How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The main social group our piece represents is 'nerds'. Just the appearence of him suggests that he lack confidence in himself and doesn't particulaly cares about his appearence or what other people think of him. Other thinks give him away to be a nerd by the fact that he sleeps in his clothes and also that he always wears the same clothes all the time. Another aspect of the 'nerdy' culture is the music in the background. It is not what you would call 'in' music, again showing a lack of social awareness on behalf of the main character. Also we used props to convey his character. The speed camera for example is not something a usual teenager would do, they wouldn't make a speed camera that doesn't work and further still the definatly wouldn't bring it into school. The speed camera was meant to have a 'homemade' look about it to show that he had produced it himself. The fact that he brings it into school is another example that he doesn't care what other people think or say which is another trait of a nerdish character.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

We knew that our film was going to be a teen comedy so we did some research on that genre. We realised that in quite a lot of films from that genre use a voice over to acompany the images seen on screen. It can help to convay the personality of the character and portray a certain image to the audience quickly and usualyy they will have an opinion on that character as soon as he speaks. Mean Girls for example is a film that uses that technique. We thought that by using a voice over it would show people what our character thinks of himself and how that differs from what happens in real life. But once that had been done and added to the film we realised that the voice over sounded disjointed. Another teen comedy convention we have used is the school setting. Lots of effective teen comedies have been set in a high school, american pie for example. We thought by setting it in a school it would appeal to people who have previously enjoyed american pie etc. An editing technique usually used in teen comedy films is fast cuts. We have encorperated many fast cuts in our piece to create a frantic, 'lots going on' atmosphere for comedic effect.

Filming Diary

The first piece of filming we did was 'the classroom scene'. When we had finished filming it we put it onto the computer but then realised it had no sound!. That meant we had to re-film it. But that had its problems as when we tried to film it again there was already a class in there. So we had to wait till our next media lesson to film it again and we changed our extra actors because not all of the initial volunteers were available. We the had to brief the new actors in what they had to do and to help them out we did a run-through. This would hopefully eliminate the need to re-shoot the scene.

After that had been filmed the next part we intended to do was the 'speed camera' scene. Finding a box that was the right size for me to hold in my hand was difficult. Eventually, after asking numerous people, one of my old teachers said he had one we could use and luckily it was the right size. We then cut a hole in the back of it and found a suitable piece of wood and put it in the hole we had made. We then had to make it look like a 'nerdy' home made design to fit in with our character. We did this by colouring in all the sides. That posed problems as there was sellotape holding it together and we couldn't colour over it as the colour wouldn't stay on. We resolved that problem by sticking couloured paper on the parts we couldn't colour over and that also saved us considerable time. All that time spent getting and making the 'speed camera' took us to the end of the lesson which meant we had to wait till the next lesson to film that scene.

The time came to film the 'speed camera' scene. We had to then find people willing to participate in our film. Once they had been established they were told what they would have to do. We then set up, for the first time, TWO cameras. They were cleverly placed so neither camera came into the other ones shot. This would prevent us having to re-film it. We then shot it but had monumental problems with people walking into our film. This was because we were filming in a main corridor. When everyone had moved we tried to shoot it again but the bell went uin the middle of it so we stopped filming. Then everyone came out of the classrooms around us. We decided it would be best to wait ten minutes to try and get a whole run through without anyone straying onto our set. The problwem with our next shooting wasn't random people walking past but one of the volunteer actors forgetting what we had told them to do so we decided to change the actors. Once we had done all this we shot it for what we hoped would be the final time! Success, we shot it and it went without a hitch. We then uploaded the footage onto adobe premiere, the program we use to edit our footage. This would let us see just how good/bad the shots were. We knew we were going to edit them later but for now that scene was done and we could move onto a new one.
We knew that the titles are a major part of any film and can set the scene for the rest of the film. We knew this by doing research on the lady in black film. The titles in that are dark and scary which does indeed set the tone for the rest of the film. That is what we were aiming for from our titles. We wanted a wierd combination of colours inside the letters to portray the main charcters wierdness and his uncoordinated personality. As Scott had some experience using photoshop we let him take the lead with the titles. It took him ages to get the right combination of colours. Once he had done that he saved it onto his blog and on a memory stick so it could be easily transferred into our movie.
The next scene we had to shoot was the scene where 'Melvin' gets out of bed. The fact that we needed a bedroom made this one of the most awkward bits to shoot. The original plan was to go to scotts house during the lesson as his house was closest leaving us time to return to lesson before it finished. We got halfway there but found out his Mum was at home ill so we had to abort that plan. We thought we would have to shoot it somewhere other than a bedroom but at the last minute i asked one of my friends and she said we could shoot it in her bedroom. We then travelled to her house and shot it. It only took one take as we had assured there were no problems. For example making sure the camera had sound and that everyone in the house was silent so there was no background noise. We quickly returned to school on time for the end of lesson and quickly uploaded it onto adobe premier ready for editing the nexy lesson.
As soon as the next lesson started the editing began. As it had only taken one take to film there wasn't that much editing to do. First we made sure we had just the bit we filmed on our computer by editing the ten seconds before we filmed which we were making sure we had sound.
While we were in my friends house we filmed a scene in the bathroom which was me just fiddling with my hair like you do in the morning. We filmed that for just over ten seconds. We planned to cut the scene up into four parts and that was going to be used to bridge gaps between the previous scenes. That was then edited when we got back and added to our previous footage on the computer. Once it had been split into many parts it was inserted where we felt neccassery.
Our original idea was to have a monologue over the top where ' Melvin' describes what he thinks his lifes about and what he thinks how everyone feels about him. We then decided to have text on the screen instead as the sound clashed with the music in the background and you couldn't hear my voice. So we then added text which we think has improved our piece ten-fold.
I was entrusted with the task of finding the music for our piece. We were told about a website where you could get music that was not copyright so we could use it. I picked a piece that had dramatic parts to it and the music i chose had just that. It was also meant to have comedic effect as the music built up to a climax but all i was doing was doing my hair which was an anti-climax but a funny one.