Strong women roles

One of the most obvious developments in recent pop culture has been the emergence of the icons and rhetoric of 'girl power', a phrase slapped into mainstream culture by the Spice Girls and subsequently incorporated into the language of government bodies as well as journalists, educationalists, culture critics, and pop fans themselves. Magazines for young women are emphatic in their determination that women must do their own thing, be themselves, and/or be as outrageously sassy and sexy as possible. Several recent movies have featured self-confident, tough, intelligent female lead characters. Female pop stars sing about financial and emotional independence, inner strength, and how they don't need a man; and the popular mantra of self-help books is that women can become just as powerful as these icons, if they cultivate their confidence and self-belief, and draw up a plan of self-development.

The emergence of the increasing amount of strong women roles has been included in many films that have come out in the past few years such as hunger games with Jennifer Lawrence and star wars the force awakens with Daisy Ridley 

With our production we have also included a strong women role where we see the character of "Libby" taking the lead. Whereas the stereotype would be a "damsel in distress" which we have chosen not include in our production.

First rough edit

Our first rough edit of the sequence which we originally thought would be the opening to our production was more of a learning experience. As this day of shooting was not well planed, we did not stick to the shot list and it was challenging to get everything done. However it gave us the our first hands on experience with our new equipment which consisted of a glide cam, which allowed for high levels of mobility while giving seamless and smooth footage, which we used for the majority of the day, along side a shoulder rig which again gave us more mobility but not as smooth as the glide cam, we used this where it was not possible to use the glide cam. (inside the car)

The experience learnt from that day of shooting consisted of time management, Organisation of crew and cast, organisation of shot list and a briefing of what we planned to do that day. our main way of organisation was through the social network site Facebook. as a group conversation can be made in seconds and there were two groups, one with all members, crew, cast and logistics. And another which just consisted the members of the group. this was a great tool to use for the organisation of the entire production.

Behind the scenes

This behind the scenes clip shows our first shoots where we attempt to film the first scene where the group abruptly breaks down on a country road and obviously isolated from anyone else.some difficulties that we encountered were firstly, lighting. Ensuring that there was a suitable lighting setup was crucial to having a high quality shoot and being successful as a part of the final piece. we tried best to fit our filming times during the lightest parts of the day but as we wanted the best result it took an hour and a half to get the fist dialogue shot the way we wanted. this made for a long day of filming and the light slowly made it more and more difficult to get a shot that was well lit. this made editing in post very difficult as upping the exposure often caused the picture to be full of noise and not usable. we over came this but tweaking the colour grading to make the footage clearer without distorting the image too much. We made specific presets for the darker scenes where we could match the colour and tones as best we could


Before                                                                                                        After

                                                                                                       

Cinematography: Camera movement

Through out the production we discussed multiple aspects of  our production and ways in which to improve the outcome of the production and to progress from my AS project. The main key difference i discovered is camera movement. from studying film language and in my own time observing closely to existing films such as Inception, pulp fiction and Shawshank redemption. And saw that all these texts show huge evidence of camera movement and cinematography which exactly reflects the atmosphere of the scene and is still able to emerge you into the film without it being made obvious that there is an operator and crew behind the camera creating the illusion that you are watching it as it happens.

 

An example of the camera movements used in film are put together in this clip where it collaborates all significant camera movement and explains the motive behind using the specific movement. Close ups make you notice the characters facial expression. Which works along side the slight camera movement to immerse you with what is usually an intense or emotional scene where select moment and shots are needed to make the effect needed for the end product. in our first shoot we experimented and attempted to not use any static shots throughout the scene which meant not using a tripod and instead using a rig to create the slight unsteady shots which add to the urgency of the scene.

Audience preferences

This research has been grouped with data and information from the BFI.  we will look at data conducted through exit polls for a number of films, organise them into categories that relate to our project.

Sources of data 

Part of our project is to create a support product, in our case a poster and a film review . We need to look at how audiences find out about films in order to assess if our choice is appropriate.

The following data is for the film 'Frank':

looking at the graph magazine articles show up as the second highest  ,with 13% of all people surveyed hearing about the film through this medium. Radio is around mid table at 10%, which is still good enough to justify our decision. We don't want to create an article and a poster, as that would be too similar and posters scored much lower than both the radio and magazine options in this survey.

reason for watching the film 

In this set of data, I will look at what makes people go to the film that they have watched. In this case, the data is from the film 'Kidulthood' by Noel Clarke:

the majority of people surveyed said that the story is the reason that they went to see the film, with 36% of the vote. Factors such as the genre of the film were also popular answers, with this one getting 23% of the vote. This is data that will be useful to us, as we will know what to focus on when making our support products.

Overall, the audience is influenced heavily by the support products, and therefore we must utilise this influence fully, in order to create a successful end product.

Slider test

Making a camera slider

Making a camera slider was much more challenging than we first expected. as in group discussion the statement of “drill two holes and stick both of the poles in”. once we started to make the slider we realised it to be much more complex, as the only straight metal piping we could use was rusted and weathered so a cleaning process with emery paper (sandpaper for metal). we used this until the surface was smooth and flush. 

then the task to drill the holes into two blocks of wood to hold both of the rods equally apart this was relatively simple and quick completed.

And to hold the camera we chose a solid block of nylon which we thought to be the best material as it was easy to cut and self lubricating so we saw it fit to use. 

Then to add some silicon spray to help it slide along 

Now we're ready to shoot with a fully functioning camera slider