Foundation portfolio evaluation: Q1: In what ways does your media product use , develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products.(Part 2 of 2)

"Live2Dance"



Secondly i have looked at our media piece and analysed it and wrote about how film follows the genre/conventions of the dance genre.






1:Text colour. At 0:05 we can see black and red text colours, this follows the conventions of the dance genre as the text colours tend to be either whites blacks or reds.

2:Text style and font. At 0:01 we can see a chalk style of text and a big font, this therefore implys that the film is urban and this therefore follows the conventions of the dance genre as most films are typically set in urban/suburban settings.

3:setting and location. At 1:40 we can see the stage which is used in the opening sequence to show the dance championship scene we included, this is conventional because big spacious areas, more specifically stages areans and dance studios are used to show the dance championship scenes.

4:clothing and costume. At 0:18 we can see david's characters costume, this follows the convention of the genre as most characters costumes tend to be cheap clothes that can be used to dance in very easily, specifically trainers tracksuits tshirts vests etc, which David is shown wearing.

5:title name. At 0:03 we can see the title name "Live2Dance" this is conventional to the dance genre as many films such as streetdance 3d tend to have a reference to dance in their name or numbers and appear to be an urban version of normal words.

6:colour adjustment (editing). At 0:15 we can see the colour for David's scene to be a black and weight coloured scene, this therefore follows the conventions of the scene as colour editing is used in many flashback scenes in the opening sequences however we also broke away from the conventions as we went black and white whereas most other dance films use a orangeish tinge colour for flashback scenes.

7:lighting. At 1:21 we can see dark lighting , this breaks the conventions of the dance genre as most films in the dance genre tend to have bright lighting and not dark lighting unless its a night time scene.

8:transitions. At 1:37 we can see a transistion , fade to white this breaks a convention of the dance genre as most dance films tend to avoid the use of transitions as they dont flow with the scenes very well , an exception to this in recent time could be streetdance 3d , which features alot of transistions.

9:genre. This film follows the conventions of the genre as at 0:06 we can see someone dancing with feet , this follows the conventions of the genre as scenes of people dancing are usually quite a major part to show a film is part of a genre/ especially a dance film.

Foundation portfolio evaluation: Q1: In what ways does your media product use , develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products.(Part 1 of 2)

For this question i am going to analyse our coursework and exsisting media productions of the Dance/street dance film genre and compare what we have done to follow the conventions, and what we have done to break them.

first of all i have looked at streetdance : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ4EGbDAQ9Q
and analysed the movie and wrote about how that film follows the genre/conventions of the dance genre.

1:Text colour. At 1:38 we can see the text being white, this follows the conventions of the genre as most dance films have white/black or red text for the characters names , this therefore follows the conventions of the genre.

2:Text style and font. at 1:38 we see a "chalk" style of font used for the character "carly"'s name it also recurs as it again appears at 1:43 and so on when we saw more of the characters appearances in the opening sequence. This follows the conventions of the genre as in many/most dance films we see a "urban" or chalk style of text/font used in the opening scenes of the films.

3:setting and location. At 3:16 we can see "Uk streetdance championships, this follows the conventions of the genre as the story usually consists of the characters entering a dance competition to better their lives, the location therefore consists of urban areas also shown in several clips which as used as sort of transistions between the scenes (i.e 1:26)

4:clothing and costume. At 1:56 we see a group of streetdancers performing a dance, they are seen wearing similar coloured clothes but they are primarily wearing baggy trousers , vests, big t-shirts this typically follows the conventions of the genre as in most/many dance films we see the characters wearing baggy "urban" clothes, especially in group dance scenes we see them all wearing the same clothes.

5:title name. At 1:19 we can see the title "StreetDance" in black and bold writing, this breaks the conventions of the genre as most dance films usually have the text for the titles in a chalk style, therefore the film differentiantion itself from the other films in the dance genre.

6:colour adjustment (editing). At 0:36 we can see the colour looks very faded , even "old" style ,this could be used to represent a flashback which is prominent in alot of dance genre films and is usually used to show off example of people dancing to help set the scene with narration over the top.

7:lighting. At 0:27 we can see the lighting is mostly dark with a few spotlights this is different to most dance films in the genre as most would have the scene with full lighting but this film is breaking the conventions by having the first scene in the film having mostly dark lighting.

8:transitions. At 0:33 we can see a fade to black between the scene where the lights turn on and the scene where the group start to dance, this is used to break the conventions as most other dance films just show other locations and dont use any transistions such as fade to black inbetween the scenes.

9:genre. At 0:55 we can see a group of people about to dance, this follows the conventions of the genre as most of the dance films produced show street dance as opposed to ballet. Therefore following the conventions of the genre

summary of what we did in the lesson - 1/2/11

Typical conventions of dance genre research from 1/2/11

The typical conventions of the dance genre opening scene usually consist of scenes of dancing followed by flashbacks of dancing/ the main characters past which then has the characters name appearing and sets the motive/ pace/ storyline of the film (i.e step up 2) . 

fonts: Urban chalk style          

duration: 1 second/ 3-10 for the dancers

placement on the screen: centre of the screen

content: clips of street dancers 

However some of the films don't follow the conventions i.e Honey which starts off in a bar in a nightclub with the main character but doesnt tell you the storyline in the first few minutes nor does it have any dancing in the first 2 minutes of the film it also uses 

Fonts: block capitals , blue , has a shining effect going across it. 

Duration :1/2 seconds each.

Placement on the screen: bottom right corner of the screen with some more towards the middle and Bottom left of the screen. 

Content: actors, production company , "soundtrack by"  

Links to opening scenes watched:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAobq7g4p9I (honey)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUhNRkRAaSM (step up 2 the streets )

Title sequence convention research.

 The typical conventions of the dance genre opening scene usually consist of scenes of dancing followed by flashbacks of dancing/ the main characters past which then has the characters name appearing and sets the motive/ pace/ storyline of the film (i.e step up 2) . However some of the films don't follow the conventions i.e Honey which starts off in a bar in a nightclub with the main character but doesnt tell you the storyline in the first few minutes nor does it have any dancing in the first 2 minutes of the film.


Links to opening scenes watched:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAobq7g4p9I (honey)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUhNRkRAaSM (step up 2 the streets )

Transitions

today group 4 edited some of the clips and added transitons to the opening scene, we have nearly finished the editing.

Rough cut -24/1/11

This is a screenshot took on the 24/1/11 this screenshot shows our rough-cut of the opening sequence (all the footage in order as shown in the story boards) 


In the lesson, my role was to cut down some of the scenes so that we could reduce some of the time along with changing the contrast saturation etc to make the scenes look better and improve the quality of the opening sequence.


I have learned how to cut down scenes and change the saturation etc.


We have changed some ideas from our storyboard for instance we firstly got rid of the "8 months later" and also changed several scenes round to fit with the voice over better. 


To finish this opening sequence we still need to cut down alot of time , add in transistions and do the credits , along with add in the music for the dance scenes we have this is due to the cameras not being the best quality so therefore we have to edit the scenes to improve them.