Why We Looked at Articles

The Reason why we looked at the articles below was so that we could create a more realistic aspect to our comedy film, by taking real life problems into consideration, to try and send a message out.

Anti-Gay Law Stirs Fears in Russia

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/01/world/asia/anti-gay-law-stirs-fears-in-russia.html?ref=homosexuality

MOSCOW — St. Petersburg’s legislature passed a law on Wednesday aimed at eliminating what its backers called “propaganda” of homosexuality among minors, prompting fears among gay rights groups of an impending crackdown on their activities as other cities vowed to look into adopting similar measures.

The law, which follows similar legislation passed elsewhere recently, appears to be a reaction to increasingly vocal efforts by gay rights groups, particularly in St. Petersburg and Moscow, to attract attention to the issue.

Vitaly V. Milonov, the law’s principal drafter and an outspoken proponent of Russia’s Orthodox Church, who has referred to gay people as “perverts,” has accused gay rights activists of waging an aggressive campaign of conversion among Russia’s children with the backing of Western governments.

“This is a declaration of Russia’s moral sovereignty,” Mr. Milonov said in televised remarks shortly after Wednesday’s legislative session.

Under the new law, which passed 29 to 5, “public actions directed at the propaganda of sodomy, lesbianism, bisexuality and transgenderism among minors” will be punishable with fines of up to $17,000. The law defines propaganda of homosexuality as “the targeted and uncontrolled dissemination of generally accessible information capable of harming the health and moral and spiritual development of minors,” particularly that which could create “a distorted impression” of “marital relations.”

Igor Kochetkov, the head of the Russian L.G.B.T. Network, a rights group based in St. Petersburg, called the premise of the law “absurd.”

“You can also adopt a law against turning off the light of the sun, but no one has the ability to do this,” Mr. Kochetkov said. “Even if someone wanted to, no amount of propaganda is going to turn a heterosexual gay.”

He said he feared that the law could be used to prevent outreach efforts by gay rights activists, who have only recently becomeoutspoken enough to attract attention.

“This is a law that can be used, and will be used, to conduct searches of organizations and prevent public actions,” he said. “Most importantly, it will be used for official propaganda. Officially homosexuality will be considered illegal, something incorrect and something that cannot be discussed with children. It will create a negative atmosphere in society around gays and lesbians as well as our organizations.”

Open discussion of homosexuality was almost unheard of in Russia until just a few years ago. A Soviet-era law that punished same-sex relations between men with prison time was repealed in 1993, but the subject has long remained taboo outside a smattering of bars and clubs in major Russian cities.

Attempts in recent years to hold gay rights rallies have been met with contempt and outright hostility from officials and religious groups, and have occasionally turned bloody.

But the issue has gradually begun to attract the attention of the Russian news media, including government-controlled television, which has occasionally given a platform to advocates of equal rights for gay people.

As often happens, passage of the new law has helped raise to the level of national discussion the topic it was meant to suppress. The legislation set off a media frenzy when introduced late last year, and has been the subject of boisterous debates on television.

In one debate on a popular political talk show, the law’s opponents shouted down Mr. Milonov after he accused gay rights groups of “attacking” children and “trying to do them sexual harm.” At one point, the host donned a rainbow flag like a cape, taunting another legislator from St. Petersburg who suggested banning such flags because of their association with gay rights.

International human rights groups and Western governments had urged legislators not to pass the law, and a few opposition groups in Russia have condemned it.

“I consider this law a provocation intended to divide society over a question that could have been used to teach people understanding,” Aleksandr Korbinsky, an opposition member of St. Petersburg’s Parliament who voted against the measure, said on Ekho Moskvy radio. “We need to help them become full-fledged members of society, not make them feel like second-class citizens.”

Supporters of the new measure insist there is broad support in Russian society for laws meant to protect what they say are Russia’s traditional values. In a July 2010 survey by the Levada Center, a polling agency based in Moscow, 84 percent of the 1,600 adults surveyed said they opposed granting same-sex couples the right to marry. The poll showed that 45 percent said gay men and lesbians should enjoy the same rights as all other Russians, 41 percent said they should not, and 15 percent were undecided. Eighteen percent said homosexuals should be isolated from society. The poll had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

The new law is expected to face no opposition from St. Petersburg’s governor, who must sign it before it can take effect.

Legislatures in Arkhangelsk and Ryazan have passed similar laws, and others have said they would follow suit. Valentina I. Matviyenko, the chairwoman of Russia’s upper house of Parliament and a former governor of St. Petersburg, has suggested that the measure could be enacted on a federal level.

Glenn Kates contributed reporting.

News Story - Number 1

Rutgers Defendant Wrote of Keeping 'Gays Away'

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/06/nyregion/dharun-ravi-wrote-of-wanting-to-keep-gays-away.html?_r=1&ref=homosexuality

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. — A former Rutgers University student sent a message to a friend about wanting to “keep the gays away” and urged her to watch a feed from a webcam that he had trained on a bed where he expected his roommate to have a tryst with another man, according to text messages shown in court on Monday.

“Do it,” the former student, Dharun Ravi, told his friend Michelle Huang in a message on Sept. 21, 2010. “I have it pointed at his bed and the monitor is off so he can’t see you.”

The next day, the roommate, Tyler Clementi, jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge. Mr. Ravi is now on trial on charges including invasion of privacy and bias intimidation, accused of spying on Mr. Clementi as he had sexual encounters with another man. Mr. Ravi is not charged with causing Mr. Clementi’s death.

Mr. Ravi said in a text message to Ms. Huang, whom he had known since high school, that through his webcam he had seen Mr. Clementi being intimate with a man he described as “older and creepy and definitely from the Internet.”

That man, a 30-year-old known publicly only by his initials, M.B., testified on Friday that he did meet Mr. Clementi online. Upon visiting him in his dorm room, M.B. said, he noticed a webcam pointing at him from atop Mr. Ravi’s desktop computer.

Prosecutors say Mr. Ravi initially used his webcam to spy on Mr. Clementi from a computer in a neighboring dorm room on Sunday, Sept. 19, 2010, and tried to do it again two days later after Mr. Clementi again asked to have their room to himself.

In a text message, Mr. Ravi told Ms. Huang: “I got so creeped out after Sunday.” Ms. Huang suggested that Mr. Clementi and his date might use Mr. Ravi’s bed, and Mr. Ravi replied, “My webcam checks my bed, hahaha.”

He then wrote, “Yeah, keep the gays away.”

Mr. Ravi told Ms. Huang that his webcam was set to “automatically accept” whenever anyone tried to view its feed from another computer.

“I tested it and it works,” Mr. Ravi wrote. “Be careful it could get nasty.”

When a prosecutor, Julia McClure, asked Ms. Huang what she understood Mr. Ravi to have meant, she testified that she believed that the webcam feed would show “a man with another man.” Ms. Huang had referred in text messages to Mr. Ravi’s “gay roomie” and asked, “Did you really see him make out with some guy?”

A defense lawyer, Steven Altman, called Ms. Huang’s memory into question after she answered yes when he asked if some of the testimony she gave police investigators in January was “impacted by what you read in the newspaper.” The defense has maintained that Mr. Ravi checked his webcam out of fear that Mr. Clementi’s guest might steal some of his property, not because he was biased against gay men.

In his exchange of text messages with Ms. Huang on that Tuesday, Mr. Ravi alluded to having told others about his webcam.

“People are having a viewing party with a bottle of Bacardi and beer in this kid’s room for my roommate,” Mr. Ravi said.

On the Wednesday, Ms. Huang sent a message to Mr. Ravi asking what had happened the previous night. Mr. Ravi replied, “It got messed up and didn’t work.”

That Thursday afternoon, Mr. Ravi told Ms. Huang in a text message that he had learned that Mr. Clementi had committed suicide.

“He was quiet all the time and had no friends,” Mr. Ravi wrote. “So I guess it makes sense.”

Mr. Ravi also wrote, “I’m at home now till it blows over.”

These are some of the Soundtracks we considered using however voted against.

The reason why we didn't use this soundtrack was due to copyright issues that may have occurred due to the familiarity of the song.

We knew that we weren't going to use this song as it is really popular and we knew there would certainly be issues to do with copyright, however it influenced our ideas about what kind of soundtrack which we wanted. we wanted it to be fast paced and quite comical.

At one point we looked at fast paced, quite rough music as we thought it might be a good idea to reflect the gangster side of Alan through music, however we decided that this wouldn't reflect our genre which is teen comedy, therefore voted against it.

Improving Our Trailer

Our initial trailer did not work the way we had originally intended it to work, it had many classic conventions such lots of different scenes from the movie put together in a sequence, however it didn’t work as the sequence was suppose to make sense and flow, so that it was almost a short version of the film so you could understand what the story line was. Yet when our trailer was put together it did not achieve this as you couldn’t understand what the story line was. The name of the movie also contrasted with the whole concept of the film as the film was called ‘Petals Fury’ on the other hand there was hardly anything in the trailer that suggested ‘Fury’ in other words anger to the audience, even though there was a scene where we saw the main character Alan getting robbed by a couple of girls it didn’t really relate to the title as according to the title we should have actually put in a few scenes where we saw our main character get angry.

So we decided to improve upon our trailer by changing it so that our trailer was a sequence of a variety of Video Diaries created by our main character Alan, which would hint on what would happen in our film without giving out much detail. We thought that this would work better as it would achieve the intentions of a teaser trailer much better than our previous version. This way we also manage to create a sense of mystery as you don’t actually see anything from the actual movie this way it would create a direct connection with the audience leaving them to want more. This was inspired by the Toy Story 3 trailer which was one of the trailers we looked at after we realise that we had to improve on our previous trailer.

More Location Shots

Filming Our Scenes

The Props - Convent Garden

These are the props that we used in Covent Garden.

We decided to use the bag with the pennies on it, at the last second because we wanted Alan to be a more realistic street performer and when we looked at the other street performers, they had hats or dog bowls in front of them with some money in them. As it was short notice we used what we had and that we thought that would be most suitable so we used Josh's (Alan) bag and emptied out the pennies from our pockets and put them out in front of him.

Finding the shoes were quite difficult compared to the dress, as the boy who played Alan wore size 10 male shoes. We wasn't quite sure if this meant size 10 in female shoes so we went down to our local shoe shop where the lady working told us that it would be around a 43, but that not every shoe store would have this size shoe. However we were quite lucky to find a pair in the charity shop down the road. We thought that the shoes would work quite well as they looked quite worn out and clashed with the dress, and that was exactly the kind of look were going for which was quite tacky and outrageous at the same time.

This is the necklace which we used for alan to wear, it was quite simple but it looked sweet which we thought would add a nice little feminine touch to our character.

We used this silver belt as one of the other accessories purely because it was quite large and it was clearly seen when put over the dress, but the main reason was because it was shiny and silver. This was particularly useful for us as drag queens tend to like the glitz and glamour and to be the centre of attention.

This was the neck tie we used, we used both the neck tie and the necklace because the necklace was quite small and even though you could see it we thought it would be a good idea to have something a little extra.

The dress was another item we found in a charity shop, as you can see it has a shine to it and it looks like a vintage dress left over from the 80's. The reason why we chose the dress however was because we thought that it would be perfect for our character of a drag queen, as the dress looked like his mothers and that he just took it out of her wardrobe which was similar to the look we were going for.

We also used a glamour to add a bit of glamour to our character.

We used a variety of different nail varnish colours instead of sticking to the one colour, because we wanted our character to be as exaggerated as possible. In the picture below you can see the final outcome of what his nails looked like.

Photo's of location - Convent Garden

Covent Garden

On Tuesday 27th September, our group went to our chosen location

Video of our Prepartions

This a brief video that shows some of our preparations in action.

Preperations

In the photo's below you can see how we were trying to prepare for out shooting in Convent Garden, I was trying to apply the make-up and nail varnish on our main character Alan as best as I could on the bus so that we could save time when we arrived at the location, and start filming straight away.