Genre Research part 2

Conventions of a Teen Drama:

• 'real life' or relatable characters and story line, but mostly exaggerated to make the narrative more interesting.
• Cliques and friendship groups and separation between these cliques - nerds, jocks, cheerleaders, stoners, musical theater (actors and musicians)
• Most teen drama films are set in the location of a typical American High School - locker rooms, cafeteria, sports field, auditorium.
• Alcohol and drug use- sometimes being peer pressured into these activities, substance use at parties, emphasis of the novelty of the new feeling of being drunk/ high.
• Teen love- usually the main character having a new/ first love, a summer romance - doesn't always work out as planned.

The Perks Of Being A Wallflower is a teenage drama film, revolving around a 15 year old, mentally ill boy called Charlie, and his friends Patrick and Sam.
The film is set in the 1990s (noticeable from the clothing the characters are wearing in the poster above). You are also able to tell it is a teen drama due to the characters being young (teenagers) and the dramatic narrative.
 The background of the poster looks like the wall of a high school gym which provides evidence for the genre being a teen drama.
The colours used include only black against a bright lime green, and a short quote is placed directly in the middle of the poster. The contrast of the two colours creates foreshadowing for the dramatic narrative ahead and the short quote "we are infinite" shows the basis of the film. we implemented these conventions to our own film poster to reflect the teenage drama genre.

The film Juno is a teenage drama film about a 16 year old girl named Juno who is attending high school and falls pregnant with her boyfriend's baby. This film follows the dramatic life of a pregnant teenager and the challenges and journeys she comes across along the way.
This film has the conventions of friendship groups (Juno is in a nerd clique, whilst her boyfriend and best friend are both the sporty type/ group), the typical high school setting and real life characters.
We implemented this research into Untamed by using a real life and relatable character.

The film Mean Girls is a teen drama which follows the new life of Cady Heron, who once lived in Africa and has recently moved to America and starts at a new high school. This film follows the teen genre conventions by having drug and alcohol use, teen love, cliques, real life characters and being set in high school.

Final titles

A CONNELL PRODUCTION

HOLLY CONNELL

ANNEKA WILLIAMSON

KATIE DUNNING

UNTAMED

JODIE PETERS

CHARLOTTE ELLIS

AARON ELLWOOD

HARRY FOORD

ELISE BECKETT

CASTING BY    OLIVIA TUCKER

MUSIC BY    ISABELLE MCCABE

MUSIC SUPERVISOR    LISA WISEMAN

COSTUME DESIGNER    SHONA EKINS

EDITOR    LUCY HOCART

PRODUCTION DESIGNER   EMILY SPENCER

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY    RICHARD SMITH

EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS    NICOLE ROBINSON

SHANE WILLIAMS

PRODUCED BY PETER RODGERS

JORDAN WHITEHEAD

CAROLINE MARDEN

SCREENPLAY BY   MILES PETERSON

LIA MARSHALL

DANA HAROLD

DIRECTED BY    KEITH BRUSSELL

Genre Research

Our film opening is the genre of a teen drama.
There are conventions of a teen drama which usually are consistent throughout all films of the genre.
The conventions are:
Drug/ alcohol use
Popularity status/ friendship groups
Dramatic narrative.

As our film was only the opening, we managed to use the conventions of alcohol use (where Aubrey is walking home drunk with a bottle of alcohol in her hand.
Additionally, we used Dramatic narrative to fit with the genre conventions. We did this by the use of argument between Aubrey and her mother, Caroline.

Production Diary

07/11/16 -  Today, in our lesson, we were told that we were going to be producing a film opening that needed to look as professional as possible. We were all put into groups our group included me, Charlotte, Anneka and Holly. We began to brainstorm ideas and decided to present our film opening pitch on a presentation website called Emaze. I set up an account and began to present our ideas, we also discussed what genres we could most successfully portray.

08/11/16- In todays lesson I continued to add more to the Emaze presentation, whilst charlotte focused on shots and locations were going to include, and holly and Anneka researched good film openings and noted down things that made them stand out and seem intriguing. In our Emaze we included our genre, target audience, plot, characters and props/costume. We found it quite difficult to adapt to the software as it was the first time we had used it.  The theme of our film is adolescence, it's about a young 17 year old girl who is quite troubled and rebellious she confesses she is gay to her mother, and is kicked out the house. We chose to do this type of film as it is modern and relatable we also wanted it to stand out from the typical more obvious genres such as Action and horror.

09/11/16- We continued to adapt and add more to our Film pitch presentation, we began to add more detail to our character analysis and include specific locations and shots we wanted to include.With all of our input, Holly created and designed an institution that we will be using before the film opening. It is called 'night time' Productions and is transitioned on screen with lighting.

10/11/16-  Today, in lesson we continued on the Film pitch we described certain shots in great detail and what was going to happen within them shots .We finished the Emaze presentation by adding the target audience, character profiles and overall plotline. 

11/11/16-  In our lesson today, we presented our film pitch to the class and received feedback which was mostly positive. We also watched and listened to the other groups within our class and gave them back feedback on their film pitches.

14/11/16- Today we worked on creating a script for our film opening, whilst I started creating the storyboard on an Emaze presentation, we made the storyboard quite simple and short as we decided we  would edit it on Premier so that Anneka would speak in the background of the storyboard to add more detail into the specific shots and character analysis . 

15/11/16-  As a group we continued what we was doing yesterday, whilst Charlotte began to do some research into the film titles, she took note of how long they lasted on screen and what order they came up in, as well as considering what font and colour we would like to present in our own film opening. 

16/11/16-  The script got finished, and Anneka started to create a moodboard to portray this type of film opening, whilst we continued to work on the storyboard and develop a detailed background script for Anneka to read out.

17/1 1/16- Today we focused on doing some more blog posts, we looked at the risk assessments and how we would overcome them and what difficulties we would face when filming. We also done a post about props that we would be using including all technical equipment such as the cameras and tripod. Another post was about costume for the characters and how we wanted them to be portrayed.

21/11/16- As a group we went into the green room and started to film the background recording to our storyboard. 

22/11/16- Today we started filming, we went up to Brixton Academy to see Chance the rapper, we filmed a short scene of when Aubrey she is at a concert and is enjoying herself. However we didn't use this video footage as the quality wasn't very good as it was hard to keep the camera steady, as well as this the lighting was to dark.

23/11/16- We decided that we were going to start filming on Friday round Anneka's house we planned to do the opening shots of Aubrey walking home drunk from the party and the inside shots and dialogue of when she is confronted by her strict mother who tells her to leave. We made some quick changes to the script and as a group discussed what we wanted to have achieved by Friday. 

25/11/16- Today we began filming, we firstly began by doing hair makeup and costume for Anneka and Holly who were playing Aubrey and Carol .We managed to get some good shots from different angles and levels, we filmed the scene outside in the dark of Aubrey stumbling home drunk after the party. We used the street lighting, phone light and torches to create the lighting for the camera to use pick up Aubrey, we took lots of clips so that we could choose from the best ones. We also completed all the filming of the indoor dialogue scene. 

28/11/16- Today we began editing, we began by uploading all of Friday's footage to the Mac and watching it back, this was quite time consuming as it took a long time to upload the videos. After we watched the footage we began to select which ones we were going to use and which ones we could delete.

29/11/16- We bagan to edit on premier, Anneka cut out the clips of Aubrey walking that we didn't need and edited them together, she also split the videos up which showed black screens to represent her drunken state.

30/11/16- Today we all went back round Anneka's house to finish the filming. We filmed a scene of Aubrey running away from home and meeting the girl she fancies Riley, all filming was done at night so it was quite difficult to achieve the correct lighting. We changed to finish all the filming we needed for our first film draft of UNTAMED.

02/12/16- Today we uploaded all the footage from last tight and watched it back we then began to add the ones we needed to premier to continue editing.

05/12/16- Continued editing on Premier we edited the clips and shots of Aubrey and her mother talking and then Aubrey running up the stairs and into her bedroom. We also done some music research and used a karaoke backtrack version of the song Naïve by the Kooks for the opening scene of her stumbling home. 

06/12/16- Continued editing on Premier we edited the scene of Aubrey packing her bag, this consisted of lots of different shots and camera angles. We also created the UNTAMED film poster on fireworks and Photoshop.

07/12/16- We spent the lesson finishing the first draft, we finished all the video footage and began to add the titles. Once our first draft was finished we exported the video. 

08/12/16- Today we watched everyone's first film opening drafts and filled out feedback sheets to give constructive criticism and to give advice on what went well.

09/12/16- As a group we read all our feeback sheets and talked about what we needed to change and what we could include to improve it. We then done a blog post about the Feedback summarising what people generally said.

12/12/16- Today we continued blogging about the film opening and began the process of making improvements based on our feeback sheets. We also made sure we were up to date with everything.

13/12/16- We changed our titles on premier as we had some names that were repeated through out. We also done some research into film certificates and what makes our film a 15. Holly began to create a website for our film to gain more publicity and variation in advertisement. 

14/12/16- In today's lesson we continued to re do the titles for the opening, this involved doing some research into other film opening titles, we looked at Juno and The Perks Of Being A Wallflower and wrote down what order they came in. Holly and Charlotte continued to create the UNTAMED website and we decided that we would make a social media account.

15/12/16- Today we continued to edit for our final UNTAMED film opening, we finished doing the new corrected titles and just made a few edits to some of the clips. We also continued to do the website and uploaded our film opening to one of the website pages.

Age Certificate

The reason we have chosen to make our film 'Untamed' certificate  15 is because it includes alcohol consumption and mild drug use further on in the film. We did not think that this film would be suitable for views under the age of 15 as the narrative is about a troubled girl dealing with problems that only older teenagers/ young adults would deal with. I researched what the factors are for a certificate and these were the results.

Location-Recce Shots

Above is an image of where the first shot of Aubrey is filmed.

Here is where one of the first shots of our film opening is filmed. In front of the gate is where Aubrey is pictured stopping and drinking from her bottle of alcohol with close up shots of her face whilst the titles play.

      

Above are images of the location where Aubrey is filmed walking and stumbling with her alcohol bottle whilst titles and Naive by the Kooks plays.

Here is Aubrey's home. Aubrey stops in front of this house and throws her bottle into the bush, then quietly enters the house.

Above are images of where Aubrey is filmed running away from home in a hurry.

Above are two shots of the final shot. This is the location which Aubrey is filmed stopping herself from running by grabbing onto the gate and heavily breathing with a close up of her face. This is the last shot of the whole opening sequence.

Film Institution

Advertisement Methods

Here are some of the different types of advertisements we will be using to advertise our film, this includes Film posters on bus shelters, underground tube stations and iconic city centres. As well as this we will be using social media such as Twitter and Facebook to create publicity and hype around the release date.

Perks of Being a Wallflower titles

Night time productions presents

A Russell Production

Holly Connell

Anneka Williamson

Katie Dunning

UNTAMED

...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...

casting by
...
...

music by
...

music supervisor
...

costume designer
...

editor
...

production designer
...

director of photography
...

exec producers
...
...

produced by
...
...
...

screenplay by
...
...

directed by
...

Juno TItles

night time productions presents

An Allen Pictures
A Connell production

An Anderson Film

Untamed

Holly Connell

Anneka Williamson

Dan Thompson

May Beckett

Charlotte Ellis

Aaron Ellwood

Casting by Casey Wood, Emma Turner

Costume Designer Nicole Robinson

Music By Richard Smith
Songs by Shane Williams

Music Supervisors
Peter Rodgers
Jodie Pattinson

Co-Producers
Peter Miles
Jordan Whitehead
Lia Marhsall

Film Editor
Dana Harold

Production Designer
Katie Dunning

Director of Photography
Natalie Steele

Executive Producers
Joe Phillips
Lisa Kinsey
Danny Russo

Prouced by
Martin Russell
Finn Halfon
Gabrielle Dorrington
Harry Tucker


Written By
Keith Brussel

Directed By
Tony Johnson

improvements for opening sequence

Here is a list of things we need to do in order to improve our film sequence:

- Put a filter over the film
- Alter the lighting in some scenes to make it more consistent
- Edit the titles so they show up for the same amount of time

Institution for UNTAMED

As a group we done some research into production companies, so that we could find a suitable institution to distribute our film. A production company is in charge of the founding and distribution of the film, as our film is low-Budget it is important that we find the right institution that is compatible with our film. Especially as  this will be the name 'behind our film'.
After doing some research we found that Film4 would be the most appropriate institution to distribute our film. Here are the following reasons why: Film4 are an independent distribution company that typically produce Drama/ Documentary/Thrillers/Low Budget, High concept Genre films/Original film ideas /controversial topics.
Our film includes a sensitive and controversial topic around sexual orientation and problems in the home. It also includes drinking problems. As film4 distributes films with controversial topics this could be considered an appropriate institution to distribute our film. Because our film is a low-budget production it  would potentially benefit from a smaller but still well known distribution company such as Film4.

Film Opening Feedback

Today we received feedback for the first draft of our film opening 'Untamed'. 

Looking at our feedback sheets we got a mixture of positive and negative comments. 

An example of the positive comments are: "The music choice works well with the changes in scenes and a good variety of camera shots." this shows that we do not need to improve our camera work because the audience believe that it was appropriate for the genre of film we created.

 An example of a comment that showed constructive criticism was one that said "lighting/ colour correction could be improved". This is helpful because this is something that can be improved in our work to make the film opening more successful.

Audience- primary and secondary

 There are two types of audiences when considering the target audience for the type of film we wanted to create- primary and secondary. Our target primary audience is of the age range between 15-23 both boys and girls. This is because our genre is 'teen drama' so we wanted our target audience to be able to relate to our characters and narrative. Our target audience would become aware of our film 'Untamed' through the different forms of advertisement such as: on Twitter, our website, billboards and bus advertisements. A possible secondary audience would be the parents of the teenagers that would be watching Untamed. This is because they may see the film on the television while their child is watching it and sit down with them. This film might appeal to the parents because they may be able to relate to the character, Carol and the disagreements she has with her daughter, Aubrey.

Film Poster

Above is our film poster. We chose Aubrey as the main focus for the poster as she is the protagonist. We edited this poster on Adobe Fireworks as it provides a clean and professional looking finish.

Representation

The 2 characters which are included in the film opening, Aubrey and Carol, are subjected to stereotypes because of their ages and the roles they play.

Stereotypes of Aubrey: She is a rebellious teenager who has arguments with her parents. Not all teenagers are this way , but her character is conforming to the stereotype that the media have built up of her.

Stereotypes of Caroline: She is a worrying mother who inflicts strict rules upon her child and she does not agree with her daughters homosexuality. Caroline is conforming to the stereotypical image of the older generation which do not agree with gay people which the media have created which is not true for everyone.

Untamed first draft

This is our first draft for our film opening 'Untamed'. This gives a rough idea to the audience the sequence we aim to create. This needs to be further edited though as there are some slight jumps. We could improve this by adding an effect to the first part which makes Aubrey look more drunk, such as ghosting. Additionally, improving the titles.

Peer assessment

my peer assessment

what elements of this sequence did you feel were successful? Give at least 2 elements, and explain why they were successful.

I found the final scene successful the phone being filmed by Amara holding the lighter - large element of suspicion which led me to want to carry on watching.

Were there any aspects of the sequence which you felt were confusing/distracting/missing, etc? Be sure to explain your answers.

The pictures were not clear when they were turned around, I could not see what they were.

List 2 things which you feel would have improved this sequence and explain your opinion.

Make the part showing the pictures longer to make it clearer.

Music Research

These are a few of the songs we were considering when choosing the background music for our opening sequence. We took music inspiration from films similar to the one which we were trying to achieve such as: Endless Love, The Perks of Being a Wallflower and The Spectacular Now. All of these films possess an indie music genre with songs that are heard of but not always acknowledged.

We wanted the songs that would be featured on our film to have a strong use of the guitar as we all felt that it created a chaotic mood and foreshadows that the main character, Aubrey wants to create trouble. We ended up choosing the songs: 'Naive' by The Kooks and 'I Kissed a Girl' by Katy Perry as they were both up beat and fairly modern songs which reflected the atmosphere perfectly. We used the instrumemtal versions because if we used the normal versions then our video would get copyrighted.

Here are the following songs we were considering: 

Filming Process

On Friday 25th November, myself, Holly and Anneka went to Anneka's house and filmed the first scene of our opening sequence. We made Anneka look like an older woman by adding dry shampoo to her hair so it turned grey, drew on wrinkles and she wore pyjamas. For Holly, we used black eyeliner to make her eyes stand out more and she wore her hair down and curly. We started filming Holly walking down a dark street near Anneka's house that has street lights. The only source of light we had was the torch on Anneka's phone and the street lights. At first we found it quite difficult to get the lighting on her face right though since we did not want it to look too light.