The Best Years of Your Life? - Final Cut with Narration

Changes to my short film!

Although I thought that I was completely finished with my A2 coursework for media including my short film itself, my ancillary tasks and my evaluation, following an educational trip to London with my media class and teachers in February, I decided to make a major change to my short film!

Whilst we were in London, my class attended a screening of 'Beyond Clueless', written and directed by Charlie Lyne at the BFI Southbank. The film showed numerous clips from American youth films from previous generations with a narrative analysis of the films displayed and the conventions of such films. 

After returning back to Norfolk, my teachers and I began discussing the film and how it kind of related to my own short film and it was suggested that I should attempt to write an essay for my short film and lay it over the top of the footage to give the audience more of a detailed insight into life as a teenager. 

Following this discussion I wrote a small essay describing some of the issues teenagers struggle with and how much of an impact they can really have on life as well as emphasising the memories that teens have the opportunity to create and remind them not to spend the entirety of their youth worrying and stressing out but to go out and enjoy being young and carefree.

I then recorded myself saying this essay and laid it over the top of my coursework whilst making minor adjustments to the footage and sound to ensure that the whole short film flowed correctly and that you can hear my voice clearly with the music also subtly being played in the background.

I believe that this technique of using a narrative description/analysis of teenage life and growing up in this society to place over my footage of teen life will work effectively and act as a major improvement as it gives the audience more insight into the messages I have been trying to present. I feel that the narrative encourages adults to understand teenagers and the struggles they go through whilst growing up more effectively than just the footage on its own. I also feel that the narrative will benefit teenage viewers as it will show them that others clearly understand what they are going through, that they are not on their own and that they have so many chances to make the most of being young and to just have fun instead of feeling stressed, nervous and anxious.

The Best Years of Your Life? Updated cut

Second Draft of my magazine article

From spending a lot of time looking at my first draft of my magazine article I became to dislike it more and more, believing there was too much text and it may bore the potential reader and they would simply skip the article. In this updated version I have removed some of the text and included another snapshot from the film, added a website URL and a twitter name to emphasise the interactive element and link to the use of a hashtag trend as seen on the poster, whilst changing the colour of the box around the 'inspiration' section to match the colour scheme, as can be seen below:

Magazine Article Second Draft -updated-

Poster for my short film

After researching, designing, creating and editing several 'trial' posters for my short, I have finally decided on the poster I would like to use to officially advertise my short film:

I decided on this poster to represent my short film as I feel it displays clearly what my short is about, clearing showing both sides and encouraging the potential audience to question whether their teenager years were the best years of their life, or not. I feel the posters are creative and clearly display a divide between the most stressful and most enjoyable aspects of teenage life with both the images within the thought bubble and the next below it clearly demonstrating this. The text and photos are clear and the idea of the poster can easily be understood by the potential audience given their size.

First draft of my A2 coursework piece: The Best Years of Your Life?

After an extensive amount of filming and editing, the first draft of my A2 short film has been exported! I am really happy with the outcome and I feel that it achieves the main message I wanted to get across to the target audience: to spend less time worrying about every little detail of being a teenager and just enjoy your youth instead of wishing it away.

Final Idea: Character Biographies

Although there aren't any specific characters in my short film, I wanted to do some research into what people typically expect a teenager to be and how they behave to give me a rough idea of the expectations of my documentary.

I researched online to see what others had suggested are the most common traits amongst teenagers and conducted a survey using this as inspiration and received the following results:

1) What physical characteristics do you expect from a typical teenager?

2) What social characteristics would you expect from a typical teenager? 

3) What intellectual characteristics do you expect from a typical teenager? 

4) Where would you expect teenagers to mostly hang out?

5) What emotional characteristics do you expect from a typical teenager?

6) What behaviour do you expect from a typical teenager?

From this research I plan to take note of what a wide range of people would expect from the teenagers that will feature in my documentary. As well as playing towards the expectations from the research, I also want to challenge the views to show some people that view teenagers as loud and a bad influence that most of them do work hard, have to deal with a lot of stress and can be more self conscious and insecure than they sometimes let on.

Response to Audience Research: Film

Final Idea: Location Research

Location Research

Audience Research Video: Film

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne14aJAKAXo

Audience Research Questions: Film

Inspiration for my short film: 'Youth'

YOUTH from Tommy Petroni on Vimeo.

Final Idea: 'Dragons Den' Pitch

'Mood Board' presenting initial ideas for my idea for my short film with the main focus on the positive and negative aspects of teenage life:

(awaiting the video)

Video Planning for A2 piece

A2 Video Planning