For our film opening we wanted to incorporate the things that teenagers come into contact with whether it is from seen on the news or in real life.
• Drugs
• Addiction
• Weapons
• Gangs
• Theme of escapism
• Street wars
• Low class lifestyle
• Street reputation.
We wanted our title to represent the film and what the film is about. After we had done so editing we started to come up with titles. Each of us would pick their own name and we would see who’s was the best.
The titles that where suggested:
• Estate of Mind
• Here today gone tomorrow
• The better life
• Eyes of a teenagers
The title that we decided that we was going to use as Estate of Mind because the film is based on a estate and to survive on the estate you need to have your mind focused to make sure that you are not killed.
We then came up it a statement for our film opening; An Estate is not only a low class building it is a state of mind... Estate of mind.
The film follows the lives of two young south London teenagers trying to find a way to escape their lifestyle but is really leading themselves to their death. Josephine is a 17 year old mum who struggles to control being a mum, a student and a broke drug addict. As she tries to quit the addiction she finds herself get more addicted which makes her lose everything she has. She is wanted by her abusive ex boyfriend, who is her drug dealer because he wants his money. Terry is also 17 years old trying to make something of his life but finds himself confined to selling drugs on an estate but there are other dealers who want to see him dead so he starts to carry weapons. When he gets to a dead end he realizes that “Bad boys don’t have to stay bad forever” and changes his life proving society wrong that teenagers can change.
Josephine and Terry fall in love. Terry tries to get Josephine out of the trouble she is in and get her child back but this just makes Josephine ex boyfriend, Terry’s enemy mad. Terry gets killed and Josephine escapes. Our opening has a mixture of scenes and a smoky effect where the titles of the film appear. We did this to create suspense to see what is going to happen. It starts with an establishing shot of London to show that it is set in London. Then cuts to a drug scene with a few teenagers taking drugs. After that Terry is seen walking into the estate that he sells drugs but then is robbed and threatened.
In our opening you cannot tell the narrative as we wanted to make it attract the audience to carry on watching the film to find out what happens at the end. We do indicate who the main characters are.
Our target audience is both male and female teenagers from different backgrounds, because every teenager knows about the drug dealers, gangs, weapons and killings whether it is from seen on the news or in real life. The film includes everything that is happening in real life from selling drugs on an estate to robbing teenagers on the streets for no reason. Every teenager knows about what goes on, on the streets that they live on especially if they live in London.
This is how the opening is going to go;
We had the production logo followed by the ‘Solomon pictures’ with the soundtrack beginning. After we have the establishing shot followed by a title. Then we have a bird’s eye view of Me walking followed by a title. Next we have a close up of vodka bottle pouring drinks but the drink gets less than more followed by a title. Then we have a long shot of Me being followed by Myrin who is a drug dealer who wants to see me dead, then a title. After we have a close up on the vodka bottle to show that the teenagers are drinks alcohol, then a title. After we have an extreme close up of Josephine’s lips as she smokes followed by a title. Then we have the confrontation of me and Myrin, followed by a title. Next we have a dancing scene that has an effect to show that they are drunk followed by a title. After a cocaine scene followed by a title. Then a scene of me putting the drugs into a locker followed by a title. Then a spilt scene with all three main characters and a voice over followed by the main title of the film.
Monday, 22 March 2010
Thursday, 18 March 2010
Rough Cut & Feed Back from Fellow Students
After showing our rough cut, we got some constructive feedback from our fellow students. Some where that:
. The Titles where brilliant and seemed very professional
. That our soundtrack was brilliant and compliments very well with the titles.
However, we were told that:
. The main title was too quick and needed to be longer so that it can be read properly.
. Some scenes were too dark.
. Story very unclear
. That the cocaine should be shown more.
Nevertheless, these constructive criticisms and compliments well help us get the best of our work!
To justify the view that the storyline is unclear, we intended on setting our film opening like this so that we wouldn't give away to much of our storyline to our audience.
. The Titles where brilliant and seemed very professional
. That our soundtrack was brilliant and compliments very well with the titles.
However, we were told that:
. The main title was too quick and needed to be longer so that it can be read properly.
. Some scenes were too dark.
. Story very unclear
. That the cocaine should be shown more.
Nevertheless, these constructive criticisms and compliments well help us get the best of our work!
To justify the view that the storyline is unclear, we intended on setting our film opening like this so that we wouldn't give away to much of our storyline to our audience.
Estate Of Mind Rough Cut from Jemma Goulds on Vimeo.
Sunday, 14 March 2010
Soundtrack
The soundtrack for Estate Of Mind is based around a hip-hop/grime theme as this fits the nature of the film opening and suits perfectly. Rather than finding copyrighted music and asking permission for it to be used, I decided that it would be better that I go forth and produce the soundtrack for my team. In order for me to do this, I needed to do research into the hip-hop and grime genres, so that I could have some ideas in terms of how a hip-hop/grime produced track would sound, and different techniques I could use when producing the track.
Here are some examples of tracks I studied and tried to emulate into my work:
To produce the track, I used a programme named Cubase. Cubase is a programme that provides all the different sounds and allows you to make your own original songs from scratch, without any pre-programme loops or samples.
When producing the song, I added in certain instruments to play on the effect and theme of our opening sequence. For instance, the orchestral chords emphasise the drama & tension in our film opening that depicts that will happen in the rest of the film, while the sharp snares emphasises the dramatic, sharp tone to our film, as well as the theme of danger. The tempo, which is fast, emphasises the the fast paced lives that the characters in our film lead, as well as complimenting the hip-hop/grime theme.
Here is the finished soundtrack to Estate Of Mind! :D
Estate Of Mind Soundtrackbyduaneamarquaye">
Here are some examples of tracks I studied and tried to emulate into my work:
To produce the track, I used a programme named Cubase. Cubase is a programme that provides all the different sounds and allows you to make your own original songs from scratch, without any pre-programme loops or samples.
When producing the song, I added in certain instruments to play on the effect and theme of our opening sequence. For instance, the orchestral chords emphasise the drama & tension in our film opening that depicts that will happen in the rest of the film, while the sharp snares emphasises the dramatic, sharp tone to our film, as well as the theme of danger. The tempo, which is fast, emphasises the the fast paced lives that the characters in our film lead, as well as complimenting the hip-hop/grime theme.
Here is the finished soundtrack to Estate Of Mind! :D
Estate Of Mind Soundtrackbyduaneamarquaye">
Friday, 12 March 2010
Production Logo
Our production logo is called Y.O.A (Young Original Africans). To create our production logo, we used Adobe After Effetcs. Our original colour choice was blue as we thought it would be more reasonable to have different shades of blue than to have different colours and make things too colourful. However, after this had been done, we took a second look and decided that having just blue gave our production logo a very monotonous feel to it and there resulted in mixing in white. To put the finishing touch to it, we added an animation of electric shocks in the background to make it more interesting and give it a sharp feel.
Our production logo in progress.
Thursday, 11 March 2010
Meetings
Meeting 1
During our first meeting for our project, we initially decided to create an African Comedy as we thought it would be interesting and different, as well as original. We planned to call the comedy Tunde Comes to England. This film opening was to show Tunde starting school in England for the first time, but however the day turns out horribly for him. Tunde was to be played by Terry, and we were to include his mother (played by Josephine) in the very first few scenes. To make everything realistic, we dressed the characters up in African attire, as Tunde would be picked on because of his attire as well as his struggle to understand the English school ways. To fuel our inspiration for our opening sequence, we looked through many different African comedies, and a popular choice amongst the four of us was the Nigerian comedy, Mr Ibu, which was our major source of inspiration. It was during this point that I decided to take the role of editor of our footage, once it was filmed.
Meeting 2
During the second meeting, we planned what Tunde and his mother were going to wear, aswell as the locations we would film. Our locations were: outside the school entrance, inside the school building by the reception, and in a classroom full of children. Once we had planned all of this, we then decided that immediately we would film the following day. During the process of filming, we all thought that the idea was going really well and that we had done well to get our ideas as far as we thought we wouldn't go when we first came up with the idea. However, within a couple of days after filming, we looked back at what we had filmed and realised that what we had filmed was more like a sitcom rather than a film opening, and we thought that the idea was too silly to be a film opening. After some serious discussion, we as a group decided to scrap the entire idea of 'Tunde Comes To England', and therefore had to start from square one.
Meeting 3
After the failure of 'Tunde Comes To England', we were began to fell very unmotivated and uninspired and were starting to lose hope in what we as a group could come up with. However, days later, Josephine introduced the idea of us making a Drama inspired film opening, along the lines of Skins, but however with each character giving the audience an autobiographical spoken word insight of their life. Our original title for this was to be London Town, which was to be about a group of teenagers struggling with drug addictions and seeking help by going to council meetings. Our film opening was to show the group of teenagers in a drug meeting, then each character talking about their struggle with drugs and what life was like before they started with drugs, and also there were to be flashbacks of each character's lives as drug addicts. After we had filmed and edited, we were very pleased with the results. However, when we played it to our teacher, we were told that our film was 'crying out for different angles and shots'. For a second time, we decided to start everything from scratch once again, but we decided to keep the main storyline, however we dismissed the idea of the characters going to councilling.
Meeting 4
It was during this meeting that Terry decided to bring the idea of us basing our film opening towards the likes of Kidulthood, Adulthood and Bulletboy. It was also during this meeting that we decided 'London Town' wasn't the right name for our film opening. After going through a list of names that we came up with, we all disagreed with the names and struggled to find a suitable name for our film. Terry then came up with the name 'Estate Of Mind' after randomly making jokes out of the names we could use. After a lot of thought, we all decided that 'Estate Of Mind' was the right title for our film as it was a very clever title.
Josephine, being the driving force of the group, decided on the locations we would film and where particular scenes would be shot: for instance the establishing shot, the drug scene at her home, Myrin and Terry's confrontational scene at an Estate. I was offered to play a role in our film opening but I declined, preferring to take the role as the main editor, while assisting in helping Myrin & Terry film. Nevertheless, as well as Josephine, Terry & Myrin being the actors, it was decided that Terry would do the opening titles as well as credits, Myrin would do the the production logo, while Josephine helped edit and took charge in what scenes we would include and the ones that we would dismiss. During this meeting, Josephine had initially insisted for the soundtrack, a song that Terry had recorded many months ago as she thought it would fit our film and would be much easier than asking permission for an already existing song. However, I offered to produce the soundtrack for our team as I wanted to be more involved in our group and take a chance in doing multiple things. Also, I had first hand experience in producing music and that I believed that making the soundtrack for our team would benefit us a lot.
During our first meeting for our project, we initially decided to create an African Comedy as we thought it would be interesting and different, as well as original. We planned to call the comedy Tunde Comes to England. This film opening was to show Tunde starting school in England for the first time, but however the day turns out horribly for him. Tunde was to be played by Terry, and we were to include his mother (played by Josephine) in the very first few scenes. To make everything realistic, we dressed the characters up in African attire, as Tunde would be picked on because of his attire as well as his struggle to understand the English school ways. To fuel our inspiration for our opening sequence, we looked through many different African comedies, and a popular choice amongst the four of us was the Nigerian comedy, Mr Ibu, which was our major source of inspiration. It was during this point that I decided to take the role of editor of our footage, once it was filmed.
Meeting 2
During the second meeting, we planned what Tunde and his mother were going to wear, aswell as the locations we would film. Our locations were: outside the school entrance, inside the school building by the reception, and in a classroom full of children. Once we had planned all of this, we then decided that immediately we would film the following day. During the process of filming, we all thought that the idea was going really well and that we had done well to get our ideas as far as we thought we wouldn't go when we first came up with the idea. However, within a couple of days after filming, we looked back at what we had filmed and realised that what we had filmed was more like a sitcom rather than a film opening, and we thought that the idea was too silly to be a film opening. After some serious discussion, we as a group decided to scrap the entire idea of 'Tunde Comes To England', and therefore had to start from square one.
Meeting 3
After the failure of 'Tunde Comes To England', we were began to fell very unmotivated and uninspired and were starting to lose hope in what we as a group could come up with. However, days later, Josephine introduced the idea of us making a Drama inspired film opening, along the lines of Skins, but however with each character giving the audience an autobiographical spoken word insight of their life. Our original title for this was to be London Town, which was to be about a group of teenagers struggling with drug addictions and seeking help by going to council meetings. Our film opening was to show the group of teenagers in a drug meeting, then each character talking about their struggle with drugs and what life was like before they started with drugs, and also there were to be flashbacks of each character's lives as drug addicts. After we had filmed and edited, we were very pleased with the results. However, when we played it to our teacher, we were told that our film was 'crying out for different angles and shots'. For a second time, we decided to start everything from scratch once again, but we decided to keep the main storyline, however we dismissed the idea of the characters going to councilling.
Meeting 4
It was during this meeting that Terry decided to bring the idea of us basing our film opening towards the likes of Kidulthood, Adulthood and Bulletboy. It was also during this meeting that we decided 'London Town' wasn't the right name for our film opening. After going through a list of names that we came up with, we all disagreed with the names and struggled to find a suitable name for our film. Terry then came up with the name 'Estate Of Mind' after randomly making jokes out of the names we could use. After a lot of thought, we all decided that 'Estate Of Mind' was the right title for our film as it was a very clever title.
Josephine, being the driving force of the group, decided on the locations we would film and where particular scenes would be shot: for instance the establishing shot, the drug scene at her home, Myrin and Terry's confrontational scene at an Estate. I was offered to play a role in our film opening but I declined, preferring to take the role as the main editor, while assisting in helping Myrin & Terry film. Nevertheless, as well as Josephine, Terry & Myrin being the actors, it was decided that Terry would do the opening titles as well as credits, Myrin would do the the production logo, while Josephine helped edit and took charge in what scenes we would include and the ones that we would dismiss. During this meeting, Josephine had initially insisted for the soundtrack, a song that Terry had recorded many months ago as she thought it would fit our film and would be much easier than asking permission for an already existing song. However, I offered to produce the soundtrack for our team as I wanted to be more involved in our group and take a chance in doing multiple things. Also, I had first hand experience in producing music and that I believed that making the soundtrack for our team would benefit us a lot.
Tuesday, 9 March 2010
Costume list
Terry and the confrontation
Terry
Terry
- White hat
- black jackets
- red hoodie
- black hood
- pair of black gloves
- Dark trousers
- Dark trainers
- Long shirt
- Red bra
- Tights
- heavy Chains
- Skinny Jeanes
- Greay top
- Leggins
- Long top
- messy hair
- black pouch
- Locker
- white hat
- Dark clothing.
Monday, 8 March 2010
Sunday, 7 March 2010
Target Audience
Our film opening is mainly aimed at adolescents and young adults around the ages of 16 - 27 years of age. This is because people of that age group would find more interest in our film opening and would be able to relate to the themes such as gangs, violence etc., although they may not neccasirily indulge into these things. As other films such as Kidulthood, Bullet boy and Adulthood have had success in delivering these films to this particular audience, we assumed that aiming our film towards this audience would be more realistic and would work as our film opening goes along the same lines.
Saturday, 6 March 2010
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