Thursday 14th of January, Feedback from our Client

When we came into our CRaM class today none of us knew that our client Derek Budd was going to be there. He was going to watch our films today, give us feedback and decide whether they were going to be put onto the website or not. As we were not ready for this we didn't have anything prepared to present our film to him. This was quite difficult and made us all quite nervous when we explained to him what our film was about and why we decided to make it on that subject. But I don't think it matters that much because no one else had anything prepared to say, so he didn't expect it of us. Our film was watched third after the 'Running Away' and 'Bullying' films.

I was quite nervous when he was watching our film and worried about what he was going to say afterwards. He seemed to quite like the film and gave us positive feedback about it. He said that it was a good piece of filming, and it applies to both girls as the second girl is very quick to say she wants to go back downstairs to the party rather than help her friend make an important decision. As Mr.Budd said "It's not just about drinking, the girl and sex, its also about friendship". He also said that the film had a good ending and the film doesn't leave any doubt to what the girl is thinking about and what is behind the door, there is also a good point of view at the end when it goes blurry to show that the girl is quite drunk. The second girl going downstairs makes it more believable that there actually is a party going on downstairs that she wants to go back to. He didn't give us any negative feedback which is good. So Mr.Budd decided that our film was going to go on the website and we didn't need to make any changes to the film, Which i think is very good as many of the other groups have to make quite a few changes to their films. I think we made a very good film especially as we did everything in one day. The filming, the editing, and the music. The video will be going onto the Youthoria website within the next two weeks.

Thursday 7th of January

Today in our CRaM lessons we watched all four films of all the groups in our class, and all gave our feedback on it, the good things about each film and the bad things and how we could improve them. Our film didn't have much negative feedback, only a few things about the sound and lighting. We had to film it during school hours so it was about 11AM in the morning, so it was quite bright, and the party of course wasn't meant to be at 11AM. We couldn't do much about this, but it wasn't that much of an issue. The sound was probably the biggest problem, but we could still hear everything the girls were saying in it, all we had to do to fix this problem was make the sound louder while editing it. We got quite a lot of positive feedback about the different camera angles, amount of time we finished it in, fading, costumes, acting etc. We completed this film in one day, we filmed it all in about 1:30 hours on the last day before the holidays. Then after lunch we edited it all and put music onto it.

We have finished everything with our filming and editing, and improved it in any way we could. Now I am just writing the accessibility for it, and later on I'll draw the story board. I will Upload some photos to this photo later on.

Thursday 17th of December.

In our CRaM session today we finally managed to do all our filming and actually produce something worth watching, unlike last time.
After break we went to my Nans house which is about 3 minutes away from Coleridge and began filming. This time there were less people [ the people in our group] as this way there would be less distractions and messing about.
We worked very well together as a team and got some excellent footage. Filming at my nans house was definitely much easier and safer than the Cambridge Leisure Centre, we didn't have to worry about things like theft, rain, or filming on a private property without permission. Even though we managed to get some footage last time it didn't fit together well and didn't make sense at all.
It was completely clear to us that we had to film it all again with a completely different story, especially after we showed our Rough Edit to another CRaM student and had very negative feedback. So this is why we decided to re-film at my Nans house. This time everything fit together perfectly and it was much easier to film. However we had some problems with the sound, so we rang Mr. Durran and he told us what we had to do to overcome this difficulty. After we solved this problem, everything else was perfect, and it only needed editing. When we got back to Coleridge it was Lunch time so after our break we started editing immediately. After about 10 minutes of editing, We showed our rough edit to Mr.Durran and he had very positive feedback about our footage. We've edited most of it now and we are just putting a Royalty Free soundtrack onto it.

We haven't had any other problems with our footage yet, and hopefully there wont be any more. It was quite difficult having to abandon a plan, which we had written story boards, scripts, summaries, Risk assessments and more, We had even scouted the location. So it wasn't the easiest thing to do to change plans one week before the Christmas holidays, However we were successful and managed to produce something even better than I expected. Even though we completely failed with our other plan, I think it was quite a good experience and that I learned a lot from it.

I helped with a lot of the planning today, I wrote about the Location, I was also one of the characters in the film, and it was at my nans house. I'm very happy with our work today and I think we worked very well.

Thursday 10th of December.

In our CRaM class on Thursday our group decided that we would be filming on that day rather than the next day. So after we made our decision we went to Cineworld to do our filming. After the long walk there we began filming, this was quite difficult at the time as we were a big group of people and most of the people weren't cooperating, and everything was taking too much time. After about half an hour or so, one of the security guards had told us to leave as our location was a private property and we weren't allowed to film there.


We had already filmed most of what we needed, only one last bit was left and we could do that in Coleridge. After we filmed our last scene at Coleridge, we uploaded everything to the computer and edited it all roughly. After we watched it a few times and got others opinions on it, we realized that all our footage was completely useless and didn't make the least bit of sense.
This definitely brought all our moods down, and now we were behind everyone else, as most people had finished filming and some even editing. So in the last few lessons on Thursday we talked about the alternatives, after a discussion about what we were going to do instead we decided that it would be good to film at my grandmas house, as it was convenient and only across the road from school. After my Grandma agreed to us filming there, we quickly decided what we would change from our previous script, and how the story would be different.
Even though we haven't achieved anything in this lesson, or made anything useful, I think that it was a good experience even if it was a complete failure. I think I learnt quite a few things this lesson. Next week we will be much more prepared and will have costumes, and wont have to worry about walking far away. There wont be as many risks either, while outside there are many different things which could happen. Someone stealing the camera, Rain, being on private property without permission etc.
So even if we didn't manage to produce anything useful in this lesson, I think we still learnt useful things.

Thursday, 3rd of December.

In our CRaM session today, we went and scouted the location of where we would be filming and took some images. We went to the Cambridge Leisure centre, which is the location. It was pouring it down with rain and we got completely soaked, however we managed to overcome this obstacle. We got the pictures we needed for our folders and it simplified things. Now we have the pictures its much easier to make plans about how we are going to film certain shots and scenes.

We took about 8 pictures, showing the location of each shot we are going to take. This lets us take our plans further and on the day of the filming it will be much easier for us now we have these pictures.

When we got back to school we printed out the images and wrote which spot would be for what shot. This defiantly simplifies things for us as a group, as now we know exactly where we are going to be filming each scene.

I have worked independently today too.I took the images on my phone, in the rain.

We had some other difficulties today, other than the rain. The camera we had taken to take the pictures with wasn't working. So we had to take our images with my mobile phone.

Personally I believe today has been very successful, useful, and helpful to us. We got the images we needed, it helps us with the plans we are making and we will be able to refer to these images at any time if we forget something.

Here are some of the pictures we took today.

Research Report.

Public Information Films

Public information films began in 1946, sometime in march. I did some research on the Internet to try and find out more information about public information films. Here is an article from BBC from almost 4 years previous, when they were celebrating their 60th anniversary. The article does provide some information about Public information films, however it wasn't exactly what i was looking for. Here is the link to the article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4669540.stm

I also checked wikipedia to see if I could find anything, it provided more information than the BBC article did, but it didn't mention anything about who made them or how they began.Here is the link to it:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_information_film

I also checked the National Archives website, which provided similar information to the BBC article and wikipedia. But the national archives website is probably the most accurate and reliable of them all. It tells us about the COI [Central Office of Information], it says when it was established and how. It mentions their sixtieth anniversary too. Here is the link to the article:http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/FILMS/aboutfilms.htm

From the PIF's [Public Information Films] I have watched they have changed drastically over the years. They have changed in every way, the way the characters behave in the films, the quality of it of course, colour, style, and in the earlier years it was normally men who were made superior to women, however now it can be either or.

In the earlier years it was normally men who were starring in the films and if women were in fact involved it was normally suggesting that they shouldn't do something in a certain way, or they were doing something wrong. Back then the people in the films put on accents of a slightly posher voice and somehow superior and fatherly, however as the years passed by these accents disappeared and more women were in the films.

This video shows quite a few of the scarier PIF's from the 1970's. As you can see everyone is putting on a posher accent and in one of the videos it suggests that women cannot drive as well as men can. I think that some of the films are actually quite frightening like the one when the boy falls into the river and the scary man whose face you cant see, also the video of when the young boy goes into the substation because he lost his Frisbee in there. PIF's have certainly changed since then, here is an example of a newer PIF from the 2000s

as you can see this is very different to a one from the 70's. There isn't anyone putting on posh accents, and there is a woman speaking. The effects are also a lot better as it is 30 years later, so the quality, sound and effects would be better. I think the newer ones are shorter and more to the point than the older ones are. There isn't really any acting in this film so I can't compare to acting in the films from the 70's.Here is another recent PIF, this one has acting in it so I can compare this to one from the 70s. The acting in the more recent PIFs is more realistic and they're easier to relate to in my opinion, People who have depression will be able to relate to this video and it will convince to get help.

PIF's have changed a lot since they were made in the 40's, back then the people who were talking in them were acting quite paternalistic and the acting wasn't as naturalistic as it is now, they could even be patronizing. As the years went by the acting became more and more naturalistic and the people acting in it were less patronizing and of course the quality of the films improved too. If they made a film now like they did in the 40's, especially if they were being patronizing, people wouldn't even want to watch the film and would probably be quite shocked and insulted in my opinion. Back then the people in the film used to talk to people as they were dumb and didn't know anything.

Here are two warning films somehow based on the same thing. The first one is from the early 2000's when mobile phones we're a new thing and texting was a big deal to people. Both films are about road safety however they are quite different. The first film is quite dramatic and you can tell that the people who made it went to a lot of trouble to make it, there are many different camera angles and the acting is not very naturalistic unlike the second film. Some people in our CRaM class thought that the second one was real and it had just been caught on camera! Another thing which makes the second film more convincing is that it has been filmed with a camera phone. It is also something other teenagers could relate to. Hanging around on the streets, messing around and then crossing the road without looking properly, it could really happen to anyone. You can tell that the first film is older because of the phones in the film too, they look very old and simple and it looks like texting is a new thing to them. It is quite obvious that a lot of effort has been put into the first film, it has been edited perfectly and there are many different good camera angles. The acting is very good too, different to the second film though. The music also adds to the effect of the first film, it stays the same volume and pace throughout the whole film, even when the boy gets hit by the car, normally I would have thought that wouldn't work very well, but it did in this film, it adds to the whole effect of it. The second film is quite scary in my opinion as it looks like it could be real and its something people can relate to, the acting in it is very naturalistic too.

Thursday 26th of November

Today in our CRAM class we planned everything were going to be filming, the exact location of every scene, who's going to be who, we wrote a screen play, we printed out the map of the location, wrote the brief story and the treatment, we also did some background research on it, and who is going to be filming what scene.
We are going to film it next Friday at 5 outside the Cambridge Leisure center, I will be borrowing a Camera from school on Thursday and will take it home after school, and as I live right next to the Cambridge Leisure center, it will be safe and I'll take it back home as soon as we have finished filming. As you can see in the image to the left shows the location. Overall this session has been successful, as a group we worked very well together and helped each other out a lot, we all did something to contribute to this. I thought mostly of what we were going to say in the film and wrote most of the scenes, I also decided who is going to be filming what scene. I typed the Brief story, and the Printers in the CRAM room weren't working so I had to go to the Learning centre to print the brief story out for the four of us. I have also been an independent enquirer today, as I did my own background research on alcohol abuse, and I wrote the brief story and went and printed it out.

Next week we are rehearsing for our film, and memorizing our script, and organizing everything which needs to be organized, and I'll be borrowing the camera for the following day. I think Today has been successful and we have achieved a lot.

Thursday 19th of November.

This has been the first CRAM lesson in 2 weeks, as last week Coleridge and Parkside had ICU and the week before was half-term.
Today in our CRAM lesson we were watching a lot of different videos like adverts, warnings and just informative material, from a variety of different time periods. We were watching them to look at how they have changed throughout the years.
The videos from the 1940s-1970s were slightly sexist towards women, and suggested that they were inferior to men and less capable, e.g saying that women were more likely to have a car crash than men. The videos changed a lot through the time, the older videos had a V.O of a posh man, and were in black and white, while the newer videos were in colour, had better quality and sometimes had a V.O of a woman.
Then we were put into groups, ( The same Groups we were in the last CRAM lesson ) and we had to make a name for a group, we called it JKAJ Culture, the JKAJ is the initials of our group members.
After lunch we met Mr.Derek Budd, who is the Youthoria Curriculum Manager he explained a lot to us today and talked about things like pixels, resolution, people's rights about being on camera, and where we would be allowed to film and not allowed to film. We have to make a short film in our groups approximately 1-2 Min's long and no larger than 20Mb. We are making a video about Alcohol, Sexuality, and Relationships. Mr.Budd had given us a sheet where we had choices about what to make our videos on, we thought instead of making it on only one subject we could use multiple subjects to make it more interesting. The video is due on the 31st of January, so that means we have a very long time to produce a successful video. We didn't have one of the people in our group today but we managed without them, and organized things and made decisions for them, so next time we can all work as a group together and continue with our planning. We have already done most of our planning and know roughly what we are going to do, we just need to plan the details and the exact location of where we are going, then after we make our plans we'll go out and film it. Unfortunately this time I have no images to upload to this post, as our lesson today didn't involve any filming.

Thursday Novemeber 5th.

We did a lot today in our cram class, in the first lesson of the day two of the cram students were giving us a demonstration of what we were going to film next, just to give us an idea of what we were meant to do, it was Petra acting as a police officer asking Micheal why he did what he had done, and Micheal "Cocky Badboy" denying it, then after break we had to make a short film with only a few lines in it, it was quite difficult doing this as we were filming on the stairs, but we managed to get some very good shots, it was also quite difficult to keep a straight face most of the time. After we finished this we had to go back and edit it, cut out all the bits we didn't need, and put different clips together, we had a problem with the sound because it was out of sync so we had to rearrange it all.

After lunch we had to film again, it was of a chase where Jayne snatched Kara's Ipod and ran off with it, so they chased each other through the quad until Jayne gave up and just put the Ipod on the bench and ran off. We had so many shots for this, as it was longer than the previous clip, and we used the camera in many different angles too, we used music for this video as no one was talking in it and the sound wasn't very good. We were fine with the editing, until we had to put the music in, half of the track didn't have any sound in so neither did the video, so we just had to use a different part of the track so it was alright. I think we learned a lot today, and filmed some very good clips.

Thursday October 22nd, First Performance Blog.

This is my first Performance Blog which I made today, we started to learn about performance in CRAM and it will be our first assessed unit.

Today we learned the difference of acting on stage, and acting on film, we learned about tricks on camera, like filming at different angles, close-ups, medium shots, long shots, and we also learned about how when acting on film you don't have to act with all of your body like on stage, it could be a close-up of your hands and only act with your hands.

When on Stage you have to be more dramatic than on film, film is more realistic and more like real life, Like the picture above shows that when on stage you have to use bigger gestures and be much more dramatic than on film, and also when your on stage you only have one chance to get it right so its much more tense and dramatic, when your on stage you would have to shout if you wanted to whisper so the audience could hear you but on film you would only have to whisper loud enough for the sound to reach the microphone, when on film you could have as many takes as you need to get it right.

We learned a bit about hand filming today and how to show emotion with our hands and to only act with them, so on film you can do a close-up of someones hand and they won't need to act with their entire body.
We also learned more about editing, how much better a clip can be with just a bit of editing, we edited a clip that some Parkside students made, and we made the clip a lot better just with some editing and cutting out bits and making it into like a short movie.

http://www.ehow.com/video_5226019_acting-film-tips.html
This Video gives tips about what to do when being filmed and how it is different than being on stage, i think the video is quite useful and gives good advice to people who are actors, it tells you about the sound too and how it is different than on stage and how you have to be "tight" while on camera.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2009/may/09/matthew-macfadyen-acting-mediums
This article is about what Matthew Macfayden thinks of filming and being on stage, he thinks they're not actually that different, and that you don't have to act that differently like he says "But if I walk across a stage, I'm not going to walk in a different way to the way I walk on screen." He thinks that sometimes people get too tense on camera and the clips can be edited so much that they turn out completely different than you would expect them to be.
This is a picture of Matthew Macfadyen acting in a film
with Kiera Knightley.














http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/films/1945to1951/filmpage_cas.htm
This video is from the 1945-1951 time period, it is about spreading germs and becoming ill, the video is in black and white and humour is added to make it more interesting and funny to watch.

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/films/1951to1964/filmpage_streaked.htm
This video is from the 1951-1964 time period its about a lightning jet and it once beat the world-air speed record, the video shows the jet flying at top speed, it was used in the Royal Air Force.

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/films/1964to1979/filmpage_jobs.htm
This video is from the 1964-1979 time period, its about teenage girls going to work for the first time, and them growing up basically, its an animated video.


http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/films/1979to2006/filmpage_dummy.htm
This video is from the 1979-2006 time period, its about drug misuse and how heroin ruins people's lives.


The videos change from the time periods, first the video was black and white, then they became colour and had better effects and sound, and the videos became a lot better as the time passed by, the videos are more efficient now and have better effects and are filmed better and of course better quality, and also better sound.