Representation:Kidulthood

Kidulthood strives to represent the tough life that youths are forced to grow up in,  in urban area's of London.

The way they do this is by striking the audience with shocking pieces of footage which show a true and uncensored reflection of what occurs in the urban areas of London. Some of the themes displayed are teenage pregnancy, gang affiliation, drug use and distribution, murder and theft.

The movie follows the stories of a group of teenagers showing how living in poverty has effected their lives, some are shown acting as hooligans and seeking revenge or violence where the main character is shown trying to change his ways for the better and take care of his girlfriend and his baby.

The themes and characters in this film are purposely stereotyped to ensure that it catches the attention of the audience and receives a truthful response. I believe that Noel Clarke has chosen to stereotype his characters whilst being aware that it would raise a lot of debate as to whether or not it was a fair and true representation because this helps bring awareness to society. This film was shown in cinemas across the country in many middle class areas where people are more likely to be unaware of what occurs in places in London outside of their society as the media is more focused on issues that are occurring in other countries.To summarise, I believe this film managed to serve its main overall purpose and aim.

My Film:

I can use the information and knowledge I've gathered from my research here and apply it to my film by making sure that I take into account what kind of message I'm trying to get accross to my viewer through aspects such as costume and thinking about what I want my viewers to take away from my film.

Institution

Distribution:

Distribution companies play a huge role in determining how well a movie does,distribution is sometimes considered as the most important step in making and premiering a film.Distributors usually work in large groups and aim to make your movie come off as interesting and appealing as possible to your target audience to make sure the theatrical release attracts as many people as possible.Regardless of how strong and original your movie's storyline is and how good it may be,without the right distribution it could be a huge flop in the box office.

An example of a well known UK - based distribution company is "Momentum Pictures" who are responsible for movies such as "Seven Psychopaths" and "Lawless"

Production:

Production companies are responsible for producing the film. This includes scheduling, scripting, marketing and post production. A successful production company would be the BBC. They usually work within the UK. They are responsible for some successful British films such as Fish Tank, Bullet boy, The boy in the striped pajamas's and others

Probably the most well known British production company is BBC Films.In recent years they have been responsible for producing films such as "We Need to Talk About Kevin" and "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen"

I believe that BBC Films would be a suitable production company for my film as they've been known to work on a variety of different genre of films.

My Film:
For my film I plan on using a small production company and distribution team as my movie's quite low budget and small scale meaning I'm not looking to advertise it too much but try to get most of the people to see my film through word of mouth.

Narrative

1.  Equilibrium - This is when everything is at peace and all is in order at the beginning of the narrative
2. Disruption - Something happens which disrupts the peace 
3. Recognition - Characters realise that there is a disruption
4. Repair- An attempt to fix the disruption and return peace
5. New Equilibrium - The problem has been solved

According to Todorov,there's a basic guideline that all narratives follow.He claimed that films begin with an equilibrium,where nothing significant is happening and all characters are introduced.This peace is then disrupted by something bad that occurs which is followed by the recognition by characters that this disruption has occurred.The characters will then attempt to go out and fix the disruption to bring back peace.The film finishes by showing that the problem's been solved and everything is back to normal.This is supposed to be
seen as a basic layout of how most "Hollywood" films take course.

Ted:

"Ted" follows is an example of a Hollywood movie that follows this narrative pattern

1.Equilibrium - Everything is going well, John Bennett has a great relationship with his best friend Ted and fiancee Lori Collins

2.Disruption -  John continues to spend a lot of time with Ted being irresponsible which leads to Lori calling off the wedding and leaving John

3.Recognition - John acknowledges that his life is terrible without Lori and blames Ted for her leaving

4.Repair - Ted and John work together to get Lori back 

5.New equilibrium - John and Lori get back together, get married and live happily ever after with their best friend Ted

Preliminary task self evaluation

Evaluation 

For my preliminary task I was asked to make a short film with my group following a script titled "Feed the fish". We decided to take a humourous approach with our short film whilst still managing to show our ability and understanding of how different types of shots work together effectively. I believe that the first half of our film indicated that we were able to edit our shots to create match-on-action as shown when our main character walks into a bulding and up the stairs. However, as the film got to the middle there were a few clear jump cuts which effected the overall look of the film as well as indications that we didn't take lighting into consideration as the lighting would blatantly change between two shots. 

 In my opinion, the editing at the end of our video worked well. We filmed two characters spinning in seperate rooms and later duplicated and sped up these shots to show that this was meant to be character 1 changing into character 2.The editing was done poorly on purpose to show light hearted humour.

A strength I believe we showed in our short film was using the music at the beginning to establish to the audience the genre of our film.We used the opening tune to "Looney Tunes" when following the main character around a building to show that he isn't to be taken seriously as well as to help make the long journey a little more interesting. On the other hand this also didn't help our film as we found from our feedback that the energy of the music overhadowed the energy of the characters.

We could have also worked on planning our filming times better. For example, we filmed on two days and didn't realise that our costumes in the first and second half of the film were not the same.

My Film:
Doing the premilinary task has enabled me to learn a lot of new skills in filiming and editing in a quick time and I think I'll be able to apply this knowledge onto my actual film opening by learning from the errors I've made and using the feedback I was given by my class to ensure that I make the best opening sequence possible.

Harry Potter opening

Harry Potter Opening Sequence

     

I added a thunderclap to start off my opening sequence because it's an easy way to capture the audience's attention and is also parallel to the dark,eerie background. I would try to make this thunderclap seem to fit in a lot more appropriately as the jumps in between each effect is noticeable.

For the playground sequence I used a guitar loop as well as the sound effect of birds tweeting to show that the day starts out as any other, it also implies that the film takes place in Summer. As Dudley appears, I slowly faded out the guitars and replaced them by a hip - hop soundtrack playing in the background to show how him and his group is associated with the urban lifestyle. I added more storm/thunder sounds as the setting starts to darken to indicate that there's trouble near and reflect how the mood has suddenly changed. To compliment the fast pace and tension of the chase scene, I added guitar and drum loops which helped signify danger being near.

As the first Dementors start to appear I used more guitar and drum loops to help keep the audience engaged in the film as it transitions into the fight scene. I believe that me and my partner did a good job in timing the transition from one soundtrack to another as Dudley slides across the floor and the Dementor appears, this worked well because there wasn't any space in between the transition where there was no music meaning the audience would be more likely to be engaged at all times.

Overall, I can confidently say that me and my partner did a good job on the soundtrack for the whole sequence. It showed that we were aware of how different instruments and genres of music can change the pace, tension and atmosphere of a scene altogether as well as how small sound effects can have a large impact on the overall feel of the scene. If I could change anything about my sequence next time, I would ensure that I worked closer on getting the timing correct as even the slightest mistakes are very noticeable, I would also ensure that I didn't leave too many places in the sequence where there was no sound at all as this isn't very interesting to watch.