Media Studies 2009-2011

The Suit by Douglas Ray

A disillusioned city lawyer shars his thoughts on life as he sets out to show that theres more to him than just a suit. Winner of the 48 hour film challenge award 2007.

The scene starts with an introduction from the lead character, then the scene cuts to a black out and the title ‘The Suit’ appears and lasts for over 5 seconds. After the short film the titles appear on a blank screen at the end, the first two to appear on screen was ‘Starring Ryan Slack’ and ‘Directed by Douglas Ray’. after them two were cut from screen the last title to appear was ‘Written by Ryan Slack’, this shows me that everything done in this short film was accomplished by these two people so no extra involvements and thankyous were needed for this particular film.

Link to YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0pLudxkzSI

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

 The type of camera we used was a Canon  camera, in these two images we experimented with the tripod to see how tall and short we could make the camera. The tripod  was stable on the solid floor however the camera did need some support whilst the tripod was postioned on the bed. Once we positioned the tripod we would postion the angle of the camera, like the tripod short and the camera looking up or the tripod tall and the camera looking down.

These three images are of our experimental shots and the angles we used that were hard to position. The first one was one of the mirror shots where we had the camera by hand and asked our actress to look into the camera. The second image is of the camera and tripod positioned in the shower as there was not enough room o film the feet so we had to position the camera in the shower to get the shot. The third image is of the tripod in the sink, we didnt know how to film the second mirror shot as we couldnt rest on anything like the first image, so very carefully we positioned the tripod in the sink at the level of the actress’s face for her to look into the camera, we positioned each leg on each side of the sink fixing it carefully so that the camera was stable.  

The picture below is a screengrab from ‘ Adobe Premiere‘ which was the editing program we used to produce this film. I found premiere a very useful program which helped us a lot, we managed to do all of the editing quite quickly and professionally by using it. I have learnt a lot about editing bu using Premiere such as how to create split screens and how to include music and titles into films.

The picture below is of another program we used, for one of the evaluation activities, this was  Youtube’s annotation tools, I found using this really hard and confusing at first but it was a good way to evaluate and comment on our film, pointing out each key point and frame as we watched it.  

The two pictures below are of the  Wordpress blogging, this is another major use of technology for creating our final piece because it is a way which I could include links and embed videos or images, before creating this film I had never used a blog before and this has taught we that they can be useful for creating multi-media information online, this gives me and all other students a chance to look back at my work as i docymented what i had learnt.

How did we attract/address your audience?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0pLudxkzSI

In what ways does our media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e. of film openings)

The title of our film is called ‘When Shelly met Kelly’, which we took from a very popular romantic comedy callled ‘When Harry met Sally’ . We wanted the audience to recognise this title to show that we are joking about this movie and how it relates to the similar conventions of this film. The font and style of the title and the subtitles are in clear, big letters and are in the colour of a bright red, the writing style is to show that the opening is based on a modern day like to day, whilst the colour red shows that this is a bright, colourful film. Coloured titles are very popular with comedys as they are a sign of a family feel good movie. The Setting of our film is a block of flats where both our characters live, we filmed the inside of the flats or the characters own flat in a house where we could stage each character’s bedroom and bathroom. The setting of our film is very typical to the conventions of a romantic comedy, as its a large building and a home to our two main characters. In most comedys the first scene begins with an establishing shot of a building in which is related to the character like a home or a work place, we know this as later on in the first scene we see the character leave or enter this building as our main character leaves the setting later on in the opening. Our Costumes and props were our own clothing that we have purchased from shops like New look  or Topshop. Our props were an alarm clock and items that are everyday use when washing up like a washcloth and a toothbrush. During our research we found that our costume and props were very typical in the conventions of comedy as they relate to the audiences everyday use. Our Camerawork and editing was very basic in our 9 key frames. Our first frame was our company logo which we made in paint on the computer, our second frame was our establishing shot of our setting where we based our characters, we rotated the camera so that we could get the whole of the building in. The story begins with the third frame of a mid shot with the alarm clock going off and we see a hand turn it off, this hand is the first introduction to the female lead character, also with this frame we the introduction to the story as we now know that this character has to get up to be somewhere. The fourth frame is a mid shot of the second character in bed, we know this is another characater as this scene is in another bedroom and this is the first introduction to the second character. The fifth key frame is a split screen of the two characters looking up at the camera. In editing we dragged the two shots of both characters side by side to create the split screen to give the effect that they are in the same bed and to show how similar these characters are since this is the first time we see their face. The sixth Key frame is of another split screen, with both shots we had both characters walk into the view of the camera and then look directly into the camera asif the camera was a mirror to wash up, this is called a point of view shot where the characters are looking back at their reflections. The seventh key frame is a mid shot of the character in the location of her bedroom with her back towards the camera asif to say she is dressing for work, this is so we can see and focus on the items of clothes she throws behind her. The eighth key frame is a wide shot of the character sitting on the bed looking asif she is falling back to sleep, this was a wide shot instead of a mid shot because when the character jumps up in reaction to a noise, we wanted to fit all of her in. The ninth key frame was a tracking shot of the character walking from the building towards the road whilst walking out of the camera’s shot, as soon as the character is out of the shot the title appears, covering up most of the screen.

We decided whilst making our story board that we wanted to base our target audience on teenage girls, between the ages of 12 to 18. We based this audience to be the kind who watch popular sitcoms and go on days out with friends to go shopping and see a movie. One of the main reasons why we based the audience on this movie was because we set the age limit of our film to be either age 12 or 15 to see this movie as the movie would be inapropriate to see with a young child. We also chose this audience because our two characters are this age and we wanted the audience to relate to the characters.     

This image is of two girls ‘Heather’ and ‘Hannah’. We chose Heather and Hannah to represent our audience because we want our audience to relate to the characters by age and personality. Both of these girls are the same age as the characters, both between the ages of 12-18 and they both have similar characteristics as our characters. Hannah’s personality matches with the character Shelly, both calm and relaxed whilst Heather’s personality matches with the character Kelly as they both work hard at their jobs.

How does our media product represent particular social groups?

The image on the left is of our Actress Hannah Whyman playing the lead role of Kelly in our movie ‘When Shelly met Kelly’, and on the Right is the Actress Sandra Bullock  playing the lead role of Maggie in the movie ‘The Proposal’ . We actually based the character Kelly on the character of Maggie because Maggie is portrayed as a stuck up, snobby and career driven woman who wont let anyone into her life and that is exactly the type of person we wanted to base our character Kelly on to be exactly like the character Maggie. I chose these pictures because these In these images we see both characters walking to work, they are both dressed similar as they both cerry heavy hand bags to show female strength. Also their body language is basically the same as they both walk or stride to work with the look of determination on their face. We based the Character Kelly on the character Maggie before looking at social groups as we wanted the audience to see the resembelance.