The Main Task: The GodDaddy Opening Sequence!

PRELIM

This is our Prelim video!

THE SCRIPT!

Location

 above: alley in yale college.    Below (2): TV studio at Yale College

 tv studio 

The Edit

After we had completed filming all of our footage we uploaded it onto an editing programme called Adobe Premier Pro. The first thing we did was separate the useful parts of all the footage we shot to cut them out of the rest and drag them into the editing timeline. I thought that we have a look at what the black & white effect looks like compared to the normal colour version; we then decided as a group that we preferred the black & white effect on our film, this also adds an old fashioned look to the film. We then added sound effects such as more of a heightened sound of a gunshot in which we even added a tiny flash effect by the gun on the footage to make it seem more dramatic. We also added a ‘meow’ cat noise sound effect at the end of our film when he chucks away the cat, this adds to the spoof sub-genre. We also recorded a voice over and then added it to the flashback scene in our film making it sound like the conversation was happening at the time but picturing back to what happened. The main transitions we used on our film scenes were cross dissolve, dip to black, and fade in/out  between scenes so it flows better rather than making them seem like jump shots. We also added credits to some frames in this order:

C&S Productions, Jake Lewesy (cast) Scarlett Bellis and Connie brunskill, title of the film the GodDaddy, edited by Connie Brunskill, Sound by Scarlett Bellis, screenplay by Connie Brunskill, produced by Scarlett Bellis & Connie Brunskill. 

Q4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

Here is our typical Audience member:

Name: MAIR PAINSTIL

Age: 16

Location: UK

Likes/Dislikes: Love's watching films especially gangster crime movies and comedies. Dislikes romance and Horror films. Prefer's to watch films on youtube, alone.

Favourite film: GodFather and Shifty.

What TV shows she likes: Loves old crime detective shows like Touch of frost and CSI. Also loves to watch Ross Kemp on Gangs.

What music do he/she listen to? mix of music but loves 1940's type music and Rap.

My group's film would appeal to Mair because the narrative of our film and the conventions in it relate very well to the genre that Mair loves to watch including the crime genre and the comedy sub-genre. Also our film is distributed onto youtube so Mair paintsil is a perfect audience member as that is her favourite way to view films. Our film is different to any other crime/gangster film, we have everything Mair wants from a gangster movie in our film but we also give her a taste of something exciting and modern in our film.

Q2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My groups opening sequence represents a fair few social groups. The main social group represented is the criminal side, its a classic gangster, guns and drugs type of film. Our gangster isnt however a typical british gangster, the GodDaddy is an upper class, formal gangster not to forget that he also is italian too.

I have represented my chosen social groups by keeping to the classic narrative of a criminal/ gangster genre of film for example, scenes involving drug exchanges, murder and cigars/cigarettes.

 We kept the mise-en-scene similar to the style of the clothing attire that were used similarly to the social group in the classic film the GodFather which portrays classic Italian American gangsters. We used formal, expensive looking suits and tie's to match, aswell as fancy moustaches. This represents the upper class society that the characters are in, they are classic bourgeoisie character's. To represent the spoof sub-genre of the film, we used props that showed humorous side of our film, which is also a modern day representation of classic GodFather. Such as the toy cat on the GodDaddy's lap, and the chocolate coins exchanged for the sherbet deal.

Me and my group have produced an opening sequence which portrays italian-American gangster surroundings that give off set emotions to the audience, from the audience's non diegetic view of the film, the atmosphere seems tense and emotionless in the shoe's of the gangsters. It shows that they live in a society of patriarchy, power means you get what you want in life, we show the Godfather's soft side though when it comes to non-human's such as cats. The cat proves a less heavy effect of gangster surroundings and lets the humour show through.

audience.

 This compares to existing representations in the media as I feel that our film would be a unique aspect on the original Godfather and a parody of the film has never been actually created, making our representation different from any other.

Our film interprets a different style of gangsters; in the media today we have the 21^st century british hard gangsters. In our film we have the classic Italian-American gangsters, with a spin of humour to their characterization.

Q5. How did you attract/address your audience?

Here is a video of an interview of someone who fits our audience profile criteria.

Here is a screenshot from our opening sequence, because our main genre is crime and our sub-genre is gangster crime we have to keep some of the film serious, also to keep to the conventions of the genre that the audience love to watch repeatedly as this is what makes a crime/gangster film, we have done this by editing the film into black & white and having the characters wear formal attire and smoke cigars which is a classic formal gangster convention.


But we also have another sub-genre, which is a spoof.
We have put humor into our film making our film similar to the classic film The Godfather. We have used a cat similar to the godfather except ours was a stuffed cat which the GodDaddy in our film chucks onto the floor.

We also have shown the funny side the sequence by drawing on fake curly mustache's onto the 2 characters.

We also had a female 'GodDaddy' instead of the classic super male GodFather, aswell as the fact the actor used marshmellows in her mouth to talk like the classic godfather and look a bit like him.
We also had a scene which had violence in it which related to the action/crime genre which appeals to many male figures of which is our typical audience member.

Q.7 Looking back at your Preliminary Task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to your final product?

above: 2 'two-shots'. left: PRELIM Right: Main task
Here is a print screen i have taken from the prelim task my group filmed, this shot was filmed as a wide-shot, this shows the two characters seated at opposite sides of the table having a general conversation here wan see everything within the mise-en-scene, this was used in our final product as in we used the same table shot. However we changed the camera angles in the final product so we shot an over the shoulder shot and noddy shot. The noddy shot let's you see the other character's reaction to what another character may be saying we used this in more of the dramatic spoof scenes in our final product.

2 Over  the shoulder shots, Left Prelim, Right Main Task.

Issues encountered in preliminary task:

The issues that we encountered were keeping the continuity whilst filming, improvising with a non-existent script!

also we didnt know all that much about the camera function's really. We also had to do re-takes for some scenes as we realized we broke the 180 degree rule.

Improvements made in final product:

In the final product we mastered the technique's of the camera handling! we sussed out the important camera functions, which buttons to use and how to use them. We also realised where we went wrong with the 180 degree rule in the prelim and figured out the best way to film without breaking it. This time we also had properly typed out script!

What skills have you improved upon or gained over the course of this project?

I have learnt how to use properly use the hand-held camera's aswell as the big professional camera's in the Tv studio, so i am now well informed of the different functions and best ways of filming the best possible shots at complex angles.

I have also learnt how to edit using Adobe Premier Pro, i know how to use the different tools on the editing programme for example the different transitions and how to apply them to the clip.

Q1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The Title of my group’s film is The GodDaddy.

Titles- font style:

28Days later in bold condensed for the production name.
Birch white for the cast names and Title of Film.

The location we used most was in the studio room because there was lots of space and good lighting resources aswell as the room being able to be pitch black, but we also shot a scene in an alley way beacuse it was prefect for the gun shot scene as the alley way was damp looking aswell as grim.

Our costume was basically shirts and blazers so it’s a formal gangster convention but more relaxed and lazy relating to the spoofy sub genre. But with the interrogaated drug seeker 'Vinny' we have not given him a tie and un-buttoned the top button on his collar so that it suits his character of trying to fit in with the godafther but not quite as well.

These are the props we have used in our opening sequence such as the 'sherbet filled cocaine bags' for the drug deal along with the money in the case to which is chocolate coins this relates to the spoof sub genre of our sequence. The picture next to it is the products we used to make the sherbet bags.

We also have in the picture above the toy cat which sit's on the lap of the Goddaddy, this relates to the film The Godfather which we based our opening sequence on. 

We also used toy guns we are going to use for the gun shooting scene; we have one rather bigger gun compared to the other one to seem more over exaggerated and funny like a spoof. used in the scene above. The marshmallow’s we used to make the actor who plays the character of 'The Goddaddy' have the same sort of tone of voice and way of speaking as the Godfather in the film The Godfather. We also used a real cigar in our film which is a typical gangster convention, especially as our film is similar to the Godfather.

For Lighting in the studio we switched the main light off in the room, and set up an overhead lamp above the table that we did an interrogation on aswell as the sofa scene, this was a gangster convention as shown in the famous film the godfather.

In our film we will have 4 characters all together, but two main characters. The GodDaddy is a highly respected, powerful and formal gangster, he decides whether he will give the drug seeker what he wants or send him off to be taught a lesson. Vinny is nervous, but eager drug seeker who doesn’t realise whose toes he’s stepping on but soon realises that he is not getting what he wanted. Pauly D is a drug dealer, like the godfather she has stern and formal ways when it comes to who she deals with and who does not deserve the deals. The character who shoots vinny in the alley is the un-named mysterious hitman.

All of the footage we shot was filmed from the same height and angle, we moved the camera to the side to film an over shoulder shot of Vinny shaking hands with the dealer. We also zoomed in to Vinny’s eyes to do a cut shot to show his fear to the audience. We also filmed a cut shot of the ‘drugs’ and chocolate money to show the deal. Our last scene starts off where the GodDaddy’s eyes are being filmed, and then we zoomed slowly out revealing the GodDaddy on the sofa with a cigar. 

Our opening sequence has had the black & white effect added to it, to relate to the dark crime conventions, that something doodgey and dangerous is going to happen. We also had the typcial gangster sub-genre conventions such as cigar's formal attire, drug dealing, guns, and alcohol. Also the chocolate coins that were being exchanged for the drugs gave a message to teh audience of the sequence having an element of comedy/spoof related to the sub-genre. As well as cast such as the GodDaddy being a female with a moustache, and the character Vinny's acting such as the scene where he runs out of the room he does it in a way that seems funny rather than serious. But then the serious, crime convention plays in just before the ending scene where Vinny is shot dead by a silhouette figure in an alley who is one of the GodDaddy's Hitmen who's name is unknown.


2. For our film we challenged the typical conventions of the classic film  aswell as using the conventions of The GodFather film, we kept most of the seriousness and used some of the lines for our opening sequence, we even used the cat in our clip aswell as having a cigar and dressed in formal suits. The way in which we challenged the typical conventions is that with out film we decided to make our film as a spoof sub genre aswell as gangster and the main crime genre such as using the stuffed cat.

Q6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Myself and Connie brunskill took turns in using the camera as we each had to do our acting scene's, we used a handheld camera and then attached it to a tri-pod stand, and then made sure we had it at the right angle, we then used a scrolling button at the side to zoom in to the character's eyes as shown in the picture above. We also used an over the shoulder shot of one of the characters in the picture below.













We used Adobe Premiere Pro to work on the editing of our opening sequence, first we uploaded the footage we shot and then dragged it onto a new project 'The GodDaddy'. We seperate chunks of footage and certain points (the bits we wanted to use) and then dragged it into the main editing timeline, when we had taken out all the good parts and put them into the editing timeline, we then started to use some transitions on the film such as "cross dissolve" which we used mostly on the text that we edited onto the footage showing the cats names and production names etc. We also used Dip to black at the end of certain shots so then it seemed to flow more between each different angled shots.

I have learnt how to use blogger fluently now, it seemed tricky to begin with but now it seems pretty simple. You log in using your google account and click on create a blog, i have used it to post updates on my opening sequence progress by typing up a little diary with a picture included sometimes too, and this can be viewed by anyone in the world. You can also upload video's and add hyperlink's to video's on youtube.

I have used websites such as youtube to gain inspiration for our groups sub genre which we chose to be a gangster film, and the GodFather was perfect for this.

    

I used Microsoft powerpoint in one of the lesson's to pitch the our opening sequence to our classmates, we included images and texts aswell as applying slide transitions.

We also used microsoft word for the script, and i also used it to create the schedule/shot list.

The Pitch

We pitched our ideas to the rest of our class by having a powerpoint with all the information on it, aswell as each of us in our group giving additional bits of information to the class members. We also had a Moodboard and Storyboard in which we held up to present and point to the different ideas we had and what inspired them.

We gave information about things such as our chosen film classification and our distributor.

Our feedback had comments such as good unique ideas, nice original idea, clear presentation of ideas, could have given more examples of 'spoofy' elements, etc.

We didnt change to many things in our sequence because most of the feedback we received was only positive, but we did put more spoofy elements into our film to exaggerate the idea. But we did change the characters well the cast so again it relates to the spoofy sub-genre, such as we changed the GodDaddy to a female.