How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In these pictures i believe this is the best visual representation of myself and my character. The picture on the left is of  Tony Montana the main character from the popular crime film Scarface. 

I believe that our characters are very much the same as we both run mobs, we are the head of a large organisation and we both are involved in our organisations decline and fall under our feet and we spend the majority of the film trying to rebuild it and regain our spot at the top of the ladder. 

Our costumes are very similar. We both dress smartly to show our superior positions and wealth. But in our opening im differnet to tony because i go out to assist my mob where as he just stay in the safeness of his compound.   

Mine and tonys general appearence in the film are completely different. in most of scarface tony tends to look alot laid back and casual where as in our film i dress smartly to show that im serious and a commanding leader.

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

In the first screen shot you can see our film title. We went with the name mendacity as we believed it sounded and looked like a conventional name for a crime / thriller film. As you can see for mendacity we have used a font which looks like it is falling apart. This links into the crumbling and destruction of my organisation in our film, this font is also used to make the title of the film stand out compared to the other titles in the film. We also went for a red background and a drop of blood just behind the text to show the audience that there will be alot of fighting and killing along with blood spilled.

In the second screen shot you can see one of our three shooting locations from our film opening. This shows how long the alleyway in which used was and the fact that you cant see the end. Matt and Kieran enter the alleyway at their own risk.

The third shot is of harry who is the bad guy in our film. He is in full costume holding one of the main props in our opening a baseball bat. We decided that harry should have a baseball bat instead of the conventional gun or knife as a beating from a baseball bat would be a lot more violent fitting the genre and outline of our opening. All of the characters are wearing suits to show that everyone is smart, organised and wealthy.

The fourth shot shows the moment in which i close the front door after the kitchen scene triggering a white flash showing the start of the flash back. This is one of the main sections of editing in our opening. We tried to make the white flash stand out and also make it a transition between the kitchen scene and the scene in the woods.

The fifth shot shows our titles and the colours and font we used. As you can see for our titles we used a black background with black font surrounded by a white shadow making the font standout and eye catching grabbing the audiences attention.

The sixth shot shows one of the main elements of the story. This shot is of Matt and  Kieran finding the briefcase which is the main object of our opening. Them picking up the case is the beginning of my organisations crumble as you see later on in the opening the end up loosing the case to harry which contained a lot of money and documents to do with the success of my organisation so when you loose it i loose all power and a lot of money because other mobs now have my information which i use to succeed.

The seventh shot shows Kieran and Matt opening the case also exploiting the genre of our film. As you can see they are in the stereotypical gangster / mobster suits and ties, this showing that it is a film under the crime genre but there are elements of a thriller whilst watching. We decided to go for an old school crime film as wearing suits and having a smart look shows the power and wealth of our characters and the story lines and plots are just generally a lot better.

The eighth shot shows myself getting ready in the bedroom. This is one of the many ways which we introduce our characters into the opening. Matt and Kieran and introduced at the same time just after the white flash but the front door the are in a woods looking for the briefcase. Harry is introduced when Kieran and Matt reach the alleyway. He appears at the other end of the alleyway wielding a baseball bat.

Finally the ninth shot shot one of our special effects. This screen shot is taken mid way threw our crash zoom in the alleyway to Harry's face. The crash zoom was made by filming a long shot of us walking down the alleyway towards Harry's face. Then we sped up the shot in editing and added a sound bridge for the shot.   

Mendacity (Media AS Opening)

This is the final version of our 2 minute film opening mendacity.

Re Filming Photos

 

These are the pictures which our group took whilst re filming the kitchen scene. These were taken inbetween shots. 

Continuation of editing

March 17th - Today we were ment to have a lesson with Mr Oswick but he allowed us to continue with editing so we uploaded the footage which we re-filmed of me makeing the cup of tea in matts kitchen.

March 22nd -  Today kieran brought in his laptop so we continued to edit  our two minute opening. We decided  that we seriously needed to cut down some of the scenes to reach the two minute mark show we cracked on to make sure it was ready for the 28th march when it is due.

Re-filming March 15th

Today after school our group went back to Matts house to re film a certain sequence in the kitchen. We made sure that the location looked exactly the same as when i was mmakeing the cup of tea previously so when editing it wouldn't be difficult and we could make the cuts flow nice and smoothly. Our group will upload the footage on monday which is our next media lesson.

Diary of editing

For a number of weeks now we have been editing our 2 minute film opening and this is a list of the dates which we edited on and what we achieved.

February 28th - In todays lesson we started to upload the clips to the school computers which were ready to edit. Kierans wished to take the footage home but his memory stick was to small to take it so he is going to bring in a bigger one next lesson.

March 8th - Over the past few lessons we have been rendering the footage but as the school computers are so slow this has takeing a lot longer than we had wished. We eventually put the footage onto Kierans memory stick so we could edit on his laptop in lesson as i said the school computers are too slow to get a reasonable amount of work done on them.

March 10th - Today kieran brought his laptop into lesson so we could begin editing. Our group began to cut up the first scene whilst providing ideas aswell as advice. But me and Matt feel a little un used so we are going to edit some of the titles.

March 14th - In today's lesson our group began to cut up the kitchen scene. whilst doing this we came across a problem as some of the shots would not merge together well so we dceided we would re shoot part of the scene. So at the end of the day we picked up the camera and tripod and decided that tomorrow we would go back to Matt's house and re shoot the scene.