Animatic

    

This is a rough animatic of our new storyline, which is that the main character, Mel, has a side of him that wants to be a successful footballer but he's stuck in a life that consists of gangs and trouble.

Our actual sequences has more of a variety of shots.

Feedback from Dan:

From Dans feedback we have loads of things to improve our work on:
Shortening and cutting a few atmospheric scenes
Match cut improvements
Slowen down a few shots


1 - Shortening and cutting a few atmospheric scenes
This can be done through our editing process using final cut pro, this will help prevent "clutter" in our work and will also allow us to focus more on the characters.

2 - Matchcut improvements
This can be done by timingly editing out our scenes in the correct order of the characters, this will help understand the role of the character and also prevent the video from looking incorrect.

3 - Slowen down a few shots
This can be done using final cut pro, and slowing down a few shots will help emphasise the characters and thier roles to the audience. This will also create a dramatic look and feel into our film, by slowing it down.

Video Feedback of our work so far

Our work is still in the process of editing, however we wanted a feedback from our teacher in order to see what we could improve on alongside us editing. We have taken alot of points on board such as "shorting/cutting out a few of the atmospheric scenes". In order to shorten the film, as well as to show more of the characters this time round, and prevent overpacking of our scenes.


Things that were liked:
Football scene - which shows the transition between characters lifestyle
Different types of shots - Atmosphere, close ups, wide range of angles
Different character roles

Things to improve on:

Shortening and cutting a few atmospheric scenes
Match cut improvements
Slowen down a few shots

Feedback from Dan

- Try to avoid long shots and get more close ups
- the football shots are great and a big improvement, has made the storyline more clear
- slow down the shots
- remove some of the setting shots

Tweet us with our hashtag #GrindTeenDrama

Planning - Order of the Title Credits

We used the list option on time toast to present the order we have decided to put our title credits in. Some actors names will be added and they will all be over the moving images. The pictures are there to show you the font, size and way in which they will appear on the screen. 

Let us know your thoughts!

24th February - Filming session

We were not able to do the football scene the other day because as we finished the gang scenes it was getting too dark therefore it would of not corresponded as we need the football scene to be an earlier time.

So Mel and China went out on tuesday to film the football scene. Ahsan and Shanaz had lessons therefore we could not take them on board with us. It wasn't essential that they were present as it was only Mel who was needed as he is playing the main character. The football scene went really well and came out looking good. It was also a chance for Mel to work on football skills as he's been out of football for 10 months. Mel really loved it. There was a lot fun involved as Mel kept missing open shots but it was all good in the end.

We got excellent shots and our storyline is now clear showing he main character as a good character but also bad. Here are some of the shots:

43 - Reflection on what went well

During the filming we added alot more shots and I think this went really well for us as a team as we have improved our camerawork from experience and we have gained in my words really high quality filming and camerawork this was due to us being able to edit and use the camera effectively. We have taken many shots here are a few:


 

23rd February - Fiming session

As we planned, we reshot the scenes in the half-term. We planned to do it an earlier day but everyone was busy however we found a covenient day. Mel, Shaz and China set off to film in Silver street again and again, Mel's friends came to help us shoot the group scenes. Ahsan was not able to come due to work however it did not pose a problem.

We remebered the feedback we were given from Dan our teacher and decided to act upon it. So we included more close ups and a few high and low angle shots in order to make it interesting with a variety.  We also made sure our storyline made sense therefore needed to film the gang acting as if they had a job for Mel. It went really well and we are now officially happy with the end results and all the shots we had. It was an excellent shoot.

Here are examples of some shots we took:

Updated TimeToast - Production Schedule

Wednesday 25th february Lesson

In todays session we will be editing our footage of Mel (main character) playing football, which represents his good talent. We have also decided to cut the footage towards the end therefore we will be showing more of Mels good side and less of his bad side as we do not want to give to much away to the audience.

During the beginning of our teen drama 'GRIND' you are automatically introduced to a variety of different camera shots such as close ups to reflect the passion Mel has for football, low angle shots, long shots to show the characters skills and to also show the setting where this is all taking place.

We believe that the football shots we have included have now made our video and storyline much more clearer for our target audience, and due to us shortening the footage it will leave the audience on  a cliff hanger which will entice them to watch the whole film.

Reshooting Plans

The main reason of reshooting some of our scenes is to make sure that the film makes more sense and allows the audience to engage more. We will be reshooting some of the clips such as the two groups approaching eachother so we can add more shots at one time such as close ups, medium shots, long shorts, high and low angle shots. This is so that the film has more audacity and voice in order to make our storyline clearer for our audience. We have also planned to include a football scene at the begining so we can see a transition between the main characters lifestyle from a dream of becoming successuful to the reality of gang culture which stands out for appeal to the character.

Production Diary - Tuesday 24th Feb 2015

Today after college myself and Mel went out to continue filming some more shots for the new beginning of our title sequence (The football scenes) I managed to film everything in the time we had after college so all our group had left to do was edit it on Final Cut Pro in our lessons. We used a variety of shots such as low angle shots, point of view shots, long shots and more. The point of the scenes we filmed today were to make our storyline much clearer than it was before. We took the feedback from Dan and changed it so that our audience would understand what was going on. The storyline is now that Mel, who is our main character, wants to be a successful footballer but is stuck in a life of gangs/crime. This shows two different sides to Mel, one that conforms to the stereotype of teens and one that challenges it.

Editing Sesh

From our group editing session, I have edited our title sequence by changing the different colours which our title sequence starts off with. I have changed this from a bright yellow to a light white which looks better alongside our film and matches the theme. I have also included a different title sequence which I have seen in the use of different movies such as kidulthood, this reinforces our film and really sets out the meaning of youth drama with as it adds a urban theme to it.
As a group we have also edited and talked about changing some of the scenes, this has included things like shorterning/adding/removing a few scenes and also adding music to certain parts.
In all this has given us a chance to look over our work, improve, and also have a laugh about some of the funniest parts!

Lastest Feedback:

Feedback:

As a team we need to improve our youth drama, from the feedback of both Dan and Rebecca our storyline needs to include more shots and direction in order to make more sense this will help to improve and make our film better.
Dan and Rebecca both loved our title seqences as it enforced our urban youth drama and was sleek against the background music which all our group helped to make. The plot of the film was also liked, we had some really good editing techniques.

What to expect and improve on?

As a team we will include more scenes and add more shots, we have planned to include scenes of the main character in a football scene just before he returns back to his estate. We have also decided to include more shots of all the characters with more close ups and medium shots. In the end, our group 32 Fi Dem film will blow!

Sound Design

Foley Sounds

• Bag zipping 
• Gates opening 
• Sirens
• Buses
• Whistle

I used Garageband to create 4 copyright free sounds. 

Also we will also be using an instrumental that we will remake ourselves as it would be copyright to use it.
Here is a listen of the instrumental that we will remake.

Macro analysis of youth drama title sequence

Key plot ideas introduced:

•  Conflict between relationships
• Main characters who either play a part in the conflict or are affected by it. In this case it will be Mel who has been affected by the street life.

Characters introduced:

• A male character
• Gang members

Representation of social groups:

• Gangs
• Working class
• Guys being introduced to gang life
• No binary oppositions

Genre Research

Setting and location of chosen genre

The setting of GRIND is in the main characters hometown (Mel) and the scenes within the film are the most important places to him at that moment. For example the opening credits appear over all of the main spots in his area where he chills, and before we view the main character himself we are automatically introduced to the type of atmosphere she surrounds himself in. The use of these different types of locations makes the viewer think that he has walked a long way for something which is this important to him. The setting and the location is very crucial to the genre, I am using this because it shows the type of characters there are.

Costumes and characters

The costumes for each character especially in this genre is really important because it reflects on what type of character they are, meaning that the viewers normally stereotype  the character so they know what they are like. In GRIND the main character is dressed in his normal tracksuit, big jacket and cap. This conforms to the stereotype of young black males dressing in hoodies and caps, however Mel's character represents the poker face which means he has two sides to him.

Title Sequences and Title Designs

Who makes title sequences?
The person responsible for the making of title sequences is called the 'Title Sequence Designer'. 

An example of a well known tit;e sequence designer is Aaron Becker, who has a BFA in visual communication and has designed and directed the main title sequences for films such as The Purge, Insidious and The Conjuring. 


Who makes title designs? 
Film title design is a term describing the craft and design of motion picture title sequences. Since the beginning of the film form, it's been an essential part of any motion picture.

A 'Main Title Designer' is the designer of the movie title. The manner in which the title of a movie is displayed is considered an art form.


How do they get their ideas?
Main title designers gather their ideas by designing their art work to 'set a mood' and 'capture the audience' before the movie begins. 

Representation of different characters

The way thats the young boys are represented in our film GRIND is that they are oblivious and they don't know what they are doing. Our opening sequence aims to make it clear that our main character Mel does not take his football talent as serious as he should and would rather be peer pressured into illegal activity with his mates. The idea of football was used because it is the most common sport/activity that young males are associated with in todays society. This also represents Mels character as being weak and oblivious to the important factors in his life. I think that the use of Mel represents the day to day life style of most young boys that spend their time on the streets.

In the film GRIND we don't use any female characters because we would like to show it from a young boys persecutive himself and we ran out of time finding female characters since me and china did not want to take part in any acting.

Production Diary - 13 February

In todays lesson my group were concentrated on editing as we plan to reshoot during the half-term on the 17th february. We each allocated ourselves to diffeent sections so that we do no waste time. Ahsan did some blogging and also China since we were a bit behind. Shanaz went over our film to make sure the cuts were on the right place and making sure our film wasn't too long.

I decided to edit the titles. So titles concerning the opening credits. e.g
executive producer by
music produced by
produced by
costume by..

After the reshoot in half term I will then put the titles over the action since we chose to do titles over moving images , then we should be done. Also in this day we done a rough cut and receved feedback from peers and teacher therefore this led on to our decsion to reshoot some sections again. We will then also make our website to promote our film also look out for exclusive interviews with the makers of GRIND, actors, sound designer etc. A lot to look forward to, so watch this space!

Editing session

Friday 13th February 2015

In todays lesson we are editing the titles to our teen drama film GRIND. As a group we discussed different styles and fonts which would best represent our genre of film. The name of the style is 'rocket', I think this is suitable for our youth drama as the writing appears fast and is straight forward. Our production label is 'fi dem productions', we discussed this idea because it is the name of our group and therefore who would be better to give the credit to!

The colours used in the title sequence is mainly over a black screen at the moment, however when we finish filming in the half term all of the credits and titles will be going over the moving images. This fits in perfect with our story line because most of our camera shots and in gloomy, dark environments which sets the tone of what our drama is about.

Blogging Heath Check 2

Hi guys 34, 35, 36 posts respectively. 13/20, C- I'm a bit disappointed that you haven't blogged since last week, Weds. You've posted a storyboard but there are no further comments and no production diary bar the one day - what have you doing, and how have you filled your time? Please get an updated production diary together as soon as possible. You should state what you intended to do, what you achieved and what changes are you making to your plans (if any) because of this. You need to be as detailed as possible here - the entry you have up for the 28th January could be more detailed. What exactly happened that day? How happy are you with what you've done? You also should post an account of what you did in my lesson on Weds as well. You can do dairy entries as group posts but should also some add some short posts about your individual contributions. Also consider your skills development - what skills have you picked up since you began. Remember, workshop is open every day for you to add blogs. 'm currently grading you a C- but I will have to downgrade your mark unless you get something up soon. Thanks Dan Me and Mel have improved the blogs 34,35,36 as we have detailed them in content and have also added ICT to the blogs by including pictures and different fonts.

Blogging Health Check 1

Hi Ahsan You do have 15 posts currently but I note that 2 of these are totally empty and at least one only has two pictures in it. These partial and empty posts take down your total grade - please fill them in properly. I also note that you could use more graphics or ICT - your post on title sequences from Art of the Title is well written but lacks any graphics and has mixed font sizes. I also note that you have not yet posted your remake and your assessment of this piece of work. When you actually start to plan your sequence, you must include more detail and put in more effort. Longer posts with good ICT will get you a better mark and they will also aid your planning, leading to a better product. I suggest you use workshop this week to catch up. Improvement of my posts have been made I have included more posts and into detail I am aiming to hit my targets. I have also filled in empty/unfinished blogs.

Rough Cut 1 with Feedback

 

Here we received a feedback on our first ever rough cut. The main topics discussed were, putting the titles over the moving images; making sure our storyline making sense. and making use of the settings. Also our shots needed more variety and to avoid taking shots that do not include the face.

The good points were that the music we created was good. The beginning shots was also good.

There was lots of improvements made therefore we decided to reshoot.

Editing

In todays lesson we focused on editing our opening sequence. However we discovered that most of our shots are too long and therefore as a group we will cut them down to ensure our opening sequence just hits 2 minutes max.

We will also be re-shooting some footage as in one of the scenes you can see the camera bag in the background. Therefore we will be reshooting next thursday during the half term within the afternoon

Blogging health check 2

Hi guys
34, 35, 36 posts respectively. 13/20, C-

I'm a bit disappointed that you haven't blogged since last week, Weds. You've posted a storyboard but there are no further comments and no production diary bar the one day - what have you doing, and how have you filled your time? Please get an updated production diary together as soon as possible. You should state what you intended to do, what you achieved and what changes are you making to your plans (if any) because of this. You need to be as detailed as possible here - the entry you have up for the 28th January could be more detailed. What exactly happened that day? How happy are you with what you've done? You also should post an account of what you did in my lesson on Weds as well. You can do dairy entries as group posts but should also some add some short posts about your individual contributions. Also consider your skills development - what skills have you picked up since you began. Remember, workshop is open every day for you to add blogs.

'm currently grading you a C- but I will have to downgrade your mark unless you get something up soon.

I've improved on what my teacher told me in order for me to be up-to-date.

Feedback on my blogs

FEEDBACK: A little under where you should be at this point in the unit Shanaz.  What I need you to do is to commit to coming to one lunchtime workshop per week to get on top of this work, aiming to blog individually at least 3 times a week.  Post your own overview of the filming session, with photos, post your own outline of what you need to improve I light of the filming session, and post your own plans for the rest of the week.  Quite simple blogs and it will bulk up your post count quite considerably. 

How I am going to improve?

I am going to improve my blogs by ensuring I spend more time completing them all up to standard and for the correct deadlines. On wednesdays I am going to being attending Media workshops and blogging  every Monday during lunch time as I have a 3 hour gap.

What am I going to change?

I am going to ensure that I find new ways to upload my bloggs, including using better ict skills and other softwares rather than having plain font as it does not attract young people.

Feedback on Wednesday 11th February

Rebecca viewed our opening sequence to our film 'GRIND' today and we came to a conclusion that the storyline to our film is un clear. The main problem is that our main character has not been portrayed as the good character as we see him with a group of other young males, stereotypically being involved in crime or illegal activity. However to improve on this feedback, during the half term we have decided to do additional footage mainly showing the main character Mel playing football which is his passion in the film. To portray this we will be using close up angle shots of our main character and overview shots of the football cage which in this case is the sobell leisure football pitch which is within the local area.

Our next filming session will be on wednesday 18th february where we will be filming our new location. We should be filing during the evening time when it is late because during the night time the football pitch lights appear.

Props that we will be using: 

Football shorts

Football tee

Football boots

Football

Football gloves (Optional)

A silver whistle

Characters:

Mel- The footballer

Football coach

Blogging health check 2

34 posts at health check 2.  A little under where you should be at this point in the unit Shanaz.  What I need you to do is to commit to coming to one lunchtime workshop per week to get on top of this work, aiming to blog individually at least 3 times a week.  Post your own overview of the filming session, with photos, post your own outline of what you need to improve I light of the filming session, and post your own plans for the rest of the week.  Quite simple blogs and it will bulk up your post count quite considerably.

Blogging health check 2

Hi guys
34, 35, 36 posts respectively. 13/20, C-

I'm a bit disappointed that you haven't blogged since last week, Weds. You've posted a storyboard but there are no further comments and no production diary bar the one day - what have you doing, and how have you filled your time? Please get an updated production diary together as soon as possible. You should state what you intended to do, what you achieved and what changes are you making to your plans (if any) because of this. You need to be as detailed as possible here - the entry you have up for the 28th January could be more detailed. What exactly happened that day? How happy are you with what you've done? You also should post an account of what you did in my lesson on Weds as well. You can do dairy entries as group posts but should also some add some short posts about your individual contributions. Also consider your skills development - what skills have you picked up since you began. Remember, workshop is open every day for you to add blogs.

I'm currently grading you a C- but I will have to downgrade your mark unless you get something up soon.

Thanks

Dan

Refection on filming - Wednesday 4th February - 43

Filming for the Intermediate



Today we went out filming and guess what? My friends did not let us down. We went straight to Bruce Grove and met them then off we went to Silver Street. Also another good news, the whole group was present. So everyone contributed to the film and it all went well.

Mel's friends were so excited to be part of the film they thought it was a Hollywood film or something. I guess that was good thing. We filmed the different acting parts. So there was tracking shot of Mel's character walking up to his friends. High angle of the friends together , close ups of faces and extreme close up so that the audience can know who is who and who is present.

We particularly liked the shot of one Mel's friend who so huge and massive. He's about 6ft6 and the over the shoulder looked incredible. The quality was amazing, it looked like a proper movie. I guess that our group has a lot talent that we just discovered. Our filming was incredible and directing was exceptional. Congrats to Ahsan who did a good job on the filming. I'm sure he will be chuffed when he reads this.(Thas me tbh).

We managed to finish all our shots, well almost and it was amazing . We ended the day with smiles but with cold hands so it was time to go home. We were really pleased with ourselves and were looking forward to the editing. Next lesson we will be focusing on editing and putting our shots in order, finish off our soundtrack , finish off our titles, there's still a lot to go but we got this. We've really improved on our filming skills. Group 32 Fi Dem!

Reflection on filming - Friday 30th January - 43

Filming for Amateurs- Location



Unfortunately Shanaz wasn't in for this filming due to a politics trip she had to go to but this did not pose a problem and did not stop us to go out filming. Me, China and Ahsan set off filming in another location which was different from the previous one. Instead of 'Silver Street' we set off to Broadwater Farm in Tottenham - (don't worry it is not a farm)! We had to think of the risks when going there because of its violent and gang culture history so we had to take precautions and be vigilant. It was all due to be fine as myself lived round the area.

It was a cold morning but that didn't stop us. We arrived at Broadwater Farm and decided that we liked the estates that were present and thought we could add it to our film. So more scenery was taken from Broadwater Farm and it didn't matter that it was different to the previous location as they are quite near to each other. We then decided to film the actual footage therefore myself playing the character that we initially planned. Initially in I was planned something else to wear but on this day I was wearing something completely different but the intial items of clothing were there, a hoody, nike cap and black jeans. So there was a complete change of costume but it didn't affect our story in any way.

This time China and Ahsan were behind the camera and China doing a great job of directing and I know Shanaz would of loved to be there and boss us around! We did several shots of my character being introduced to the camera and the shots came out really because well... I would call myself an exceptional actor. There was some bits where we went wrong or I couldn't stop laughing but I guess that's what filming is all about, deleted scenes and bloopers so it was nice to experience it.

Next time we would be doing the follow up scenes as to when my character meets up his friends and they have a bit of  laugh but then are disturbed by the presence of other boys who come in the area and tension arises. This will be filmed back in Silver Street, Edmonton. For this I'm relying on my friends to be present and help make this film work, its a risk but a risk our group is willing to take so fingers cross!