Animatic 

First day of filming

First day of filming 

My first day of filming was the 24th of September, I decided to go down town to get some establishing shots of ware town as that is where the first part of my documentary starts, I then got another shot of me walking along the river with the town in the background. I got this shot because I wanted to add narration over the top in post production, the narration is going to be me talking about why I am in ware and where I will be going. I then went and got some shots of me standing outside my house talking about how I was visiting Mrs Smith one of Clifford Randall's old neighbours. I couldn't get the interview on the 24th as the person I was interviewing wasn't available.

locations

Locations

Throughout my production I will be using many different locations in order to make it more interesting.

Location list:

·         Ware high street, this is where the production will start, I am going to have a establishing shot of ware town so people know where I am, then it will cut to me walking along the river with a voice over.

·         My house, this is where the interview with Mrs Smith will take place

·         in the car, I will be sitting in the back of a car as if I’m on my way to the next location

·         School, I will be using the school as the next location as I am going to interview Dr. Martin and I need a place that will look like a doctor’s office.

·         The next location will be in the drama studio as I need to use lights and staging to create the effect I am in a prison.

characters

Characters

in the five minute segment of my documentary there will be three different characters (bot including me) that I will be interviewing. The first character I will meet is going to be Mrs Smith then I am going to see Dr. Martin and I will finally meet the infamous Clifford Randal himself.

Mrs Smith
Mrs Smith is an old neighbour of Clifford Randal and I am going to be asking her questions about what he was like as a neighbour and to try to get an insight into what he was like. The name Mrs Smith was made up because I am going to say she wanted her identity hidden in order to protect her, and Smith is a very common name.

Dr Martin

Dr Martin was one of the psychiatric doctors who worked very closely with Clifford Randal; I will be asking her questions about how he behaved in his sessions and what he was like behind bars.

Clifford Randal
The final interview will be with Clifford Randal and I will be asking him questions to try to understand why he did it and what led him to do it.

costumes

Costumes

Jimmy Beaton

The costume I will be wearing to present the documentary in will be smart casual as I will be wearing a shirt, jeans, Vans and a smart jacket. This is because I will need to look smart but I am also supposed to be traveling around and I need to look trustworthy as well.  

 

 

 

 

Mrs Smith (false name)

Mrs Smith was one of Clifford Randal’s old neighbours; she will just be wearing trousers, blouse and a cardigan. This is because she is just a normal woman and so will be wearing normal clothing.

Dr. Martin
Dr. Martin was one or the main psychiatric doctors who treated Clifford Randal, to show this she will be wearing a white lab coat with a smart skirt or trousers on underneath and smart shoes.

 

 

Clifford Randal
When I interview Clifford Randal he will be in prison, to show this he will be wearing an orange jumpsuit with black plimsolls.  

 

shot list

shot list

Shot 1. Focuses on me walking down a road talking about where I’m going today.

Shot 2. Medium shot of my knocking on a door.

Shot 3. Woman opening the door I then introduce myself saying why I’m here

Shot 4. Shot of me and then woman walking down the corridor

Shot 5. Shot of us both sitting down in the living room I then proceed to ask questions

Shot 6. Numerous shots going back and forth of me asking the neighbour questions.

Shot 7. Shot of me walking out the house

Shot 8. Shot of me traveling in the car talking about where I’m going next.

Shot 9. Shot of me at the door of the doctor who treated Derek Moore.

Shot 10. This shot is a medium shot of me greeting the doctor

Shot 11. Over the shoulder shot of the doctor and me asking her questions, the will also me many shots going back and forth as I am asking questions

Shot

Shot 12. Will be a shot of me thanking the doctor for her time and leaving.

Shot 13. Is a shot of me walking down the corridor talking about how I have managed to get an interview with Derek Moore.

Shot 14. Will be a shot using chiaroscuro lighting it will be dark so you cannot see the surroundings. 

Shot 15. I will then continue to ask him questions. 

relevant media texts

 

relevant media texts

 

 

 

Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer

Production facts:

  Made in 2003

Documentary/crime 

  Directed by Nick Broomfield, Joan Churchill

This is a crime documentary was made in 2003 and presented my Nick broom field the documentary was about Aileen wuornos who was a highway prostitute who was executed in 2002 for killing seven men. this is relevent to my production because it is set in the same sort of style as mine will be as they use interveiws with different people and that is what i will be doing.

 

Serial Killers: The Real Life Hannibal Lecters

Production facts:

Made in 2001

        Directed by Sean Buckley

     Written by Phil M. Rosenberg

This documentary examines a selection of real life serial killers and compares them to the fictional Hannibal Lecter. this is also relevent to my production because it profile many different serial killers and it compares them to fictional characters.

 

The Silence of the Lambs

Production facts:

       Made in 1991

         Directed by

     Crime/drama/thriller

A young F.B.I. cadet must confide in an incarcerated and manipulative killer to receive his help on catching another serial killer who skins his victims. this is also simmilar to my production because although its fictiononal it is about interveiwing serial killers and will be in a similar style.

 

Knebworth

In preparation for year 13 media studies we went to knebworth park to shoot a music video. We had to do a music video as it is one of the choices that we can do next year as well as a film trailer and a documentary. We were asked to get into groups of our choice and chose a song and what sort of stylistic features we were going to use. I was in a group with Billy s, Billy t and Max. As a group we thought it would be a good idea to pick a collection of songs and make a mash up. whilst at knebworth we film all the shots we needed for our music video, we used many different types of shots, action shots and we even used lip sinking so so it looked like we were singing the song.

The songs we chose to do were

'Mario - let me love you' - performed by Max

'Take That - want you back' - performed by me

'Elton John - Her Song' - performed by Billy s

'Toni Braxton - Unbreak my heart' - performed by Billy t

'One Direction - that's what makes you beautiful' - group performance 

The video:

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=djNr7scFSkw

Evaluation: Question 7

Evaluation Question 7

Throughout the duration of our production I have learnt a lot about many different types of technologies and I have learnt many different skills from filming, editing and audio aspects. A lot of planning has gone into the making of our production and it has come a lot way since we started with the creation of our original storyboard to the completion of our final cut. We also found that we had to change our production a lot because of certain mistakes we had made.

Throughout the production because of mistakes we made in the visual department we found we had to reshoot many times to make the corrections needed. for example once we put all of our original shot back and got feedback on the first cut it was made clear to us that we had to change the prop we used for the murder weapon this is because the weapon we used originally was a metal pole and it was unclear to the audience that it was the murder weapon. This is why when we re-shot it we changed the murder weapon to a brick and made it obvious to the audience that it was the weapon by filming the Billy drop the brick and show it roll down and hit the victim. Another problem we faced was the amount of shots we had, when we put our first cut together we realised that the amount of shots we had didn’t add up to two minutes because of this we had to re-write the story board however we had to add on another scene to the end, we used these extra scenes to show the audience the character relationship between the two boys and how the murder had effected them. Continuity was also another issue we faced because as we put the piece together we realised that certain parts of the production had problems with continuity and so we had to re-shoot them and re edit them and we learnt that we had to pay closer attention to detail when filming.

We also had problems with sound at different points in the production this is because where we were filming was quite noisy and so the microphone had trouble picking up other sound effects we wanted to include such and snapping twigs, we got around this issue by using pre recorded sounds and adding them on in the editing stage. We also found I difficult to find music to use in our piece because it had to be un-copyrighted.
I have also learnt a lot about editing from working on our production this is because we had to cut all of our shots and put them together in the right order and so they looked right, we also added many transitions to the piece to add effect and to make it more interesting.    

Evaluation: Question 6

Question 6: what have you learnt about technologies in the process of constructing this film?
 
Planning and research
We used our smartphones as digital still cameras to take pictures of the storyboard, the mind map and the possible locations of the film opening. We also used search engines such as Google and Google images to find out things such as other films that are similar to ours so we could compare them and to find examples of the costumes of our characters. We also used Facebook so that we could contact everyone in our group. We also used Blogger to keep track of the research we had done. we aso used Youtube to find non-copyrighted music for our prodution.

Production
For actual production the main piece of tech we used a Canon digital camera with an SD card. However we also used a microphone so we could record sounds such as running water and breaking twigs. We also used our smartphones again to take pictures of our group at work for evidence that we later put on our blogs.

 
Post production
We used Premier Pro V6 in the post production for editing our piece by cutting it to make it shorter we to add visual effects such as dissolve and overlays. We also used premier to add titles to our work such as who stars in it, the director, producer and the name of the film “It Never Happened”. We also downloaded a font from the internet to use for our titles so it fitted our production.
We used Adobe Illustrator to make our company logo. Blogger was also used in post-production to document everything we have done and to give evidence.

Evaluation
Google has probably been the most important tool for our production because we have used it to search films film production and distribution companies that are similar and relate to our film. we also used it to access all of the other websites  used such as IMDB, Facebook Youtube.

Evaluation: Question 5

Question 5

The opening scene is supposed to make our audience want to watch on. This is why we open with the shot of a dead body laying in the woods because it builds suspense and you want to know why he is there. we then make it more suspenseful and exiting by increasing the pace when we see the two boys running through the woods and by introducing flash forward of the same boy franticly washing their hands, this suggest that these two boys have done something bad and makes the audience wonder if it was that they murdered the boy at the start. They should then realise that these two boys have killed the boy on the floor which will make them want to keep watching because they will want to know why they did it and how it happened. our opening scene appeals to teenagers because it is focused on two average teenage boys that have made a mistake and the characters are easy to relate to.

Evaluation: Question 4

Q4 : Who would be the audience for your product?

The audience for our product would be teenagers/ young adults because the film focuses on two teenage boys and so it would be more appealing to young people, people would probably go with their friends or parents most likely their dads because they would probably want to see it more than mums. The film is primarily targeted at a male audience because it’s a male cast and is quite dark and gritty. The type of people who would go and see it would be people from working class and middle class backgrounds. Ethnicity doesn’t really matter for our film I think people from any ethnicity would be interested in it. The place where our viewers would most likely see it would be in DVD’s, TV and selected cinemas.

Evaluation: Question 3

evaluation of question 3

Q3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Our film would be a small budget British film. Once we knew these we then researched film production companies that would best suit are film we found four companies that we thought suited our film and they were Pathe, BBC films, Film 4 productions and Revolver entertainment. We decided that the best one for our film was Revolver entertainment because it had funded films similar to ours such as “Ill Manors”, “kidulthood and “Shank”.

Evaluation: Question 2

evaluation of Question 2

 . Q2 : How does your media product represent particular social groups?

 

The social group that our media product represents is teenagers because the three characters seen in the film opening are teenagers. At first we were going to show them as very lower class living in the slums of London and the costumes were going to be tracksuit bottoms and hoodies. The sort of characters was had in mind first been for example the characters featured in Kidulthood and Attack the Block.



however because the opening took place in the woods we decided to make them look more working class living in a more rural area because there are not really any woods in the middle of London. Instead of showing the characters wearing jogging bottoms we made them wear jeans and chinos this was to show that they are not really poor. This shows that they are first time offenders and that they didn’t plan the murder. The characters featured in the TV show Misfits and Skins were used as inspiration to show they are not that poor but that they have been got involved in something bad accidentally.

Evaluation: Question 1

AS Media Studies Foundation Production Evaluation

Question 1: in what way does your media product use, develop or challenge form and conventions of real media product?

Example and description	Explanation how it uses/ develops/ challenges forms and conventions
Title of film	Our film is called “It Never Happened” this is because it is a quote from the film when the character texts this to another character in the film it is a key moment because the character is telling the other one to keep the murder a secret which makes it more thrilling. An example of films where there are quotes as the title are “I Know what  you did last summer”
Setting/location	The location for the main section of the film opening is set in the woods however there are indoor scenes and there is one part where the characters are running over a bridge and they run past a cctv sign which hints at what might happen later on. An example of a film where people are murdered in the woods is the film Severance and Cabin in the woods.
Camerawork and editing	Our camerawork and editing in  the opening scene follows convention because it starts of slow as it slowly pans away from a dead body however it then quickly cut to the culprits running away which uses very fast editing such as jump cuts.
costume	The costumes featured in our opening scene are typical working class teenager clothes. Billy is wearing some old chinos and a n old hoody and Matt is wearing some old jeans and a hoody. A good example of a film where they dree similar to how the characters in our film opening dress is in Kidulthood.the murder wepon we use however is not conventional e.g. a gun or a knife it a broken road sign this was to show that they are not trained profesional killers and it shows that they did not go out peurposely to kill someone but it just happened,
Genre	The genre of our film is a crime drama/thriller and it revolves around the murder of this boy. The film is not  from the police officers point of veiw trying to solve the murder instead it focuses on the two murderers and what they go through and how they cover up the murder.