Foundation Portfolio-Evaluation
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
We have created an opening sequence to a crime thriller feature film, a classic media product. It is identifiable as a crime thriller with the crime being committed and a conclusion to it unresolved. We have used the classic thriller conventions of the genre. Using a young women victim and a tense score.
We created the tense score using the computer programme “Garage Band”. Our score consists of dramatic, percussive sounds that create a depressing, lonely atmosphere to underscore the title of the film “Alone”.
We use the classic genre convention of increase in pace of both this the action and the musical score to lure the audience into the plot.
We used extreme close up shots to elucidate the emotions of the characters and then longer shots to establish the setting and mood of the sequence. We used three different locations, South Bank, School, and a bathroom. In the bathroom scenes we used low key lighting to create the emotions associated with the characters flash backs to distressing events.
In the flash back scenes, filmed at the South Bank and in school, we used high key lighting to create a sense of realism.
Our casting challenges the forms and conventions of a thriller by using teenage characters, but complies with convention in the use of a helpless, female victim.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our characters represent different teenage stereotypes. The Emo is an emotionally sensitive youth, the bully is a big white guy with short hair (thoughts of skinheads), and the female victim is small and frail. They are all students as most teenagers are. We used stereo types to put across the role of the characters with out any back ground into them. If we had challenged these stereotype it may of confused the audience.
Friendship is a strong theme, especially the lack of it. Bullying is such a real concern for many teenagers today, as it always has been.
In general the teenagers in our film are portrayed as troubled. This follows the conventions of TV programmes over the years portraying teenagers-Grange Hill in the past and Holly Oaks and skins in the present.
Knife crime amongst teenagers is much more prevalent today in
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
Our product is an independent feature film, made on a minimal budget and with a limited cast selection. compared to a main stream film which could have millions to spend on there film and all the greatest actors available to them.
The main distribution route would initially be the internet. Using website like YouTube. We would hope that the introduction teaser would generate viral interest from the public and also film festival organisers with the hope of getting film festival exposure. The creating of interest by free exposure of parts of the film is essential to the marketing plan.
We could start with more local media for instance Chiswick W4 website and local newspapers for the generation of interest. We could show it around local school 6th forms and film clubs.
We would aim for final distribution in independent cinemas like the electric in Portobello theses show independent films not only mainstream which give a chance for my film to be seen to a wider audience. We could only have it shown in independent and art house cinemas because mainstream cinemas are there to make a big profit and can only do so on big name films.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
Our target audience is 15 to 25 year olds, males and females, and all races. We think that the themes are universal to teenagers whether urban or not. We think that the BBFC censor would pass this as suitable for 15 year olds because there is no gratuitous violence or graphic sex.
I think the themes of the film, friendship, loneliness, bullying and death from stabbing contribute to the film appealing to our targeted audience. Also the age of the cast will help to attract the target audience.
How did you attract/address your audience?
We chose the themes of bullying, loss of friendship and murder to be appealing to teenagers because teenagers in particular experience bullying and frequently struggle with issues of belonging. They some times fear for the safety of there friends. The age of the characters was also chosen to appeal to the target audience as it is easier to empathise with the same age group. The urban environment and the school setting are used to draw in the audience to familiar territory. I think that we ought to have made our score more contemporary and exciting as this could have potentially attracted the youth audience more than our existing score does. We showed the film clip to our class and distributed a questionnaire to collect their feed back. From these questionnaires we found people thought that are film was mainly quite relevant or very relevant to the thriller genre, also concluded that it maybe hard to understand the idea of the flash backs so we changed the order of the sequences so it flows more fluently. On are flashbacks we used a effect which the audience did not like this was because they thought it was tacky but we used this to show the difference between the real world and flash backs if we had a bigger budget and better effects we would of used this to improve it. Every one thought it was very relevant to are target audience. We would hope to show it to other sixth form groups or film club groups. We would also like to take it in to local youth clubs. This would not only be a way of getting are film seen to are target audience and also to get feedback.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
I have learnt how to use a blog website to post my research and planning into the thriller genre so that individual research work of our group can be shared.I have learnt how to use a video camera in order to make the film. The camera we used is a dv camera which uses dv tape. This gives the film a grainy realistic look paying homage to the famous horror film “the blair witch project”. And it was sutiable for the type of film we where trying to make.
I used I movies editing software to edit my footage in order to create a coherent product. We created the score using Garage Band software which is a sound database which takes sounds and puts them together to make a song. Youtube is a video sharing website which we used to post are film it is a free website which has millions of uses all over the world where any one can upload. I utilised the internet to research into the thriller and into age certificates also to find copy right free music but in the end we used garage band.
Looking back at the preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
The preliminary task had little time for planning and research unlike the full product which had plenty of both. In the preliminary task we had a very limited selection of cast, location and lighting due to being restricted to filming in school. With the main task we could select from a wider cast and choose our subject, location and lighting. We had no score in the first task just dialogue. we learnt that the score is an essential film element when we used it in the second task. The problems we encountered in the preliminary task were problems of continuity due to the intrusions of the every day life of the school. The lighting had to be the every day school lighting. The mise en scene in the preliminary task was limited by the school environment and the actors in school wear.
In our second task we made sure that we controlled environment, lighting and casting where ever possible. We made sure when we could we would stop people waking past the camera when filming this was harder when we were filming in south bank but when in school and in the bath room we made sure we had a closed set. We used lamps to choose the lighting to create shadows where we wanted them and create a dark and tense atmosphere.
Not only could we control these factors we had a lot more time to pick are cast and had a lot larger rang of actors to choose from all these made a huge improvement to are main task compared to are first task.
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