Friday 11 May 2012

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

Evaluation Question 7:

Technology
Preliminary Exercise:
To start off, we used my Blackberry Torch 9800(Phone) to record the first few drafts of our preliminary exercise, then when we recieved The Sony Bloggie video camera we shot the whole of our preliminary exercise and used the available Apple Mac's to put together the clips on the applicatin 'Final Cut Pro' and used GarageBand to find a scream like sound to add on top of our recording.

Final Coursework:
We used the Sony Bloggie to record all the drafts and extras of our final coursework, then once again we used the Mac's and Final Cut Pro to put together the shots we recorded but this time we used cuts like Fade In/Fade Out and effects to slow down time which gave emotion and effects which made it look as if the characters were drunk with a blurry drunk effect. We used my phone once again and this time we recorded a theme tune for our film, the phone was to record the first draft of our lyrics which we improved and used a microphone for our final lyrics, using Garageband we found sound effects for certain scenes and sorted out the audio for our theme tune including bass and instrumentals. We have definately improved with technology using everything in much more detail than we had in our preliminary and using much more technology to.

Mise-en-Scene
Preliminary Exercise:
We thought of putting my character in a black suit to give him a more darker look as he is a russian spy and thought it would suit his personality, we didn't do this with any other characters, they just happened to be in suits at the time due to it being in school times. We didn't use any props and thought to use our hands as guns, so we obviouly didn't think much into it. The most obvious thing is the lighting, it is different in every scene and would of need to be sorted out if it were our coursework. Whoopsy.

Final Coursework:
All 3 characters were in suis for our coursework, this was purposful nd we decided to make certain characters look less smart, for instance one doesn't wear a tie and another wears a hoodie to show the rebellion in the teenage characters. We improved with props definately in our coursework as we used glue on Olivers shoulder as bird excrement which i believe would be a prop, we also used a hat and a wine bottle and from this we definately see an improvement from 'hand' guns to wine bottles. The lighting is also a lot more improved in our coursework, we made sure all shots were shot in around about the same lighting and same time of day, then used colour correction on shots that were more dark than the rest, which sorted out the lighting and gives a definite improvement.


Cinematography
Preliminary Exercise:
We were told to put at least 5 different shots in our preliminary and we did this without fail and in my opinion used a varied amount for our preliminary which would be hard to beat in our coursework. The camera was extremely unsteady in our preliminary which we didn't really seem to realise and we broke the 180 degree rule i believe. Unpurposful of course.

Final Coursework:
Our shot types had improved massively, although we already had a varied amount in our preliminary, we were able to use medium shots and long shots in our final coursework due to it being filmed outside, we also showed a lot more expression and friendship with close ups and two shots. Unfortunately our camera skills were still quite shaky in this piece but had definately improved from our preliminary and varied shot types definitely improved as time went on.


Editing
Preliminary Exercise:
We didn't think much into this for our preliminary, we simply put the shots together in order using Final Cut pro and added sound effects such as Stephen's character screaming and a gun shot at the end. Also at the end the screen does freeze but we didn't think much into editing.

Final Coursework:
We put together the shots as we did for our preliminary but we thought that cuts between shots looked to jumpya nd fast paced so we decided to use Fade In/Fade Out to make it look more professional, this is definitely an improvement. We also added a lot more effects such as the slow motion of the scene my increasing gaps between frames and also the drunken 'WideTime' effect, we definately thought more into this and aded a theme tune hich we edited together with audio and sound, then of course added title credits over the tp of this so our skills definitely improved.


Sound
Preliminary Exercise:
We didn't do anything with sound in the preliminary, we simply filmed with our Sony Bloggie and whatever sound we picked up is what we put in our final preliminary.

Final Coursework:
We realised here that the sound was not of high quality and this was probably due to us filming by a busy road, most dialogue was picked up but there was a lot of background noise such as wind and cars, so we decided to overdub the dialogue which was a good idea and helped us understand what the character's were saying but we didn'tnhave eenought ime to finalise the volume.
We also added sound effects such as a bird sound, the sound of someone walking into a door and the theme tune which we made sure was of similar volume to the dialogue and we thought went very well, considering the fact that we didn't even consider sound in our preliminary, we definitely improved.


Narrative
Preliminary Exercise:
Considering this was our preliminary and all we had to do was walk into a roo and share dialogue, i think we established a very clear narrative of an interrogation that got out of hand and ended up in death.  Now this wasn't meant to be of a high standard so i think we did very well anyway.


Final Coursework:
From my feedback, a very clear narrative was established and therefore all the audiences could tell what was going on, compared to our preliminary we did much more preparation on this as we went out of our way to think of a genre, storyline and script, this took time and effort and we put so many hours in for our coursework, in filming, editing, rehearsing and finalising. Overall our final coursework is better than our preliminary in every single way, we used more technology, everything was in more depth, the audience had nothing but positive feedback for our coursework and therefore it was a success.

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


Tuesday 8 May 2012

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

Evaluation Question 3:

To start with i thought i'd talk about the way 'The Inbetweeners' is produced, Bwark Productions is a London based comedy producer founded in 2004 by two former Channel 4 commissioning editors – Iain Morris and Damon Beesley. Bwark is best known in the UK for its hit E4 comedy series The Inbetweeners. From this i can tell these are the sort of producers that would attempt to distribute our film or at least know those who would, it isnt a hugely well known production comedy which is good as i need a company that would distribute my film and they wouldnt be a major film distributor but would focus mostly on the lad, teenage, comedy genre.

I believ that to find a distributor, they must be a British film distributor engaged by the genre of comedy, so that they will see this piece and immediately feel like it is the sort of film they want to share.
The film distibution company that distibuted 'The Inbetweeners' in my opinion would be perfect, although they are quite well known and a high class Brithish film distributor, i believ they are the best chance, they are 'Entertainment Film Distributors'.


Here is the first thing we see when we go onto the Entertainment Film Distributors website, it immediately shows off the latest and best selling films that the company have distributed recently.
For example, it is currntly showing the 'Lockout' trailer in this screenshot, and goes through over trailers such as 'Piranha 3DD' and 'Underworld', this shows to me that this company distributors a wide range of genres from comedy to horror.
As we got huge amounts of inspiration from 'The Inbetweeners Movie' and this was the distibution company they used, they are bound to enjoy the comedy of my coursework piece and would hopefully distribute it.
Doing research on the Entertainment Film Distributors i have found out that its first big success was with a film called Terror, in 1978.
This company has distributed a huge range of films including:
  • The Inbetweeners Movie
  • Ausin Powers
  • Rush Hour
  • Lord of the rings
  • Dawn of the dead
  • Final Destination
Other distributors i believe may distribute our film if it were complete or the closet we could get would be Warner Bros or Universal Pictures, although they are American big film distributors, i blieve they distribute films for the age group specified in our film such as films like 'Hangover' and 'Get him to the Greek', these may not be the greatest people to distribute us and there is always the possibility that they know of british independent distributors who could help us start out and eventually grow to make big screen films that will be blockbuster hits.



Monday 7 May 2012

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Evaluation Question 2:
Here i will tell you what social groups are represented in my media coursework, considering age, gender and social class as i thought they were most shown thoughout the film.

In our coursework we used many ways of representation to show the social group that our media product focuses on; our 3 haracters are British male teenagers and are seen as rebels trying to look cool. Teenage males are represented as funny and rebellious.
To start with, we considered age in our social group, as they are 3 teenagers we thought a great place to film would be as the 3 characters leave school in their suits showing  they are in sixth form and are meant to be responsible role models.


We are wearing suits so are immediately seen as responsible adults for our age; as in people would believe us to be calm, collective and sane.  This is representation of our age and although people think we may look smart, we do end up drinking and this shows it is tyical behaviour for our age group.
I am seen to be wearing a blue hoody underneath my suiit, this could be subverting the idea of looking smart, also Samir does not have a tie on, so although people may think we are smart, teenagers will be teenagers and brake rules and this is shown by not wearing the correct uniform.


 Another thing representing age and irresponsibility would be the way Smi walks when we stroll down the street, for one we are walking down a road wihout worry and Samir tries to act 'gangster' showing a stereottypical teenager in the eyes of an older generation.

Gender is represented in this piece of coursework as the 3 main chracters are male, rebellious, they runaway from teachers and try to act cool.
The blue hoody is again used to represent gender, as a majority of people link hoodys to male's they see as 'gangsters', these three characters walk down the oad drinking without a care in the world about being caught, this is something we mainly see with males rather than females. So using the rebellious and layed back attitude for the characters definately shows off their gender, especially when they try to look cool by walking like a 'gangster'' or accidentally walking into things therefore being the opposite to cool.



The last thing i looked at when choosing how social groups are represented in our film, was social class. As we are seen as upper class students as being in sixth form, the use of drinking subverts the reputation viewers expect to see.
We are in suits and are therefore seen as an automatically higher class, but using the subverts make our reputation of a less high class, for instance wearing the blue hoody makes the character look less smart, and therefore of a less high class.
Also the fact, Samir's character isnt wearing a tie and is walking as if to look cool, he is again seen as a lower class. Then to top it off the 3 characters find a wine bottle and drink iresponsibly on the streets almost as if they ar attention seeking.
Although the suits and sixth form give the viewer an idea that these characters are of high class, as they run away from teachers, try to act cool and drink alcohool we see their reputation of social class decrease.

Evaluation on Feedback

During an assembly open to friends, family and teachers, we introduced our preliminary exercise and coursewrk piece to our audience and they filled in a questionnaire about our coursework for feedback, these were the results we recieved for our 2 minute introduction to a film, coursework.

Gender:
Male: 15
female: 30

Age:
0-20: 39
21-34: 1
35-51: 7
52+: 2

Favourite genre:
Action: 5
Comedy: 29
Horror: 8
Rom Com: 3
Thriller: 3
Drama: 2
Crime: 1
Fantasy: 1
Spy Detective: 1

Score out of 10:
1/10: 0
2/10: 0
3/10: 0
4/10: 0
5/10: 0
6/10: 0
7/10: 9
8/10: 19
9/10: 14
10/10: 9
Average score out of 10: 8.45


Question
Positive
Neutral
Negative
Example Comments
1
52
3
0
‘OK’ and ‘yes completely, good for sixth form’
2
52
5
0
‘Made me laugh, new inbetweeners’ and ‘could have had more comedy’
3
42
12
3
‘Sound was quiet, dubbing was off’ and ‘well synchronised, love effects’
4
46
5
3
‘Very successful, amazing shots’ and ‘camera was a bit shaky in places’
5
49
2
2
All were complements, except a few which thought it ‘didn’t have much narrative’

Most people said comedy was their favourite genre, this wasn't representative of the audience as they were mostly family, friends and teachers.
Most of the participants were of age 0-20 so maybe would of preferred the film as this was our target audience, but even the older participants seemed to enjoy our piece just as much.
Our average score was 8.45/10 and in my opinion that is a very good score and involves a lot of positive feedback.

Some people found the shakiness of the camera off putting and didnt like it, whereas others thought it fit the personalities of the charaters trying to be cool when they arent and also adding to the drunka nd unorganised effect.
The overdubbing was the biggest prolem pointed out in the questionnaires, although this meant that viewers could hear our coursework a lot better than they could with other groups as we were the only AS group to overdub, they did find it to be at different volumes at certain points and i definately agree, due to a last minute decision to overdub we didnt have much time to perfect it. It wasnt perfect but it did the job, there were technical difficulties with sound in the asssembly showcase which gaves us an advantage as ours was easily heard even if each piece of dialogue was at different volumes.

Most of our feedback was completely positive and things to improve were like 'make it longer' and 'we want more' so there is no doubt that we definately engaged the audience and left them wanting more.

Someone said that humour is hard to pull off and we did it so they loved it, others said we worked to hard for humour and it was cheesy but they still enjoyed it.
One participant suggested 'more action' but that was not our genre and to pull off both genres in a 2 minute introductio would prove difficult, as it was only an introduction i think we did a great job at engaging the audience and suiting a target audience.

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

Evaluation Question 1:

Our media coursework involves 3 male British characters walking down the street after leaving sixth form for the day and finding a wine bottle, who knows what could go wrong...

An already existing product that we got inspiration from to make our film and that we also look up to is the inbetweeners movie, I believe this is competition and will compare our coursework to the inbetweeners movie.
The narrative that i believe the audience will establish, is the boyish behaviour seen in the footage, such as running away from teachers, walking into things/acting stupid, and go out drinking after school. These are things that I believe are also established in the inbetweeners movie, I think the humour that we have in our coursework is similar to the inbetweeners but definately a less sexual and less swearing humour as we couldn't use this in our piece, in my opinion this gives us an edge over the inbetweeners humour as it fits a wider range of audience. We are not likely to see children or the elderly age group watching the inbetweeners and enjoying the humuor, so those age groups are more likely to enjoy our coursework than the inbetweeners.
We got inspiration from them and although they do pull off the act of lad comedy better than our coursework does, I think our coursework will apply to a wider range of audience.




The inbetweeners movie use similar camera shots as we do, for instance they use a lot of close ups, mid shots and two way shots to show emotion, friendship and loyalty. We have  used a lot of close ups and two way shots for the same reason so you can guess we got a lot of inspiration from the inbetweeners. Another shot the inbetweeners use regularly are long shots as a specific thing happens in the scene such as the characters leaving the scene as one of them does something embarrassing such as walk into a door, we have used this as olivers character wipes bird poo on my characer as we leave the gates.



We were in our suits at the time we filmed this, not only because we had just finished school before filming, but because we wanted to capture the effect of boys leaving school, this happens in the inbetweeners a lot and again got inspiration from this.
Also the inbetweeners school always seems lit up and bright, so we decided to change a few shots that we thought were too dark, meaning that we had to redo scenes in the same costume, this was because we thought it was too dark and wanted to make it seem brighter like the inbetweeners does. We also had to use colour correction to get the right brightness.