Please click on the photos for the descriptions

Also, we did previously speak to our media teacher Mr White regarding copyright, as the company still hadn’t got back to us with a reply. He spoke to the OCR Media Subject Manager Rob, who said “ If we had clearly tried to  find permission, we could use the song, regardless of the fact that we haven’t actually gained the copyright permission.”

However, thanks to Megan Habgood, the company did finally get back to us.

‘GRATIS LICENCE

Dear Megan Habgood

 This email will serve as confirmation that we consent to the following use on the terms set out below:

Licensor: Kobalt Music Publishing Limited 

Licensor’s address: 4 Valentine Place, London, SE1 8QH

 Licensee: Megan Habgood 6 Earlham drive, Poole, Dorset, England, BH14 0HH

Composition: to build a home

 Kobalt Controlled Writer: Patrick Watson 45%

Production: Losing You

 Date Issued: 22^nd April 2010

Maximum Duration: 2 minutes

 Territory: UK

 Term: December 09 – April 2010

 Usage: Background

 Media: 1 x Dvd A.S.level media production 

 All other rights not expressly granted herein shall be specifically reserved to Licensor.

We grant this licence free of charge on a non-precedential basis and on the condition that Licensee receives no remuneration as a result of this use.  As this licence is granted free of charge, we give no warranty or accept any liability in respect of this licence.

Special Conditions: 

1. MFN with master and/or co-publisher. ‘

So we now have the correct liscence to use the song!

It is such a great feeling to know this part of our Media Studies course has come to an end, as we’ve put so much in to it. Although at times it has been a very stressful experience looking back on it is has been so rewarding, and I have gained great knowledge of so many different things. I think my group has helped me to gain the most possible from the situation and I’d really like to thank Holly and Megan for their hard work. I’m very happy with what he have all produced!

Pinnacle Studio 9: As you are well aware from previous posts we didn’t have the best experience working with Pinnacle, it has been the biggest help when it comes to creating our film. We used the process of long linear editing, which means putting the clips from the original source onto the computer, picking, cutting, editing and putting clips into the correct order. This is alot easier than the process of non-linear editing which would be editing it on the source material. After we came to grips with the use of Pinnacle we tried very hard to make the most of our clips, this included the use of transitions, for which we used the simple ‘slide’ and also the ability to edit the speed of the clips. The most handy tool was the cutting of the clips to allow for a smooth running finish, however in our second edit we encountered a problem where Pinnacle simply wouldn’t let us cut one particular clip meaning a slight wobble at the  beginning of it, yet due to time constraints we just had to let this be.

The second programme I have mentioned that we used was Audacity. This was almost used accidently in a way as we had no knowledge of it and wasn’t a requirement of our course. We managed to find this, upload our non-diegetic sound which we had saved on the VLE, clip the first eight seconds, re-save it and put it in it’s place on Pinnacle. We have muted all diegetic sound from our clips so that the only audiable noise is the non-diegetic song, ‘To Build A Home’.

The most important technology we have used is the Digital Video Camera, although I had amateur experience with these before I haven’t used them in such a professional way before. We shot our film in widescreen to give the desired cinematic effect. Digital video is a type of video recording system that works by using a digital rather than an analog video signal and therefore this was the best device to capture our motion picture on.

The film is inevitably more aimed toward female viewers and this is mainly because men aren’t often renowned for their ability to sit down and happily watch a tear-jerker. Therefore the distribution of our film would be likely to feature in women’s magazines, for example, ‘Glamour’ or ‘Closer’. Also women are likely to be attracted to the caring, sensitive side of ‘Harry’ and therefore be more interested in watching the film. As a group we inducted a mini-questionnaire on people post watching our opening to gather data on the potential audience:

After watching the two minute opening of the film, who would you recommend the film to?

• Women – 5
• Men – 2
• Either – 3

After watching the two minute opening of the film, what age range would you say this would attract?

• 3-12 – 0
• 12-20 - 5
• 20-30 - 4
• 30 + – 1

To make sure we represented the character we had to use costume effectively, this meant a headscarf to be worn by ‘Lily’ to express the severe amount of chemotherapy she would have faced and then encountered hair loss. We needed loungewear to be worn to show her fragile state and also pale foundation and dark eye make-up was used to show how she is still not perfectly well.

We did question whether we should bother to represent a young couple in love because we were well aware of how cliche it could come across, yet we thought it would be of a higher effect on the audience if we did let them know of the close relationships ‘Lily’ had and therefore the loss of her would be even greater. Even though ‘Harry’ her boyfriend does not feature in the opening two minutes we are aware of his charatcer due to the scrapbook and dress he buys for her (therefore the audience gather she is preparing to see him) but in the rest of our film the audience would be more aware of his character and the couples trials during their relationship.

1. Titanic – $600, 788, 1883, 265
2. Dreamgirls – $103,365,956
3. Ghost – $217, 631, 3061, 766

Paramount is an American distribution company, currently owned by Viacom. It is America’s oldest existing film studio and is consistently ranked as one of the top-grossing movie studios. As our film is a British film I think using such a notorious American company may not benfefit our film or be adaquete to distribute it. However, when looking at British film companies such as Working Title, who distributed The Boat That Rocked and Love Actually their strong points of film are not in the distribution of such titles as ours. I think an American company such as New Line Cinema would be best for our film. They release top emotional dramas such as ‘The Notebook’ and ‘My Sister’s Keeper’ and therefore have the knowledge our film would need, the fact it is an American company would mean a bigger funding for our project and a wider potential target audience.

With regards to further distribution of our film, it would be more than essential we had both a trailer and teaser trailer running in cinemas to ensure our film had maximum success. We would need to make sure the trailer ran prior to appropriate films. Therefore we would not show the film before a horror, or a children’s animation. The trailer would be best of showing before another emotional drama, or perhaps a romantic film.

Due to modern day media I feel it is important that our film is avaliable for legal downloading on the internet, this will hopefully combat piracy as people are less likely to illegally source the film. Our film would also have the opportunity of airing on movie channels on the television, for example, Sky Movies and prior to this Sky Box Office.

We would also need to release posters for billboards, buses, magazines, etc. so that our film could reach the widest audience possible. It would also be neccessary to release several differnet posters of different aspects of the film, perhaps actors/actresses so that it is fresh in the potential audiences mind when they see the different posters. Megan Habgood kindly produced this poster to give an outline of what we would expect from our distribution company.

In our task there were a number of things which were specifically asked of us:

1. The need for an establishing shot to set the scene/setting and when needed the characters.
2. A shot which shows the surrounding and characters at depth, a long shot.
3. A shot where a character is looking or talking to another (who can be on or off screen) and then a shot back to the second character looking back to the first. A shot reverse shot is the technical name for this.
4. A close up, this is a shot which tightly captures a certain object or character.
5. The cutting from one shot to another view which matches the action and pace of the first shot which creates an impression of continuity, even though the shots may not have been necessarily filmed at the same time – Match on action

Another thing we had to be constantly aware of during our first chance at filming, was the 180 degree rule, although quite simple sounding it does need a lot of attention as it’s easy to be unaware of, it basically refers to an imaginary line which cuts through the middle of the scene from side to side with respect to the camera. If the line if crossed it may cause disorientation and confusion for the viewer.

Here are a few screen grabs from our preliminary task:

Please click on the photo’s for descriptions of the shots.

The preliminary task helped us alot in the process of understanding how shots work and how continuity is a really important aspect of filming. We found that in our piece we have one major continuity error, unfortuantelty my house is laid out rather different from what we were hoping. We wanted a traditional set up of ‘Lily’ going up the stairs but my bathroom is infact downstairs. This meant the shot of her leaving the bedroom would be filmed inside my bedoroom, but yet for the match on action ‘Lily’ would be filmed coming out of a different room. Accidentally Holly when acting ‘Lily’s’ part came out of the room and didn’t shut the door. The flooring of both rooms is different, one laminate and one carpet and therfore the continuity error in our eyes is noticable. When looking at it on closer inspection we felt that it probably wasn’t worth the hassle of re-filming this is due to the fact we asked alot of peoples opinions and many people didn’t notice this error until it was pointed out to them. Thankfully due to us finally being able to understand the working of ‘Pinnacle Studio 9′ we were able to cut and edit clips appropriately to avoid any shots being jumpy and distracting from the smooth running of the film.

We have made sure in our film that we take a realistic character and portray a story of emotions during the film in which the audience become attached and also feel themselves. This is much like the majority of emotional dramas, including the one’s I studied at the beginning of the course. This was important for our film that we had a realistic storyline which would be interesting and innovative. Another convention of emotional dramas that our group followed within our production was the use of non-diegetic sound. For the genre we picked this is debatably one of the most important factors. The non-diegetic sound has to create an atmosphere and mirror the action within the film. The piece we’ve picked – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QB0ordd2nOI - perfectly captures this, the lyrics and music itself is soothing and delicate yet has a noticable climax which fits together with our film better than we could have anticipated.

However, where we have subverted away from the conventions of emotional dramas is mainly due to the context of our situation. As we were only filming the opening two minutes we wanted to hook the audience immediately and therfore a large proportion of sadness and events happens right at the beginning of the film. However, in emotional dramas usually the openings are more sombre with a slow moving pace to the film, the main action is only really ever noted toward the middle/end. I am proud of the way we managed to do this though as I was worried our film would be too busy and un-realistic if we tried to cram too much in to the beginning but I feel we have created a very professional production which reflects the nature of emotional dramas.

We edited the piece in exactly the same way, with the same transitions, fades, cut-clips, speeds and colour alteration. We wanted to make sure that the second edit was as good if not better than the original as opposed to rushing it too much and creating something that was of a poorer standard. I am extremely proud of our final film and think it is a credit to how well we worked together as a group.

This was a massive blow to our group after all our hard work, we have nothing to show for it. After we stopped being pessimistic we did realise that thankfully Megan had been looking after our original tape and the only thing we could do to save our selves was to upload all the original filming and then re-start the editing, from scratch!

It is very fustrating, mainly because our group had finished with so much time spare, and yet our efforts still cannot be fully recognised without the film on DVD. Let’s just hope that our next attempt to MPEG is more successful!