The document provides details about a 2-minute film opening project for an AS Level Media Studies course. It discusses how the film challenges conventions by telling a story about prosopagnosia (face blindness) and Stockholm syndrome. It describes the opening scene's structure, shots, lighting, and representation of unheard social issues. It then discusses how the film would engage audiences, be distributed online, and how the production skills of the student team developed throughout making the project. The student used various hardware, software, and online tools in creating the film.

1. Where It All Began
Critical Analysis
AS Level Media Studies – 2 minute film opening
Divyadarshini Balaji

2. How does your product use or challenge
conventions and how does it represent social
groups or issues?

3. Structure
 Our film does not follow a regular way of convention, because our storyline itself is
different from the normal representation of society.
 Our story talks about the effects and the problems gone through by a person who
has Prosopagnosia and Stockholm syndrome.
 Prosopagnosia or also known as “Face blindness” is a disorder which is very less
known and represented in our society.

4. Structure
 Our film opens without any music in order to add a mysteriousness to it.
 The Non-diegetic sound starts only when the visuals start and it is in an unhappy
and creepy tone to add to the story.
 There is well established shots of both the protagonist and antagonist.
 (left) Establishment of the protagonist and (right) Establishment of the antagonist.

5. Shots and angles
 We used mid shots and long shots of the protagonist and antagonist to show the
emotions between the two.
 We tried incorporating different types of shots as well to add more mysteriousness
and suspense to it. (left below) close up shot and (right below) tracking shot.

6. Shots and angles
 We used still frames to add suspense to
the scene.
 (right) This is a point of view shot of the
protagonist from inside the car to give
her side of view.
 (left) This is a still frame shot in slightly
low angle to show the strongness of the
upcoming establishment shot.

7. Lighting
 (left) We used artificial
lighting for only one of
the scene which is a
flashback scene. We shot
it in a room and used
artificial lightings from
the phone to achieve a
dim lighting. It was dim
and dark to show the
some of the dark
mysteries past of the
protagonist.
 Other than that, everything else was Practical lighting. The
scenes shot outside had natural sunlight. We used the normal
light inside the shop which there to shoot inside. (below)

8. Representation
Our Story does not represent the normal society, rather it represents the unheard part of the
society. Prosopagnosia is not a well know disorder, we tried to give out the basic issues faced by
them through this story. This disorder mixed with Stockholm syndrome is not a every day situation
in our life that we hear. This film depicts the story of a teenage girl who is born with prosopagnosia
and lives with her single mother who later on develops Stockholm syndrome. By representing these
unheard part of society we hope to bring some type of awareness about both issues (prosopagnosia
and Stockholm syndrome).

9. How does your product engage with
audiences and how would it be distributed as
a real media text?

10.  Target audience – According to MPAA, this would be given a PG. Without any
violence, this film is family friendly and can help create awareness on
prosopagnosia. It can reach a large range of audience as it has unheard storyline.
 The 2 min opening film, “Where It All Began”, has a cliffhanger
ending and this leaves the audience in suspense and wanting to know
more about the film.
 The audience will also be interested about the film as it has a unique
storyline and talks about the unknow and unheard issues.
 The music of the film will keep the audience engaged and interested
about the film.

11. Distribution
 The target audience of this film is mainly teenagers.
 This film can be promoted through social media like Instagram, twitter
and Facebook.
 It can also be promoted by YouTube by releasing trailers and short
snippets of the film which will cause curiousness and also help promote
by word.
 This film will be released worldwide as this story can help promote
awareness.
 This film is released on YouTube and Amazon Prime as this helps reach a
wide range and age group of audiences worldwide.

12. How did your production skills develop
throughout this project?

13.  We made this film as a team and none of us had
any experience in filming before this, hence this
helped all of us learn about the entire process of
filmmaking.
 We learnt about cinematography, script writing,
storyboard, editing and most importantly – how
to work as a team to produce an film.
 We learnt that shooting is not just random
videos but looking at angles, shots and how we
can be creative and work together as a team.
 We learnt to divide the work equally as mush as
possible.

14.  We learnt to write a script and draw a storyboard
from scratch and how we need to specify about a
scene in both script writing and storyboard.
 At first, we thought editing would be hard. It was,
only in beginning as we were all new to this, but as
we went on we were able to find our way around it.
We learnt a lot about editing and how to input
music and dialogues in Adobe Premiere Pro.
 We learnt about the lightings, framing and
composition for all shots and how it is important for
very scene.
 We also learnt to colour correct according to the
lightings.

15. How did you integrate technologies –
software, hardware and online – in this
project?

16.  Hardware
We used Canon EOS 700D, Tripod and Phone to shoot and record. We used a Canon to shoot
all the footage and we used tripod to stabilise the shots for a few scenes. We used our
phones to take pictures and record behind the scenes and also record our dialogues in it.
 Software
We used Microsoft Word, Adobe Rush and Adobe Premiere Pro. We used Microsoft
Word to write our plot, storyline, one-liner and script. We used Adobe Rush only
to do our credit scenes and we used Adobe Premiere Pro to edit the entire film
including the audio and background music.
 Online
We used online websites like WordPress, Gmail, Google Photos. We used
WordPress to update on our blogs and used Gmail to communicate and send links.
We also used google photos to upload our behind the scenes footage and photos
and created links that can be used as links to albums and used those in our blogs.

17. Thank You!