Welcome to Oliver Loom's AS media blog. This is where you can find all of the tasks i have completed between September 2015 and January 2016 for my AS Media Course Work.
This post is about the costumes our characters will be wearing in the film opening.
The characters in our film are:
Elderly Man. This character plays the character that we are basing the film on in the present time. He is in casual normal clothes walking through a park in England.
Young footballer. These characters will be in a football kit all the same showing a team. Also the character that is playing the elderly man that is now younger will be wearing the same numbered shirt as the older character did. Also when the scene change and cut to the changing room this character will be shown first to symbolise this is him. We tried to get a kit as same as the kits were in the 1960s so it showed the flash back well enough. as shown in the two photos. the one on the left is a 1960s football kit and the photo on the right is the kit we used. We changed it to black and white so it looked older and that was the cameras used then. The kits were yellow and black still if we had decided not to use the black and white effect.
Rest of the football team around 17 years of age. These will be wearing the same kit as the character are basin git on.
This post is about the films which are similar to ours and how they are similar.
We have to look at films of a similar genre and films with a similar opening to us.
One film that is similar to our genre and our opening is Saving Private Ryan.
They have similar shots of the elderly man walking through the park. Also the music is similar to what we will use. It replicates our genre and creates a feeling of emotion and meaning to the viewer.
Our group will take different shots from this as they have a very similar scene to what we want. Also we will want to carry the emotion through into our film opening.
Another similar film is Forrest Gump. This film is similar as it is of a similar genre. It has emotional music that sets the mood for the first scene. We will take some ideas from the sound of this film as it correctly shows the genre and different objects match the sound.
Finally, our final similar film is the Goal series. They are similar because of the genre is Sport. Also they follow one individuals career and personal struggles.
This post is about the films which are similar to ours in some way and the titles that are in them. Saving Private Ryan
The title of the production company comes up on a black screen dead center. The titles are in a old fashion formal writing in a white font. It is all in capital letters and is in about front size 28-32. This means ti is easy to read and stands out enough. Each title is on for about 2-4 seconds. This means each tile can be read easily. Each one fades in and fades out in the center of the screen. The title Saving Private Ryan is on for the longest time about 5-6 seconds. This stands out at the start and gets the audience thinking about whys it is called this and engaged them in. The titles stop and it cuts to an american flag flapping in the breeze.
Goal
In goal the camera pans to the right from a birds eye view of a packed stadium. the title comes in at the top right of the screen. It is in yellow writing and a graphite style font. Where the letters are broken up and not solid lines. The titles are all in capital letters. The brand of the production company is in bigger font. Each title is on the screen for 2-3 seconds. The place where it comes onto the screen changes each time to not cover up the filming that is going n behind. Each title fades in and out. The titles go on for a whole 2 minutes of section and highlights of a football game.
Damned United
It starts of with 2 big film production companies flashing on the screen. This shows its a big film and will be well known. The smaller titles flash on a black screen with white writing. The titles are dead centre and fade in and out of the middle of the screen. It shows the date set and then flashes into eye catching titles of the name of a football club. It goes to a goal being scored in a football game.
Fonts
Arial
Courier
Georgia
Times
Verdana
Helvetica
Trebuchet
These fonts fitted the type of genre we chose. It shows that it is a big bold name and stand out in the sequence. It looks emotional with the name of the actor we have based it on. However the one we are going to use is called Engravers.
This post focuses on the Locations where we will be filming our film opening.
We have planned in advance where we were going to film.
Location is very important as it adds to the Mise en Scene.
We decided to use this location as it is easily accessible for all of our group as it is nearby the school. Also it is perfect as it has a thin concrete path flowing through the large amounts of grass where we needed our actor to walk through.
Finally there are football goals in the park and makes the flat football in the park realistic.
Another location we are using is a school changing room.
This is very easy for us as it is at the school so is easily accessible for everyone in the group. Also it is accessible for other actors we need to include in the film.
The changing room we are going to use is large and allows a lot of potential of including a variety of shots.
In this post i talk about the titles and the Name from our film and where it roots from.
We decided to use a subtle white font for the titles in our film. We used the titles in Saving Private Ryan and Forrest Gump as a base for this as these films of both biographical dramas. We also looked at the film Goal II but the font was too bold and bright and didn't match our genre well.
Coming up with a Film Name took a lot of thought. We came up with a few, the first was 'Cohen the Lion' this was because our characters name was Cohen and he played for England and obviously the England badge has three lions on it. However, when we told our classmates about the name they didn't understand the link between the lion and the England football team so we scrapped that name. The second name we had was 'Replay' this one worked better as it was clearly justifiable from our film opening of an old man looking back at his life. However, we felt that this name didn't match our genre very well, it seemed too Sci-Fi in our opinion. The last and official name for our film was simply 'Cohen' the name of our playing. Influenced for this name came from other sport films such as 'Best', 'Rudy' and 'Rocky' which is why it worked for our film.
Below is the production diary which shows the process we went through in making our film opening. Monday 9th November
On this day we were put in our groups and set the task to create an individual film pitch about what we would individually like our film opening to be. My one was about an old man suffering with dementia and looking at the details of what is going on in his head. Harry's was about a football player preparing in the changing room for his first football match. Joe's was a drama about a spy and his first encounter on a busy day.
Tuesday 10th November
On this day we pitched our individual pitches to each other in our group and came up with an idea which we all liked. We mainly took ideas from/ merged mine and Harry's ideas. We came up with a plot where an element of all our ideas was included. .
-Olly presenting his pitch.
Wednesday 11th November
We then developed our idea further and developed a film pitch based around target audience, genre and marketing putting all of our ideas on to a PowerPoint ready to present it the next day.
Thursday 12th November
On this day we pitched our film to our classmates. We all contributed to the presentation taking turns speaking and all contributed to the questions we were asked at the end. The only problems we faced was not having a name for our film and people couldn't get there heads around a biographical drama, but after giving them a couple of examples such as 'Forrest Gump' and 'Best' they seemed to like the idea more.
Friday 13th November
On this day we started to plan our planning what we would do on each day which took around about 30 minutes. Then for the other half of the lesson we focused on Fonts and titles and Harry did a Mood Board.
Monday 16th November
On this day we looked at music, we felt that sound was the most important factor of the film opening as sound can transform the context and feel of any footage and we wanted a specific image for our opening. We also decided on location and casting.
Tuesday 17th November
On this day we went to Baddow Recreational Park to take some pictures of the park and find a good place to shoot and to do some test shots.
This is a picture of us taking test shots.
These are some of our test shots. The last one is upside down because we had the idea of using this technique to try and do a successful tracking shot. It was not successful and we avoided using the shot in our final film.
Wednesday 18th November
On this day we went to the changing rooms at Great Baddow High School and took some pictures of the changing room and decided it would be perfect for our film opening as it looks old fashioned which is what we wanted as its quite a plain room with nothing modern. However, the camera we had died whilst we were doing some test videos so we decided to come back the next day and get some more test shots.
Thursday 19th November
On this day we went back to the changing room and took some more test shots.
Friday 20th November
On this day we worked out what shots we were going to actually do at the Rec and what order we would do them in. We then prepared our risk assessment for filming at the Rec. In addition to this we practiced the shots we would be using in the first scene we were filming on the following day.
This is some test shots we did when we worked out what shots we were going to use. We found that the camera was on the wrong setting and the footage was too dark because of this. Therefore we remembered to check the camera setting on the actual shoots. Monday 23rd November
On this day we did all of our filming at the rec. Harry's Grandfather was the only actor we needed for this scene. He fitted the part perfectly, he looked like an old football player which was exactly what we wanted. After we finished filming we uploaded the footage to a computer and reflected on how we though the shoot went. We all thought it was successful and concurred when we saw the footage later.
Tuesday 24th November
On the first day of editing i separated the clips i wanted to use from the ones i didn't and put them into order. I thought that when applying the sound to the clip it would all just slot into place, this wasn't the case. I decided it would be better if i put the music infirst and then apply the clips to the music. Which is what i began to do the next day.
This is the order of our first scene.
Wednesday 25th November
On this day i began to fit the footage we got to the music, this took me the whole lesson as i wanted the transitions to occur on the strong beats in the music.
Here is the music we used as non-diegetic sound on the second audio channel.
Thursday 26th November
We also came up with idea of having commentary from the 1966 world cup final come in quietly towards the end of the old man scene. We spent this lesson looking for the right piece of sound.
Friday 27th November
In this lesson we applied the old fashioned commentary to our clip and began adding a couple of titles in.
Monday 30th November
On this day we attempted to film our second scene in the changing room. We had all of our character (The football team) ready to film, however when we arrived at the facility there were people using it. We did book it but we were pumped at the last minute this meant we were pushed for time for filming and editing with one week until our deadline for our first draft. Our Next filming opportunity wasn't until the 2nd.
Tuesday 1st December
On this day we recorded our story board talk through, edited it and posted it onto YouTube and eventually onto the blog.
Wednesday 2nd December
On this day we filmed the second part of our film opening. We filmed this in the changing room, unfortunelty the teacher who was organizing the slot for us made a mistake which limited the time we had to film. We did our best to get as much footage as we could. We then took it back to the classroom uploaded and were delighted with the results.
Thursday 3rd December
This day was designated to editing we import the running order of the clips to adobe premiere and then applied the sound.
Friday 4th December
This was the day of our first deadline. We spent our lesson working out the levels for sound and tried to get the transition between the scenes right which took a long time. We then exported our first draft under the name 'Replay'.
Monday 7th December
On this day we watched all of the films opening and began to evaluate them.
Tuesday 8th December
On this day we finished evaluating the film openings. Wednesday 9th December
On this day we looked at our feedback. We found that our film wasn't long enough and the transition between old man and teenager wasn't great. We decided to do another shoot and extend the end of our piece. Thursday 10th December
We already had a risk assessment prepared as this shoot was in the same place as our last. The filming process was very quick and I feel it was successful. I edited the order straight away and that night I also recorded some foley to go over this part of the film opening. Friday 11th December
On this day i applied the sound i had recorded the night before and worked on the transition between the first and second scenes. This was the day our second draft was due in.
Monday 14th December -Friday 18th December
Over the last 5 days i made the editing as perfect as i could work primarily on titles. The rest of my group worked on the marketing campaign and made sure all the blog work was up to date. They also made a poster for the film.
Above is the finished film with all of the sound, footage and titles.
Elderly Man. This character plays the character that we are basing the film on in the present time. He is in casual normal clothes walking through a park in England. 
