preliminary exercise

Costume: Female Actors

These are items of clothing in similar style of what we want the female actors to wear. Girly items that are also sporty and "ghetto".

Again, we got our influences from the research that we did.

Costume: Male Actors

We have decided that we would like items of clothing such as these to be worn by the male actors. For example, dark hoodies/ tracksuits, new era caps. We got these ideas from various influences, for example, from the films and music videos we studied. They are also stereotypical items of clothing assosiated with the lifestyle of an urban drama.

Preliminary Exercise: Group Evaluation

Our first idea for the preliminary exercise was a police interrogation. We did our storyboard, and planned it, however, whilst filming there were too many problems such as sound and location, that made it difficult, not even after editing was it satisfactory, so we re-planned our initial idea. We decided that it would be about two rival girls in a school. We did the story board and wrote our own ideas down and then decided which ones we would use. We then each had a turn at drawing part of the storyboard. We were not sure as to where we should locate the filming, however in the end we decided that a classroom would be a good idea. During the filming process, we each had a turn at filming. Whilst Mikaela and Emma were acting, Casey and Vivian were behind the camera. when Emma or Mikaela were acting alone, the other would be having a go at filming, so that it was fair. Originally there were a few outside sounds but we cut them out in the editing process. This process was also one in which we all participated, we assigned each other particular jobs and then swapped so that we we all helping.

Preliminary Exercise Self Evaluation: Mikaela

My primary role in the making of our preliminary exercise was inputting ideas for the storyboard, acting, filming and also taking part in the editing process.
To start off with, we had a completely different idea to what our end result was as we were not happy with the quality. This meant that we had to create a new storyboard quickly and a new idea. I helped to come up with the idea for the exercise and we decided that it would be about two rival girls in a school, a pretty simple idea. I then acted as one of the girls alongside Emma. I think that my performance was satisfactory for the project. I also took over from Vivian and Casey with the filming whilst it was Emma's turn to act so that I could participate in different ways.

We then did the editing and again I had a go at making the shots match and cutting. Overall, I think that I participated well in nearly all of the things that made the end product.

List of conventions of the genre: Urban Drama

Typical Characters:
- Main male character -- intimidating, powerful, violent
- Sidekick of main male character -- helps out main character, sucks up
- Enemy of main character -- similar personality (intimidating, powerful, violent)
- Girlfriend of main character
- Best friend of girlfriend

Typical Situations:
- Violent encounter in the street involving knives/ guns.
- Drug deals, bad experiences with drugs, alcohol
- Situations involving money/drugs
- Death/murders
- Suicide
- Teenage pregnancy

Typical Locations:
- In the street
- Dark/grimy alleyways
- Park
- Teenager's bedroom
- Nightclub/ outside a nightclub

Two trailers that are relavent to our genre: Urban Drama

Here are two links to trailers that we can get ideas from as they are the same genre as the movie opening we hope to make (Urban Drama). The first link is to the trailer for the film 'kidulthood', the second is to the sequel 'Adulthood'.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=mdoKD4gTQ2c

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=bjWC0BCYUp8

I chose these two trailers because we watched parts of both films to see what ideas we could get for things such as location, props, costume and also music. The trailers show different parts of the film and a few of the ideas that influenced our own movie opening. These two trailers fit the conventions of our genre as they have aspects of street crime, violence, gangs, drugs and in general, the stereotypical lives of teenagers in gangs in London.
We are probably most likely to use most of these ideas and a lot of the camera shots, mainly the establishing shots. We want to include similar music in our production (urban, grime).