VOICE OVER: update 3

Reasons why I changed the voice over
Hollie's was too long and it created too much exposition on the location rather than the character. 
Brad's to clearly represent his love interest for Harri

How I changed it

• Made Hollie's shorter and aded more exposition of the character
• Added the line 'Blondes have always been my type and this is no exception.' to indicate his love interest in Harri.

Updated Voice Over
Hollie:

Okay, so I'm not average teenager, not someone that gets party invites. Like Molly Ringwald, I make my own clothes. I prefer vinyl over Spotify. I read 2-inch thick novels by writers that most people can’t even pronounce. A Doestoevsky is no punishment for me. I’m more into Simone de Beauvoir than Taylor Swift. I’m fine with all that. My name is Hollie Morris and My dark secret is my [Emily] Bronte obsession – it’s a horrible cliché, but I go for the Heathcliff type, in particular one called …

Brad:

Brad. Mostly people see me as loud, banterous someone who lives without the fear of consequences. I do what I want when I want. But never judge a book by its cover. I'm not all that. I can't get over this person, their perfect funny hot and bit crazy. Unusual. Blondes have always been my type and this is no exception. 

Hollie:

My best friend Harri. Well, many would describe him as, flamboyant. Crazy. An individual, just like my self. Opposites attract you know.  

Harri:

'Try a little tenderness' thats the last thing I need to do. Apparently i'm too sensitive, girls arn't into that kind of thing in a boy. But who cares what they think all I worry about is how Hollie feels about me.

Weekly Podcast 12

This is our 12th Podcast

In this podcast we talk about:

Evaluation Q5

Updated Voice Over

Rough Cut 5

VOICE OVER: updated

Reasons why I changed the voice over
I have re-written Hollie's original voice over to make it shorter. This is so it will cover a good amount of the bedroom shots without filling the whole scene as the music is an important factor in the bedroom scene and too clearly hear the voice over the musics volume needs to be lowered, therefore not being able to hear it properly. So this approach means that we hear an equal amount of non diegetic music and voice over. I could have added a lot more intertexuality but I decided that the voice over would seam a lot more realistic if there were minimal intertexuality links. 
This will help the film to appeal to our target audience by using teen slang and references so our central protagonists are relatable and therefore more likeable. 
How I changed it

• I have removed some of the description of Hollies surroundings. 
• I have now added 3 voice overs instead of 1 to more accurately represent each characters love interest. 
• I have also created links between each to help the flow of the voice overs rather than them being stunted and disjointed. Hollies anchors her surroundings and her love of reading, she is also represented as a bit of an out sider and the best friend of Harri. Brad is perceived as a badboy but is revealed to be more emotional that first thought. It is hinted at that his affection lies with Harri creating a counter typical love triangle. This is shown through the mention of his love interest being 'blonde' and Brad describes them as 'crazy', Hollie describes Harri as crazy therefore creating a link.

The Yorkshire Moorland shots signify that it is set in Yorkshire however Hollie's voice over anchors the setting.

Updated Voice Over
Hollie:

Most people see me as quiet, reserved, always with my head in a book, most usually a 19th century classic. Poppleton, my home town is just south of York, a tiny village surrounded by sheep and vast moorland. It's just like living in a Jane Austin novel. My name is Hollie Morris. So theres this boy  he's dreamy. Gorgeous. And way way out of my league. If only he'd notice me. His names....

Brad:

Bad. Mostly people see me as loud, banters someone who lives without the fear of consequences. I do what I want when I want. But never judge a book by its cover. I'm not all that. I can't get over this person, their perfect funny hot and bit crazy. Unusual. Blondes have always been my type and this is no exception. 

Hollie:

My best friend Harri. Well, many would describe him as, flamboyant. Crazy. An individual, just like my self. Opposites attract you know.  

Harri:

'Try a little tenderness' thats the last thing I need to do. Apparently i'm too sensitive, girls team to go go for boys who are a bit more .... well a rebel. But I am a bit crazy, crazy about Hollie. 

Weekly Podcast 11

This is our 11th Podcast

In this we talk about:

Evaluation Question 4

Our Fourth Rough Cut

Photoshop

TECHNOLOGY: using Photoshop

Using photoshop 

Why we did this

To help re enforce our rom-com genre and to help attract our rom-com audience we decided to incorporate cartoon figures of each of the male characters to help introduce their characters characteristics. Brad's shortened tie, scruffy spiky hair and unimpressed expression signifies that this character will be a bit ofa rebel and a bad boy which is then anchored by the voice over and badboy scene. Contrastingly Harri's has along smart tie, neat hair and smiling expression which indicates that he is a hard worker and an opposite toBrad which is also anchored in the voice over and Shop scene. This idea was influenced by the film Diary of a Wimpy Kid, as it's genre is comedy this fits with our rom-com genre. 

Cartoons used to introduce the characters from 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid'

This also holds intertexuality of Warps Le Donk and Scoor-zay-zee

TECHNOLOGY: updated blogger

Blogger 

We have used blogger to keep account of our journey as film producers. We used different tools such as labels to make it easier to locate specific blog posts for ourselves and other people. This tool allows us to highlight specific words and puts them on the main page and hyperlinks to and posts with that label. We also edited the layout of our blogs to make them more user friendly by adding links to different catagories that we were exploring. On our blogs we can also see how many people have viewed our blogs and on what days. This is helpful as we can get an opinion on how good our blogs are by the amount of people viewing them and also commenting on them.

We used youtube to upload our work onto the internet. This also aloud us to embed our work onto our blogs and let more people see it.  There is also an editing tool on youtube which we haven't used yet which allows us to annotate our work and add comments for other people to see.

TECHNOLOGY: blogger

Blogger   

Whilst creating this blog  have used Blogger to create new posts, add links, pictures and videos. I have also created links lists which helps to organise and clearly show what I have done.  

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK: on the 4th rough cut

I asked a fellow media student Amber to give me feed back on my fourth rough cut. I asked her to comment on the aspects she liked and though I could improve on.

Weekly Podcast 10

This is our 10th Podcast

In this we explain:
The idea behind our possible character introduction
Our third rough cut and what we've changed

Q4

Q4
The audience of a film is vital for the films success. If the film is targeted towards the wrong audience then it could have a disastrous effect on the films profits. For example The World's End, even though it's predecessors in the Cornetto trilogy where a hit in the box office with Hot Fuzz making $80m from a budget of $8m and Shaun of the Dead  making $30m world wide from the budget of $4m The World's End did not follow the trend of a high success rate. Will a much higher budget of $28m it only made a domestic gross of $26m and a foreign gross of $20m, not even coming close to the success of the first two. Hot fuzz box office total was 10 times its budget whilst Shaun of the Dead multiplied their budget by 7.5, The World's End didn't even double their budget. This was because its preferred reading, was too heavily skewed towards cultural reference points of an older audience for example its music composed of There's no other way by Blur and Do you remember the first time? by Pulp which were unfamiliar to a younger audience. As it's target market was more focused on a younger teenage audience, due to their alien theme, the frequent unfamiliar references made in many of their jokes and music would have not appealed to a younger audience. The age range that visits the cinema most frequently are 15-20, so this film would not have done as well as the others before it as this film did not appeal to this age range as much as the others.

Our target primary audience would be 15-24. To help enforce this our characters reflect this age range, this means that a younger audience can relate to our youthful teenage characters. Hollie, Harri and Brad are all 16-17 years old. We show this through their obvious outfits. They are all wearing school uniforms in the school scene anchoring the fact that they are teenagers. Even though Harri wears clothing that would connote an older character, the knitted patterned tank top, this only makes him look quirky rather than older. Brad wears a leather jacket in the bad boy scene, this is stereotypical of a rebel and a teenage boy. Hollie wears a pink wooden coat which could be worn by all ages however her ankle socks and skirt does signify a younger character. 

Our sound track also reflects this age range. As the shot moves across the moorland shots and then through the bedroom an acoustic guitar piece is played. This is incorporated and inspired by The Arctic Monkeys, a band which is very current and is enjoyed by many teenagers. 

We have targeted our film at a Male and Female audience and have taken a hybrid approach by having Social Realist and a Rom-Com genre. The social realist and comedy will help with the male audience and the romance, stereotypically will help with the female audience. Therefore appealing to both. From http://pro.boxoffice.com/latest-news/2013-09-11-uk-romcom-about-time-beats-riddick-with-27m-debut , we can see About time, a rom-com, received the largest gross (£2.7m) in the Top 10 Films in the United Kingdom and Ireland in September 6-8, 2013. They commented saying "It posted a comparable debut to films like 50 First Dates ($14.2M Cume), One Day ($13M), and The Time Traveler's Wife ($12.7M Cume). Universal is reporting that the time-traveling romantic comedy scored particularly well in exit polls among females over 25." This shows that rom-coms can do very well with the British public as many big hit films in the UK are romcoms. Usually the audience is mainly female based but due to the comedy aspect it also appeals to men. The age target varies from teen rom-coms' to adult rom-coms', but the romcoms' usually range from 12-44. E.g 10 things I hate about you (directed by Gil Junger) is a teen rom-com' and the main audience age will be teens and adult rom-coms' like About a boy (directed by Chris Weitz and Paul Weitz) a larger older audience. Most rom-com ratings are 12 or 15, due to swearing or sexual content which will appeal to the 14-44 rating and that is a commonly used in rom-coms' due to the key love theme. Also You've Got Mail is a rom-com and their font used is very similar to ours, therefore this may signify that our film's genre is also a rom-com. 

Usually in a social realist film the age rating is 15 or above for example in 'East is East', 'West is West', 'Slum Dog Millionaire' and 'This is England', all of the age ratings are 15 or 18. This is generally because the target audience they are trying to promote their film too is an older age group. This is because social realist films don't have as much action as the youth of today want and is not the typical story line they will be interested in. On saying that some  age ratings can be below that  for example 'Bend it like Beckham'. This is because he is an icon and idol to young children therefore the film he makes needs to be suitable for this age category as they are the main target audience. Another factor to age is teen characters. This is shown in 'Billy Elliot', 'This is England', 'Sweet Sixteen' and 'Submarine' as all of these films have characters that teens of today can relate with, making it easier to empathise with them and understand the character. In some cases such as 'This is  England' it is a problem as the age rating is an 18, therefore not allowing the younger teens to watch it. Gender is also another key factor in Social Realism films as it needs to appeal to both men and woman. On looking into further depth about this i found out that 'Tyrannosaur' directed by Paddy Considine does this very well. He uses violence with the main protagonist to promote his film to men but he also uses romance and empathy to promote his film to woman. By using both of these key 'genres' in a social realism film, it opens up the amount of people coming to watch it as it is for both men and woman. 'The full monty' also do this as even though the film has men in it, it has comedy and a feel good factor allowing a bigger range of people to enjoy the film.