was fairly professional looking. It would have been nice to include some more impressive media skills as I feel this would make our piece more entertaining but the use of mild comedy made up for this. There was one thing we were disappointed about and that was the costume. We didn’t premeditate costume and therefore both characters were dressed casually which is not what you would expect of a interviewer or interviewee, so this reduced the realism of the piece. Therefore if we were to do this piece again we would involve some character designs as part of our plan. I also feel that we could include more shots to make the piece more interesting. Despite this the piece did meet the criteria and turned out exactly as we had planned so I am happy with the end result, I think we work well as a team and there were very few disagreements when making decisions about the piece.

Technical Difficulties

We've been experiencing a lot of technical difficulties both before and after the half term holiday with the macs over the last couple of lessons, the footage we caught on tape won't upload onto the mac and the mac freezes when we try to upload it. It is for this reason that we haven't been able to get a lot done either over the halfterm or in lesson time and the reason why i haven't been blogging. in today's lesson we will try again to upload our footage so that it can be edited and will also begin evaluating our piece. Hopefully we will be able to get this problem resolved because we risk falling behind otherwise.

Filming

In today's lesson we began filming. Intitially we intended to use a spare classroom to film in but unfortunatley we could not find one. We therefore decided to use the 6 form study room which luckily was empty, however the choice of room meant that often we had to stop filming due to interuptions by other 6 formers wanting to use the photocopier. Also at the end of the first hour lesson we were interupted by a teacher who had a lesson in the room. As we had not finished filming this proved to be a problem.

Luckily we managed to secure a more private and more professional filming location : the office of the deputy head teacher, who kindly allowed us to film in her office whilst she was at a meeting. The room did throw up some problems in that it was much smaller than we had intended so the tracking was slightly more difficult to do. However, once furniture was re-arranged we were able to film quite successfully. We also added a few shots so that there would be more footage to edit. I am very pleased with the footage we filmed today. We will be editing in friday's lesson, we already have some knowledge of the editing software so we should be able to develop this piece well.

Preliminary Task

Last lesson (Monday 9th Feb) we began planning for our preliminary task. We discussed some suitable ideas which we storyboarded but realised that there could be potentially some problems with creating such a complex piece. It would take too much time to film if there were complex components to the piece, the idea of using a clock would also have some pitfalls as time changes so re-filming certain scenes may ruin the linear narrative we were intending to create and as our time is limited for creating the piece preparing props or getting people outside our group involved in the piece would be difficult. Therefore we simplified the piece down to the basics but ensuring that we kept to the instructions. I will post the final storyboard during today's lesson.

We drafted a short script which was as follows:

Interviewer (on phone): She was meant to be here five minutes ago!...yes...alright...goodbye

(After some time)

Interviewee: Sorry I'm late! (sitting down) The traffic was terrible, the weather is awful.

Interviewer: Well, we can see your punctuality is intact.

Interviewee: The bus...broke down.

Interviewer: Yes, i gathered that...

Institutions

Over the weekend i researched Institutions which develop Teen Comedy films like the one my group are looking to create. I did this by looking up which institutions created films such as St Trinians, Wild Child and Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging. I also looked up a couple of major institutions such as 20th Century Fox.

All Information in my notes was researched on wikipedia.

20th Century Fox
Formed in 1915 by William Fox .
Became known as 20th Century Fox after a merger of two companies, Fox Film Corporation and Twentieth Century Pictures, founded in 1933 by Darryl F. Zanuck, Joseph Schenck, Raymond Griffith and William Goetz.
The company's first film studios were set up in Fort Lee, New Jersey
New sound technologies came about and Fox moved to get the rights to a sound-on-film process.
In 1926 Fox bought a plot just outside Beverly Hills and built "Movietone City", the best-equipped studio at the time.
When Fox’s biggest rival Marcus Loew died in 1927, Fox offered to buy the Loew family's holdings. Loew's Inc. controlled more than 200 theaters and the MGM studio at the time.
MGM studio-boss Louis B. Mayer didn't want the merger to go ahead and used his political connections : the Justice Department's anti-trust unit to stop the merger from going ahead.
Fox was injured badly in a car crash in 1929 and just as he recovered was hit by the stock market crash which stole most of his fortune.
Fox lost 20th Century Fox and ended up in jail, Fox film ended up in receivership.
The new owners began negotiating the launch of Twentieth Century Pictures in 1935.

Twentieth Century Pictures

An independent Hollywood motion picture production company.
Created in 1932 by Joseph Schenck
Financial backing came from Schenck's older brother Nicholas Schenck and the father-in-law of Goetz, Louis B. Mayer, the head of MGM Studios.
Films were distributed by United Artists

Teen Comedies

John Tucker Must Die
Satisfaction

Working Title
A British film production company, London, England.
Founded by Tim Bevan and Sarah Radclyffe in 1984.
It produces both feature films and television productions.
Eric Fellner and Bevan are the co-owners of the company today.
Mainstream success came after the unexpected global success of Four Weddings and a Funeral, this film also launched one of their biggest stars, Hugh Grant.
Working Title tended to produce a lot of Romantic Comedies but have recently ventured into other genres of film.
In 1992 Working Title Films merged with PolyGram.
In 2004 Working Title grossed £17.8 million
Since 2007 all of Working Title’s films are distributed by the American Universal Studios.
Universal Studios own 67% of the company, the rest of the shares are owned by both the company’s founders and private investors.
Many of Working Title’s recent films have been co-productions with StudioCanal.
Working Title also own a low-budget film brand called WT2 or Working Title 2 which has produced films such as Shaun of the Dead in 2004.

Teen Comedies

· Wild Child

Ealing Studios

· A television and film production company, Ealing Green, West London
· It is officially the oldest film studio in Great Britan .
· The site was bought by theatre producer Basil Dean's Talking Pictures in 1929
· But re-opened as Ealing Studios in 1931
· In 1933, the company was renamed Associated Talking Pictures.
· By the time Basil Dean left the company in 1938, 60 films had been made at the studios. Dean was replaced by Michael Balcon from MGM.
· Balcon decided to return to the name Ealing Studios.
· In 1944, the company was taken over by the Rank Organisation.
· Over the war the comedies became what the studio was best known for.
· The BBC bought the studios in 1955 and created television productions there.
· In 1995, the studios were purchased by the National Film and Television School.
· It was then bought by Uri Fruchtmann, Barnaby Thompson, Harry Handelsman and John Kao in 2000 in an attempt to re-vive the studio.

Teen Comedies
· St. Trinians

Gold crest Films
· A British film production company founded by Jake Eberts 1977
It won two Academy Awards for Best Picture, for Chariots of Fire in 1981 and Gandhi in 1982.
After these successes the company decided to back more expensive productions with famous Hollywood stars. However these films often ran over schedule and budget e.g. The Mission (1986) and Revolution which were ultimately flops.
Recently Gold crest has begun to produce critically acclaimed films again.
Goldcrest Independent is Goldcrest’s newest venture. It was created to offer independent producers a chance to get their films made and produced worldwide.

Teen Comedies
· Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging
· Sex Drive
· Twilight?

Summary of Findings

Constraints

• Lack of funding
• Lack of expertise e.g. trained camera operators
• Lack of equipment e.g. lighting, props, special effects
• Stick to the BBFC’s guidelines for a 15 certificate
• Geographically – can’t travel too far so limited locations

All the Institutions researched have produced Teen Comedies but tend to produce a range of films of different genres, i would say the biggest competition would be from American studios as they produce a lot of Teen Comedies which are popular worldwide. In creating a British Teen Comedy we would be rivaling these American Studios for the British teenager's attention. A British Teen Comedy will enable British teens to relate more to the content as it will have references to their everyday lives which will hopefully appeal to them more.