Actor Profiles

Doyle

Age - 18
Occupation - Unemployed
Bio - "Doyle" is a small time criminal/gangstar, he lives in a council house with his mother in inner city London (he doesn't know his father). He is a violent youth who has got him self into alot of trouble over the years, this consequently meant that he has a criminal record. He has a nasty drug habit which is normal in his society.
Appearance - He is a white male, he dresses in tracksuits and also wears a flat peak cap, this are things that small time criminals wear so supports the message that we are trying to put across that he is quite a rough character.
Personality - He is quite a violent youth that has got in alot of trouble with the police, this has shaped his personality and his hatred of the police. He is quite opinionated about certain topics in his society, for example rival gangs.

The actor who plays "Doyle" is Charlie Doyle, I have chosen him to be an actor in our film because he is a white male in the right age range that would be expected in our film (17-24 years old).

He is confident and is a good actor that compliments our film perfectly. He is also a good looking man which would appeal to a female audience.

Murph

Age -20
Occupation - Unemployed
Bio - "Murph" is the new kid on the block, he has just moved into inner city London from Manchester. He has a point to prove that he is not to messed with. He lives by himself in a council flat but he has been warned that he might get kicked out because of anti-social behaviour. "Murph" drinks alot of alcohol and i want this to come across in our film, hedoesnt have that many friends because he hasn't been living in London long.
Appearance - He is short and stocky, he dresses in trackies and hoodies because that is the stereotype of young white males in the age range between 17 and 24 years old.
Personality - "Murph" is a hot head, he loves to get in fights and isn't scared of anything. He has quite a rough appearance to match his personality. He has some big mood swings due to the amount of alcohol he consumes.

 The actor that is have chosen to play "Murph" is Keir Murphy, this is because he fits the stereo type of a white male between 17 and 24 years of age. He can look quite rough so this compliments my film perfectly.

 Making these actor profiles has really helped me get ideas and inspseration for our opening sequence, it has helped me realise what the characters need to look like to make them appeal to our target audience and to also fit the genre of a british crime film. It has also made me realise how important good characters are, becuase without them the film would be unsuccessful and unconvincing.

Permissions for Music

To make sure my film is going to be as professional as possible I needed to get permission to use the song/backing track for our opening sequence, if I don't do this it will limit the places which I can post my film, for example I wouldn't be able to show it on YouTube because they would just take it down. In a serious case I could even get sued by the owner of the rights to this song because I used it in my film without permission. To make sure this didn't happen I found out what record label owned the rights to this song, it turned out to be "679Artists", but "679Artists" are owned by "Warner Music Group".

Originally I just just emailed "Warner Music Group" because I thought that they would be more likely to reply because they are a bigger company but I have still yet to receive a reply from them. I know that the email had sent because the next web page said that it was successfully delivered.

When i hadn't received an email from "Warner Music Group" I decided to email "679Artists", but when I did some research on this record label I found out that there a few different parts to their company and they had lots of previous names for their company. I found two email addresses for this record label and emailed both of them and one of this got back to me.

Since "679Artists" have given me permission to use this chosen song it makes my film seem alot more professional and will be more appealing to film makers and people who are in the industry. This is a copy of the email which I sent to "Warner Music Group" and "679Artists".

Dear Sir/Madam,

We are creating an opening sequence to a British Crime Film for our coursework in media studies and Tavistock College.

We understand that you are the owner of the copyright in the musical composition “Ps and Qs” by Kano and we want to create the opening sequence of a film to this song.  We want to use the first 2 minutes of this song in the video.

We are on a limited budget so i was hoping that you would let us use this song on our video free of charge. The opening sequence that we create will only be seen by my teacher and the exam board, i will upload my video to a blogging sit called Blogspot which is password protecting so that only me, my teacher and the exam board will be able see it.

It would be much appreciated if you could send me a confirmation email saying that it is ok to use this song free of charge on our school coursework. You can reach me on this email address - lsamson-hill@tavistockcollege.devon.sch.uk. Thank you for your time,

Yours Truly

Luke Samson-Hill

I am really glad that I am able to use the song "Kano - Ps and Qs" because it fits our genre so well, it also fits the codes and conventions of our genre and would compliment our setting and story line perfectly.

Practice Filming

Before we went out to do our final paice of filming we went out and did some practice filming, this helped us realise the positives and negatives of what we had done and made us realise what we had to do to make our film better. I wasnt that happy with the outcome of our practice filming because it didnt look as I wanted it to. The lighting was too dark so the camera didnt perfrom as well as it could of done, this consequencly made the film less convincing. The acting was bad, if I do this again I will take lots of shots of the same scene then I can choose between the shots and make sure I have the best acting possible to make the film convincing becuase otherwise the veiwer my lose intrest. I also didnt like the setting, it wasnt urban enough so the film wasnt as convincing as it could of been, the information that we gathered from our questionairere told us that it needs to be an urban background so we need to re-film this scene in a more urban background.

There was good points to our paractice filming though, I liked the costumes because they fitted the stereo type of street crime and matched what we found out from our questionairre. I also liked the "match on action", we edited well so that it flowed nicely and made the film more convincing. We also used a good range of shots that established the scene and introduced a main character.


practice filming from Luke Samson-Hill on Vimeo.

Doing this practice filming has helped me a lot  and I am very glad I have done it. It has helped me realise the strengths and weaknesses of my film and this has helped me rethink what I am going to do and what I am going to film. If I dont take insperation from this film to improve our footage and to re film the scene, my opening sequence will suffer and it wont be as sucessful and aesthetically pleasing as I had hoped.

Prelimanary task

The preliminary task was one of the first bit of practical work set to get us used to using the camera facilities and introducing us to the different camera shots/angles. Another thing that was introduced to use were two rules that we have to obide by whilst making our opening sequence being the 180 degree rule and the thirds rule. We had to film a sequence of somebody going up to a door, opening it and walking across the room to have a conversation with someone. We had two lessons to complete it.

 Key summary of what we had to include:

• opening a door.
• Crossing a room.
• Sitting down.
• Dialogue.
• Match on action.
• Shot reverse.
• 180 degree rule.
• thirds rule.

180 degree rule - The hardest thing which I found was sticking to the 180 degree rule, this is because without it the film doesn't look right but with it, it gives the film an edge. The rule basically means that once the camera is on one side of a character you stick to one side of that character, if the person walked across a room from left to right the next shot of them walking past should also be left to right otherwise the film would loose momentum and also make the film unbelievable.

Another rule which I found hard to stick to was the rule of thirds, this means that the emphasis of each shot should be in one of the crosses of the thirds. You dont have to follow this rule but it makes the film alot more believeable if you do, it also makes the film more aesthetically pleasing and better to watch. key aspects ofeach shot should follow the lines which make up the thirds, for example in the picture below the mans eyes are on the top horizontal line, this makes the shot look better.

 

There are quite a few things which i think that we could of done better in our preminary task, it helped us alot relising the aspects of a film that you have to get right otherwise our film wouldnt look right and wouldnt have any flow. When we create our final film i think that  it is very important to get the 180 degree rule right otherwise our film could be disasterous.

film from Luke Samson-Hill on Vimeo.

Institutional Research

In this blog post I am going to do some institutional research, I have chosen to research the BBC. BBC stands for British Broadcasting Corporation, it has been running for many years producing all sorts of types of media from TV shows to radio programmes. It is one of the most successful institutions in the world, it is the largest broadcaster in the would by number of employees, they employ around 23,000 staff. The BBC produce many types of texts, they ave many radio stations playing a wide range of music from modern classics to traditional Asian music, there are also radio stations that are talk shows and story tellers. They also have many TV channels producing a wide range of shows, from dramas to game shows. The BBC make most genres of entertainment on TV and they are all well made. They also produce alot of news, they even have their own 24 hour news channel. The BBC make their money through TV licenses, this funds everything they do and the payment of all the employees.

If the BBC ever came to me asking me to make my film for them it would be perfect, this is because the BBC make alot of dramas and my film would fit in nicely with all the other programmes they have produced. On the other hand the BBC have only made a few British crime films so this might add some variety to the other programmes and films which the BBC make. Since the BBC have never made a crime film, the viewers may be drawn to it because they know the great work that the BBC do and want to see what they would do with a crime film. I would expect about a £15,000 budget for my film, this is because it is set in the inner city and there isn't any extravagant places involved in my film so there would be no huge travel costs. This is what the BBC normally spend on film budgets so this is another reason why i would expect this amount of money.

To achieve maximum coverage my film would be shown on a range of the BBC TV channels as well as on BBC iPlayer so that my film would reach a wide range of people. Because my film is aimed at a younger audience and the BBC mostly cater for a older audience, they might be drawn to my film because it bring a younger audience and will bring their views up. To make sure my film got the coverage which it needed to make it popular with my target audience it would also be advertised in the advert break on a range of their TV channels and also over the radio so the that lots of people know about my film and give them the chance to watch it.

Audience Research

We created a questionnaire to help us figure out the key elements that our opening sequence needs to include to make it successful and appealing to out target audience. We asked a wide range of people to make sure we knew everyones opinion on what makes up a British crime film, although we did mostly asked males in their teens and some young adults because this is out target audience. creating this questionnaire has really helped us realise the key things which we need to include to appeal to our target audience. We asked a wide range of questions about who they are and what they think needs to be included in our film. The first 2 questions are about the person answering the questionnaire, what gender they are and how old they are. The second part of it is asking questions about the genre, from songs to props.

1. The first question was "what is your gender?", we asked a mixture of males and females but mainly males because they are our target audience.
2. The second question was "what is your age?", we asked a wide range of people from young teenagers to adults, we did this to make sure we weren't limiting our selves to designing our film for a very specific target audience.
3. In the third question we played the person who was doing the questionnaire 3 songs and they chose the song which they thought fitted the genre the most. The conclusion was that they thought that we should use "Kano - Ps and Qs".
4. The forth question was "what would you expect to see in a modern crime drama?", we got a wide range of responses from the people doing the questionnaire. They said things like violence, drug taking, weapons and gangs. we want to include as many of these things as possible to make sure our film is as successful as possible.
5. The fifth question was "what costumes would you expects the characters to be wearing?", most of the people said things like trackies, hoodies, baggy jeans and flat caps. This has really helped us with what to dress our characters in to make sure it a convincing as possible.
6. The sixth question was "where would you expect a crime film to be set?", everyone who did the questionnaire all agreed that it should be set in the inner city. We will definitely film our film in an urban area because it was such important theme in our film.
7. The seventh question was "What props would you expect to see in a modern crime film?", everyone either said said weapons or drugs. So we will try to include both to satisfy our target audience.
8. The eighth question was "what type of scenery would you expect to see?", they all said either ubran area or graphitied background, so will try to set bits of our opening sequence in both.
9. The ninth question was "what gender do you mainly expect to see?", most of the people answered males. So we will have a mainly male cast.
10. The tenth question was "What age group would you expect to see?", the answers brigded across two boxes, these were 14-20 and 20-37. This means that there should people in our cast ranging from around the age of 16-26.

I have learnt a lot from doing this questionnaire, it has helped us decide the fine details of our final opening sequence that we had not yet decided on. For example we knew what song we wanted to put over our film and this questionnaire supported our decision that it was a good song to choose and it went with the film well. We weren't quite sure on what to dress our actors in because it was very important to us and to our film that it look realistic and convincing, the questionnaire really helped us decide what the costumes were going to look like.

Regulation Research

Every piece of media in the UK, from movies to magazines, is regulated. This means that legal bodies have been set up to protect the viewers and users of British media from offencive or unsuitable content, this is usually the government. I am going to undertake some research about the BBFC guidelines and analyse the code of practise for film making.

BBFC stands for the "British Board of Film Classification". The BBFC is a not-for-profit media content regulator.

There job is to....

• provide an effective service to enforcement agencies
• protect the public, especially children, from content which might raise harm risks
• work in partnership with the industry to develop innovative service models to provide content advice which support emerging media delivery systems
• empower the public, especially parents, to make informed viewing choices
• provide a cost-effective, efficient classification service within our statutory remit
• recognise and respect adult freedom of choice within the law
• respond to and reflect changing social attitudes towards media content through proactive public consultation and research

There are 5 main certifications, they are...

• U - this stands for "universal", this means it is suitable for all and is unlikely to upset children or offend people.
• PG - this stands for "parental guidance", this means any age child may watch it as long as they are accompanied by an adult. Children over 8 are unlikely to get disturbed by these film but anyone younger may be affected.
• 12 - this means it is only suitable for children over the age of 12, it is considered unsuitable for a child under 12.
• 15 - no one under the age of 15 may watch this film in a cinema or buy/rent it. This is because it may contain details which may disturb younger viewers.
• 18 - no one under the age of 18 may watch this film in a cinema or buy/rent it. This is because it may contain details which may disturb younger viewers.

Our film will be classified 15, this is because there will be some strong violence but not graphic or gruesome enough to classify it 18. Our film will also include some sex scenes and some sexual references which would be seen a unsuitable for some younger viewers. There will also be some drug taking in our film, this is because we are trying to portray the characters in our film  "dodgy people" and this helps us achieve this, some viewers may disapprove of drug taking so we have to classify our film 15. This also fits with my target audience, which is teenagers and young adults.