Filming update

It didn't work.  The day was rainy, windy and cold, which meant our footage was a disaster. We can't use ANY of it, so we've decided to rearrange for the 9th.  Second time lucky perhaps..

Filming update

Today is the day that we start (the fairly daunting prosect of) filming.  We'll all jump into our retropective forms of transport and make our way to our filming location, the beautiful village of Tealby, and will attempt to film the second, fourth and sixth scenes (the ones containing Jay and Lucy).  Wish us luck..

Loving the crew

Last week it was our job to distribute jobs among our team (or crew, if you will), this included directors, producers, sound, lighting and camera operators.  Here is a quick description of what each job entails, and who we have chosen to take up this role.

Producer:

Producers are the main players in film industries. A producer will oversee each project from conception to completion and may also be involved in the marketing and distribution processes. Producers work closely with directors and other production staff on the shoot.

We have decided to all participate in this role as we are all part of our production company.

We all have the vision of the film which we want to produce and have all had an input in who we want to market it to. 

Director:

They oversee everything on a movie set and have to realise their artistic vision at the same time. Directors work with actors, set designers, costumers  editors and lighting technicians. They deal with everyone from the make-up artists and tech workers to cinematographers and art directors.

We have decided to have Jess bell as our Director as she drew the story board and visualised all of our ideas onto paper and we feel she would be the best to organise everyone in order to achieve the best overall 2 minute film opening. 

Camera:

The role of a camera operator is to do more than just silently stand behind the camera and record things. A camera operator also provides knowledge that enable directors, editors and producers to present "stories" visually.

We have decided to have Kim Ware as our camera woman as she the most confident and efficient with the camera. 

Sound:

A sound engineer is a technical who operates recording the sounds of the film opening. Also making sure that the sounds fits the film when it comes to editing the film opening.

We have decided to use Arren Doughty for our sound woman as she feels confident in been able to achieve the best sound possible for our film opening.

Lighting:

This person operates the artificial lighting when needed on set. And makes sure this lighting is in keeping with the rest of the scene. They make sure that it’s not too high key or low key and that the elements in which we want to be high lightened are visible.  

 

We have decided to use Vicky Pritchard for our lighting as we think she will be able to recognise what the right lighting is for our film as she knows the conventions of Romantic Comedies.

Student Video Analysis - Elephant Juice

Planning - Our characters, cast and location (hopefully)

This week we have been trying to co-ordinate the three most important parts to our film opening, the characters, who will play them and where our key scenes will be filmed.

Four our four key characters, Lucy, Jay, Bridget and Jonathan, we have chosen actors that we feel would reflect the characters and play the parts to their full potential.

The beautiful Jessica Codd

 For the character of Lucy, we have chosen Jessica Codd,
 as she has experience in drama and performing.  She also has that 'angelic' look that we were searching for.

Greg Reynolds, Looking dapper (as always)

For Jay, Lucy's boyfriend, we have chosen Greg Reynolds.  He has the perfect look for the character of Jay, and his confidence will shine through when on camera (he also has the perfect kitchen for one of our main scenes).

My lovely mother Tracy.

The character of Bridget, Lucy's mother will be played by Tracy Eglon (my gorgeous mother).  As a teenager, she partook in lots of drama pieces, and is excellent at taking direction.

Matt, taking it easy in Thailand.

Matt Goodman will be playing  the role of Jonathan, Lucy's father. Matt is a confident, and has the right look to play Jonathan, and we have every faith that he will have no trouble playing a 'problematic father-in-law, with his daughter's best interests at heart' - I hear he has experience..

Tealby, the setting of one of our main scenes

For the location of Lucy and Jay's scene, we have chosen the village of Tealby, as it is a picturesque, and idyllic village, which we always imagined would be our setting - It also challenges the general stereotype of romantic comedies as mostly these are filmed in famous cities.








For the scene with Bridget and Jay, we have chosen Greg's kitchen, as it is a great size and has the right style.

Greg's Kitchen - Cats not included

Our Pitch of ideas

This week we had to pitch two ideas for our two minute film opening to the class, so that we could gain feedback and criticisms from an unbiased audience.  This is how it went...

           

 So as you can see, our pitches seemed fairly well received, with the questions being mainly to do with target audiences and micro-elements (possibly due to the ambiguity of our pitch), but on the whole, the class appeared to like them both.  When a vote was taken, the class were much more in favour of our first idea due to it's higher comedy factor, compared to the second idea, which sides much more towards the romance end of the genre. The first idea is also our favourite idea within the group, so with the response from our pitch I think it will definitely be the one we continue with.

Target audience profiles

Here is a character profile for two members of our target audience.

This is Hannah, She's 16, a student, from a middle class background, enjoys music, sport, fashion and  (coincidentally) romantic comedies. She is a perfect example of our target audience, as she meets all our target demographics.  As well as this, she is very similar to our protagonist Lucy, in the sense that she is a young female, of middle class upbringing who is partaking in further education. This increases the opportunity for empathy.







Hannah has a boyfriend, Tom, who just happens to be a member of our secondary audience. He is also 16, a student, middle class, and enjoys the same things as Hannah, including romantic comedies, though he wouldn't tell anyone out of choice.  Tom likes romantic comedies because, not only do they always feature a male protagonist (in our case Jay) who he can relate to with ease, but also a very attractive female protagonist, which is an added bonus.

Target audience interviews

This is a video of 4 interviews covering both our primary and secondary target audiences.  We did this in order to gain information on the psychographics of our target demographic.

 From this video, we learned that it is important to both our primary and secondary audience that there is always a happy ending (see interviews with Mrs Rivett and Mrs Tubman).  We also learned that in the older side of our primary audience, and our secondary audience, it makes little/no difference whether the actors were attractive or not, but that actually, if they were less conventionally attractive it adds depth.

The younger side of our primary audience disagreed with this (See Holly and Rhea's interview), saying that if the main actors were attractive they would be more encouraged to see the film, and Kain and Will highlighted that as long as they had a good reputation, then there looks didn't matter.

 None of our interviewees highlighted any elements of distraction per se, but there appeared to be a general agreement that if there was too much going on, or if the characters weren't relatable, then the audience was less interested.

Target Audience Research - UK Film Council and date from The Numbers

 To start off our audience research we decided to analyse data from the UK Film Council, our results are as shown:




After analysing the types of film that the general public enjoy watching from the graph on page 105, we have recognised that the genre we have chosen is very well established, being the 7th most popular out of 27, with 37% of people saying they enjoy this genre.











 The graph on page 106 shows a full break down by demographic of what type of genre appeals to whom. It shows that our chosen genre most appeals to females under 35, with 61% claiming they enjoy romantic comedies, the next most popular being women over 35, followed by men over 35.

 Page 116 shows that 14% of people claim romantic comedies is their favourite genre of film, the 8th most popular.  This justifies our choice of genre, and ensures that we will have a wide target audience. 

 This screen shot of the 'top rated movies' page from The Numbers highlights all the films in the top 8 recent releases with aspects of romantic comedy. It also shows the all time top rated movies with aspects of romantic comedy.  As you can see, the second, third and fourth of the all time top rated films are all either romantic comedies or have aspects of, and the sixth, seventh and eighth of the top rated recent releases are the same.

 This is a screen shot from IMDB featuring the top 20 rated movies on the site.  Although this features no films that are catagorised as romantic comedy, the majority have aspects of the genre, almost all of which featuring a love interest of some sort.





 With this information in mind, we have chosen to aim our film opening to a primary audience of females between the ages of 12 and 35, and a secondary audience of females above 35.  We will, however, also aim to entice a male audience as a secondary audience in order to appeal to a wider range of demographic.  We feel that social class plays little part in the enjoyment of romantic comedies as they are used mostly as 'feel good' films, this means that they would appeal to all social classes, this opinion is backed up by the BBFC data.

Conventions of the genre Romantic Comedies

Conventions of Rom-Com on Prezi

Film Conventions

Film Conventions on Prezi