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Dear Moderator,

Welcome to my AS Media Studies Blog. My blog follows my footsteps from research, planning, production and evaluation of my opening sequence 'When Two Became One'. I have regularly updated my blog from September through to May of the school year. My blog includes, PowerPoints, posts, pictures, links and more. I hope you enjoy reading it.

Here is my final title sequence for 'When Two Became One'.

Background Music

Two aspiring musicians in our year, Jack Cowley and Ben Pilston from the band Monday Coma, played the acoustic guitar for the background music in our opening sequence. We recorded this using on an iphone and uploaded in onto the computer. To find out more about Monday Coma take a look at their twitter page: https://twitter.com/MondayComa 

Voice Over

Our Final Script for the Voice Over

Joe: What is Love? Does it really exist? Love is said to be an emotion of a strong affection and personal attachment. It’s said to be a virtue representing all of human kindness, compassion, and affection—the unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another. I believe everyone has a soul mate somewhere, but not everyone is destined to find theirs.

Lily: I definitely believe in love, it's so magical, something from a fantasy  Every girl wants to fall in love from the moment they watch their first Disney princess on TV  Everyone deserves true love. I once read a Greek myth: Once upon a time, when gods and people existed together, people had four arms and four legs. They had two heads and two faces. They existed happily as they were, and grew more powerful as time went on. The gods decided that the humans were getting too powerful and needed to be put back into place somehow, so they cut the humans in half. Each human now had only two arms, two legs, one head, and one face. They had to spend the rest of their lives searching for their other half to make themselves whole again. It became the point of life.

                         

The Voice Over To Our Opening Sequence

We had the idea to do a voice over for the opening sequence of Lily and Joe talking about love over an acoustic guitar.

 We found a Greek myth from Plato's Symposium which Lily will quote:

“Once upon a time, when gods and people existed together, people had four arms and four legs. They had two heads and two faces. They existed happily as they were, and grew more powerful as time went on. The gods decided that the humans were getting too powerful and needed to be put back into place somehow, so they cut the humans in half. Each human now had only two arms, two legs, one head, and one face. They had to spend the rest of their lives searching for their other half to make themselves whole again. It became the point of life."

  

And we got the definition of love from Wikipedia which Joe will quote then his view on love:

“Love is an emotion of a strong affection and personal attachment. Love is also said to be a virtue representing all of human kindness, compassion, and affection—the unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another".

The Editing Process

Filming Scene One - Day Two

Filming Scene One - Day One

The Set of Scene 1

Yesterday Bethany, Camille and I set up the two rooms for scene one. We used lots of props and setting to depict each character. (Pictures of rooms below).

Main props/set in Joe's room:

• Acoustic guitar
• Base guitar
• Beats headphones
• An ipod
• Levi jacket
• Various tops/clothing
• Speakers/stereo
• CDs
• PlayStation hand controls
• Aftershave
• Wallet

We thought these props portrayed Joe is musical, young, unorganised and messy.

Main props/set in Lily's room:

• Books/plays
• A canvas
• Paint
• Scrap book
• Flowers
• Makeup bag
• Floral Cath Kidston bags
• Christmas cards

These props were to show Lily is creative, arty and clever (enjoys reading).

Cast Changes

Unfortunately, due to an operation, Cameron Wishart - who was playing Joe, the main boy- is no longer able to act in our opening sequence.

After much thought and recasting, we decided Ashley Cunningham, a reliable friend of ours who also took GCSE drama with me and Cameron, would be best suited for the role of Joe. (See photo of Ashley to the right).

Production Meeting 4

Date: 10th January 2013
Present: Bethany Hutson, Katie Bannock, Camille Pierrart and Ellie Bunce (Me)
Focus: Plan (Create a scene breakdown, shot list and production schedule)

In our fourth production meeting we got started on planning filming our opening sequence, this included making a scene breakdown, shot list and production schedule. We assigned ourselves different roles, Bethany and Camille made the scene breakdowns using our storyboard we used in our production pitch (http://www.scribd.com/doc/118314176/BECK-Production-Pitch) and I created our shot list and a summary of each scene (the props, costumes, equipment etc used). We also tried to schedule a time to start filming when we were all free by creating a table of dates but ran out of time. Although we didn't finish our production schedule we each printed a blank schedule which we had to fill in before our next meeting.

Action Point: Fill in detail of scenes on production schedule.

Production Pitch Feedback

After Camille, Katie, Bethany and I had presented our production pitch to our class and teacher we were asked some questions about our idea.

These are some of them:

Question: What was your inspiration?

Answer: 'The Holiday' and 'Love Actually' were my two main inspirations for our opening sequence. The Christmas themed romantic comedies are two of my favourite films. Also doing a Christmas themed opening fits in the weather and the moment and is easy to portray.

Question: Who is your target audience?

Answer: Teenage/ young females. The film will be a feel good typical 'chick flick' probably rated at a 12 or 12A. 

'The Holiday' is a 12 and 'Love Actually' is a 15 (see photos below).

Production Pitch

BECK Production Pitch

Production Meeting 3

Date: 13th December
Present: Bethany Hutson, Katie Bannock, Camille Pierrart and Ellie Bunce (Me)
Focus: Begin to create production pitch (everyone get started on their individual tasks)
Action point: Finish production pitch

In our third production meeting we were told to make an production pitch by Mr Buckmaster for the following lesson to show to him and the class. The production pitch had to include, a synopsis/brief, mood board, locations, cast/characters, treatment, soundtrack and a storyboard. This was Mr Buckmaster's example for us: http://marlboroughmediastudies.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/production-pitch.html 

We all had different tasks to do to create our production pitch. Bethany did the storyboard and treatment, Camille did the brief, Katie looked for a soundtrack and I did the mood board, locations, cast/characters and made the power point presentation.

Production Meeting 2

Date: 12th December 2012
Present: Bethany Hutson, Camille Pierrart, Katie Bannock, Ellie Bunce (me)
Focus: Brainstorm ideas, and discuss any sequences we had watched

In our second production meeting we started thinking about ideas for our opening sequences, here are some of them:

1. Two people (boy and girl) waking up 
2. Sister and brother on a dog walk, stranger watching them
3. Missing child (posters, then we see the child)
4. Home videos of a boy growing up, then we see him now 

We then voted on the idea we wanted for our opening sequence, here are the results:

1. Three votes
2. No votes
3. One vote
4. No votes

So we decided to do the two people waking up, we then discussed this idea and expanded on it thinking about them crossing in the street but not acknowledging one another to set up an enigma for the rest of the play. 

Production Meeting 1

Date: 6th December 2012
Present: Bethany Hutson, Camille Pierrart, Ellie Bunce (me) and Katie Bannock

In our first production meeting we looked at different genres and sub genres in films in order to help us come with ideas for our opening sequence. Below is a spider diagram of genres and sub-genres:

We eliminated genres we wanted to stay away from or didn't think were able to do such as:

• Fantasy
• Melodramas
• Crime
• Epics/historical
• Magical
• Science fiction
• Westerns

This was because we thought they would be hard to portray realistically and we wanted our opening sequence to be believable. We also thought it would be hard make these type of films with our low budget, experience and knowledge.

We also thought about genres we to consider for our opening sequence such as:

• Romance
• Horror 
• Crime
• Action
• Drama

Our action point was to look at opening sequences and bring some ideas for our next meeting.