A Note To The Moderator

Hello and welcome to our group Media AS-level blog. Thank you for taking time to look around!

You can navigate around our blog by clicking on the links on the right hand side of the page. There you will also find a link to our class blog (which contains links to the other blogs from our school). You can filter posts by labels or date, and there is a blog archive if you want to look through chronologically. You can find our individual evaluations by clicking on the labels 'Anna Evaluation', 'Emily Evaluation' and 'Sharlene Evaluation'. Our evaluation answers are posted here in reverse order from 1-7 for your convenience but some posts may appear on the next page so please press "Older Posts" at the bottom of the page if it appears.

On this blog you will find our individual and group independent research when you click on the individual contribution labels ('Emily Contribution', 'Sharlene Contribution' and 'Anna Contribution')  - this is in the form of our research, planning and development along with evidence from pre-production, production and post-production, as well as our final evaluation questions. You can watch our final opening sequence above (at the top of our blog) - we really hope you enjoy watching it as it is the product of a lot of hard work and creativity.

Once again, thanks for your time and we hope you enjoy reading and watching the content on our blog!

Anna Rawe (Candidate no. 1630)
Emily Lawson (Candidate no. 1415)
Sharlene Gandhi (Candidate no. 1200)

This Blog Is Now Closed

We hope you have enjoyed watching the progression of our project, from the research and planning stages to the actual finished product. Thank you!

Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

During the research and planning stages of the production of Turning Pages, we considered various aspects, such as genre, narrative structure, form and style, and how we could use their conventions to appeal to our target audience of 16-24 year old females. In addition, we also thought about which conventions we could challenge in order to enhance the viewing experience and present an alternative to the norm through our low-budget, independent film.

Our initial research included watching films of several genres that we, as consumers of the media, enjoyed thoroughly. We really wanted to make an 'indie' film, and therefore explored sub-genres that are popular amongst independent film-makers, such as comedy-dramas (Juno) and quirky romance films (Amelie).

 Genre
Turning Pages is a coming-of-age drama- we researched a variety of coming-of-age films, both big budgets and small-scale, independent films. Our influences included The Perks of Being A Wallflower, Little Birds, Submarine, Donnie Darko, 17 Again and The Art of Getting By.

	Coming-of-age conventions	Example
Typical characters	-The protagonist (‘Hero’ in Propp’s character theory)- young, mid-teens, quite quirky/individual but still naive -Friends of the protagonists  (‘Helpers’)- “balance out” the thoughtfulness of the protagonist as they are lateral thinkers but also very caring and still unique.	Charlie, The Perks of Being a Wallflower - very deep thinker and emotional Alison, Little Birds -helps to get Lily back home after they run away to Los Angeles
Typical events	- The protagonist often wants to change something about their lives, which is the trigger of disruption. -They then ‘mature’ over the course of the film, learning about themselves and the world along the way	Mike, 17 Again - Mike made the immature decision of abandoning his basketball career to be with his pregnant girlfriend, which he later regrets and sets out to resolve.
Typical themes	- Love -Sexuality -Relationships -Growing Up -Education -Family and Friends	Submarine -focuses on two aspects of typical teenage life- a ‘first love’ and a turbulent family life
Typical mise-en-scene	- Props that are signifiers of youth (eg bicycles, books, backpacks) - Quirky, unique fashion sense	Donnie Darko - opening sequence features the protagonist riding a bike

Using these particular films as inspiration, we developed our idea for Turning Pages- 
- The protagonist, Lila, is a feisty impulsive 18-year-old who has just left school and has the desire to live life to the full after the unfortunate death of her brother.
- Her friends, Noah and Jess, who are both quite individual, help her complete the bucket list that her brother has left behind.
-The focus of the story is their journey as they set out to complete all the things on the list and learn about life along the way.
-Themes include love, family, maturity and adventure.
-Signifiers of youth were included in our film opening, such as a backpack, a notebook and a camera, to 'capture the memories' of their trip.

Narrative Structure
From our narrative structure research on A Walk to Remember and Juno, we found that coming-of-age dramas are conventionally structured in this way:

• The stories usually begin in the equilibrium  tage of Todorov's narrative theory (eg. Friends on a night out in A Walk to Remember)
•  The disruption usually comes very early on in the narrative and there are multiple disruptions throughout the storyline (eg. student injured, Landon held responsible and Jamie's leukaemia (top right) in A Walk to Remember)
• The resolution solves all these problems, and we thus return to the stage of equilibrium that was present at the beginning of the narrative (in Juno, she goes back to living her old, teenage life after giving birth to her son and giving him to Vanessa Loring (bottom right), with the slight change of having Paulie as a boyfriend). 

Turning Pages starts in a 'new' equilibrium stage after the death of Lila's brother, a disruption that has taken place before the film. Multiple disruptions will take place throughout the film, such as Lila being unable to complete something on the bucket list or falling out with one of her friends, but her friends will then become the resolution and help her complete the list, leading her to the new equilibrium in which she feels content in the knowledge that she has had the chance to live life to the full. Throughout these disruptions, the character of Lila matures, which is a conventional event in a coming-of-age narrative.

Form

During our audience feedback session, we found that there were some things that we had not clarified in our opening sequence-

• There was some confusion as to who originally wrote the bucket list. Although we tried to avoid this by including 'Kiss as many girls as possible....' to clarify that the list was Lila's brother's, this creates further confusion for some of our audience members
• While we did successfully communicate the relationships between the three characters, the names of the characters themselves were not clear. 

A still from Submarine, an indie coming-of-age film
that we used as inspiration

Style
Indie style- dull colouring to create realism (as shown in the Submarine still)
               - natural lighting
               - not as 'glossy' as Hollywood productions- reflects difference in budget

We implemented indie style through the use of a slow pace and rhythm of editing, as well as the use of a backing track that was more to set the mood of the film in general rather than 'direct' the audience's emotions (as music does in a horror film).

Through our research on titles, we also found that films of  the coming-of-age genre and those with an indie style tend to use capitalised, white fonts for the titles in their opening sequences, such as that of Brick (right).  We also used a font called Brain Flower that had a handwritten feel to it, thus linking to our theme of the handwritten bucket list. The screenshot below shows the final title in the opening sequence, featuring this white, capitalised and themed font that would be used as a logo in marketing campaigns.

Here is a short video of the style that we tried to replicate which was taken on our first test shoot. The sunrise, as well as the soft piano soundtrack and the shaky pan up all add to the 'indie' element of the film and reinforce the mellow mood.

Question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Characters were very strongly considered when we were planning Turning Pages. As an independent film, we wanted to challenge certain conventions of characters that are established by Hollywood, such as the fashion/boy-crazed teenage girl, the egoistic, self-centred teenage boy and the geeky, antisocial Asian. Through our three main characters, Lila, Noah and Jess, we tried to challenge some of these stereotypes so that the character was more accessible and relative to our audience. However, we also included some qualities that are stereotypical of certain social groups so that audience members are able to identify the type of character and some of their characteristics.

Character profiles

Name:	Lila King
Age:	18
Characteristics:	Feisty, individual, impulsive but naive
Inspiration:	Lily from Little Birds
Social group:	Teenage girls- stereotypically, young female characters are obsessed with fashion and boys, as we see in high school films such as Mean Girls.                     - however, the character of Lila is subverts this stereotype through her philosophy of ‘living life to the max’. This is reflected by her costume, which is quite scruffy and individual                    - It is hinted in our opening sequence that Lila and Noah may be more than friends, and if this does happen later on in the narrative, Lila will become a conventional romantic heroine, who is stereotypically loving and 'waiting for the one'.

Name:	Noah Walsh
Age:	19
Characteristics:	Weird, caring, understanding, carefree
Inspiration:	Patrick from The Perks of Being A Wallflower
Social group:	Teenage boys- by convention, teenage boys are quite careless and arrogant, and are depicted as being sex-driven and aggressive, such as Jordana’s boyfriend in Submarine.                  - Noah, however, shows his caring and understanding side in the Turning Pages opening, through his dialogue- “Come on Lila, you can’t do this by yourself.”

Name:	Jessica Lo
Age:	18
Characteristics:	Intelligent, practical, caring, holds the group together
Inspiration:	Rhi from Easy A / Ali from Little Birds
Social group:	Asian students- especially in American high school dramas, the Asian characters are classed as nerds/geeks and often put together in their own group (eg Mean Girls)                    - Jess, although intelligent, also thinks logically and is well-liked for her wittiness, portrayed in her line “Noah, even I could get with more girls than you.”

Representing young people in Turning Pages:
In media texts such as Skins and This is England, young people are represented as rowdy and antisocial. In Turning Pages, we wanted to challenge this stereotype by highlighting a more philosophical and deep side of young people. This attitude of the protagonist, Lila, is triggered by the death of her brother, and she adopts the mindset of 'living life to the full', consequently subverting any antisocial stereotype that can be pinned to teenagers. Noah and Jess also show their affection and care for their friend, another characteristic which is often lost through conventional representation of teenagers.

Question 3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

The distributor works in conjunction with the production company in order to successfully market and distribute a film to an appropriate audience, in order to generate as much revenue as possible. Above is a presentation of the process we used to shortlist potential distributors for Turning Pages and why we chose Entertainment Film Distributors.

Our production company is called Fruit Bowl Films. The qualities that we gave our production company were those that we would associate with a company that would be making Turning Pages:
- We are an independent British production company based in London, UK.
- We specialise in the production of low-budget, indie films with a British twist, and aim to produce high quality, British productions.
- Turning Pages is our first production, and we would like to reach a young audience through themes of love, friendship, growing up and adventure. We would love for them to associate high quality films with Fruit Bowl and look forward to further releases. We plan on expanding into further genres in the future, but would like films aimed at young audiences to be our specialist area.





Distribution strategy
- The typical core target audience for a coming-of-age film would be teenagers, who are likely to be able to relate to the characters, the situation, the journey and its outcome, and are also likely to be inspired by films of this genre.
- As it is a film about a group of teenagers going on an adventure, it corresponds with the excitement surrounding summer holidays, and so the projected release date would be mid-late July.
- We see this film being released into small-scale, independent cinemas in 'trendy' areas of London- a few examples are the Electric Cinema in Notting Hill, The Curzon Renoir in Russell Square and The Phoenix in East Finchley. Visitors of these cinemas tend to be commuters around the area, with more disposable income than normal. In addition, university students undertaking courses in central London in the fields of media, film and/or English are likely also to visit these cinemas.
- It will be a fairly limited regional release, which could potentially expand to a staggered national release as revenue rolls in.

Marketing campaign

- As an independent film, we would have a relatively limited marketing budget, and would probably rely largely on word-of-mouth promotion as a means of marketing our film.
- In order to target young, trendy commuters, I think we could place an advert in the free London newspaper, The Metro, that is distributed daily on the London Underground. The advert would be placed on the day of the film's opening in central London locations such as The Renoir in Russell Square. Those who see the advertisement and are familiar with the Renoir will know that the film is independent and will hopefully take some time after work to go and see it.
- We could also use below-the-line marketing methods, such as interviews with the cast and crew in newspapers and magazines that our core target audience would typically read- we could target young office-workers through the culture sections of newspapers such as The Metro and the Evening Standard, whilst magazines such as Company target females between the ages of 16 and 30 who are interested in fashion, music, film, arts and general culture.

Question 4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

We decided that an appropriate primary audience for Turning Pages would be 16-24 year old females, due to the themes of love, friendship and growing up. We also drew up profiles of two secondary audiences, 16-24 year old males, and couples in their thirties. During the planning stages of the production process, we paid particular attention to aspects such as characters, style and events, keeping audience experience and pleasure in mind the whole time.

In a report on avid cinema-goers published by the British Film Institute, we found that:

• Just over 40% of all cinema-goers are of the 15-24 audience bracket.
• Members of this age bracket go to the cinema at least once a month
• Film for this audience is a way of forming identity, and therefore, young people between the ages of 15 and 24 often turn to independent films as a means of escaping mainstream, Hollywood productions.

Using this information we constructed a core audience profile-

Age: 16-24

Gender: Female

Occupation: Student (likely to be studying film/media/English-related courses)

Class: Middle-class

Interests: Film, photography, literature, culture, theatre, history, museums

We also had two wider audience groups that we wanted to appeal to through Turning Pages:

1) Young males between the ages of 16-24- would also have an interest in independent and small-budget films, and would be attracted by the inclusion of good-looking female characters

2) Older couples (30+)- through a sense of nostalgia of the days of their youth, they would be able to attach sentiments to the film and they would be able to relate to Lila, Noah and Jess. Also, the themes of family and loss are perhaps more relative to this audience than the younger audience groups. 

Entertainment Film Distributors have expertise in distributing British films to British audiences, and people interested in the film industry will be able to associate this particular distributor with high-quality, British audiences, which could be a possible technique of marketing to both our core and wider audience groups. One issue associated with marketing to young audiences is film piracy- the 16-24 age group accounts for 71% of Internet users downloading film. For a low-budget film like Turning Pages, the marketing budget is also likely to be relatively low, and hence incoming revenue will initially be low. To lose potential sales through film piracy could be detrimental for both the production company and the distributor.

Question 5: How did you attract/address your audience?

In order to make sure that we were effectively targeting our core audience of 16-24 year old females, we used Katz and Blumler's Uses and Gratifications theory, as well as the inclusion of desirable characters, popular themes with this demographic and deeply considered stylistic choices. The effectiveness of these choices can be judged through our audience feedback screening session, which was held after the post-production stage, with two members of our core audience and one member of our secondary audience.

Entertainment          - -The audience would be hooked to see whether the trio successfully complete everything on the list, and how they go about doing it.              - There will be comic moments as well as dramatic parts as they complete the bucket list.	Information            --Turning Pages provides a new perspective on the death of a close family member- audience members learn about a new, and perhaps better way of dealing with bereavement.
Personal Identity            --The themes of maturing and growing up apply to the majority of our core audience members, and as Lila completes the things on the bucket list, she develops as a character	Relationships         -    -The audience start to identify with the characters, particularly Lila, whom they want to see complete the list.               -  The death of Lila’s brother may inspire audience members to appreciate family more.

Katz and Blumler's Uses and Gratifications theory illustrates the reasons why members of our core audience of 16-24 year old females would 'consume' this media text, Turning Pages.

Looking back, we focused largely on the entertainment factor and the idea of maturing with Lila as the narrative progresses, thus building on personal identity. We should have thought more about the informative part of our narrative, which could have come later on in the storyline while she completes her list; for example, she could learn a language or about a foreign culture on her quest.

Characters

Themes
- Themes of love/relationships- the two female audience members at our audience feedback session mentioned that their favourite film genres were romance, comedy, teen films and rom-coms. They were able to spot that there may be a potential love story between Lila and Noah that would be developed later on in the film.
- Identity/ maturity- through our audience research, we found that members of the 15-24 audience group use film as a means of identity and personal development, and they therefore move away from mainstream cinema to find something that they can relate to. Themes of maturity and growing up run throughout Turning Pages, a small-scale production which is likely to appeal to the 15-24 age bracket.

Style
-'Indie' style attracts core audience's love of independent cinema

Build of enigma
- The props used, such as the notebook and photograph, are enigma codes because they raise questions about their significance in the narrative:

• Who is the boy in the photo?
• What is his relationship with Lila?
• Why does she have a bucket list?

- Although the props raise appropriate questions, we also found that they caused some confusion- we had not established properly that the photo was linked to the bucket list, and that the bucket list belonged to the boy in the photo with Lila. Therefore, we had various interpretations of the opening during our audience screening sessions.
-Noah's entrance is also quite unexpected and therefore keeps the audience hooked to find out who these two new characters are and what their role in the narrative is.

Audience Feedback
We held a screening through which members of our core and secondary audiences were able to give us feedback on what they liked best about the film and why they would watch it:
1) The first, a girl aged 17, who liked films such as The Perks of Being a Wallflower, particularly enjoyed the vlogging sequence- this could be because of the intimacy of the situation and the direct address to the camera, which automatically introduces Lila's character to the audience. This also links to the Uses and Gratifications theory through which the audience member establishes a relationship with the fictional character.
2) The second girl, aged 16, liked the small joke used in the dialogue- comedies are also popular amongst our core and secondary target markets, as they are light-hearted and therefore can be enjoyed by young audiences, which is why we incorporated this into the coming-of-age genre and into our film opening.
3) A member of the secondary audience, a boy aged 17, liked the acoustic backing track- this stylistic element was also added to reinforce the light-hearted nature of the film.
Whilst all three audience members really liked the style of the sunrise shots, they all thought that the establishment of character could be worked on. In hindsight, this is definitely something that we would reconsider as we would like our audience members to engage with the characters from the very beginning, and hence be immersed into the filmic world. 

Question 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

During the production of Turning Pages, we used technology that we familiar with, such as cameras, tripods, Adobe Premiere Pro, Livetype and Adobe Photoshop, as well as new technology, such as the ProCamp and Three Way Colour Corrector tools on Premiere Pro and Audition. Therefore, as well as learning about the new technologies, we had a chance to improve our usage of the programmes that we had previous experience with.

This is our director's commentary, featuring Group 3B talking over our final cut, about what we could have improved on and what we liked about our opening sequence- we discuss our sunrise shots, the titles, the lighting changes and consequent grading process, sound issues and continuity errors.

Pre-production
- Use of new media/ social networking to communicate- we made a Facebook group where we could post and communicate with the rest of the group, as well as a group message where we could inform our actors of shoot plans.
- Adobe Première Pro- Although we had used Première Pro before for GCSE coursework, it was really good to have the chance to use it again before we got onto actual production. We had the chance to get used to this particular piece of editing software again when editing our animatic (below). Obviously the editing process for the animatic was not as sophisticated as for the final cut, but we did learn how to use tools such as the razor tool on Première Pro, add voice-overs and other backing music and add titles to our sequence.


Production
- For our test shoot, real shoot and re-shoot, we used a Legria HV30 camera, a tripod and a microphone.
- As Emily was acting, Anna and I shared out the directing/ camerawork responsibilities between us, so that both of us had equal time using the equipment. Here are some of the shots that I shot:

- One particular advantage of using the tripod was that we could get smooth pans for our sunrise shots, especially our first one.

-However, the microphone picked up a lot of wind and background noise, which meant that we sometimes lost the dialogue, such as the 'Over and out' at the end of the vlogging shot.

Post-production

• We used Adobe Premiere Pro to edit- we had already used this software before so we were fairly familiar with it, but in particular, I found these tools useful-

                         1) Pen tool- to use for the fade in and out at the beginning and end of the sequence and also to control volumes of our various sound tracks (backing music, birds sfx, dialogue, background noise)
                         2) Grading- Using ProcAmp and Three Way Colour, we graded various shots because between different shoots, the weather changed and so did the sunrises. Therefore, the quality of light was different in each shoot and we fixed that through grading. We paid more attention to this tool for this project than we had in previous years- it was actually quite difficult to get the right balance between the colours of the person and the colours of the sky/ground/ sky, so that it all looked realistic.
                          3) Razor tool- In parts where we thought the dialogue had been said too fast or the shot was not held for long enough, we used the razor tool so that we could slightly slow down these shots. For example, I slowed down the part where she flicks through the notebook to build up the enigma.

• We made the REC sign in Photoshop. We made two, one with a red dot and one without, so it would look like the red dot was flashing. We researched films/media texts with vlogging shots; Good Luck Charlie's video diary shots feature a REC sign, and we used that as inspiration. If we had time, I think we could also have added a timecode to make it look more realistic and to reinforce the idea of an amateur film-maker/vlogger.

• We used both Livetype and Dafont.com to produce our titles. Through our research, we found that titles of indie films are usually white and capitalised, and also quite simple. We wanted to reinforce the bucket list theme and so we went for a handwritten-style font called Brain Flower. We prodcued the titles on Livetype, through which we could change their size, position and boldness. One thing we had to keep changing was the positioning of the titles, so that they wouldn't interrupt any of the significant action of the narrative. During our screening, however, we found that reading the titles is particularly difficult when watching from a distance away, so we should have made them bolder in Livetype before adding them into the sequence.

• Audition was used to rerecord the backing track so that it was better quality. Unfortunately, we could not get a whole take of the song that was perfect, so we had to cut together two parts of the song in Premiere Pro, which was quite difficult.

Question 7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Above are both the preliminary task and the final cut of Turning Pages.
Whilst the aim of the prelim was to work on continuity editing (180 degree rule, match on action and shot reverse shot), the main task involved us using these continuity editing skills in a full opening sequence for a fiction film, which also had to include a titles.


This table summarises what we did differently between the preliminary task and the production of Turning Pages, what we learnt from the process and what we could have improved on. 

	What we did in the Prelim	What we did in the production of Turning Pages	What was different? Was this effective or not? If so, how? What did you learn?	What could have been done differently/ better?
Pre-production Planning for Faceless Planning for Turning Pages	Brainstorm to plan ideas > storyboard > script > shot list > shoot schedule	We followed the same process as with the prelim, but since we had multiple shoots, we had the chance to go back to our scripts and storyboards and edit them.	Revising the pre-production material several times helped us to see which parts of our script needed changing, whereas in the prelim, we could not change much about the initial idea. I learnt that sticking to an original script is quite rare, and that revising pre-production material is an essential part of the process.	I think we could have paid more attention to the shoot schedule, as we did sometimes end up shooting some shots more times than they needed to be done due to a lack of paperwork.
Audience Research Using BFI statistics to form our core audience profile of 16-24 year old females	Since the main focus were the continuity principles, we did not get much time to think about audiences, but tried to factor in audience involvement by including over-the-shoulder shots and an appropriate shot order to bring the audience into the action.	We researched audience BFI statistics, which helped us form our core and wider audience profiles- 16-24 year old females were our primary audience and we had two secondary audiences of 16-24 year old males, and couples in their 30s.	Doing audience research helped us to focus our product more, as we took into consideration what our core audience would enjoy seeing, as well as what we could add into the narrative to appeal to our wider audiences. This meant that we took into account our genre, style, the themes/ messages conveyed and our characters.	What we could have focused a bit more on was the appeal to the 16-24 year old male market- what is it about Turning Pages that would convince them to watch it? Is Noah really an aspirational character to young males?
Location scouting Shooting on school grounds for Faceless  Primrose Hill in the morning	We were quite limited in our choice of setting for the prelim, and therefore chose our location on school grounds. We looked primarily for a long path which led to a door, which led to the room in which the exchange of dialogue takes place.	Since we had a longer period of time to plan, shoot and edit our opening sequence, we were able to go on a location scout a couple of weeks into the process. This also became our first test shoot, where we were able to, very roughly, rehearse the sequence and the dialogue.	Location scouting was one of the advantages of the main task over the preliminary task. We could rehearse the sequence in the space available to us at Primrose Hill, and could see what worked and what did not, in terms of the dialogue and shot order. Location scouting also inspired the very first change in the script, because prior to the scouting, we hadn’t thought much about the dialogue.	Shooting in an exterior location was  difficult at times, especially on cold mornings. Also, due to weather changes between shoots, the ‘quality’ of the sunrises would change, which had to be resolved during grading.
Multiple shoots	Again, due to a shortage of time to complete the prelim, we were unable to carry out multiple shoots and had to use the footage we got the first time round.	As well as the location scout, we went on more formal test, real and re-shoots; between each of these, we had made some changes either to the storyboard or the shot list after getting feedback on what could be improved.	The process of having multiple shoots was a lot more effective, because it meant that we had several opportunities to make changes to the storyboard and script. We also looked at our rough cuts more critically and paid attention to the detail of each shot so any errors and alterations would be the focus of the next shoot.	Had the problems that were flagged up between the real shoot and the reshoot been noted earlier on, we would have been able to get usable footage during our real shoot rather than having to do an extra.
Continuity editing At the edit suite	The focus of the task was to implement continuity techniques, such as match on action, the 180 degree rule and the shot reverse shot, which I think we did successfully.	There were several more points were we were required to use continuity editing, especially matches on action. We had to edit Lila getting her notebook out, Noah’s jump over the bench and Jess shoving Noah using these principles.	Whilst continuity principles were not the main focus of the main task, I think we did well to get enough footage which we could then cut together in the edit room. For example, we made sure we shot sequences from multiple angles so that we could then edit together a shot reverse shot in post-production.	Because we changed Jess’ coat between the real shoot and the re-shoot, we had to reshoot the whole conversation, and we didn’t actually get footage from enough angles to edit the shot reverse shot adequately
Group dynamic Group 3B	We worked really well together as a group, despite the fact that we did not have much time to plan, shoot and edit the sequence.	I think our group dynamic was great during the whole process. We voiced our opinions and told each other if we thought there was a problem with the sequence. We also shared responsibility for the blog, for planning, during production and in post-production.	We found that communicating regularly through Facebook helped massively, because we all knew what our responsibilities were and when we had to get things done by. We also made sure we spread the blog posts out equally between us.	One thing we could have worked on was communication with our actors- during our re-shoot, there was some confusion about timings and meet places.

In conclusion, from the preliminary task to the final product, I definitely feel that my grasp of technology has improved, as well as my understanding of audience and the process of production. Overall, I think that this project has been really enjoyable and beneficial, particularly in terms of honing my Premiere Pro skills and learning about the difficulties one can encounter during pre-production, production and post-production. I loved working with my group, and I also think that group dynamic was essential in the production process as we could not have completed tasks efficiently without effective communication. 

1. In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop and Challenge Forms and Conventions of Real Media Products?

Our film, 'Turning Pages', was a  Coming of Age Drama, and we conformed to the majority of the conventions of the genre and of opening sequences so audiences would understand our film.

We watched notable coming of age films, as well as looking at other independent and British films. We used what we learnt from those films while planning our narrative, characters and style, for instance creating strong and believable friendships and a juxtaposition between old and young.

Genre Conventions	Example From Real Media Text	Correlation to Our Text
Teenage Protagonist/Hero	Ferris Bueller from ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’	Conformed: Lila fits the coming of age drama's protagonist's stereotype apart from her gender
Plot focused on Protagonist’s journey	Billy Elliot’s journey to become a ballet dancer and overcome prejudice in ‘Billy Elliot’	Conformed: Lila’s journey as she moves on after her brother’s death, and as she completes his bucket list
A quirky best friend who supports the protagonist through their journey	Michael Eckman the audiovisual geek in '10 Things I hate about you'	Confromed: Jess wears dark clothes, is very sarcastic/pessimistic and in general is a contrast to Lila
A friend who develops into a love interest	Sam becomes Charlie's love interest despite their age difference and other relationships in 'Perks of Being a Wallflower'	Conformed: Noah will become Lila's love interest, and we tried to hint at this using 2 shots and the actors body language
The protagonist goes through a major change/transitional period in their life	In 'Son Of Rambow' Will's mother is starting a new relationship with their vicar, he watches TV for the first time,  makes his first friend and he starts to lose his faith	Conformed: Lila's brother has just died, she has just left school and she embarks on a life-altering journey
High/Secondary School setting	'Dead Poet's Society' is set in an extremely academic boarding school for boys	Challenged: In this respect we broke conventions as the film is set during Lila's gap year in order that she has enough time to complete the list
Parents who disagree with the protagonist choices	Both Jess and Jules's parents have doubts or outright forbid their daughters to play football in 'Bend It Like Beckham'	Challenged: While this is not in our opening sequence we planned to have Lila's parents have a minor role in the film, wanting to greive together and disapprove of her actions
Protagonists usually seek independence/self discovery	In '17 Again' Mike wants to find out who he is away from the constraints of family life	Conformed: In our film Lila learns more about herself and grows as a person as well as gaining independence as she goes on her quest without her parents or even their consent
Mutual friend of protagonist and love interest	Ted in 'Sixteen Candles' passes information between the two leads	Conformed: The character of Jess provides a constant link as well as a barrier between Lila and Atticus
Love Interest's current perfect/pretty/popular partner	Wet Lindsay in 'Angus, Thongs and Prefect Snogging'	Challenged
Protagonist has an unusual family	Napoleon Dynamite's older brother Kip spends all day trying to talk to 'babes' in chatrooms and training to be a cage fighter, while his grandmother rides quadbikes in the desert with multiple mysterious boyfriends. in 'Napoleon Dynamite'.	Challenged: We broke this convention as Lila is not around her family much in the film, and they instead are the antagonists in the film.

The Way we followed Opening Sequence Conventions:


  Insiprational opening sequences:

1. Donnie Darko - Camera - A very long (in both duration and framing) shot to begin the film, indie guitar music, lots of MCUs and MSs of protagonist which focused on his actions and emotions, Lots of ELSs and LSs to establish setting
2. Pride and Prejudice - Similar style to us as it begins with dawn breaking over some trees, pale colour scheme to indicate the dawn's early light, and camera as in the shot with Lizzie reading shot reverse shot is used, as in our film 
3. Juno - We were inspired by the quirky handwritten titles, indie guitar music soundtrack and the focus put on the protagonist through featuring her alone

Did our Sequence do the job of an opening sequence?
Job = Introduce Character's and their personalities

• Yes - Introduces all our main characters through the dialogue, establishes Lila as protagonist, relationships between the main characters through the dialogue and friendly gestures between them, as young people, some elements of character - Lila as sad, Noah as charismatic, Jess as sarcastic
• No - Audience unsure as to who the person in the photograph is - we should have expalined this using our dialogue

Job = Introduces Genre

• Yes - It establishes the genre as a coming of age drama and the target audience as young people
• No - Audiences are left unclear as to whether it is a Lesbian film or not, as if the list is Lila's she wants to 'Kiss as many girls as possible in an hour'

Job = Introduces Setting

• Yes - Establishes the London setting through ELSs at the beginning and British location and feel through language, accents and mise-en-scene like lamposts

Job = Establish the Narrative

• Yes - Sets up the bucket list and that they will be completing the list through out the film, as the list's title is easily readable in the CU of it and it sets up the romance to follow
• No - Audiences are left feeling uncertain about whose bucket list it is and the audience is uncertain about who the boy in the photo is

Job = Establish the Mood

• The mood satarts off relatively sombre, setting up he philosophical undertones of the film
• The groups banter set up the humour and quirkiness that will develop further
• By jumping for the photo, the film's mood is set as a celebration of life
• Slow pace of editing indicates the reflective mood
• Editing pace increases when Lila's friends arrive, signalling the arrival of hope and support to break Lila out of her depression

TITLES:

We chose to use a font called 'Brainflower' for our titles because it's handwriting look reflected the bucket list and connoted the themes of learning and growing. The white letters juxtaposed with the background and are typical of indie films. We made our titles fade in and out using the pen tool to make teir transitions seem smoother. However, the Turning Pages title is very bold, and I wish we had changed that.         

STYLE:
We wanted 'Turning Pages' to feel and look like a British Independent film through our cinematography and mise en scene. This unused shot from our test shoot exemplifies the indie style and feel we aimed for:

• It uses natural lighting - bright sunrise shots
• It contains typically 'indie' iconography like birds, blue skies and travelling
• Handheld/shaky cam feel (though we used a trippod when filming all our shots)
• Gentle/Mellow guitar music



Narrative:

We wanted 'Turning Pages' to be realistic to allow our audience to suspend their disbelief, as well as making our film memorable and relevant, so we followed codes and conventions.

Equilibrium	Our film skips this section out as it is before Lila's brother's death
Disruption	Lila’s brother’s death, although this happens offscreen before the film has started, and Lila’s subsequent depression There are also a series of minor disruptions along the way: Lila finds new love interest, group arguments, setbacks while completing the list
Recognition of Disruption	When Noah and Jess meet Lila on the top of the hill, recognising her distress and pledging to help with the bucket list
Attempt to repair	The completion of the bucket list, such as when Lila ticks off ‘Watch the sunrise from the top of Primrose Hill’
New Equilibrium	Lila completes her bucket list, is in a relationship with Atticus, has overcome her grief, and sets out to live the rest of her life

Our Use Of Barthes' Theory of Semiotics:

Levi -Strauss Theory of Binary Opposites:

Young vs old
Female vs Male
Lila vs Parents
Adventure vs Normal Life
Fun vs Mundanity
Death vs Life

Semiotic Code:

• Sunrise- new beginnings
• Rucksack - journey
• Camera/phone - youth, art, photography, making memories
• Bucket list - Past trauma, hope, fun, living
• Birds - hope, freedom, youth, breaking free

Cultural Code:

• Primrose Hill - London
• London skyline
• Bucket list - death, living life
• Photograph in pocket - loving memory, nostalgia, missing someone
• Rucksack - she's going somewhere

Action codes:

Symbolic Code:

• New beginning/hope.start
• Joy from darkness
• Friendship
• Memory
• Journeys
• Moving on
• Loneliness/sadness

Character roles in our opening:

Colour Scheme:

Our Use of Continuity Techniques was to allow our audience to become immersed in our film and suspend their disbelief:

1. Shot Reverse Shot:

2. Not crossing the line