Week One Production Log

This week we viewed and assessed pupils past work with the given mark scheme, to see what we need to include in our 'British Social Realism' to achieve each level as shown below.

By assessing previous work, I have seen what I should be including to achieve the top level:

• Material appropriate for the target audience and task

The film is aimed at British 16-24 year olds, so the storyline must attract to this age, the actors will be this age so that the audience can relate to their characters. It will include struggles that stereotypically teenagers face such as alcohol, drugs, sex, violence, gangs etc. The task is to make the film for Film 4, to protect their Social Realism genre I will make sure my film includes "real" life situations with everyday working class people.

• Using titles appropriately according to institutional conventions

From watching previous work, I found that titles and credits play a huge part in deciding whether your film is successful which you wouldn't think would make such a huge difference but it does, from this I will make sure the typography of my title will relate to the genre and storyline of my film and that the credits are shown long enough to clearly read. 

• Using sound with images and editing appropriately for the task set

In some of the previous work, the music used was too loud so the dialogue could not be heard, also some of the music used did not match the actions in the film. I found the music plays a huge part in making the film successful because it sets the mood and atmosphere, gives you an idea of the characters used and overall makes it more interesting to watch. Some of the previous students did not finish their film, so I will make sure to save enough time after filming to edit as this is what makes the film more effective. 

Mise-en-Scene also plays a very important part in British Social Realism films. I will make sure to include "PLACE" when producing my film.

Production design - (sets, props and costumes.)

Lighting - (Ambient/Artificial/Natural)

A = Actors - (Performance)

Colour design - (Through production)

Era - (How is the time and place represented.)

I feel this will impact my production because I now know what I need to include in order to achieve the highest grade as shown above, watching previous work also helped me think of possible creative storylines and to avoid predictable storylines that have been done before for example, in my work I will emulate how little dialogue was used as I feel it has much more of an effect over the audience than if people were talking throughout not acting it as well as it could be shown, this would take away the realism of the film. Also, the locations used, the previous works were set in the typical Social Realism locations such as alleys, buses, dark messy bedrooms etc. I also learnt that I need to balance my time well because some of the previous people did not finish, I need to spend just as long editing and editing the music as filming. 

I will try to avoid the speed of the credits, in previous work I could not clearly read the credits as they were shown too fast, this is off-putting as an audience. I will also avoid having my music too loud so that any dialogue can be clearly heard. I will make sure my music is effective with the film and relates well to the characters shown and is not too repetitive. I will try and use good actors in my movie as although we are not marked on the acting, when watching some of the previous work, the quality of the acting was not as great as it could be, making me as an audience lose interest and the overall storyline and characters do seem like real everyday situations.