Shots from Films that Inspired us by Jamie Paxton

This shot from the film "Stranger than fiction" was where I got the main idea for the film in the first place, this shot shows the character of the film Harold Crick living his life as he does normally before he finds out that he is going to die in the near future and decides to change his life so he has done something with himself before he finally croaks.


This shot from "Hancock" gave us the idea that our character should appear to be worthless and so the audience would empathise with the character more as he finds out he has got his 12 weeks left because we see he is nothing and so the job to make his life worth something because of it will be harder.






This shot is from the finale of "Sharpe's Eagle" and while this is a relatively easy shot to make and incorporate into our film it also summarised our film clip quite well, the purpose is to make the audience want to watch the film and see what happens to Ryan and whether he succeeds before he dies.

12 Weeks to Heaven Video

Critical Evaltuation by PJ Roden and Jamie Paxton

Media Studies Foundation Evaluation
Our Media studies opening sequence `12 weeks to heaven` uses, develops, and challenges real forms and conventions of real media products in the way in which it is produced and in the way in which it represents real life situations.

1) Our product uses real conventions such as the 'universal' logo which comes up and this happens in every film and then it gets straight into the movie. It also follows the forms of real media products as it follows the conventions of a real life film in the way in which the camera is very focused on the main character and the style is micro themed in which the planning was done in a very serious tone as the subject is of death which is not seen as a joke unless it’s a humour based film. It challenges the way in which real life media products are done as it is not a whole based plan as we only planned the first two minutes of the film not the whole film so we do not know everything that is going to happen in the film but only the first two minutes. The way in which the film has been developed has been based on real life as our film is about a man facing death in 12 weeks and to develop this in a serious way we had to copy the ways in which real media products do this.

So we had to film the actor speaking without in other noises there had to be a lot of silence as far as diegetic sounds went, however this did not include the sad music which increased the mood; the setting had to look dull and almost sad and we had to make sure we got a miserable impression of the characters life which we did in how we filmed it.
2) Our media product represents no particular social group as a whole as there are only two people in our opening film but they represent two kinds of different social groups. The nurse represents someone who is caring and kind as she is devlerving news that no one wishes to hear which is death to represent that she is kind we showed her as a nurse and nurses are seen as kind as they are there to help so she was in her nursing clothes she also had a gentle voice which we made sure off as the volume is lower. She also represents concern as she has to make a painful phone call which will change our main character Ryan’s life forever and she speaks to him kindly and with a voice of concern even though he is rude towards her. We show this by zooming in her after he is rude and it show her facial expression has not changed despite him being rude. Ryan is represented as a bum as we film his room which is a tip and we film his kitchen which is also a mess and we zoom in on his fly to show its un done and this act represents no hygiene and is viewed as disgusting we also zoom in on his rent bill which has expired which represents he is poor and out of money.

3) The type of media institution that would show our product would be one that usually shows serious film topics so possibly BBC films of Film Four films as they show a lot of British based films which are serious life drama. We would say it would be one of these two as in the past they have distributed films similar to ours and also because it is based in Britain; British people might be keen on watching it as they maybe be able to relate to it for personal reasons.

4) Our audience without a doubt would be both sexes preferably males who are ages 20-30 as it is about a 30 year old man however teenagers could be targeted as well as the topic choice could appeal to them . The age group would be targeted as Ryan is 30 years old and people between the ages of 20-30 might be interested as this kind of thing could happen to them and males particularly as the percentage of young death is male more than female.

5) Our product attracted our audience by making our film about a topic that affects more or less everyone but by making it attract the age group we have chosen we made our Character in his 30s so people would know they were similar of age to him. Also in the way we filmed the surrounding setting of a normal flat that anyone could live in but also messing it up as it is a stereotype that men are messy.

Here are some screen shots which we took from films which we employed in our own

6) We have learnt that filming is not so easy as it is not all it’s made out to be which is getting a camera filming people and then putting it on YouTube. Indeed it’s much more you have to upload your film on to a USB stick then upload it on premiere adobe film programme and edit it cut and add sound to your film. The technology is also very advanced as there is so much that you are able to do on it like cut fast track edit there is allot of variety available to you. It took us a while to do it as we had to get use to it but overall it took us just over four hours to do it all and to finalise it all.
We have learnt that making a film is not as easy as people may think as there is far more work and effort that goes in to making a film but not just making but making it good entertainment and good for people to watch. You have to devote allot of time and energy into this product and you have to make sure you aim your goal by putting in the effort we have also learnt the obvious such as how to film edit and have improved my knowledge of media technology.

7) Our preliminary task was a good learning point compared to this task as it was not as serious as this and we did not how to use the programme as well then however it helped us get it used to it and make this final project a success. We have learned new techniques of filming as well as the rather obvious and embarassing fact that not actually putting ourselves in the film ensures that we get more of what we want once we are done filming.

8) Feedback we got for our video said; Good one. The music and the setting perfectly match together. You achieved to construct tension and you make interested audiences want to see more of your stories.The colours are rather dark, but that's good because it represents the sadness. By the way - Good title for your project. and Patrick and Jamie's video was very good. The story line was great and the cross cutting between each character during the phone conversation is very good. :) Tolu

From our feedback we decided we could work on making the shots better and using more of a varietey when taking shots, I'd try also to make sure that my shots were not as shaky. I'd also spend more time working on the sound so that the music isn't quite so loud and the dialogue and other diegetic sounds are louder so there is more of a balance like in a real film, whereas in our film it is really loud with the music and then it goes quieter at the dialogue which makes it sound a lot louder compared to the rest of the video. We also origionally had a different shot of Mori waking up in a room up in Altyre House where the previous shots were filmed, however Mrs Downes pointed out as we were watching it that the light which came straight through the window and shone on the camera made the image look "furry" as she put it. So we quickly went to Round Square House to film a replacement shot, which is why if you look closely you will notice quite easily in fact that Mori wakes up in a different room that he is later filmed in taking the call telling him he is going to die.

PJ Roden Media Blog questions

1. The people that are represented in my film as there are only two charchacters is Ryan a middle aged man whos life is going nowhere and has been told he is going to die in 12 weeks and he is portrayed as depressed angry and upset at the sate of his life. The other charchacter who has a minor role is the nurse who is portrayed as caring as she is delviring such devasting news to someone and is trying to tell him without hurting him to much. we represented Ryans flat as messy dirty unhygenic and his kitchen the same and his kitchen is seen as a place you would not want to eat anything there. The theme in this is the constant unlukyness that Ryan has to deal with I.E the stae of hsi house the fact he is unemployed redundent and is going to die in 12 weeks. The time period in this is all on the same day and is roughly along 1-2 hours.
2. The text which i have created includes a person who lives a bad lifestyle and is misfortunate and it soley focus on him. However it exclueds anyone with a rich or happy lifestyle as there are no people represented in this way in my film.
3. The form of realism that i have created is the real life bad situations that people can find themselfs living in even when they dont plan or expect it to happen to them espically with facing the reality of sudden death. We shjow this by showing the shot reaction of ryan when he is told he has 12 weeks to live and we show his reaction of shock which shows how unexpected the news was for him.
4. The mise-en-scene of the film shows the real world textual as it portrays real elements of real life situations as the film is set in an ordinary flat and eveyrthing in the surrunding background is normal so by doing this it shows that death can hit anyone who lives a normal lifestyle. The acting is also very normal as Mori who plays ryan shows how he feels about death as he screams and shouts when given the news and this shows a normal reaction that someone would have when given such bad news like that. The music we have used is very sad so that it fits the mood of the film and makes you feel even more sorry for poor ryan. The camera work uses alllot of close up shots to show how people are feeling like when ryan finds out the news of his death we zoom in on him to show how devasated he is and this shows the real reaction someone would have and puts it the bigger picture.

Can we have feedback on our film posted by comments
thanks

change of genre by Jamie

PJ and I showed our film to other members of the group. With there feedback we realised that it was not a comedy and was more like a drama and we changed the genre from comedy to drama. We changed this as we both thought it was more of a drama in the way in which it is done and it looks more like a drama as it is represented more serious in the film than comedy.

Prep: Blog Entries 2nd March PJ Roden

1.i foundgroup dynamics, equipment and resources, interim deadlines and the necessary collaborative nature of film making tricky as it was my first time but have got more use to it. I foudn it tricky as you haveto make sure that you and your partner (jaime) work well togethere which i think we did and we split the jobs between us to make it easier for us. If i am honest i foudn using the camera hard to get use to but eventually i have got use to it and now i find it fine. We had allot of resources available to us through the school as Gordonstoun offer allot as we have woods many houses fields and roads. The deadlines were tricky though as there is so much to do in such little time.
2. the health and safety issues that we had to solve were few but the one that we had a little problem was with filming Mori on the road to make sure he was not in the way of traffic and we had no problem with this but none of the less made sure there was no traffic interefering.
3. The people involved in the production were me Jaime mrs downs who helped us organise it Mori and the women from the San. We had no problems with Mori or Janya fitting in time time to help us and we told them in advance so that they could help us and mrs downs helped us fit in extra filminf time which helped us allot.
4. Getting our actors was easy as we only needed two and they made themselfs avaiblable to us we had to chnage our setting from G house to Altrye as Altrye is set out better for us as the room we filmed in is closer to the kitchen compared to that of G house. we had a costume looked out for mori from Altrye an old pin stripped suit which was good for hsi image we were creating which was a scruffy image.
5. our shootign script and storyboard had no problems apart from we had to chanage our shootign script at oen point as each actors conversations didnt link up the way we wanted but we changed this.
6. time managment was an issue becuase we thought we had more time than we did and s we had a rush in filming but we still had enough time to do our filming and we have a week and a half to finish editing so it looks for the future for us.

Media Questions by Jamie Paxton

02/03/09
1) How did you manage the group dynamics, equipment and resources, interim deadlines and the necessary collaborative nature of filming?:
The working in the group was good as far as planning went, PJ and I were good at picking out tasks which each of us could do and getting them done, getting the props for our filming was relativley simple because both PJ and I were able to get what we needed relativley easily and we had chosen very basic props. The actual filming of the story was a lot harder as neither PJ or myself had a very good attitude with regards to getting started, once we did get going PJ decided he was going to direct but didn't communicate very well to me as the camera-man exactly what it was he wanted me to do, however I didn't make any effort to take the intitiative in these situations either and this left us both feeling under pressure.
2) What health and safety logistical problems did you solve?:
There weren't really any health and safety issues involved in the making of our film.
3) How did you organise your human resources- the people involved in the production?:
Our human resources was mainly organised by word of mouth comparisons of free time and snap decisions made with the time available.
4) How did you manage actors, locations, costumes and props?:
I initially wrote the storyline and then we picked Mori out of our class because we thougth he fitted the storyline quite well, we chose Altyre because of PJ's assurance that it would be a good set to film some of our locations on, the refectory because it looks like a resteraunt and the san because it looks like a doctors surgery and fits with the storyline for the other side of the conversation durin the film

filming by PJ Roden

Me and Jaime filmed the big scene of Ryan (Mori) in his flat which is set in Altrye we filmed establishing shots of his room to portray the state of his room and many close ups of him in bed and of his rent bill which has expired. we film his phonecall with the docter whos telling him he has 12 weeks to live and film it at medium level we then film his side on walking from his room through the corridor and into the kitchen. we film him side on andclose up drinking water in his disgustingly portrayed kitchen and then him walking out his flat. we then film him close up saying he will change his life with his fly open for humour and walking down the road we film this infront and behind both at long shot. we also filmed a scene of Mori walking into the refectory and being knocked back we film Mike a member of staff from the refctory cose up telling him he cant come in to eat there and mori being veyr gutted leaving we use close up, long shots.

changes by pj roden

myslef and jaime have made many last minute changes to our project such as changing location from G house to Altrye as Altrye was set up more realsticly to look the way we wanted it to. we used a member of Altrye room and filmed it and we filmed the corridor to the kitchen, the Kitchen the front of Altrye and its courtyard. Mori Thompson took over from Paul Kamm as our teacher recommed using class mates as actors was a better idea as there easier toget when you need them. We filmed outside the refoctry as well whcih was planned orginal for the scene of Ryan (Mori) getting knocked back from the entry point.

25th of February
by Jamie
Our film will use shot-reverse-shots in filming the phone call scene and when the camera follows the character Ryan -Mori- we have stuck to the 180 degree rule and used match on action as much as possible like when Ryan is walking from his room to his kitchen.
We haven't finnished filming yet so there is room for improvement where it may be required, we are going to try to maintian verisimilitude by having the characters dressed in the same clothes and by filming in the same weather as much as possible. Skills I learned and carried on from my prelmininary exercise was filming single sides of a conversation in one and then editing and re-aranging them so they are in the correct order we employed this tecninque when we filmed a nurse in the San doing the doctors side of the conversation between the doctor and Ryan and then later we did the same with Mori in a different location up in Altyre. Our film fulfils the conventional requirements of the comedey genre from the point of view that we have a character who has an epiphaney moment and then he decides to change his life, it fails to fulfil the requirements in the respect that we were unable to get a famous actor -who would normally play the main character in such films- and it isn't set in a famous location like new york or London. Other than these obvious but unsurprising failings to keep to the conventions of the genre we have stuck to the conventional requirements as much as possible. Although we've attmepted to write a comedey our film isn't really incredibly witty or funny. The only real attempts at comdey we have are the character Ryan's blatant stupidity when the doctor tells him he's going to die. I feel that if we had more time to develop the storyline we would have come across as a more funny film but we've tried reasonably to convey that our film is a comedy in the timeframe we were given.

Last Week me and PJ went with Mori to altyre where we shot the opening shots for our film,
we had mori lie in a bed and took several establishing shots of the room
after this mori "wakes up" and goes to have some breakfast

27th January by Jamie

Today PJ and I spent our time organising permission for some more filming of our film "12 Weeks to Heaven" as well as looking at a costume for our main character Ryan played by Mori.
We spoke to Angus in the refectory and secured permission to film outside the front of it as well as Angus electing to get a member of the refectory staff to act as a doorman on his own which was a pleasant and helpful piece of input. Then we went up to Altyre House to have a look in their suit room to have a look for a scabby looking suit which we are planning to dress Mori in so he looks something like Rab C Nesbitt. The suits we found were not scabby but we found a greenish grey Tesuto pinstripe suit which looked slightly faded and we thought would look quite good. We also found a black Greencoast jacket and a pair of blue-green corduoroy trousers which also looked quite good. Our third option if all else fails will be to put Mori in a school blazer.

On the 26th of January 2009 me (pj) and Jaime did our first shooting of our film `12 weeks to heaven` we took shots of a nurse from the San having her phonecall with her patient Ryan Richards(Mori Thompson) informing him that he is suffering from terminal cancer and only has 12 weeks left to live. We film all of her phone call from a side on angle to hide her face slightly along with various diffrent kind of shots after so we can cut her in to fit with the conversation. We then took close up shots of the medical form as it shows that the docter has got wrong form and has falsy informed Ryan that he has 12 weeks to live when he is actully perfectly fine.
BY pj roden

first shooting of `12 weeks to heaven` and storyboard

PJ Roden

For our opening sequence of a film we are doing a comedy film called `12 Weeks To Heaven` starring Paul Kamm and Victor Steph. This film is about a thirty year old man who has jsut lost his job and whos life is going down hill in all ways. After a recent docters appointment his docter gives him the wrong diagnosis which tells him hes got cancer and will die in twelve weeks. Shocked by the news he decieds to change his ways in order of getting into heaven.

This is a comedy film and it is tragetted at teenagers and will attract them by its comedy as hopefully teenagers will fidn the stroy line amusing and the way the main charchter Ryan (Paul Kamm) will be represented i.e dressed and behaviour.

we will need access top G house dorm and Common room as well as acces to the refectory and the medical room. We will need acces to copyright free music which is a funny theme tune to go with the film. We may also need props such as beer bottles clothes cups plates
BY PJ

Patrick and I are going to be making a comedy film about a man who might best be described as a social failure. He lives alone in a small, very unhygenic flat, one day he gets a call from the local doctor about the results of a test he had taken the other week. The doctor tells him that he has a terminal illness and only has 12 weeks to live and so our character sets out on a mission to change his life and live it to the fullest in what he thinks are his final 12 weeks in the world. Only several weeks later will the doctor realise that he gave him the wrong results but he is unable to contact our character who is out changing his life.