WELCOME MODERATOR

Jessica Power

Candidate number: 1716

Claremont Fan Court School 64680

I worked with Leila Saville 1767, Morven McIntyre 1744 and Evie Hand 1727

Our brief was to create a film opening, in which we decided to create a thrilling drama concerning a celebrity who turns her back on her fame caused by a recent scandal she has been involved in. We tried to create a film that would relate to a wide range of audiences and leave them wanting more.

Our film is show below:

UNDERSTANDING HEGEMONY

Understanding Hegemony

The idea that the media continually reproduces images of a dominant group as superior or powerful. Westerners have middle class white males as their dominant group. Other groups such as disabled and female are seen as inferior. However, this dominance is so subtle that the white men do not realise they are doing it and nobody challenges it. As Antonio Gramsci  says - the media ‘manufactures consent’ which allows this unethical domination to sip under the radar. It is the messy relationship between the media and society which causes consequences for the western society such as inequality; as the white middle class males are put on a social pedestal. For example, I looked at how Western journalists report on the film industry and found that accompanying the image reflected this point in an article by Vanessa Thorpe concerning film industry as every actor featured was male and all but five were white. The other less represented social groups that are less often represented as powerful and significant such as; people from working class, women and people with disabilities. Draws in an example I have looked at where working class are represented and their issues are conveyed in Ken Loach's 'Sorry we missed you' and 'I, Daniel Blake'
Hegemony causes consequences because the power rests solely on the successful manipulation of cultural and social institutions in the media which leads to limited representation of ethnic and social groups.

•  Only 13% of working film directors in the UK are women
• 54% of today’s top journalists were educated in private schools, only 7% of the population attending private school in the first place which immediately cuts down their ability to interact with working class and unprivileged people

Corrupt system: Hegemony causes consequences for representation because it means a large population of people becomes under represented causing them to have a disadvantage when getting jobs and difficulties feeling like a worthy member of society. 

Pluralism refers to the flip side to hegemony, the idea that in order to change their way we all think we need to see many varied representations of people from varied social groups. For example, a Poster of legally black which challenges hegemony by breaking from the predominately white, middle class stereotype associated with the film ‘legally blonde’. This is a more meaningful as we are breaking from the same social group intoxicating the media. However, pluralism is not possible as long as it is dominated by privileged white people.

Cultivation Theory is the Polar opposites of the passive and active audiences. Suggests that although we do not pick and choose the media we consume, we are not oblivious to the effects of repeated ideas which are constantly reproduced, over a period of time it can subtly affect our views.

Behaviourist theory believes that the media has a direct impact on our behaviour which can cause a negative or positive influence depending on the content. For example, Donald Trump claimed that violent video games and films were to blame for the school shootings in Florida; this my change audiences’ behaviour towards video games and films with violence, casting them into a negative blamed light.

Magic bullet theory puts across that the media fires messages into our brains, we are passive consumers who believe everything that we're told. This supports the idea that hegemony is not challenged as we believe everything we hear is right and valid and not subject to inequality. Similarly, the Hypodermic needle theory tells us that media messages are injected into our bloodstream which explains why this can effect our behaviour, because it becomes part of us.

CONSTRUCTION: FEEDBACK

I used powerpoint to create two slides that show the main areas in which we were instructed to improve on. The hook and sound, I have included the before and after to convey how we have taken advice given to our group and improved our film audience in order to make it more appealing to our target audience and flow as a smooth opening.

CONSTRUCTION: POSTER

Although making a film poster is not part of the brief, our group felt that by doing so, we would better understand the part that marketing plays in successful film distribution. We researched how this genre of film constructed posters, what sort of colour palette was used and how representations were featured. For instance, we looked at these three posters:



Our poster has many of the same conventions:

CONSTRUCTION: SOCIAL MEDIA

Instagram -
We chose Instagram as our first marketing strategy due our familiarity with the social platform: most people of our age – that is, our target audience- are the same. Once we developed an account name, we moved onto our biography content “The runaway affair. Pop culture icon Blake Taylor has been caught in a scandal, how will she save it? Here we explained our film in the hope of drawing our target audience in. Once we attracted an audience we were able to maintain them as followers, allowing us to remain in contact through our feed/profile; keeping them informed and post behind the scenes and sneak peaks to attract people to watch our film.
The link can be found here - Instagram

Facebook - we created this page, similar to the Instagram using a easy-to-find name and a similar bio 'the runaway affair, pop culture icon  Blake Taylor has been caught in a scandal that could ruin her career. How will she save it?

Twitter - We created our own Twitter feed and posted material that related to our movie genre and our target markets interests. This involved trailers from thriller films, re-tweets from well known thriller directors and tweets that we wrote which give an insight into our films plot. All of our social media pages relate to each have the same profile picture for each page.

CONSTRUCTION: BBFC CERTIFICATE

I created this BBFC age restriction warning using adobe photoshop and finding a template on safari. Due to our film opening containing mild threat and infequent, mildvoilence we have classified it as a 15. The next age classification up is an 18 which deems it to be 'stadistic threat'. We feel this does not reflect our film. Our category allows voilence to be strong but should does not dwell on the infliction of pain or injury. We also aim our film at 15-35 year old which caused us to construct our film to fit into the category that this audience would relate to. The BBFC certificate serves to give a warning to the audience with what the contents of the film and what ages would be suitable to watch it.

According to the official BBFC guidelines this is the criteria of our film:

Dangerous behaviour

Dangerous behaviour (for example, suicide, self-harming and asphyxiation) should not dwell on detail which could be copied. Whether the depiction of easily accessible weapons is acceptable will depend on factors such as realism, context and setting.

Discrimination

The work as a whole must not endorse discriminatory language or behaviour, although there may be racist, homophobic or other discriminatory themes and language.

Drugs

Drug taking may be shown but the work as a whole must not promote or encourage drug misuse (for example, through detailed instruction). The misuse of easily accessible and highly dangerous substances (for example, aerosols or solvents) is unlikely to be acceptable.

Language

There may be strong language. Very strong language may be permitted, depending on the manner in which it is used, who is using the language, its frequency within the work as a whole and any special contextual justification.

Nudity

There are no constraints on nudity in a non-sexual or educational context. Sexual nudity may be permitted but strong detail is likely to be brief or presented in a comic context.

Sex

Sexual activity may be portrayed, but usually without strong detail. There may be strong verbal references to sexual behaviour. Repeated very strong references, particularly those using pornographic language, are unlikely to be acceptable. Works whose primary purpose is sexual arousal are unacceptable.

Sexual violence and sexual threat

There may be strong verbal references to sexual violence but any depiction of the stronger forms of sexual violence, including rape, must not be detailed or prolonged. A strong and sustained focus on sexual threat is unacceptable.

Threat and horror

There may be strong threat and horror. A sustained focus on sadistic threat is unlikely to be acceptable.

Violence

Violence may be strong but should not dwell on the infliction of pain or injury. The strongest gory images are unlikely to be acceptable. Strong sadistic violence is also unlikely to be acceptable.

CONSTRUCTION: SOUND

For our paparazzi scene, we wanted it to come across frantic and very fast pace to connote how our protagonist, Blake, was feeling. Therefore, when editing we knew that a huge variety of different sounds needed to be used.

Initially, we though we would just use a white noise to connote a sense of Blake feeling trapped and like she doesn't want to be living this type of life. However, after playing it back it sounded far too simple and needed a lot more sound. We then realised we were missing the main part of a paparazzi clip, the sound of cameras flashing. We added in a sound of cameras flashing as well as the white noise to make it fast pace and have a very busy feel to it.

We left it like this for a while, but after lots of thinking and playing back, we knew it needed more to it. So, for a while we went around asking various different people to voice record them shouting things as if they were paparazzi so we could layer it in and make Blake seem more vulnerable towards the audience. This really improved this scene and made it seem extremely realistic and as if multiple people were shouting at her and asking questions. We still felt that it wasn't loud enough, so we added sound of a huge amount of paparazzi shouting. This really completed the sound as it now was loud and busy enough.

After this, we added a muffled sound to all of the specific questions being shouted at Blake. This added the effect that she felt so anxious and worried and was trying to block out everything people were saying.

Finally, we decided to add in one more layer of sound. This was a heartbeat sound that was playing fairly quietly in the background but it really put all the clips together and made the process of editing the sound complete!

CONSTRUCTION: FILMING

 On the day that we chose to film; we had to be organised and ready to film everything in one day which included preparing props and outfits; At the beginning we first filmed the walking out scene. This begun by starting to film inside and we filmed the back of our actors walking out a front door. Although, this wasn't in chronological order we chose to film this scene first. Then, we filmed the our actors getting into a car accompanied by one of our actors as a security guard. We used various different shots accompanied by camera flashing to make the scene a realistic paparazzi ambush. We decided to use a combination of the canon camera and an iPhone for easy filming.

Then, we filmed a scene where we aused airplay to put our green scene video of a news report on the TV and filmed 'Blake' pouring a glass of wine and watching the news report. To follow this, we filmed Blake in a bedroom packing her bags to convey her leaving. Lastly, we filmed in our last location which was a children's bedroom. This bed time scene has our characters 'Blake' and 'Zoe' with Blake reading a bed time story to her from a realistic children's book. We experimented with different lighting to convey night time. 

PLANNING: PINTEREST

These Pinterest boards represent the in-depth description and impression we get from our protagonist; Blake. We have included our props and character outfits to convey the trends associated with our film characters being sophisticated and high-end.

PLANNING: CALL SHEET

To view the full Call sheet for Infamous click here

CONSTRUCTION: GREEN SCREEN EDITING

For our character; Blake Lively in our groups film opening entitled Infamous, we decided to interview one of our characters in order to develop the introduction further. Our character is featured conducting a news alert about our protagonist Blake Lively.
We were inspired by an article written by Charlie Sierra about building the back story to film characters in which he quoted from Riding the Alligator, a book written by Pen Densham, an Academy Award nominated filmmaker.
In one of the chapters in the book, he provides a check list of questions every writer and director should ask of themselves when they are developing their characters. The purpose of this is to outline a deep understanding of your characters for both the actors and director, and for motivating your character’s choices or actions.

PLANNING: SHOT TYPES

While filming our opening to our film; featuring Blake as the protagonist. We used a variety of different shot types to show multiple perspectives for each scene. I think we successfully gave the audience multiple viewpoints to convey our storyline clearly.

PLANNING: STORYBOARD

HOT SEATING: INTERVIEW

PLANNING: RISK ASSESSMENT

PLANNING: LOCATIONS

This collage shows our different locations. it includes two different types of cars; one being luxurious and the other being more used and old. Then we will use inside a bedroom and a children's bedroom. Also, the outside of a luxurious house with the car to create our leaving scene. 

PLANNING: CASTING

 This powerpoint shows the people that we have decided to cast for Infamous with detail of each character. Link to the full powerpoint can be found here