Character profiles

Callum 

Callum is a very successful and rich man who has lived the life of luxury since the day he was born. This is one of his main strengths along with being a determined and independent man, but unfortunately it is also one of his greatest weaknesses, he can be too materialistic at times and often looks down on people, even to those whom are close to him, and this unfortunately leads to his great tragic downfall. 

Helen 

Helen is the average type of women who has lived a simple life. Throughout her life she has been trying to find her one true love, but for reasons she can’t explain she has never found the one. Because of this she has never achieved anything. She soon realises this and gives up on love. Once she has given up she starts to strive in her work. 

Story board

Plot outline

media plot

A married couple, Callum and Helen, are faced with a great battle, their withering relationship. At the start of

the film we see the couple signing their divorce papers, until however they start to take a look back at how much they had once loved one another. They start reminiscing beginning at the day they first met, their wedding day, and all the little things they shared together throughout their marriage even the simple walks in the park and the grocery shopping. But the flash backs also show the lows, the clash of their social backgrounds and the strain of Helen’s father fighting cancer. The question to be asked is will these flashbacks save their marriage or confirm their decision to divorce?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_r6UJSb2vs&context=C4a3e1bfADvjVQa1PpcFPdKt_Q0eZSdaIheUYBAniF3f3DXTMs3zs=

Promo logo

The music to go with the logo created on garage band

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

For our preliminary task we did very brief story boarding, for our main media product we changed this and instead we did a very in depth story board, for the prelim we didn't refer to the story board that much but instead we focused on ideas that popped into our head this meant that the process we went through when filming wasn't very efficient at all and it took much longer than it should have. However for our main media product we refereed back to our story board every shot, this meant that our filming was done within in a day and we made sure that we took all the shots we wanted and we mixed up some of the camera angles to give some different shots to play around with when it came to editing. For our final product we were very heavily reliant on actors and we struggled with actors as we had many people pull out at the last minute, however we managed to get hold of two actors and they were able to act and do a reasonable job, compared to our preliminary where the actors were some of the boys in the media group which meant we couldn't be let down. When it came to editing for our preliminary we were still relative novices which meant we kept the editing as simple as possible, when it came to the final product we used online tutorials on youtube to help us learn the tricks of the trade which helped make it easier to edit, it meant our final product looked more professional and we could address our target audience. We were able to add in trim and cross dissolves which helped make the short film flow much more easily.
For our final product we add sound to the film to add more of a professional edge we also used more complex shots like high angle we were able to do this because we had a heavy duty tripod which was easily extendable and we could adjust the legs on the tripod to make the camera level.

We believe that our end product has moved on immensely since our first attempt for a prelim, we were able to stick to the 180 rule and we were able to include speech. The continuity for our film worked especially well this was down to the way we directed it and the story board which we stuck too. Some flaws in our filming may have been that the zoom was used to frequently, in major hollywood films the zoom is hardly used this is because they are able to use trackers and the cameras are on long booms that are extendable, if we had a larger budget we would have been able to block out these faults and made the end product look more realistic and professional.

How did you attract/ address your audience?

Our product attracted our audience by the characters we used, the characters we used were realistic and the situation they were in can be related to many teenagers, for instance nearly all teenagers have gone through a break up and our media product adds an edge of comedic value to theses situations, our media product addresses our audience of people aged between 12 and17 because it has child humour that can be enjoyed by the younger viewers and some adult humour which can be enjoyed by the people at the older age of the spectrum. We deliberately made our media product a 12A because this means that families or mothers and daughters can watch the film together even if the daughter or son is under the age of 12. The music we used is not necessarily modern but nearly all teenagers and parents will recognise the tune which will help establish the audiences attention and make them feel good.
Our product addressed the audience because the way in which we filmed our shot are quite simple and therefore not over powering to the viewers eyes, this gives the film a more relaxed tone. Also the lead up to the 'divorce' is similar to the relationships teenagers have and therefore as the film goes on the audience can relate to the story and laugh at the situation as the film looks to find a funny side to all the problems the couples face.
We are able to attract other audiences because we follow the same means and conventions of other popular rom-coms and studies show that people are attracted to movies that follow the same conventions and are flowing along the same story line. ) 
Here are some statistics found by Lauren Green on Blogger:

ARE YOU MALE OR FEMALE?

WHAT IS YOUR AGE GROUP?

WHAT TYPE OF FILM GENRE DO YOU PREFER?

DO YOU ENJOY ROMCOMS?

WHAT DO YOU LIKE ABOUT ROMCOMS?

WHICH TYPE OF STORY DO YOU PREFER?

DO YOU ENJOY WATCHING TRAILERS?

How does your media represent social media groups?

As our media product is about two people going through a divorce we made combined the mise-en-scene to give the characters a bit of distance between each other via the way the dressed and their body language, the male character dressed in a way that showed he is very sophisticated and his body language was very upright which shows he may have more confidence that the female character how dressed in an ordinary way and was always quite slumped over maybe giving off the idea that she was self conscious and nervous because it was their first date.
We used the location to represent that they lived in rural area where the was natural beauty, it may have seemed that this area was near where the male character lived because it would have portrayed that he had more money and could afford to live place where everything was that little bit nicer.

In What ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Typical rom-coms often share the lead character role for example there is usually a female protagonist and a male protagonist, we conveyed this across in our short clip by letting the opening scene focus on two characters therefore portraying these as our main characters, we differed from the norm of most rom-coms because our film starts with a scene from the past, this was used to give more of an idea of the film and the general theme but we made sure the scene didn't give away to much as this would mean that  the rest of the film would be pointless. Rom-com film title sequences are accompanied by a popular song, for example the opening credits for friends with benefits is Magic carpet ride (Phillip Steir remix)- Steppenwolf. This song is a very upbeat remix that sets of a vibe that is modern and bouncy this may help this film appeal to it's audience, we also employed this convention we used a well known song by James Brown called I feel good. This song is easily recognisable and we were able to match the lyrics with the scene.
Rom-coms are especially good at using simple camera angles for example the high angle shots and over shoulder shots, we also used these camera angles and others, for instance in the conversation scene we used to 180 degree rule and over shoulder shots.
Another common convention we employed was using a male and female, when analysing other media products from the same genre we discovered that the characters used we always very stereotypical, they were usually middle class with a secure job and they both live in cities. We used this convention as it has proved a successful stereotype as this is what the characters are expected to be like in a conventional rom-com. This also made sure that people will be able to guess the genre not via the plot but the characters instead, although the plot was used to create the genre as well.
We also noticed that often the opening credits are able to portray the genre for example, we used elegant films, this is a made up brand and the logo was created using Aurora which is a 3-D animation creator, we combined the log with some music created in garage band we made this music bouncy and lively so that it fitted with the genre of the film, the name elegant films, is quite a feminine name and it is a name that may be associated with rom-coms.

What kind of media institution would distribute your media product and why?

If our product had a large budget it would be published by Warner brothers, which mainly specialises in films that appeal to a wide audience and are often family films.

Because our film is a low budget british film it is unlikely to compete with the likes of 'Friends With Benefits' which was a hollywood block buster with a budget of $35,000,000. Therefore it is less likely to be successful in cinema's, so for the film it would be more beneficial to distribute the film via supermarkets such as sainsburys and newsagents such as WH Smith, to make the film more successful the film would need a successful marketing campaign, the easiest way would be to advertise via social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter this is because you can easily target the audience of 13-17 year olds who are mostly active on these sites. We could also advertise via youtube, before the video starts there is a short time for advertising the trailer. However advertising film trailers is expensive no matter what you advertise it on so it may be cheaper to analyse first quarter sales and hopefully rely on word of mouth.

Who would be the audience for your media product

The audience for our media film would focus around teenagers aged between 12-17 the gender will be dominated by females. These females will often read romantic novels, they like watching comedies or films based round love, they also watch other sitcoms that focus on the lives of teenagers for example One tree hill. Our media film would also be a target for families as the age rating is 12A this means that anyone under the age of 12 may watch the film when accompanied by an adult, this means that the film can also appeal to a mother and daughter audience, our film is a feel good film and can be used to help cheer people up. Teenagers may also be able to relate to the character we used although many teenagers may not experience a divorce it is likely that the encounter a break up, a break up is similar although less severe, our media film will be able to show the funny side of break ups or divorces and give them a new meaning.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

  From the production of our film we learnt that the high budget films are able to film the scenes with many more cameras at the same time, this means when it comes to editing the film the editors are able to alternate between the angles for example you may use an over shoulder shot but at the same time a camera may be filming the scene from a high angle this also means that the continuity will be more fluent because the scenes are the same. For a film with no budget this would be especially hard to use more than one camera because it would mean investing in a new camera which would be at our own expense. It would also mean more people using the camera and no-one focusing on the scene itself and the way it will play through. It would be time consuming when it came to editing because you would have double or triple the number of shots to filter through and crop.
  Higher budget films also use more high spec cameras for example we filmed our short opening with a Sanyo Digital Movie camera with 8 megapixel, however professional camera have an excess of 12 megapixel, which helps them develop their film in a much higher quality.
  High Budget film are mostly filmed in studios or sets, this gives the director and producer the ability to adapt the surroundings to match the genre for the film, studios and sets are usually used when the genre of the film is horror because the locations have to be seen as scary and mysterious however in a rom-com general apartments can be used to give the idea of romance, the advantages of using a set would be that you can change the lighting to match the mood. For our film we were unable to get a studio so we had to research locations and check the weather forecast to make sure the area and weather matched the mood of the film, we picked a bright sunny day because it matched with our genre which was happiness and love and also the riverside locations was peaceful and romantic.
  Usually high budget films use booms with a microphone on the end this enables the producers to pick up the sound and speech more clearly, more efficient film producers are also able to record the sound after filming and then sync the sound with the lip movement this means the sound is clearer and precise. We had to rely on being close to the person speaking to make sure we could hear the speech this limited us to our  filming meaning we had to focus on over the shoulder shot when ever there was a conversation.
  Film companies use tracks to help film tracking shots this also means the scenes contain minimal zoom, for our film we tried to avoid using zoom however in some scenes to follow with the continuity we couldn't avoid using zoom.
  Film Editors are also able to use diagetic and non-diagetic sounds these are sounds that are in the background for example the wind and sound effects like thunder, to add these sounds in we would have to record those specific sound, in addition to this editors for major film are able to take out certain sounds which they don't want or are unnecessary, they can even adapt the frequencies for some sounds. On final cut we were only able to mute the whole sound we weren't able to adapt the frequencies or mute certain back ground noise because we needed a more high tech microphone which could pick up the sounds.

Location

We filmed our sequence along the footpath connecting Wessington Park and Brewers lane in Calne the footpath runs along a river which seemed quite a romantic filmsetting so this helped us with the mise-en-scene of the film.

Film Rom-com case study

Director: Will Gluck
Writers: Keith Merryman, David A. Newman


Stars: Mila Kunis, Justin Timberlake and Patricia Clarkson


Story Line:Jamie (Mila Kunis) is a New York head-hunter trying to sign Los Angeles-based Dylan (Justin Timberlake) for her client. When he takes the job and makes the move, they quickly become friends. Their friendship turns into a friendship with benefits, but with Jamie's emotionally damaged past and Dylan's history of being emotionally unavailable, they have to try to not fall for each other the way Hollywood romantic comedies dictate.


Release Date: 9th September 2011


Box Office

Budget:

 $35,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend:

 $18,622,150 (USA) (24 July 2011) (2926 Screens)

Gross:

 $55,802,754 (USA) (18 September 2011)

Companies Involved:

Screen Gems, Castle Rock Entertainment and Zucker Productions

The Finished Product

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_r6UJSb2vs&feature=youtu.be

Rom-com director case study:

Richard Curtis

Richard Curtis directed 'Love Actually', which is arguably one of the best rom-coms out in the film industry. He was awarded an MBE in 1994 before receiving a CBE in 2000 for his contribution to television and film comedy. Richard Curtis was also behind the writing of 'Notting Hill' and 'Bridget Jones's Diary'.


Curtis was born in Wellington, New Zealand. Curtis and his family lived in many different countries and were constantly travelling during his childhood, he travelled to Sweden and even the Philippines. Curtis moved to England when he was 11, and began school at Papplewick School Ascot, before he earned a scholarship to Harrow School in London, he then achieved a first class degree in English Language and Literature at Christchurch Oxford. It was at Oxford where he met and began working with Rowan Atkinson.


Collaborating with Rowan Atkinson in the Oxford Revue, he appeared alongside Atkinson at his breakthrough Edinburgh Fringe show. As a result of this, Curtis was commissioned to co-write the BBC Radio 3 series The Atkinson People with Atkinson in 1978, which was transmitted in 1979.
He then began writing comedy for film and tv, he was a regular on the the tv series 'Not the nine o'clock news' where he wrote many of the shows songs with Howard Goodall and many sketches often with Rowan Atkinson.

First with Atkinson, and later with Ben Elton, Curtis then wrote the Blackadder series from 1983 to 1989, each season focusing upon a different era in British history. Atkinson played the lead throughout, but Curtis remains the only person to have been a writer for every episode of Blackadder. The pair continued their collaboration with the comedy series Mr. Bean. which ran from 1990–1995.n 1994, Curtis created and co-wrote The Vicar of Dibley for comedian Dawn French, which was a great success. In an online poll conducted in 2004 Britain's Best Sitcom, The Vicar of Dibley was voted the third best sitcom in British history and Blackadder the second, making Curtis the only screenwriter to have created two shows within the poll's top ten programmes.

Curtis Film Career.

Curtis achieved his breakthrough success with the romantic comedy Four Weddings and a Funeral. The 1994 film, starring Hugh Grant and Andie MacDowell, was produced on a limited budget by the British production company Working Title Films. Four Weddings and a Funeral proved to be the biggest grossing British film in history at that time. It made an international star of Grant, and Curtis' Oscar nomination for the script catapulted him to prominence but Richard Curtis lost to Quentin Tarantino's script for Pulp Fiction.

Curtis' next film was also for Working Title, which has remained his artistic home ever since. 1999's Notting Hill, starring Hugh Grant andJulia Roberts, broke the record set by Four Weddings and a Funeral to become the top-grossing British film of all time. The story of a lonely travel bookstore owner who falls in love with the world's most famous movie star was directed by Roger Michell. Curtis' next film for Working Title was not an original script. Instead, he was heavily involved with the adaptation of Bridget Jones's Diary from novel to film.