Evaluation Questions:
1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
The ways in which our media piece uses technical conventions in order to make the piece look like a legitimate opening sequence is through the combination of camera angles, cast and setting. We established that the genre of the piece was going to be a crime/thriller as we thought this would be the easiest to portray and we had studied many different films in which came under this genre therefore we had the best idea of what effects in which to include and how a opening sequence to this genre would go. The main characters are established almost straight away in the piece as the antagonist is driving the car and the protagonist is in the car boot. The techniques in which we took from other similar films were the use of particular camera angles such as: Handheld shot, high and low angled shots in which establish character status. We also used editing in order to present the piece to be darker; we found this reflected the piece as we tried to create a dark and eerie atmosphere around the piece. The main film we tried to base our media piece around was the film ‘seven’ this w3as because it had much of the seven conventions in which we wanted to include. Below there are a few still images from both our piece and ‘seven’ to show the similarities between the pieces.
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
The genre of our piece is an action/crime/thriller therefore our target audience is people who enjoy this genre and are over the age of 15 which is the age certificate for our piece. We tried to appeal to wide range of audience with by using a variety of different aged actors to increase our target audience. The genre of the piece also helps towards expanding the target audience as action is a much loved genre and is very popular around the world. The costume was chosen by Lauren Matthews and the attire used was very general in that there were no outstanding features therefore not being specific to any particular social group. The stereotype in which we used was that the main antagonist (Clive Lennon) was a big bruiser who had tattoos and a typical British accent this was typical of any British gangster film the use of a Jaguar also gave the piece more cultural significance. Our films directed at more of a younger audience as is shown by the modern costume of the protagonist (Anthony Dinatale) this characterization appeals to a younger audience, as the protagonist reflects the audience targeted
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
Our group decided that if our media piece was going to be produced and commercialized we would use the film company ‘film four’. The target audience for our media piece is for the movie channel ‘film four’ this is because film four has a tendency to play some indie films which have low budgets, they are also a British company and therefore there is more opportunity in which to get the film publicized towards the British audience which is what our media piece is directed towards. Film four which is part of the channel four franchises have attempted to broaden their horizons by bringing in films, film four have had some successes such as slum dog millionaire in which backed by film four and after the Oscars was seen to be a driving force behind the film, we hope that our film would create the revenue and popularity in the same way as independent films such as: ‘Bullet boy’. The reason we have targeted film four is because our piece is not a Hollywood blockbuster but a low budget film and therefore the target audience is particularly small and revenue streams are minimal in comparison to films shown on Television channels such as sky movies. ‘Slumdog millionaire’ was the biggest film of 2009 receiving a lot of Oscars and many academy awards in the process, this shows that film four are a legitimate company who support both high and low budget film and have plenty of successes, the company also has its own TV programme therefore boosting potential airtime for the film.
4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
We decided that the target audience of our piece would be older teenagers; the social groups affected have already been addressed in question two. We decided that the age certificate of our piece should be a 15 this is because the film does not contain any extreme violence or gore. Another point in which backs the choice of age certificate is that our film does not contain any full frontal nudity neither does it have any bad language. We have not restricted our target audience with the age certificate because the target audience for the piece is above this. The audience is dependent on who is portrayed in the piece and for our film we present a wide range of ages therefore appealing to a wide range. The piece contains violence and the props include the likes of: a gun, a car and a mobile phone. We decided that the rest of our piece would include some violence but nothing extreme therefore not quite reaching the rating of 18. Other films in which we have tried to base our piece around are the like of ‘seven’ and ‘inside man’ both of these films are around the category of crime thriller in which was rated 18 or 15 which was the barrier in which we tried to reenact. We used a teenager in our piece which potentially creates a target audience of older teenagers. We feel that the actors reflect the audience in the piece.
5. How did you attract/ address your audience?
We tried to appeal to a wide audience by choosing a popular genre this enabled us to have a range of audiences spanning across a lot of different ages. We tried to establish the characters early so that the audience could sympathize with the character. We posted our AS piece on Facebook and YouTube to get some audience feedback. We felt that we would get good feedback as our main protagonist reflected the audience we had previously aimed at. Here is an example of audince feedback that we received…
We produced a questionnaire in which asked the audience if our piece had reached its preliminary objectives.
-Did you enjoy the film?
18 out of 20 people enjoyed the film.
-What genre would you say our film was?
Out of 20 people originally asked, 13 people thought that it was a Crime thriller which was the genre in which we had previously aimed at, 4 people thought it was action which could be seen as a sub genre within the piece, 2 horror and 1 thought it was a psycho thriller.
-Do you think it had a good storyline?
Everyone asked found the plot of the piece interesting.
- Do you think the characters suited their roles?
All participants found that the actors managed to fit the roles in which they portrayed.
-Were the characters roles clear?
The majority of the audience found the roles in the piece clear however the scene in which the two main antagonists are shown the audience seem to become confused as to who the stranger on the phone was.
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
The technologies in which we used within our piece were: The Camera, Editing software, Tripod, Still Camera and the music. Within the original research for the piece I used the internet and DVD’s in which gave me a broad overlook on the genre (crime thriller) we previously wanted. The internet allowed me to look at the typical conventions in which are traditionally used in thriller based films. The DVD’s were used in order to get some examples of the genre and allowed me to look at the effects and camera angles in which were used in the movie so that I could possibly reenact it into our piece, whilst watching the examples I occasionally listened to the audio commentary to listen to both directors and actors comment on the piece. This allowed me to realize why they used particular techniques and how they created the eerie atmosphere around the piece. During the construction of the piece we used a still camera in order to get ideas for possible film locations, the camera allowed us to look over the locations afterwards and decide on the best possible one. During the filming process we used an ordinary handheld camera in which restricted us with the quality of both sound and picture however the only camera in which we could use therefore was what we had to make do with. The editing software was quite basic however allowed us to do the necessary touches to our piece in order to bring it all together. The software allowed us to put a dark filter on the piece which helped towards the thriller genre. For the evaluation we posted our work on to Facebook, this allowed us to get audience feedback and see what other people thought of our piece.
7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Looking back at the preliminary I see the naivety of us, the camera angles in which we used were quite imaginative however the ways in which the piece was put together did not have the same fluency in which we have in our AS piece. There is a scene in the preliminary piece in which pans across the antagonists face onto a picture this was poorly done and because we were in a rush to get it done so we did not re-do it resulting in our piece looking a lot poorer. The editing in the piece was also very poor as we were new to the whole aspect so we did not have a clue what we were doing so we just stitched the piece together and attempted to put a few effects in however this was no properly done so the preliminary piece seems to skip in some places. For our main AS piece we corrected these problems by giving ourselves plenty of time for which to do it, this allowed us to correct any potential mistakes we made. We also tried to avoid doing any panning shots as the tripod we used was not very sturdy and therefore we could not really do it, so we just had to piece different establishing shots together to make the piece flow more. We also gave Perry a more prominent role in our main AS and allowed him to do pretty much all of the editing. He was much more gifted at this therefore we were able to experiment with different techniques. The main task was a lot more difficult to maintain a decent storyline as it was not a 20 second clip but a full 2 minutes. We have tried to use a lot more variety of camera shots to give different aspects of the piece; this also allowed us to give a different point of view.
