Beginning of Advanced Portfolio

JoJo- Get Out (Leave) Practise lipsync.
So in preparation for next year we have started mimicking Jojo's music video to Get Out (Leave)
We chose this video because it is set in a school, making it the perfect location to film as we will be doing it in our media lessons.
Heres the original..

INSERT

To get us started we practised lipsyncing, this helps us get a feel of what it will be like when doing our music video and the difficulties we could potentially face when editing.

Here's the finished product!

Final Task: Film Opening Elephant Juice

Final Task: Preliminary

Evaluation Question 7

Evaluation Question 6

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

View more PowerPoint from ZoeChapple

Evaluation Question 5

Evaluation Question 5: How did you attract/address your audience on Prezi

Evaluation Question 4

Evaluation Question 3

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? http://www.glogster.com/zoechapple/pinboard-glog-by-zoechapple/g-6litrkfma1n1hc32lgc21a0

Evaluation question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Evaluation Question 1

FINITO!

So we have finally finished our film opening, Elephant Juice.
It has definitely been a journey with a lot of up and downs in our group (hopefully not too corny). As we now move onto the evaluation of our film opening, it seems a bit hard to let go of EJ and not being able to do anymore editing. And if I could turn back time I would certainly make sure I back up everything!!!!!!
Even though everything didn't go as we had planned we are somewhat pleased of our finished piece. I think that if we had more time we would definitely make the sound much better, and most probably enjoy it more! Now I'm just excited to start A2 as I have learnt so so much from just 1 year, and dont feel like a 'newbie' as much as I have this year.
Bring on A2!!

More bad news!

So after coming in after easter we discovered that some of our footage had been lost! This meant that we had to re-shoot two more scenes. Should be easy right? WRONG! Sam (our male character) is currently travelling in Peru, which meant that I had to step in for Sam and pretend to be him. This is why in the man flu scene we used a shot from behind 'Sam' so it was hard to tell it was another person. Another problem which occurred was the 'fondling downstairs' scene. Originally we had a shot of Becca making tea and Sam fondling downstairs, then a pan up to him touching Beccas face. However, again as we couldn't show my face we had to lose our pan. 

We have also discovered that the voice recording we originally recorded with a zoom recorder was also lost, and if that wasnt bad enough the zoom recorder had broken so we had to use a boom mic instead. This meant that the sound had background buzzing noise, so we had lost the feel of the sound being done professionally! It has been rather stressful and frustrating as we have lost time and lost a lot if good footage we tried really hard on. But the only thing we can do is soldier on as a team! And we are doing just that! 

Editing take 2!

Today we Me and Effie spent the day in school to get as much editing as possible done. Unfortunately Zoe had to work but she did manage to come in for an hour and a half to help us get started. We did encounter a couple of problems, firstly we were unable to film the phone scene as the camera we normally used was being used by someone else. Also we were unable to record our speech as the microphone in the media room wasn't working. Luckily I brought in my camera (General Imagination X5) to take pictures for evidence so we were able to roughly record our 'glitter storm productions'. Heres a video, I accidently pressed the film button, however we decided to make it into a short vlog!

After this the day turned better, and the freedom of having the school to ourselves became fun! We got as much as the editing done as possible but we were unable to finish completely as we were missing certain scenes, we are hoping that we forgot to import some files from Effies memory stick onto the computer, if so we decided that I would do the editing today while Effie works on the main title (Elephant Juice) and then Effie would complete further editing at home. 

As we had more time we experimented with some of the footage we had, for example we added a new POV shot from Sam, (it looked like Becca is about to hit the camera) and added the shot of Becca hitting her head on the cupboard from three different shots to create some more comedy!

Effie doing her photo shop thaang, and the computer next to her is my editing

ELEPHANT JUICE TITLE!!

Today we finally finished our title logo! It took a couple of stages and we have yet to chose a background to put it on! Here's the different stages we went through...

This was the first draft I made on paint, really it was just an experiment but all three of us agreed that if we cleaned it up and used photoshop, it could actually look quite effective! I thought that the contrasts of the font could show the boy and girl protagonists.

As all our other titles are written on objects we decided, to keep the consistency , we would like our  title to look as if it had been written. To do this someone suggested we draw it out first, take a photo and edit it on photoshop. This is the drawing that Zoe did, she roughly stuck to my first draft but experimented with different hearts. We liked the heart in the trunk and the heart instead of a dot on the i in 'juice'. The feet on the elephant also looked better than before hand, as in the pic before it looked like bubbles!

Me and Effie thought that the 'juice' in the drawing didnt look elegant enough to contrast the 'elephant'. She decided to make it less elephant and more elegant by re-drawing it using photo shop. We took some more 'inspiration' from my a simple writing as follows (the top drawing) :

However, after Effie had completed the photo shopped version I was playing around on my brothers iPad, and found an app called '58 paper' I really liked the effect the pen had so therefore tried out 'juice'...

I think that this 'juice' is pretty effective and will therefore show Effie and Zo and see if they agree. I think that it has the elegant look we were wanting. We might need to make it bolder for it too stand out from the background.

Script re-editing

Because of the time limit we have had to re-edit and cut parts of our script to keep it within the 2 minute zone and keep it in with the movie clip.
Elephant Juice 2

Bad news!

So, unfortunately last week we lost all of the editing we had done on our movie opening due to problems with the hard drive at school. 

Obviously, this is a major set back as we thought we were finally finished. Thankfully we have most of our footage we just need to re shoot some scenes like the phone scene and our production company. 

We have decided to come into school during our Easter break where we aim to complete as much as the editing in one day as possible. Now that we have all the past months experience behind us we should be able to get it done. 

FINGERS CROSSED!!

Editing

We have been editing our film opening for about 4 weeks now, we have pretty got all of the footage in order but obviously there is a lot of cleaning up that needs to be done. Last week we added in the monologue sound. We had to cut some lines as it was longer than 2 minutes and it has meant that the length of scenes have had to be changed.
We are still in the process of looking for music, theres so much to chose from!

musica

I have been looking and researching music I want to be in the background of our speech, it will need to be copyright free and have no singing. We want it to have an indie feel, but not be too depressing.

I'm looking on jamendo although there are millions of songs on their. At the moment I like the thought of a song like Buddy Holly's Everyday 

or The Drums 


I like the backing instruments as they are upbeat but not your mainstream R&B!

Nearly a wrap!

So on Monday, me, Effie, Zoe, Becca and Sam all ventured out and started filming for our opening. We decided to change our filming location to Poulner lakes instead of Hightown lakes, this is because it was nearer to the house we would be filming in. It also turned out to be a much more scenic area. We have also decided to change one of our scenes from what was going to be a variety of old couples holding hands to actually introducing Sam to being very arrogant, and splashing Becca whislt on a boat.We decided his way was easier as it would of been hard to get lots of couples, also it adds to the comic effect. We still have a few extra scenes to film, including the 'lads night in'.
We took vlogs and pictures on Effie's phone so I just have to wait till they are uploaded, but for now heres a picture of Effie and Zoe setting up for filming 'the socks in bed' scene!

Here are some vlogs and pictures from our first shoot for Elephant Juice, it was a fun experience but also very exhausting, I think its safe to say we all slept well this evening!

Whilst filming our first couple of scenes we went for a bit of a walk to get the most 'scenic' places. On our journeys we found a boat! It belonged to the people who lived around the river and luckily Sam lived there so we were able to experiment with shots. In fact we like it so much it made it into our opening!

 Here I am shooting the close up of our couple holding hands, we did a pan shot up to see Sam coughing in Beccas face. We did want Sam to burp but unfortunately he couldnt burp on cue. Because of this the cough didnt seem as effective and just looked very messy as they kept moving away from the centre of the camera, so instead we decided to only use the first shot of the hands.

One day more...

So tomorrow we start filming for our opening. Its very exciting as will be a new experience for us going out and filming on our own!

COSTUME
For our opening we want to get the quirky feel of the characters across. Obviously for Sam we want him to be fashionable, and it to appear that he takes pride in his appearence. And for Becca we want her own 'rocky' style to show in her character. Here are some ideas on what we want her to wear...

We want a wintery feel as it tends to be opposite to the Hollywood bikinis and such:

Final preparations!

Camera
The camera we will be using tomorrow is the Canon 1100 D. We borrowed it from school, and a lot of the students have said it is brilliant quality and easy to use.

As well as a camera we obviously have a tripod.

We have decided to use Effie's iPhone 4 to take evidence of filming, and I would like to make a few vlogs during our time filming. We thought using a phone is a good way to show our abiblity of using different media devices.

Props
Below is a list of props we will need for tomorrow:

• Socks
• Toilet Roll (titles)
• Cereal box (maybe titles)
• Remote
• Tissue Box
• Marley & Me DVD
• Ben & Jerrys (Empty... yummmmm!)
• 'Witty' Tee- shirt
• Present + wrapping paper (maybe)
• Plates and dinner (yum again!)
• Bin
• Mum and couples at beginning
• Beer, popcorn, poker board etc. for lads night in.
• Fake private messaging to Sam

ANIMATIC!

Questionnaire

We have also created a questionnaire about Rom coms to help decipher our audience, we have handed them out to boys and girl and a mixture of ages. Now to wait for them back! Questionnaire for Rom Com Research

The Script is finally here!

Script

TITLE OF FILM!

We've finally got a film title, which is very exciting. Its called 'Elephant Juice' as when you mouth it, it looks like i love you. We thought it reflects the fake effection our female protagonist has for her boyfriend.
Heres a very rough rough rough look at what it may look like...

Our lovely protagonists!

Scriptamungo! 

So we have just finished writing our opening monologue which includes our protagonists pet hates of all things men! It took just over a week to complete this as all three of us have turned out to be perfectionists! Unfortunately we havent had the chance to write our script up yet but it will be on here soon. 

On the other hand we have successfully found our female protagonist and her dreaded grousome lover! 

Female Protagonist REBECCA STAMATIS

So sticking to our indie rom com conventions we wanted our main protagonist to be ordinary looking and naturally pretty. Fortunately my best friend Becca seems to fit this pitch well...

Actresses that I think share the same kind of features and conventions as Becca are: 

Carey Mulligan

Zooey Deschanel 

Audrey Tautou

The Boyfriend SAMUEL WHITE

Instead of having a grubby, unattractive boyfriend we decided to go for a boy who seems good looking and a real 'dream boat' on the outside but really he is just a horrible selfish person. We decided to change this so our first boyfriend (Sam) and our male protagonist (who doesn't appear in the opening) contrast each other. 

Sam has been used in many media projects before so he should be comfortable behind the camera and will know his stuff!

Actors that influenced our decision for picking Sam include: 

Hugh Grant

Ashton Kutcher

Ryan Reynolds

Aaron Johnston

So there we are our two characters! 

Titles

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0-xytodmKE

Here is another media text called "The Ex Drummer". I like the way the text is actually incoorporated on the objects rather than edited on the computer! It also isnt the main focus of the shots so we focus more on the story.