I have looked at the case study by the BFI on the film 'Heartless' which was released on the 24th of May 2010 and is distributed by Lionsgate.
I found points in the case study about their audience such as ' they found there are almost 600,000 self-confessed horror fans on Facebook. Lionsgate’s digital marketing targeted audiences across Facebook, by interacting
and engaging with the audiences by polling ads and encouraging them
to be interested in the film 'Heartless', also to get them talk about the film through Facebook. The social media site allowed Lionsgate to massively target people in terms of interests, age, gender, music taste so
they was very little wastage in the advertising'.
However, when the film was released 'it performed below expectations, with a
total gross box office of around £3,000, but the release strategy
for ' Heartless' was a multi-platform one, and noticeably
performances
were seen across DVD and Video-on-Demand. The DVD release
achieved sales of 9,500 which was in-line with forecast.'
With mine and Sophie's music video, we can interact with the audience by using a poll and talk about it to our target audience to get them to watch it.
Below is the link to the full case study done by the BFI of 'Heartless':
Sophie and I have started to edit some parts of our music video. We still have the main scenes to film in the drama studio and we need to film a few scenes for Captain Hook. However, we have already filmed the scene of the Lost Boy and of some scenery and have began to edit it.
This a photograph of the progress of our editing:
We went to the drama studio to plan what our set was going to look like and to get an idea of the camera angles. When we film for the music video we are going to have photographs of the characters hanging around the piano. Below is some photographs of ideas we have:
Sophie and I are taking photographs of all the characters, we are then editing them using Photoshop to look cartoon like. With the photographs we are going to hang around the piano where we are going to do the majority of the filming.
Below is an example of Peter Pan we are going to use who we have edited:
For mine and Sophie's video we have started filming, so far we have got a the photographs of Peter Pan, Tinkerbell and The Lost Boy. We also have filmed a few takes of the Lost Boy, however we haven't decided whether to use them or not as they are more for a back up in case the final product isn't interesting enough.
We still need to get a photograph of Captain Hook and Wendy Darling, which we will do this week. We have also got permission to film in the drama studio and just need to check with some other people that everyone can film on that day.
In media studies we are looking at youth culture within films. We have looked older films such as, 'Taste of Honey' and 'Quadrophenia', it highlights how much the youth has changed and the attitudes and values of people. They show the issue that some youths faced during the 1950's and 1970's and it shows the different to how people would react to those issue now.
We have compared these films to films such as, 'Fast Girls' and 'Inbetweeners 2'. In the film 'Fast Girls' it show how much the role of women has changed compared to the film 'Taste of Honey', it emphasis the amount of independence women have gained. Secondly in the 'Inbetweeners 2' they language they use is crude and is seen as unacceptable behavior to a large majority of people.
Sophie and I have got two places so far of where we know we are going to film. The first place we are hoping to film in is the drama studios because the walls are black and we can get the right lighting we need to film there. We can also easily access a piano there which is a main prop we need in our video. The drama studio is where most of the filming for our music video will be.
The second location in the forest for some camera shots we are going to do to add into our video and possibly a small amount of filming for some small scenes.
Here are some photographs of the forest that are an ideal location for us to film:
I have created a PowerPoint of a small amount of research on the audience and how they consume media products such as music videos and have including a bit about who the audience might be for mine and Sophie's music video.
Wes Anderson is an director from America, who creates different and comical films, he is known to usually work with actors such as Bill Murray and Owen Wilson. Some of his films are 'Fantastic Mr. Fox' and 'The Grand Budapest Hotel'.
In his films he uses a lot of colour and uses a lot of long shots and he usually does long takes and his film are usually comical. He also has the character in the center of the screen a lot.
Below is a trailer of his film 'Fantastic Mr. Fox' where you can see the sort of films he creates and what defines them that you can tell it has been directed by him. In this particular film he uses a lot of colour, particularly yellow.
In Sophie and I's music video that we are going to produce we like the way Wes Anderson uses the colours, however we are using mostly dark colours but we could add small props that are a brighter colour so it will contrast with the colours surrounding and make it stand out more.
From researching different Peter Pan the costume design that is closes to the idea me and Sophie are looking for is the one Pan wears in Once Upon A Time, however we prefer to get a hoodie for our video, but the colours of the Costume are the colours we want the Peter Pan to wear.
The photograph and video below show what Pan from Once Upon A Time wears:
There is an event happening at the BFI on Friday the 25th November, the day involves activities that help students to plan, edit and shoot. It also helps students to be able to be able to evaluate their own product and later on in the day there will be a director/editor to explain how professional music videos are created.
This could help mine and Sophie's Lost Boy's video as it could give us an idea of how to produce our own music video and will help us developed our understanding of how the videos are edited and how the different camera angles and shots emphasize different meanings.
One way in which we are planning to film our product is to film what the lyric are. Below is a photographs of the lyric I printed off and made annotations of plans to what each scene will be like, however we aren't going to do all of these ideas we might change them.
The song we have chosen is about Neverland and running away with Peter Pan and there are so many films and TV series that have been produced about Peter Pan and in each of them he is portrayed in different way.
For example in the TV series Once Upon A Time he is a young adult, however it is switched so that his personality is evil and horrible. This contrasts with how he is usually shown, he is usually happy and helps other people, like in the film Peter Pan (2003).
Sophie and I recently watched the film Pan (2015). They way that Pan is portrayed in this is he is in a orphanage and he gets taken by the pirates. This is different as usually in Peter Pan films it doesn't usually show his life of how he went to Neverland and he is staying there to attempt to find his mother.
Online I found an article about Ruth B and how she wrote the song Lost Boy, she got the idea of the song from the TV series Once Upon A Time and how it has all the different fairytales.
The text below is from the article of where she got the idea from:
"One day early 2015, Berhe was feeling inspired after watching the TV drama Once Upon A Time. "It's all about fairytales, so that day I went to my keyboard that's what was on my mind." She then improvised some songs about Snow White and Rumplestiltskin. However, it was a lyric about Peter Pan that resonated. "I came up with, 'I am a lost boy from Neverland, usually hanging out with Peter Pan" and recorded that simple line on my phone. I watched it back and thought it was kinda cheesy and I was actually going to delete it. But thought " Whatever, it's catchy'.""
The link to the whole of the article from the guardian:
Sophie and I made some notes on our final product, we have decided the song Lost Boy by Ruth B and below is what we have an idea of for what we are planning.
Character:
Peter Pan - around a 14 years old
Wendy Darling - around 14 years old
Tinker bell - around 10 years old
The lost boy - about 8 years old
Captain Hook - around 40 years old
We have got an idea of who can be Wendy, Tinker bell, The lost boy, and Captain Hook, we are unsure of who will be Peter Pan though.
Location:
The forest
A room
Treehouse
We have got all a place where we can film these apart from the treehouse
Lighting:
To make a shadow of Peter Pan is to film in the evening, a round sunset or to use a torch.
Costume idea:
Peter Pan - green top and Jean, we haven't really decided yet
Wendy - a floaty dress
Tinker bell - green dress, wings and hair to be in a bun
Captain Hook - beard, hat and pirate jacket
The lost boy - Pajamas, shorts and t-shirt
We have been researching what the different characters where from film and to programmes that include Peter Pan wear
Sophie and I had decided that we wanted to do a music video for our final product, however we were choosing between two songs which were 7 Years by Lucas Graham and I hate you, I love you by Gnash ft Olivia O'Brien. However over the holidays we change to and decided on Lost Boys by Ruth B, and we have an idea of what we are going to do for it.
In our lesson on Wednesday we showed our title sequences to someone who we didn't work within our As opening sequences. While watching each other's sequences we produced questions to ask each other about the opening sequences.
The questions that I was asked were:
Who might the shadows be and what does it represent?
The shadow represents an unknown character and is to help contribute with creating the affect of danger, it also helps cause tension within the audience and to highlight to them that there is an evil presence within the forest. The use of the shadow has also been to get the audience to build up ideas of what the is in the forest and who or what the shadow could possibly be.
2. Why did we use the dog?
Sophie and I decided to use the dog, Monty, in our title sequence, The Untold, to make the audience develop an understanding of the reason why our main character, Sophie, was going to the park and was on a walk. The use of the dog was to show that Sophie was taking Monty on a walk and to get some fresh air and when he hears something in the forest he runs off, which is when Sophie follows to go and find him. This could highlight to the audience the attachment people have to their dogs, that they don't leave them and go looking for them if they go missing as most people tend humanise with animals.
The idea of mine and Sophie's opening title sequence, The Untold, was to show the that there was something unknown in the forest, and to show the vulnerability of a young female when she is alone. This was to highlight the dangers that a lot of people are unaware of.
Areas of success:
One of our areas of success was the use of the music, which has been a nursery rhyme, however the one we used had a haunted effect to it. This helped to set the atmosphere and hinted to the audience, that something wasn't right. The music also suggested to the audience that there was an evil presence in the forest, and this helped to create an idea of the genre that we were aiming for. Another area of success in our AS opening sequence was choosing the location, the park and the forest were fairly close, therefore it had made filming easier. The location helped us to get the right setting and it showed our key part of The Untold. Another area of success was our use of the camera angles and shots, we used a variety of camera angles and shot to help give messages to the audience of what was happening or to help them create an idea of what was going to happen.
Areas of failure:
An area of our failures was our lighting, throughout our title sequence the lighting kept changing due to it being filmed at different times of days. Next time I would plan the timing of when to film better if I used natural lighting again. Another area of failure was the use of the shadow, the shadow isn't very clear, we should have used a different method of showing the shadows in the forest. Another area of failure had been the sound effects, the effects were recorded when it was windy, which is picked up in the recording and it had also been recorded on an iPhone. Next time if we use sound effects again it would be better to record them in a quiet room and to edit it in to the clip so it matches the film more and not to record them on an iPhone. A last area of failure was our planning, we had problem with where we were originally going to film as it flooded so we had to change the location, which had led to us not being able plan the timing of when we were going to film very well, furthermore making it difficult for us to be able to film.
Audience Feedback:
The feedback from our audience was that The Untold hadn't been very clear and some people didn't understand what was happening throughout the title sequence. However the majority of our audience recognised it as to be a horror and what age range we were targeting it for.
