Low Budget Films- Shane Meadows

- Hard to make films with little money.

- Have to make do with what they find e.g. buy stuff off Ebay.

- Can't rent propps- to expensive.

- He doesn't do much script planning, does a lot of improvisation with the actors.

- Trys to work with the basics.

- Crew work around Actors, not the other way around like in big budget films.

- Tend to use actors that fit the parts required, rather than just going for big name film stars.

- Don't use special lighting, just use normal room/ outside lights, gives it more social realism.

Preliminary Film

In Catherine and I's film, we decided to do a sort of good guy/ bad guy situation (see preliminary planning for details). We had to find some people to be actors for us, so we got Chris Smith and Paul Daulby to act for us, because we weren't allowed to film ourselves.

The rom we used for our film was a study centre room upstairs in Auburn Place. We moved all of the tables and chairs that weren't required for our film out of the view of the camera, and then we found some items like folders and paper to put on the "evil boss" type's desk, which was the character Chris was. We then discussed how we would go about getting the camera shots we wanted in the space we had, and briefed Paul and Chris on how they performed their roles as best they could.

Before we shot each piece of the film, Catherine and I got Paul and Chris to do a couple of practice runs of each scene, so that we could make suggestions and say whether they were doing as we wanted. Then when we were happy with it, we would turn the camera on and film each scene, and most times we shot it more than once just to be sure we had the best choice of footage possible when it came to editing the finished product.

Once we'd finished filming and editing, we discovered that part of our film didnt quite flow properly, and to get it to work we needed to re-shoot most of the start all over again. However, Chris was away that day so we could only re-do the bits with Paul, and try and edit what we already had of Chris.

Overall, once we'd put together our film with the new bits we filmed, I think we did quite a good job with our film. Just about all but two of the shots followed and flowed from one to another, and all of the angles and editing was done really well. If there was one thing I could go back and change, I would have added one more shot to make part of the film flow better.

Working Title and Warp Films

Working Title and Warp Films

Institution and Audiences

AOs

Production Practices to appeal to audiences

Distribution and Marketing strategies to raise audience awareness

New technologies to help target specific audiences

Audience and how they challenge institutions

1. Who are Working Title- British film making company

Who are Warp Films- short film making company

Are they independent or part of a conglomerate?

They are a joint company, since 2008.

2. How does the ownership of the company affect the budgets for film?

Increases the budget

3. Create a list of films that both institutions have produced.

Warp films- My wrongs

-dead mans shoes

-rubber Johnny

-scummy man

Working title films-

-Billy Elliot

-the boat that rocked

-atonement

-dead man walking

4. Choose one from each list and compare the budgets for these films and how much they made.

Billy Elliot- $5,000,000

Dead mans shoes- £723,000

5. Now choose a Hollywood Blockbuster and research the budget.

The fast and the furious- $38 million budget

6. Where do Working Title and Warp Films get their funding from?

Grants, funding from other companies, and previous film profits.

7. In the case of Warp Films, how does the budget affect the genre they use?

If they don’t have much money, then they restricted as to what they can do, like lack of special effects etc.

8. What is the main appeal of this genre? Give examples.

Simple, good to watch

9. Who are the target audience for Working Title and Warp Films?

18+

10. What is the main genre of the films Working Title produce?

Drama

Preliminary Magazine

Preliminary Magazine

This magazine we created follows the normal magazine conventions, such as having a mid shot of a person as the main picture on the right hand side. It also has just 3 main colours, which are red and green in the cover lines, and blue in the title. We choose blue and green because it matchs the school logo, which appeals to the target audience because the magazine is designed for the school, and red because its stands out very clearly.

As far as I'm aware, the magazine does not break any of the conventions for a typical magazine. It has a masthead, a bar code, a price, 3 pictures and some cover lines, which you would find on almost any magazine.

The cover lines on the magazine should entice the target audience into reading the magazine because we deliberately choose to write the main one about a teacher that the majority of people would know, so therefore are more likely to read about than a teacher no ones heard about. Further more, the cover lines hint at whats in the article, to get the reader interested, but doesn't actually give anything way, so they feel compelled to read it and find out what it says.

The magazine I would say appeals to not regular or non-regular readers, but only to pupils at Lutterworth college, because its about their school. It is a magazine that can be read by anyone at the school, because it doesn't have anything on the front that someone who didn't read the previous issue would not understand.

If I had the time to go back and re-do this magazine cover, I would change a few things. Firstly, I would make space for a place to put the school logo, so that the blue and green colour theme makes more sense. Also I would recreate the masthead and strap line at the top, perhaps adding more colour or using a different font, because I think it looks too plain.

On the whole though, I feel that the finished product matches up to our original plan, and we did a good job on the cover.

Preliminary Planning

Magazine-

- Blue/ green colour theme, as it matchs the school logo
- One font for the title, one font for everything else

Preliminary Planning

Me and Catherines plans

Film-
Needs to include- Person opening a door
- Person crossing a room
- Person sitting down
- Lines of dialogue
- Variety of camera angles
- Well thought out mise en scene

It needs to be around 30 seconds long, and we can't use ourselves in the film. Have to go and find some other people who are having a free period that are willing to help.

Print- (School magazine)
Needs to include- Mid shot on the front
- Maximum of 3 pictures
- Usual magazine conventions
- A contents page produced on Publisher

Film Plan-

1st shot- Close up on door handle, slowly goes down (creak sound effect)

2nd shot- Side on of door opening, seemingly by itself (no hands visible, pushed from other side)
- Head of character 1 pokes around door, checks around (looks suspious)
- Dark room

3rd shot- Close up of hand on light switch, lights come on
- Zoom out on view of character 2
- "Come in, sit down"- character 2

4th shot- Pan following character 1 walking across the room to character 2

5th shot- Over the shoulder (of character 2) shot of character 1 sitting down

6th shot- Two shot (side on), with dialogue
- "I've been expecting you..."- character 2 (acts confident)
- "How do you know who I am?"- character 1 (suspicious)
- "Well..."- character 2 (leans forward, hands together)
- Fades out to black

Evaluation Of Practical 2

For our magazine practical practice, our task was to go on the internet and find an existing magazine cover, and annotate it. We had to make annotations such as what each part of the cover was called (eg. masthead for the title), and what layer they were on. I did Autosport magazine.

The cover of the magazine follows all the usual conventions, bar a few. It has a masthead, a main picture although its not a person. It also has things like strap lines, a slogan, cover stories, a bar code and price and the date of its release. Something it doesn't have however, is a competition.

The main colours used on the magazine are black, red and white. This follows the usual conventions of only having 3 colours maximum on the cover. These colours in particular are used because black and white especially are related to flags used in motorsport, and therefore appeal to the target audience. Red is used because it tends to signify danger, and motorsport can be quite dangerous, so it ties in with the theme of the magazine.

The cover lines on the front of the magazine entice people into reading the magazine effectively. For example, where it says "Is Webber's New Williams Brave Enough?", or where it says "Renaults New R25- Can t Give Fisi & Alonso Race Wins?", the people who designed the magazine are asking qestions, and this makes people want to read the magazine and find out the answer to these questions.

The text used in the cover lines and strap lines mostly appeals to regular readers, as opposed to new readers. This is because in places, like where it says "Daytona 24 Hours... Newman, Franchitti, Wheldon, Da Matta, Tracy: The Best Entry Ever!", new readers of the magazine more than likely won't know who these people are, and won't be excited about reading it. However, a regular reader who DOES know who these people are would think "wow!", and want to read it to find out more.

Autosport magazine is printed and distributed by the Haymarket Media Group, and has is the worlds best motorsport magazine weekly.

When it came to producing my own copy of the magazine cover, I found that it was incredibly difficult to use photoshop effectively due to my inexperience with it. If I had more experience of using it, I feel I can use its tools more effectively. I feel a lot more confident using Imovie to edit films however at the present. In regards to the magazine itself, I've found that an incredible amount of thought and attention to detail goes into getting the desired effect on the cover, like trying to make it appealing for people to read.