Final Film

Final Film

Cameron Eade

Evaluation: Question 7

Q7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Ryan Moore

Evaluation: Question 6

What have you learnt about the technologies from the process of constructing the product?

Camera- Due to me already having lots of experience in video filming and editing we decided to use my camera equipment as we felt the quality we could get from it could be better. I taught Cameron and Ryan many things such as their way around the camera and how to use it etc.

Editing - Due to me already having editing experience I played a key role in this process. I did a majority of the editing as it is hard telling somewhere where to click and when etc.. Ryan and Cameron watched over me so they could pick up skills for when they did some of the editing. Overall we all learned skills in the Final Cut Pro program.

As a group we all used 'YouTube' many times when creating our film opening. When we were researching film openings as a group within in similar genres and titles research we used YouTube. The group also used YouTube when we uploaded our first rough cut of our film opening and the final draft

'Blogger' was the most used technology used by the group when creating our film opening.We used it for both out group blogs as well as our own personal blogs. It allowed us to create posts quickly and easily due to its simpleness.

Overall as a group we used many different types of technology. To create the final draft of 'Decorum' all of these programmes and software had to be used to help the film opening come together. 

Tom Free

Evaluation - Question 4&5

Q4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

I feel that the ideal age for our target audience would be between the ages of 15+. This is due to the fact it is a futuristic film and they will want a hindsight of what we have predicted will happen in the future. 15 is a good age as at this age you should be able to have a better understanding of the narrative. The gender target would be boys and girls. It will slightly be slanted towards the boy side due to the non-stereotypical aspect of a girl performing a crime. Boys often like to watch films related to crime and having a good looking girl character may also attract them to watching the film. The reason girls would go and watch it, is due to the fact it is a girl as the main character and may feel they can relate to them.

A current film that is available which is similar to ours I would suggest is Children Of Men. I say this because it is also based in the future and has relation to government laws etc. The film was based in 2027 in a chaotic world. Women are seen to become somehow fertile and a former activist agrees to help transport a miraculously pregnant woman to a sanctuary at sea. Although very different narratives, the theme of the film and relation to government is the reason why I suggested this film.

From audience planning an research, they also agreed that a 15+ would be a good age range for our film. They also said that the narrative and genre of our film in very rateable and is something that the would happily pay to go and watch. 

Q5. How did you attract/address your audience?

For our audience to be attracted to come and watch our film, we would have to make sure that we would advertise for this film which would be relate able for our target audience. We thought that a good way to advertise would be through social media. This is a cheap and easy way to advertise our film. There are millions of people at the age range of 15+ who are on social media and spend over three hours a day looking at it. A reason the audience would be attracted is due to our main Character being a girl. Girls will feel they can relate you her scenario she is in and feels that this world is going downhill and we spend to much time on social media. A big thing that may appeal to the older age range is the government side of the film. Being have many political views on how the government is run and watching this film may cause them to express their opinion on how the feel about government actions. Overall, both genders would want to watch the film of a younger age as social media is the next big thing and everyone feels that it has an impact on them. This film may change minds on how the feel about it which is another narrative we are trying to put across. 

To make our character to look dominant for our audience, we made sure we had a lot of close up shots and tried to make sure she was included in every frame whether it be walking or sitting down. We want the audience to put themselves in the position of our main character and think how the would feel in that current situation. We would want them to ask themselves if they would listen to government laws or rebel like our character. A big statement that comes from this film is that it is a girl that is committing an offence be rebelling against government law. It is not common that a girl would do this and is more related to boys doing so. A generic convention of crime thriller would be a dominant male. In our scenario we have a dominant female. We wanted to do this to attract the female audience and give them a sense of power and importance. 

Ryan Moore 

Evaluation: Question 3

What kind of media institution might distribute your  media product and why?

Our film would be distributed solely on the Internet as a digital download.

Our film would be sold through media market giants such as the Apple iTunes Platform as well as the Amazon Prime Instant Video Platform. You may question why it is not being distributed on sites such as Netflix etc. this is because they do not have a paid movies section. All the movies available through Netflix come with the monthly fee paid. However, iTunes have no monthly fee but the moves are either rented or owned, and amazon have a monthly fee to watch Amazon Prime content but you have to pay an additional fee to watch the movie.

We chose this path of distribution for multiple reasons. The first being that financially we cannot afford to distribute our movie to a cinema or picture house. our film may not appeal to as many people as we believe and therefore it will not get the returns. This again would put us in financial difficulty. and secondly, our film is targeted at 15-35 year olds as many of them would use social media so advertising is key. They would also much rather watch a film online than go out to a cinema as it is instant and they can watch it whenever they want. Usually people go to the cinema with others and overall it works out more then buying/renting the film from an online service such as iTunes or Amazon Prime.

Tom Free

Evaluation: Question 2

Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In our film, we portray girls to look rebellious, this is slightly non stereotypical as usually girls are meant to well behaved and do as they are asked. However in our film, the female character is disobeying or attempting to disobey government laws. We have chosen to do this as it shows a different side and wanted to go against the stereotype. Our film is predominantly from a female’s point of view throughout the film, however we didn't want to show only females, so to contrast we decided to use a male to play our news reporter just to split up gender. Therefore we represented gender in both a stereotypical and non-stereotypical way as we had the male character dressed in a suit and looking professional which is what is expected.

Gender is shown in our clip through the use of different characters. For example, we use both a male and female character within our film. This was done to create contrast. We used the female character for our role of the rule breaker as we felt we were able to show women in a different way, as they usually aren't seen breaking the rules. The clothing we used for our male character are also stereotypical as men are often dressed smart or in suits, this worked well for us because it made our character look professional and appropriate for his role within the film.

The News reporter in our film connotes professionalism. He is seen to be wearing clothes that are associated with those in the same profession as him. This shows that are character is correctly dressed for the role he has in our film. When filming our news report we used a medium shot of our character producing a news report in the centre of town, we chose to do our news report there as we felt it would be more effective to show people in the background, especially as the news report was about the government placing a new law in which people could only socialise through social media.

Age is shown non stereotypically in our film, this is because the people that we have used for our film are both 17. However the male character we have used we have tried to portray him to look older as his role with in the film requires him to be a little bit older than he is. We have done that by making sure that he is dressed smart which we believed makes him look older than he actually is. When casting for this job role one of the things we were looking for was facial hair as again that would make them look older and be able to play an adult role better.
The main character in our film was a female and we showed her point of view whenever she was in the was in the scene. The use of the over the shoulder shot we did when the girl was watching the television showed that it was from her point of view.

I feel that our film links quite nicely to our target audience, our film is aimed at teenagers between 12 - 18. It is accurate for our target audience because our main character is a teen and they are able to relate to our film much more than if our main character was aged 30. I would say as our film is from a females point of view it may be more specifically aimed at female teenagers as it could appeal to them more, however I would say that because of our government law storyline it also appeals to the male teenage audience.

Cameron Eade

Evaluation: Question 1

Question 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms of conventions of real media products?

Annotated Video

Annotations that are in the video

Before filming our final piece, it was important for us to do some research on the generic conventions that are used in sci-fi/crime/thriller films. We did this because it was a necessary or us to include those conventions within our film otherwise we wouldn't have been able to access high marks. Another reason why we did some research was so that we were able to get more knowledge on the genre and so that we were able to get some ideas for our film.

Titles

When deciding on what titles to have it was important that we researched title sequences before we actually started looking at different titles to use. This was because we needed to ensure that they were fit for purpose and went with our genre. It was also necessary for us to research the way in which the titles came in and the order in which they came on screen. For this we watched several different title sequences in order to work out the order for us to use when doing our titles. When looking at title sequences it was important for us to look at both mainstream and independent in order for us to look at both and the differences between them so that when it came to doing our titles we were able to show a difference between institutions. We also looked at the designs of institutional logos so that when it came to doing ours we had some ideas and again so we could make one fit for our institution (Independent). When doing our fonts for our titles we looked at Inception as the films genre is fairly similar.

The Product

Our media product uses the forms of generic conventions of real media products as it follows similar traits of real media products such as generic conventions in our chosen genre. For example we tried our best to find non diegetic sound that was similar to a sci-fi film opening such as Inception. We also looked at different camera shots with in our genre and used some of them in our film opening, such as the establishing shot like in Ant Man. Most film openings begin with an establishing shot and it is done to set the scene and inform the audience of the location of the film. One of our main aims for our film was to really bring across the futuristic aspect of our film as one of the genres we looked at was sci-fi. Our way of doing so, was to change the way in which people are able to communicate which would potentially upset a lot of people. From our protagonists point of view we were able to show that and bring across to the audience how the government law would affect people. A common generic convention for a thriller was to include close ups and therefore in our film opening we chose to use a close up as we felt that the audience would really be able to feel how the protagonist was feeling at that moment in time.

Challenge Conventions and forms of real Media Products

When creating our film opening we tried to ensure that we kept to the typical conventions and forms of other media products in order to make sure that our film delivered what it is supposed to and shows a genre and narrative that is easy enough to follow.

Influences from other films

I believe that the research we have done on film openings meant that we were in a good position to create our own film opening and use what we had learnt/research to make a product of good quality. By doing research on different topic areas within film opening it has helped us to really focus on what makes a good film opening  and then we were able to use some of these ideas and conventions in order to create our own media product. For example, by looking at the title sequence of Inception we were then able to use a font which we felt showed the genre well and looked professional and fit for purpose. Also with the title it meant we were able to position them appropriately and ensure that they were in the correct order to create something that followed the film opening guidelines. We made our own story line up and chose our own shots for our film so I feel that the only real influences from other films was for the titles within in our film opening.

Cameron Eade