Filming schedule

my location 'Adrenaline alley' is hosting an all-night skate event with competitions, this means i can do lots of filming and maybe get an interview or two with some of the people competing.

Front cover conventions i am going to use

For my front cover, i will have the obvious conventions like; price, magazine title, barcode and a banner along the bottom saying what is featured inside the magazine.
i am going to use a simple font in the banner, this is so that the viewer can read easily so it sticks to conventions. My magazine title is shown in a previous post, it is a very bold font that stands out in contrast with the simple font i will use for the rest.
I want to keep the cover pretty simple only use a max of 4 colours, i don't want it ending up looking like 'Hello' magazine or anything like that.

Heres a cover that has the style i am going for, it is simple with its use of colour. My favourite thing about this cover is the font used on the cover, not the title, but the content, it has been done in an italic font with a shadow behind it, also it is all in different sizes which but in a random order, it doesn't go small to big.

Front cover photo

After realising this weather would stop me being ableto get any good photos, i decided to look through all my old photos from when i used to skate all the time. this one was of my favorites that i found so i have decided to use it for the front cover, obviously it needs cropping so it will be the correct proportions to be used. this is from a school playcard near my house that we used to skate in. i might try adjust some of the colours to make it look better, i'll post a few adjustments if i find any i like.

Photoshoot

These are some of the photos I took, I tried to get a very simple but extremely high quality photo. They were taken using a Canon EOS 550D which is why I managed to captured all the detail in the skateboard with the photos.

Magazine Name

I decided on the name 'CONCAVE' for the name, this relates to skateboarding because concave is the what the curve in the board itself is called, when i decide on a final font i will upload it here.

Location: Adrenalin Alley, Corby

http://www.adrenalinealley.co.uk/new/

i emailed this company to see if they would let me in the park 10 minutes early to do some filming, but unfortunately i never received a reply. This means I'm going to go this weekend when it opens and see if i can get some footage before the whole park is packed.

Filming problems

Cold weather and ice, just what i needed, its practically impossible to skateboard in this weather so i'll have to wait out for a 'normal' day before i can get any decent footage.

Magazine Font/Titles ideas

Possible title ideas:
SKATE
KINGPIN - Part of the skateboard truck
Riser - used in between the deck and trucks to reduce pressure cracks
Concave - the curve in the deck
FrontSide - a style of trick

NEED TO FIND A TEXT
Possible texts(links due to macs not being able to print screen)
http://www.dafont.com/new-facebook.font?text=CONCAVE
http://www.dafont.com/impact-label.font?text=CONCAVE
http://www.dafont.com/ghettomarquee.font?text=CONCAVE

Skateistan: To live and skate in Kabul

This is a short documentary about the blooming sport of skateboarding in Kabul. It gives some background information about what goes on in Kabul, considering it is one of the most dangerous places in the world at the moment because of all the war, it is amazing that there is a community of skateboarders that is constantly growing thanks to Skateistan. It uses some incredible camera work along with some amazing skate locations, like collapse buildings due to bombings but what shocked me most about the locations was the skatepark,it's in what looks like a giant tin shed, but when Turza(the main character) opens the door, it reveals this beautiful, clean and well lit paradise for skateboarders. there are also some video dairies about this project which i will analyse in another post.
I really love the colours in the documentary, all the different shades of yellow give each clip character, this added in with the unique camera angles, gives the whole documentary a certain style.

Homeworkkk

technical codes - camera shots, movements
symbolic codes - choice of clothes or colours - symbolism
audio codes - music and dialogue

Skateboard documentaries use a very different approach compared to something like wildlife documentaries, its a much more 'down to earth' and laid back style, with shots that should have been bloopers being added into the final product just to give the documentary character. Camera shots; this is also something that is very unique to extreme sports documentaires because they have to film things in a whole different style, for skateboarding the camera man while mostly been skating beind the talent crouched down to get the best angle possible(see picture 1).

For choice of clothing 99% of the time it is up to the talent what they want to wear, however if it is a film for a certain brand, 'Etnies' for example, the talent would have to wear their brand of clothing for promotional reasons. For the odd time they do not get to choose their own clothes would be in a film like 'Lords of Dogtown' because it is set in the 70s, so obviously they have to wear the styles of that age.



Picture 1

conventions of film posters i am going to use

Film posters and their conventions

i really like this poster due to its simplicity, the use of only 3 colours really makes it stand out. The only issue i have with this poster is the 3 different styles of text, makes each of them look out of place but that might have been what they were aiming for.



This is a poster for the recently released 'Stay Gold' skateboarding film, what i love about the poster is the use of colour, although it's very abstract it shows character, also to add to the effect, the font chosen, it's practically a scribble, which is showing skateboard in its stereotypical 'i dont' care about anything' form.

Conventions i am going to use in my trailer

List of documentary films

Supersize meMorgan Spurlock eats nothing but McDonalds for 28 day, its shows the drastic lifestyle changes that happen to him.
Fighting for life, tells the story of docters and nurses in the military corp.
Buried alive: The Chilean mine rescue
A very British storm junkieStuart Robinson Chases storms around the UK
British Worst WeatherDr Nick Middleton of Oxford University investigates some of Britain's most extreme weather conditions, to find out how they are caused and why they are so dangerous
102 seconds that changed AmericaA documentary with 100s of different clips from the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center
Genius of Britain
The God Delusion Richard Dawkins decides that science should stop sitting on the fence, a documentary on the exposure of 'God' using science.

Magazine research Part 1

This is is the front cover of the best selling skateboard magazine 'sidewalk' although i have already done a post on this, i'm going to be using it for an example. I like how the cover is very simple and is basically just an image with their logo at the top, this style is very bold and effective, however my main issue with this style is that if i was to do a cover like this, i wouldn't get as many marks because it only has a few conventions of a magazine cover. These conventions being the large bold magazine title at the top of the page. The skateboarding has also been masked out so that he covers part of the title, magazine do this is because the know people already know what it says because the magazine is so popular, its like a sign of success. It has the magazine website underneath the title on the left hand side in small writing, this is for people that want to find out more about the magazine, The burst on the cover is used to catch the potential customers eye because its tells them about something interesting in the magazine(e.g free poster) these bursts are always in bright colours in contrast to the rest of the cover.

Magazine research Part 2

Empire magazine is one of the worlds best selling film magazines, this issue is advertising the film Inception, they have done this by having the background relate to the film, also having the main character in a long-mid shot in the center of the magazine but also covering up the majority of the cover, he is standing in a very powerful pose holding a gun, also holding a gun adds to this serious effect. They have also made it so that the characters head covers up part of the title of the magazine, this is to show that Empire are a well established magazine and the consumer will know what the title is even if part of it is covered up.
The cover only use 3 simple colours; Black, red and blue, these all being very male dominated colours, also the main character being a male and all the text advertising films that are targeted at the male audience, this whole cover is aimed at males.

The burst on this magazine is the only thing that is a different colour, this is to grab the viewers attention because they are advertising something within the magazine, however i think they failed to do it with this cover because there is so much going on its hard to just focus on one thing.

Digital technology turns media consumers into media producers. In your experience how has your creativity developed through using digital technology to complete your coursework?

It all started back at GCSE level when i had to create a front cover for a magazine, for this at first i only used microsoft publisher which let me have a small amount of creativity. Then i saw one of my friends using Photoshop and watched him create some really unique things for his cover, so i decided i would download Photoshop CS3 and see if i could use it. At first i was awful with it, i watched plenty of tutorials to try and learn the basics. I learnt some useful text techniques which made my front cover look proffesional, however i havent got a copy of it to show anymore. Using Photoshop also let me become more picky about certain things, like colour. It lets you pick almost any colour you want an create custom ones, this ment that i could get my magazine to look exactly how i wanted. I ended up creating my entire front cover in Photoshop and ended up getting a B for my coursework grade.

After my GCSE exams were over i was still interested in editing, especially text. I carried on researching and finding out lots of new techniques which i tried to use in my work, while watching a tutorial i found out about another programme called ‘Sony Vegas’ this program is used for video editing, its one of the most advanced of the time having so many different customisable options. I thought i would give it a shot to see if i could edit anything interesting, i ended up look for inspiration on what i could edit and game across a massive community on youtube of people editing video game footage into a ‘montage’. This style intrigued me because i was already into video games, i ended up recording some gameplay from me and edited it in this montage style syncing it to songs and adding some cool effects, i set up a youtube channel and posted it to see if what the reply would be from this community i found out about, the video got 2500 views within 2 weeks and i got some really positive feedback and lots of constructive criticism. This is what got me really interested in editing, i started trying to edit real life things like skateboarding and then just some random abstract things. However my main problem with this was using my camcorder, it wasnt a very good quality one so obviously the audience wouldnt enjoy it as much compare to if it was shot in crystal clear High Definition. After a while i lost inspirattion to make/edit videos.

Then i started Sixth fom and i found out our media courcework was to create the intro to a horror film, i thought that it was right up my street. I started researching again looking for editing techniques only horror films use and how the try and build up lots of tension. I ended up studying to intro to ‘SE7EN’ which is an editing materpiece, created using the montage editing i as used to. When it came to my courseowkr though i left it to the last week or so before the deadline to start putting things together, this ment my whole project was rushed and i was nowhere near pleased with it because i knew i could do alot better, however i did learn a lot of things from this work to do with editing. I learnt how colours affect the mood a lot in a scene, thats why in my coursework i had two contrasting colour corrections, one was a really dark gold overlay and another was a colour boost to try and make it seem happy. My courseowrk piece was supposed to be about a schizofrenic with a drastic split personality, but i dont think that came across in the intro.

I’m now in year 13 and my coursework this year is to create a trailer for a skateboard documentay so obviously i am very excited about starting this having previous experience in skateboard filiming and montage style editing which 90% of trailers use.

Back from summer

First proper week back from the summer holiday so its time to really crack on with all this media research. i'm going to start by looking at some magazine covers to get some ideas for my other task. i'm doing to be looking at some of the top selling film magazines and see what the main conventions are and what makes them stand out.

Possible plot

i had an idea to instead of just doing a film about skateboarding, i would do a documentary about why people see skateboarding as such an 'anti-social' thing and why people see skateboarders as 'rebelious' and 'punks' this would mean inteviewing certain members of the public to try get their view on skateboarders.

Lords of Dogtown

'Lords of Dogtown' is probably the most recognised skateboard documentary, the film follows the skateboard and surf trends that originated in Venice beach California during the 1970s. The film is written by the legendary Stacy Peralta (who is played by John Robinson in the film). He is considered one of the 'creators' of skateboarding. The reason i'm choosing this film to analyse is because of some of the camera work, some of the shots i am going to try re-create some for my trailer.

Sidewalk Magazine

http://sidewalk.mpora.com/

The worlds biggest skateboarding magazine 'Sidewalk' uses a very simple layout for their front cover, I like this idea because there is hardly anything on the cover, it doesnt take away from the photo, the photo on the front cover of Sidewalk will always have a skateboarding doing a trick, so this makes it very different to music magazines that fill the front cover with ads and loads of text to try and grab your attention. Another thing i noticed was that sometimes the title 'Sidewalk' would only be outlined instead of being a block colour, this shows how much they care about their target market seeing the picture on the front if they are willing to not make their title stand out.

The conventions for the front cover of skateboard magazines is that it is always very simple, they use a very artistic photo and usually very pale colours, never use a variety of bright colours e.g electric blues and neon greens. They tend to stick to blues, whites and greys. however and exception to this rule is that they will use a bright colour if they are advertising something that comes free in the magazine, like a poster.

Shaun White Skateboarding trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwMWmCn9jpg

This is a trailer for a new skateboarding game set for release in fall 2010
The trailer is probably the biggest step, editing wise, skateboarding has ever taken and it worked out really well. All the effects are perfect and it doesnt seem to overdone, however the only part about this trailer i did not enjoy was the start, people who are not familiar with skateboarding will have no idea what the people are doing, so here is a quick run down; whenever a skateboarding lands an impressive trick, fellow skateboarders who are watching will hit their board against something(usually the coping on the ramp) to make loud noises, kind of like clapping, its a skateboarders way of showing respect and giving 'props' to the rider.

The idea behind this trailer is that skateboarders make the best of the terrain around them and try and turn something simple, into something skate-able. whether its just putting a piece of wood up against a wall, or skating a set of stairs.

This trailer really grabs the attention of skateboarders(The games target market) and really appeals to them because of how they represent skateboarders and what they are all about, creativity.

Proposal

I'm going to be doing the teaser trailer brief, this is because i feel i will be able to produce a high standard piece of work from this brief compared to the others, the reason being is that i have a good knowledge of editing techniques, especially montage editing(used in trailers 99% of the time)

For research i will be watching a few trailers for highly anticipated films, this is so that i can look at what builds up the anticipation from watching the trailer. Another ting i will be watching is skateboard documentaries. There has only ever been one famous, realistic skateboard film 'Lords of Dogtown' which i will be doing a case study on soon. Another important thing for me to watch is skateboard companies promos, this is so i can learn what style of editing suites skateboard footage, also the type of atmosphere it creates while watching.

For filming and taking photos will be the local skateparks and skate spots, we have the UKs biggest skatepark within a 15 minute drive, a little ramp in the village where i live and a meduim size park about 5 minute drive away.

Also i'm considering going to Milton Keynes because it has some of the best street spots so i could get some really good photos from places like outside the art gallery.

Criteria problem?

after looking through the criteria i noticed that it says i have to produce a 'Teaser trailer' so i decided to do some research into what is actually included in a teaser trailer. The definition said that it is a very short trailer (around 30-60 seconds) and usually contains little or no actually footage.

so i think maybe the writer made a mistake while writing the brief or just did it to try and trick the students. Therefore i am going to just make a standard trailer for the film (usually around 60-120 seconds) included details about release date and maybe actors name.

Initial thoughts...

For this years course work i want to do the teaser trailer choice, with a poster and a front cover of a magazine advertising the film.
So my first idea for the trailer was a skateboard story because there has only ever been one really good skatebord film; lords of dogtown, which i will do a study on sometime in the near future. The next best thing to Lords of dogtown are skateboard documentaries, usually these are on a professional skateboarders career and how it all got started.
For insipiration i'm going to watch skateboard companies promotional videos, which are basically tricks perform by their sponsered players and edited to a song in a simple montage style of clips.

i have a few other ideas but i want to talk to my teachers first before i post anything else.