Existing Product Research

After further discussion with my group, we have decided that we would like to include certain things our film. To do this successfully, I am going to watch some existing products in order to make sure that anything we do looks authentic and convinces our audience of what is happening.

We are going to be including a flashback which takes the audience back to the 1970's, in order to do this we are going to have to be very careful when choosing costume and locations, so when the time comes to do this I will carry out a significant amount of research to make sure we are going along the right lines. I will watch a film set in the 1970's to look at the kind of clothing worn by people. Off the top of my head the film I could think of that was set in the 70's, is Please, Sir (1971), so I am going to rewatch this as part of my research.

We are also going to be including elements of religion in our film, and as our film is going to be a thriller, Rob came up with a good suggestion of a film called Carrie (1976), which I think I am also going to watch. I think that I am also going to watch this film in order to get an idea of what we could add to increase the tension in our film and how we could really make religion a focus point in our own thriller. As this film was also made in the 70's this may help me with costume/location as well.

Finally, we would like to add an element of the 'sixth sense' into our film, if we feel that it will work and our audience will get it. As I have never seen The Sixth Sense (1999), I have decided that I am going to watch this film, so that when we get to the stage of editing I can have a better input when coming up with ideas. I also want to make sure that anything we do doesn't look cheesy and too far-fetched, so watching an existing film that uses this idea will help me to make sure of this.

Hopefully, watching these existing products will help me to make ours a much better end product, making it more professional and better received by our target audience.

Roles To Be Allocated.

Following our group meeting on 27th September 2011, I have made a list of the roles that will need to be allocated to group members at our next session. The list is below and after our two hours next week, I will hopefully be able to include a synopsis of our final film idea. So far we have only come up with the basic outline which still needs a significant amount of work.

• Director
• Producer
• Editor
• Sound Editor
• Special Effects Editor
• Lighting Engineer
• Sound Editor
• Story Boarder
• Script Writer
• Treatment Writer
• Location Scout
• Talent Scout
• Costume/Make Up
• Props Manager
• Continuity Manager
• Camera Operator
• Photographer

After our meeting next week I will be able to post who is going to be in charge of what in our production team. I will also be able to include a treatment which will give a finished idea of our film. Until I have this finished idea, I think that it will be difficult for me to list the difficulties that my group and I may face during the production process of our film, so I will include this in my next blog post. 

Deciding A Genre

During our last meeting, my group and I decided on a genre for our film. Just as we had limitations as to what we could do last year, we also had the same problems this year.

For our AS projects, all groups decided that a thriller would be the best genre to go with, this is because none of us have the skills to write something successful like a comedy film and we do not have the budget/equipment/facilities to film something like a sci-fi or an action film. For the same reasons, my group and I have once again decided to go with a thriller as being our chosen genre.

However, this year, we will be adding different elements to it. From reading each other's treatments we have decided that we would like to add religious elements to or film, because it is something which is quite uncertain, so we feel we could use that to our advantage and possibly use it to build tension. Over the next few weeks we will be using our time to come up with our film idea and write and present our treatment.

Treatment Ideas

During the second half of the two hour session we had on Tuesday 20th September, my group and I met for the first time to discuss the ideas we had for our film. As this is the first time any of us have ever worked together in a media environment, we took the opportunity to remind one other of the short film ideas we came up with as part of the task set for us by Mr Hood over the summer holiday. Below I have embedded a copy of all of our presentations, each presentation includes the reading of our individual treatments which we will hopefully combine in order to come up with one great idea!

Holly A2 Treatment Pitch from Gavin Hood on Vimeo.

The first video is of my presentation. I try my best to cover answers in all potential production problems during the first stages of my idea, so as to avoid anything problematic later on during the process which could slow down the film planning/making/editing process. I believe that this skill could be valuable to our group because it will hopefully keep us organised and on track. I also feel that I could prove to be a valuable group member when it comes to the film production part of our process.

Sam C A2 Treatment Pitch from Gavin Hood on Vimeo.

Sam is a very creative member of the team and I think he will contribute greatly to both the pre production and post production side of our media project during A2. He has some very interesting ideas when it comes to the technical elements which we could include in our final film and the skills he holds in the editing stages of our film will prove to be very useful to us as he is a perfectionist in the best way possible.

Rob A2 Treatment Pitch from Gavin Hood on Vimeo.

Rob is going to prove to be a very useful member of our group due to the imagination he has. The ideas which he presented to us in his project at the beginning of the term included a very involved, yet gripping storyline which touched on the theme of religion, something which we haven't come across that much when developing our own film ideas in the past. I believe that it is Rob's way of thinking outside the box that will help us during the pre production stages to create the best possible script, treatment and storyboard we possibly can.

Adele A2 Treatment Pitch from Gavin Hood on Vimeo.

Adele is also a very creative member of our group, and although not the most vocal member, I believe that she will make sure her ideas are heard by us all in order to create the end product we can all be happy with. She has some very good ideas when it comes to creating suspense/tension in our short film and I think she will be a vital member when it comes to perfecting the planning, production and end product.


During the discussion held in our group session, we went over each other's treaments and picked out the ideas that we liked from each. We will decide on a final idea next time we meet, for now I have included a list below, of the things we liked the idea of including in our final film.

• Including a quirky twist
• Not using a weapon as this can create more tension
• Brothers that are competing for attention
• An act of violence/abuse commited by a family insider
• An object which holds significance
• Religion as a major theme

After our next session I will create a more detailed post about the direction in which we have decided to go with our short film and will fully discuss the ideas which we have and where each idea came from.

My Group.

A2 Groups have been announced and I am pleased to say that I will be working alongside Sam Clark, Rob Abel and Adele Dibble. I am looking forward to working each of them over the course of the next year.

Welcome!

Welcome to my A2 Media Blog! I am back for another year of Media Studies and am very much looking forward to it! I will be posting all of my planning, research, discussions, etc. on this blog regularly just like last year. I hope you enjoy reading through my posts.

This year, my task is slightly different; the aim is to create a five minute short which will represent a group of people in a certain way. I look forward to working with a new group of people and creating a fresh, quirky idea which will hopefully be entertaining and meet all of the criteria needed to gain the best possible grades. We also have to complete two ancillary tasks which are to create film poster and a film review to accompany our film; I am looking forward to developing new skills during this process, and building on existing skills which I gained from the AS course last year.