Our Film Opening Pitch

We have now completed and performed our pitch to the class and the teacher. Our pitch included a great amount of detail, we included everything that was supposed to be included. We also showed the audience that we knew exactly what was going to appear in our opening and in which order. We not only decided the camera angle we were going to use but we gave examples using images. The pitch was received well and the teacher said our idea was good enough to be approved and made. Next thing to do is to perfect our storyboards and scripts, we then need to create our shooting schedules, then filming should begin.

Our pitch powerpoint had many slides, here are a few.

The Pitch Preparation

We are currently working on the preparations for a pitch that we will perform and attempt to 'sell' to our teachers. The pitch will need to include details on; the film synopsis, a detailed description of the opening and what we are going to see, details on the location, the characters and the actors.
With all these details already decided we should have a well planned and organized filming process. We will also be creating a detailed and appropriately lengthened storyboard mentioning the camera shots, the camera movement and the timing of each shot. This will make the process altogether easier. We are currently creating a powerpoint and script which will make our presentation seem professional and organized.

Synopsis for Whole Film

Before creating our film opening, we needed to have an idea about how they whole film was going to go, although we didn't go into great detail we needed to discover how the film was going to end. This would help us to possibly give the audience subtle ideas on how the film will pan out, it'll also help us to portray our characters a lot easier, as the way their personalities are portrayed can affect the way we relate to, and gain emotional attachment too while watching the film.
We decided to create a rough outline as to how the film would go;

The Beginning
Equilibrium Set, Harvey and Katie introduced separately through their morning routine
Characters are introduced/ Personalities made obvious
Characters bump into each other
Characters are then at a date, and both get stood up, the couple interact

The Middle
Relationship develops
Girl’s sister (Janine) gets a job at the same place as male character
Janine and Harvey spend a lot of time together
Janine walks in on Janine and Harvey drinking together and gets the wrong idea (Disruption)
Katie and Harvey do not contact each other, yet still think about each other
Harvey goes to Katie’s house, brings singing lepricorn to sing her a romantic comedy (Attempt to restore)
Katie slams door in face
Katie constantly thinks about Harvey
Janine meets with Katie, and tells her about how she got the wrong idea, and explains that they were planning a romantic surprise for Katie

Ending
Typically ‘happy ending’ (Restoration of the equilibrium)
Harvey romantically proposes to Katie, by writing (in flowers) will you marry me on the ground (in a field)
Ends with a perfect wedding, and the couple drive past where they first met and smile to themselves.

Filming and Editing Preliminary Task

Once the planning had been done, we got our camera and tripod so we could begin filming our short task. We chose our setting, then began filming the whole situation from many different angles making it easier when it came to editing the whole thing together. We filmed Ollie walking into the hall, then walking across the hall over to a teacher, who then spoke to him and told him off.
We then went into the media room and began editing it all together, we put the shots together so that the walking around matched the next frame and eventually we had the whole scenario put together with many different camera shots giving the film some variety.

Planning Preliminary Task

We were then told that we needed to create a small task that would get us used to using the camera, choosing camera shots/movements and framing the different shots. We need these skills so that our final coursework opening looks professional and suits its purpose of intriguing the audience. We got together a story board, which included the frames we were going to film, the initial storyline and the timing of each shot. Doing this job meant that when it comes to filming the task, we will know exactly what were doing, and will take half the time.

Researching Universal Studios

The next part of our task was to create a detailed presentation on a well known production company. We decided to use the company 'Universal', this decision was well thought about as we took the most popular romantic comedy films that had been released and found out the distribution company/production company for each film, Universal was one that stood out.
We looked at the different stages of the film production, development, pre production etc. We also looked at the key elements of the film industry and why they were significant to the production. The films that have been released recently, and the genres were also explored and we put all this information onto a powerpoint presentation that we performed to the class. Mr Cramb said that our presentation was good and that the presentation had significant details on it.

Evaluating Our Texual Analysis

We then gathered together all of our textual analysis results, we found the common conventions within each of the different micro elements. We looked at the recurring themes, recurring settings, the typical lighting, the common colours used, the typical costume used, the stock characters, the actors, the use of editing, the sounds used, the camera shots and the camera movements. Aswell as looking at the movement and gestures, the narrative, the iconography and the enigma created through all of the films. Going into so much detail will improve the way our overall opening will look, including these typical codes and conventions will also help us to ensure that the genre of our opening is easily identifiable.

Textual Analysis

When it came to this part of the task, we had to write 8 detailed textual analysis on other well known romantic comedies. I chose to look at films such as Love actually, P.S i love you and Nothing Hill, not only did these all get mentioned in our questionnaires but i had previously seen this films, making it easier to do a detailed analysis of the films. I also analyzed the openings, looking specifically at the codes and conventions that typically appeared in each opening and seeing how they set up the setting and introduced the characters and storyline.
These detailed analysis will make it a lot easier when it comes to creating our own opening.

Presenting our Questionnaire Findings

After this lesson, we collated our results and created a presentation to give to the class about our findings. We created graphs and tables explaining the differing results and found this very helpful. We noticed that the results gave very particular results, particularly when looking at the gender of the audience to romantic comedies. We found that male viewers watch the films with their girlfriends or wives, not one male said that they had watched it with friends. This made us aware of particular target audience.

We also found out the typical codes and conventions that people expected in the opening of a romantic comedy. These will help us make our openings genre easily identifiable.

We were given feedback about our presentations and were told that they were very good, and that we had sufficient detail in our presentation in order to move onto the next part of the task.

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22nd January 2010

This week we have been collecting results from 50 different people, asking several questions such as 'Who do you watch romantic comedies with?' and 'Where would you expect a romantic comedy to be set?' these questions allowed us to gather lots of differing opinions, and allowed us to see the typical and most common answers. This research will give us an insight into what the audience expect, and allows us to improve our final film openings, due to knowing a lot about the target audience and the codes and conventions in well known romantic comedies.

Once we had collected our results, we calculated the percentages for each question and created graphs and charts to make our results easier to understand. We then created a powerpoint in order to present our findings to the group and Mr. Cramb.

The results gave us a good insight into who we are aiming our romantic comedy at, and sparked some ideas on to what to include in our very own opening. Mr Cramb will be giving feedback on our presentations next lesson.

Welcome

Thank you for inviting me. Welcome to blogging and your foundation portfolio. Make sure you maintain your blog a couple of times a week as this should be a reflective working document.

Second Lesson

Friday 15th January
Today we evaluated our questionnaire with Mr Cramb, we went through what we could improve for example; the age ranges were too varied and we needed to fit them to the different film certificates. Doing this would make our results even more precise and informative.

We are now typing up our questionaire, we want to make it neat and clear, once it is complete, we will start collecting our results.

First Lesson

Thursday 14th January
In yesterdays lesson we chose our groups. My group is Me, Ollie and Jennie.
We have decided to choose the genre of 'Romantic Comedy' and produced a mind map, that included all of our ideas about the genre. We also wrote the typical conventions that a 'Rom Com' featured, such as lighting, sound and stock characters. Doing this will help us to create our own 'Rom Com' opening and ensure that we use the typical conventions that are expected in this genre.

We also discussed the target audience of this genre, we decided to create a draft of our questionnaire that we will use to find out more information about our audience. It'll also allow our opening to be more effective, and will make the genre of the film clear as soon as the opening is seen.

Researching the genre and audience is very important, as we will therefore have a well produced and planned opening to our film.

Write soon