Task 3: Treatment

Synopsis

•This documentary is about a teenage American who, alongside his parents, decides to relocate his life to Britain. In the efforts of adaptation he faces many challenges such as communication issues, cultural differences (holidays, cuisine, etc.), and environmental changes. The production focuses on the daily struggle of the American located outside his homeland, specifically in a cultural environment such as England. The setting of the film is July 4^th, American Independence Day, in an English town named Tamworth.

 Target Audience

•Target audience for this documentary is aimed towards young adult audiences as the comedy in it mainly appeals to 15-25 year olds. The production also highlights foreign struggles, meaning it could be of interest to anyone who has or is planning to relocate to another country with a different environment.  

 Genre Analysis

•My documentary follows codes and conventions of a “mockumentary”. A mockumentary is a  uses the style of filming of a documentary whilst creating fictional situations for the purpose of comedy. This is done to present realistic situations as a parody in an exaggerated, humorous way.

•The style of filming it follows is a series of close ups on who is currently speaking within the scene. The camera rapidly pans as conversation continues, keeping the viewer’s attention directed towards whoever would have the room’s attention in the situation.

•A mockumentary also includes shots of an “interview-like” environment of the characters that were included in the scene. This is done to express feelings and thoughts on events that were shown to the audience. This is done to create more a personal relationship from character to audience. With this viewers watch their favorite characters develop and change throughout the show. These shots are included generally in pauses between scenes or as something important is revealed within the scene.

Task 3: Mindmap

Task 3: Creative Journey

Week 1 

For my media studies A2 coursework I've decided to go with a short film. The narrative of the short film is about an American teenager moving to England, emphasizing on the contrast between his hometown and his current location. This is a narrative I relate to and can go off experience as I was presented with the same situation when moving here from the United States. After a suggestion from a classmate I've decided to include certain aspects of the mockumentary genre to enhance comedy within the production. This will include looking back on other past mockumentaries such as 'The Office', 'Modern Family', and 'Parks and Recreation'. All of these examples are a parody of a series of realistic events that mainly focus on the comedy and production quality aspect.

Week 2

Classmate, Josh Stanley, has decided to join me for this production. Up to now I've completed my proposal to the class explaining narrative, target audience, and some genre analysis. I've posted all of this onto my blog and also presented it to the class. The reason I've decided to go with the mockumentary genre is for audiences to find comedic relief based on a serious life-changing situation. Highlighting ‘third-world conflicts’ that may be caused by the transition in countries does this. Josh and I will continue to write a script and storyboard prior to commencing filming of the production. We will also continue analyzing other popular viewer selections within the genre.

Week 3

Josh and I have made a rough draft on what we will be filming within the next upcoming weeks. We've decided to use my Canon EOS Rebel T3i for filming and planning on purchasing a tripod for it to increase stabilization in shots. We will also be making use of the green screen room within our academy to film the interview-like scenes a mockumentary includes. This will increase overall production and use of resources available to us. We will be using Adobe Premiere and possibly make slight use of Adobe After Effects as well.  We will be incorporating skills we learned whilst making our AS production last year such as use of transitions, adjusting audio footage, and use of the green screen.

Week 4
After the script was completed I recieved feedback from my teacher in regards to formatting the script as a screenplay. Therefore, I used the American Beauty screenplay as a reference in terms of formatting. This is now posted onto my blog as entry 'Script V2'. Alongside this we are currently developing research on target audience to further understand the demographic we are pleasing with our product. To benifit our research we are using a variety of models such as the Mosaic model and the Young and Rubicam model. We are also making use of the YouGov website to further enhance our knowledge of our current target audience for popular productions related to ours.

Week 5
Setbacks in permissions to record have caused us to change location of our narrative. The management team in charge of filming at Villa Park football stadium was on holiday so were not permitted to film. Therefore, we have relocated our scene to Josh's house with the plot remaining about the same just instead on a television rather than a live event. This will allow us to be more flexible with our filming as it isn't a public environment and there is more room for error. While it is a setback looking forward it may potentially be benificial towards the final outcome of the film. 

Week 6
For our first print artefact, the movie poster, we decided to take just have me and Josh with a visual of our flags coming together. We did this by using photoshop and modifying the background with a green screen to portray this in a way we were happy with. Finally, we came up with a title we found most appropriate for our production "Culture Clash".

Week 7
Our production is complete. We filmed most of it Josh's house and used the green screen at the Sixth Form for several scenes throughout the film itself. We edited the raw footage using adobe premier as it has been our chosen software since the previous year.