Evaluation Question 6

Evaluation Question 7

In our prelim, the audio quality was not very good. This made the entire prelim look like an amateur piece which ruined some of the better quality shots. We overcame this by using more foley rather than relying on the camera's audio quality. This proved quite difficult as we had to ensure that it was perfectly timed to prevent it looking unprofessional. Linking with the audio issue, my group decided that it would be a better idea if we tried to film as much as possible indoors to ensure minimal audio problems. We gained an understand of steady camera shots. We realised, from doing the prelim, how important it was to use a tripod or a moving device when filming, so that the shots were not static or jolted. From having this advice and information, we were able to improve our camera shots, ensuring that they were of a high standard, still and fitted well with each shot. Realism was a big part for us as a group, as we wanted to make our film opening serious and look professional, rather than comical and fake. Therefore, we learnt from our prelim, that in order to make the shots more realistic, you shouldn't incorporate slide transitions, because it isn't realistic, but more power point, which was not our aim.

Evaluation Question 5

How did you attract/address your audience?

This is the annotated video that shows how we attracted and made sure that our final piece for our media project fitted the conventions of our specific target audience. There were many aspects to our movie opening that we did to specifically fit in with and appeal to our target audience. Within the video many annotations will pop up to explain why we did certain things throughout our movie opening. For example at the very beginning of the opening before we even meet any of the characters there is the faint sound of rap music. We have done this because we feel that it will appeal to our target audience of mainly males of 15 years and older. Little and subtle things like this in a movie such as ours can make all the difference when making sure that the movie will actually appeal to the target audience at the very least. There are other aspects to our opening that were put in place to specifically attract members of our target audience such as the fast pace of the characters exiting the van at the beginning. We believe that scenes like this will appeal to the target audience because of how fast paced it is. It adds intensity and suspense to our opening that will excite the viewers.

Audience Primary and Secondary - Movie Opening

Audience Primary & Secondary

The audience to our movie opening is a very key aspect to making sure that our media project is a success. It is very important to set out who your target audience is because that can effect the whole conventions of your movie opening. The genre of our movie is a crime thriller but it also involves a lot of action throughout along with surprises and jumps to keep the audience on the edge of their seat and also to keep them guessing. Our target audience is teenage boys of 15 years and up. The certificate for our movie is a 15 as it involves a lot of violence, but it is the violence that we think will attract our primary target audience. The majority of teenage boys are really into watching violent films which is why we chose that specific age and gender to be our target audience. I would say that it is not just teenage boys however that will be interested in the movie, I think that all males would enjoy the violence no matter what their age. It is very stereotypical to think that most men would be into the violence in films but in a lot of cases that stereotype turns out to be true! In terms of a secondary audience I would say is girls who are also interested in action and sport. The majority of girls wont be into movies like this but there is definitely a lot of girls that also like watching violent films filled with surprises to keep the viewers guessing at all times throughout the movie.

Evaluation of Storyboard - Movie Opening

Evaluation of Storyboard

 

The storyboard for our media project covers everything that we needed to make sure that we knew what we were doing, what was going on in each shot and how long the shots lasted for. The storyboard was the perfect way to actually get our ideas on to paper so that we could start planning the opening that we had envisaged. It helps us to determine what else we need and what is actually missing from the opening that would make it even better.

In each square there is a drawing of what will happen and underneath is the text that explains what needs to happen but also what kind of shot will be needed and how long the scene will take in terms of the opening. I think that our storyboard does all of these things and was really helpful when we needed to look back at it as it was very clear and helped us remember what we had to do in terms of the type of shot and what is suppose to happen in that specific shot. Our storyboard was drawn as we knew that members of our group had the capabilities to make sure that their drawings were clear and easy to understand. Our spoken storyboard I believe is also at a very good standard. The spoken storyboard is again very clear and well spoken so that it makes it easier for us to know what we are doing.

Fonts for Titles and Film Name Research - Movie Opening

Fonts for Titles and Film Name Research

For our movie opening it was important to us that we got everything perfect and to the standard that we wanted right down to the little details. One of the little details that is actually quite important is the font of every piece of text throughout the opening. The first thing we looked at was the style of the font. Because our movie is a crime thriller film with lots of action we thought that the style should be quite bold. This is so that it would stand out throughout the opening to add the effect that the movie is full of surprises and jumps. We also first thought that the text should be black but realised that would not be possible as the movie opening as a whole is quite dark, so black was off the table. The next colour we thought was grey. We went with a light grey because again we knew that dark grey would be way too hard to see, but the light grey works perfectly as it is really easy to see. We was also thinking about the colour red because that would make the text really stand out but decided against it because we thought it would make our opening look to much like that of a horror movie which is not what we wanted.

Evaluation Question 1

Question 1- In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Question 1

Genre Research
Our genre being action, gave us a wide variety of films to turn to for inspiration. We chose this genre because it was the majority vote in our group, we also had previously come up with a storyline for an opening that would fit with the action genre which was convenient. Action generally consists a person or group facing a number of different challenges. This means there are more likely to be chase scenes, fights, and life threatening situations, all of which have been included in our film opening. In multiple famous action films there is a villain for example Die Hard is an action film about a detective who encounters a terrorist and must take on a group during a heist. A typical stereotype of action films is that many special FX are used which highlights the impressive modern use of technology making it look new, different and appealing to a wider range of audience. Action films typically have the most enigma, leaving you feeling on edge throughout and leaving you wanting to see more.

 

 

Codes & Conventions

Commonly set in big cities, action films revolve around modernised areas rather than quieter places to give a busy atmosphere building up enigma and tension.

 

 

 

Sequence Development

• We initially had the idea of doing an army themed opening, basing it on a boy named Sam who grows up to be a soldier, which has been his dream since he was a child. We were going to show his growing up through a timeline style starting at age 3 of real footage of a child saying he wanted to be 'Soldier Sam'. All our group members liked this idea and we had thoroughly planned the shots we were going to take, the risks and how to overcome them however we concluded that the  shots would've been too hard to shoot in the time frame we had. We appropriately went back to 'step 1' of our individual film pitches, having agreed we were going to stick with the genre of action, and discussed ideas and thoughts towards a new opening. This is when we discovered the Heist idea would turn out to look effective if we managed to pull it off seeing that the preparation time we had was shortened due to the change of storyline. We put in many extra hours so we had made up for missed time to ensure completion by the deadline. To begin with, with our initial plan of the Army storyline we were going to mainly focus on getting close up shots to show that the film was based purely on an individual. For shots that Sam was not going to be featured in, we would make it a long shot to show lack of importance to small detail. 

Narrative

We decided we wanted some enigma rather than a lot in our opening to diminish confusion. The audience will be questioning why the characters are in the house, also they will wonder why at the end one of the characters say they are looking for their sister. Often in action films there is a lot of enigma throughout as the film is usually a constant cycle of enigma and solving enigma similarly in Luther and Sherlock.  Audiences tend to sit on the edge of their seats when watching a film with a lot of action, spectacle and enthusiasm as it connects directly with their feelings. Film openings make it hard to show layer of meaning (Semantic code in Barthes' theory) however at the end where the scripted scene occurs and the character says 'What do you mean you haven't found my sister?' this could have a number of different interpretations therefore showing a layer of meaning. We have included the symbolic code by using props such as balaclavas to show the nature of our characters. Balaclavas symbolise danger due to the lack of facial features exposed creating a sense of unease to the audience and sympathy for the young girl in the house alone.

9 shot grid

Evaluation Question 2

Within this post, I begin to talk about the target audience. This is so that I gain a good understanding of who our target audience is, to understand the social groups we wish to aim it at. I then begin to talk and answer a variety of questions in order to establish the answer to this question.

 

Point 1) The social groups that we believe our media is targeted at.

Point 2) What were the survey results and how did this help you

Point 3) The results and how this helped us to understand the social groups, and then goes onto age, gender and race.

Point 4) The ages of our media and how this will benefit or affect the social groups

Point 5) Stereotypes and camera angles within our media

Point 6) The costumes that we chose, and why we chose them. How this benefits the social groups.

Point 7) The make up and hair within our media.

 Here are some typical profile screenshots of who we think will be the main viewers of our film. We think the average age will be teenagers and males and females between the age of 16- 28. We think this because those of that age are more likely to have the spare time and be exposed to gaming, films and social life that contain action and violence. 

 

Evaluation Question 4

Evidence of how planned opening fits with research into codes/conventions of genre and audience - Movie Opening

Evidence of how planned opening fits with research into codes/conventions of genre and audience

The genre of our movie opening is like a crime/thriller movie so this involves research into other films that are similar and what makes those films the genre that they are.

The movie above known as the town was a big inspiration for us as it has scenes that replicate the effect that we want to create for our audience when watching a crime/thriller movie. In our opening we chose to use a big van at the start to show the criminal characters inside of the van. Although the van we used was fairly different it still creates the same effect. In terms of the actual characters in the town they are all wearing the same costume when engaging in their criminal activity. Although our characters were not wearing all of the same costumes we made sure that everyone was wearing black and most importantly were covering their faces with a mask of some kind. In terms of the genre crime/thriller i think that the hiding of the face is a very significant and key factor when fitting in with the codes and conventions of the genre. The whole idea of a criminal is to not get caught so it makes sense that both sets of characters in the town and our movie opening would conceal their identity as much as they possibly can.

In the town also the scene in the van is quite slow paced as their is a shot of one of the criminals looking out of the window in slow motion, but then all of a sudden it becomes much more fast paced as they jump straight out of the van and begin their criminal activity. We have kind of gone for the same feel, although we do not have any slow motion shots, when our criminals jump out the van the opening will gain a lot of pace as they then descend into the garden through the backdoor into the house. The use of weapons is also apparent in the genre, in particular guns. As seen in the image above the criminals have guns so we have also equipped our criminals with their own weapons.

In terms of audience we looked at the batman film the dark knight. We thought this would be helpful because of the age group they are looking at. They will be looking at mainly boys who are of 15 years old and above. Which also is the same target audience as us. This film is extremely fast paced which we think is why mainly teens in particular boys will like our movie opening because of the fast pace and action that it has. The whole idea of criminality adds an excitement to both the batman film and our movie opening which we think will attract the target audience.

Prelim Task Evaluation

Prelim Task Evaluation

My group consisted of me, Kelsey and Evan. The first job we did was to discuss who would be doing what job. This was a very important and key process of making the perfect prelim task because it gave everyone a role and we knew that if everybody was able to complete their jobs then it would be a success. The planning stage I thought was very productive and worked well. We decided that although it would be a challenge, we wanted to do a comedy film. This was decided between all of us along with the storyline which was quite hard to think of but we put our ideas together and came up with what believed was a great and unique idea. There were a lot of factors to take into account when we were planning, shooting and editing. We had to discuss when we would be able to shoot because we all had free periods at different times so we had to use lunchtimes and media lessons for filming. Planning all happened in the classes along with editing although that did run into after school but it was mainly Kelsey who was editing. I think that overall our sequence was a success, the fact that people laughed and it was a comedy was a good sign! The feedback was generally good but some people were unclear on the genre so now we know for next time to make the genre a lot more clearer. My own personal opinion on the piece was that it was good and very clear. Another thing I would do differently is communication with my group. A lack of communication did lead to an argument of sorts so I know that for next time I have to communicate more with my group. I think the main change would be making sure that everyone knows what the genre actually is. Next time i will have to do some research into similar films with the given genre so i can look carefully at what actually makes that film whatever genre it is. Other thought our final piece was really funny, both media students and non media students thought that it was funny, which is what we were going for. I have mainly learnt that communication with other members of the group is vital in making the best product possible. Everyone knows their job and can just get on with what they need to do. looking forward to future group projects i would say the prelim task has been a great learning curve.

Production Diary - Movie Opening

Production Diary

Day 1 - 9/11/15

On this day we had to think about who we wanted to work with in our group, everyone started by coming up with their own ideas that they had thought up via Emaze presentations in which everyone outlined their idea and how and what they would need to pull it off. 

Day 2 - 10/11/15

This was the day that the members of each group were decided and when we was in our groups, everyone shared their ideas to the rest of their new group. This is a very important stage of development because it lets everyone have a say and also lets the group incorporate something they like into the opening.

Day 3 - 12/11/15
We decided to take all ideas that our group had, anonymously, and put them on to one big mind map. We did it anonymously to make sure that everyone in the group could give their ideas and it wasn't just one person making all of the decisions. We discussed key things such as what genre the opening would be and what the content would be.

Day 4 - 13/11/15
Everyone else in the class got to see everyone present their group ideas. So of course are group presented our idea and we got some feedback back. We discussed our feedback as soon as we got it so that we knew what people liked and didn't like. This allowed us make changes to our idea, this probably the start of when we started to decide against our idea as we would eventually change our minds.

Day 5- 18/11/15
The group started the research stage of the movie opening task on this day. The storyboard was drafted up and a voiceover was recorded over the storyboard that explained everything that was happening in each scene. Actors needed were also scouted for parts.

Day 6 - 19/11/15
A member of the group was unfortunately ill on this day so the remaining members had to work hard around that and try and do more research then they had done before so that the group did not fall behind the other groups. Everyone carried on with the research stage where we did things like a risk assessment and advertising campaign.

Day 7 - 20/11/15
Every group member today carried on with the individual task they had been set to help with the progression of the movie opening. Another member was ill again however so the same rules applied as the day before.

Timeline of Opening, timings, titles and sound

Timeline

Final Piece - Movie Opening

Final Piece

Below is our final piece for our movie opening. A lot of changes have been made from the first draft up to this point. I am very happy with how the group worked together to make this final piece. They all did a great job in bringing it all together for this movie opening!



Film Poster - Movie Opening

 

Film Poster Doubled

 

Below is the film poster for our movie opening. We think that the poster perfectly captures our opening as it is very dark and shows the criminals.