Evaluation Question 7

My Prelim:

When i first started to film my Prelim task it involved no research this is mainly because of the lack of time we had to create this and also the prelim wasn't in any specific genre so there wasn't really any research that needed to be done.  This was a lot different to my final production. For my final production there was a lot of research carried out. I had to research into the genre of my film so that i had a greater knowledge and could incorporate my knowledge into my own work, it was also important to research the genre so i could understand the conventions. Planning was another aspect that wasn't done in great detail in the prelim task. This was because there was not a lot needed in terms of props for the prelim task and it was only short which meant coming up with a story board didn't take long at all because there was only a few number of shots. Planning was a lot different for my film because we went into a lot more detail of every aspect than the prelim task. We created a long detailed story board, shot list and call sheet. There was planning looking for suitable locations to film in and also planning which dates that we would film on, we planned them by looking at the weather forecast to make sure the weather was suitable and fit along side previous shots we had. There was also planning of which equipment we would be using for each shoot as this changed thought different scenes, this was different to our prelim task because there was only one scene where we just used one camera. 

Time Management: The prelim involved very little time management, it consisted of two lessons one where we went out and got the shots and the other where i edited the shots. There was not a lot to do so it wasn't difficult to manage our time, the only thing we had to focus on was making sure we had all the shots by the time the lesson had finished. This was a lot different to my final  production because we found that managing our time was a very important aspect and that if we did not do it we would not have been successful. One of the factors which meant we had to manage our time was that we were filming at the end of the year which meant it got dark earlier so we had to make sure that all our shots for one scene where shot at the same time to show consistency in our work. Another things i had to manage was making sure i had met deadlines, this was important because if done it meant i was not behind. There was a big difference in time management between my prelim task and final production and i have learnt that time management is a very important factor while creating a film.

In my production and prelim there was no external casting done. All the actors which i used were in my media class. The reason why i didnt cast externally in my production was because i was in a big group and if we all were behind a camera there would bound to be someone left out who didtn have a fair contribution to the film, therefore  used two members of my group to act in my production. We chose Tom to play the protagonist as we believed he fit the look and style of a protagonist from an action film and we decided that Will would best suit the antagonist role out of the other members in my group. There was no change when casting from the prelim to the production.

When it comes to mise-en-scene, props and costume these were taking into account more in my production that prelim. In my prelim task i did not focus on mise-en-scene and costume in the slightest. This was completely different to my production as i took mise-en-scene and costume very seriously as we wanted to make sure our film was a professional as possible. One prop that we felt was very important was the bag which tom carried, this had a vital role in our film and for a few shoots we had got some shots without tom wearing the bag which resulted in us not being lazy and going back out and reshooting the shots with Tom having the bag on. We also made sure that Will and Tom were wearing the same clothes each shoot. We kept an eye on little details like this to make sure our film was professional and consistent .

Location wasnt though about at all in my prelim task, no though twas put into it, this was mainly because of the time that we had to do it. In my production this was very different, in my group we focused a lot on finding the perfect place to film each scene, we looked for a while narrowing down different locations until we were certain which one would suit our film the best. We had to think carefully about our location because we had to make our chase scene look like it was shot all in a constant flow but it was actually shot all over the town we live in, we chose our locations so carefully that this wouldn't be noticed even my a resident in the town.

My prelim task was shot in one take and there wasn't any chance to go back and reshoot our shots or take any sample shots. The shots were filmed and then edited straight away. However in my production this was different because when on location shooting i would also set up the camera in the correct position (being the cinematographer) and then i could conduct a few practice shots to see which looked the best (taking on the role of director). Once decided which was best i would then shoot the final shot.  Once i had all the clips and was editing i could see if there were any shots which needed to be reshot, there was a fair bit of reshooting done because we didnt want to settle for not the best we could get, this resulted in me creating a number of rough cuts for m group.

Sound was not a feature which i incorporated a lot into my prelim task, there was no dialogue and the only sound which was in was a few basic sound effects such as footsteps. In my production this was very important, i had realised that sound is a vital part of a film and it can make a film 100x better and more professional. I also wanted to make sure the sound in my production was right which resulted in me spending a lot of time messing around with the sound. There was a lot of effort making our music right in my final production which was very different to my prelim task.

Because i created my prelim task early on in the year i had not created my ident yet this was only created during my final production. Everyone in my group created their idents individually, once they were all created we then imported them into the film. I learnt a lot about idents such as the time they are on and other things that are common in idents.

The editing in my prelim task was very basic and it didnt require much depth, i feel like the editing in my final production was also quite basic but that my production didnt need anything extra, i found the editing simple and easy to complete and had no difficulty editing. Nothing new was really learnt from the prelim to the final production because i already knew how to edit and had them skills.

First Rough Cut

Final Cut

Evaluation 6 - Prezi

                 

Evaluation Question 3

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

What is a distributer

Film distribution is the process of making a film which will be available to view by an audience, examples of well known distributers are Twentieth Century Fox and Optimum Releasing. There are six major distributors which are linked and involved with the hollywood studios. There are also a lot of  independent distributers which usually distribute small films made by indie companies. 

Type of Distributors:

Universal

Paramount Pictures

20th Century Fox

Sony Pictures

Disney Pictures

Warner Bros

What role does a distributer play

In simple terms a distributer sends off your film so that it can be watched in various places all over the world. They are involved and take charge of promoting the film and deciding where the film will be screened and when the screen will be released. The process of distribution requires a few steps. The first thing that distributers have to decide is how many copies of the film they think they will need to make. They then send off copies so that they can be watched by potential buyers for example cinemas. Once they have a list of cinemas which have agreed to show their film the distributers will send off the film to cinemas before the film is released. Once the cinema has shown the movie it will then be sent back to the distributors and then they will discuss a payment. For smaller budget films more steps are involved in the process. 

What genre is our film
Our film opening is a micro budget indie production. It is part of the action genre. Because the main focus of our film opening is a chase scene one film that we have taken huge inspiration from is Point Break (1991).  

How distributors market films
Trailers - all distribution companies will use a trailer to market their film, trailers are a very good marketing technique because they allow people to see a small section of the film and this can make viewers understand the film or gain interest. 

Websites - some distributors especially ones with big budgets will use websites as a way of marketing, websites will have extra information about this film and can often have interaction for the fans. Not every distributor will have a website for their film because its extra costs, this means you wouldn't find small indie films with websites.
An example of a film in our genre which uses a website: http://pointbreakmovie.com

Social Media
One way of marketing which can make our film more known is by using social media sites such as Twitter or Facebook. Every distributor will do this because promoting on social media is very cheap and in most cases free, it also means you can reach lots and lots of people in a very short space of time. This type of marketing will always be done by every distributor. This is an example of a twitter page from a film which is in our genre: 

Our production company basically had no budget for our film, we dint use any big well known actors which they was no money spent into paying an actor,we didnt use any special effects and the location which we used required no costs eg rent because it was all outside. Because of this it means a well known distributer for example 20th Century Fox or Warner Bros will have no interest in our film mainly because it doesnt fit into the style and category of being a big budget film. Big budget films would almost certainly require famous actors and a large amount of special effects.

Risk of not finding a distributor
If you dont find a distributor to distribute your film you can be left to distribute the film on your own which will be very difficult and in most cases unsuccessful. A few examples of self distribution are, the final member and crazy and theif. If self distribution doesnt work and we cant find a distributor then we would have to upload our production onto sites such as youtube and vimeo.

Because of what i just stated i think that our films production would be best suited for a low budget indie production company such as Warp films, Warp Films produced the film called 'Dead Mans Shoes' (2004) which had a small budget of £723,000 and went to box office, which avoided their film going straight to DVD and received a rating of 7.7. This company would be the best type to distribute our film because it can distribute cheaply on social network sites like Facebook and Twitter. Distributing cheaply like this would result in us being able to invest more money into creating a better film. Another way we could save money through distributions by downloading our film 'The Brief' onto hard drives which only costs £50 rather than if we put the film onto film reels which would cost £1000.

Evaluation 5

There are many different ways that you can attract and address the audience these are:

Interviewing primary and secondary target audiences
The reason why we interviewed our primary and secondary target audiences was so that we could see what their views were on the film and their opinions. The main focus was to see if our audience was going to react in a positive way to our film because they are our target audience so if they do react positively then we will know if our film opening was any success straight away. 

Interviewing Non Media/Media Students
The reason we did this was so that we were able to collect information from two different types of people. One of the good things about getting information from other media students is that they give a very detailed feedback where they mentioned things like conventions, camera shots, the way we edited and semiotics. They could go into detail about their feedback and really pick apart our film resulting in us receiving some very useful information about our opening. The reason we also got feedback from students who were not taking media as well as those who were was because their feedback would not be the same as they wouldn't be looking out for minute details in our work and instead looking at the overall film. What the non media students usually commented on was what they disliked and what they liked about our production and then simply what they believe we could do to improve it. Anther reason why we asked non media students was because some of the media students had already seen some of our film opening and some parts of it, but using a non media student meant that they had no idea what to expect and it was all new to them which made their feedback different. We gathered some feedback from the social network site facebook but most of the time the feedback we got was in person.

Facebook
Facebook is a very helpful website (along side with twitter) when it comes to attracting and getting feedback from our audience. It is convenient and quick, almost all our friends are on feedback and they are in the age range to be part of our primary target audience, because of this it meant when  ever we wanted any feedback from our work we could simply post it to them and they would reply some feedback really quick. This was extremely helpful because it meant we could almost receive feedback which meant there was no time wasted waiting around we could read it then adapt almost instantly.

Youtube
Youtube can be accessed by everyone, everywhere. It is a video streaming site which can be accessed worldwide. Youtube is different to facebook because it allows us to connect with our secondary target audience and get feedback from them. Youtube was very helpful because it is simple, we could easily upload our work ranging from rough cuts to idents on our youtube channel meaning it can be accessed everywhere. It resulted in our audience being involved in the process of our film being made. We kept on updating our channel by uploading each rough cut and then we took peoples advise then used it and implemented it into the next rough cut.

Evaluation 4

 Who would be the audience for your media product?

Primary target audience:

A primary target audience is a segment of people which we believe our film will appeal to the most.

The film opening that we have created is part of the action/adventure genre. Because of this our primary target audience will be male. The reason why our primary target audience is male is because it is stereotypical for men to be attracted to action movies and drawn to violent films. The age of our target audience would be 12-40. It would also appeal to any social class and ethnicity but because the two lead roles are from a white british ethnicity this may result in white british being more attracted to the film than other ethnic groups. 

Secondary target audience:

A secondary target audience is the second most important consumer that we would like to target, they may have less money or less demand for our product than our primary target audience. The secondary target audience for our film could be someone who does not have enough disposible income to go see films at the cinema or someone who is taken a long to see the film with someone else such as a parent. Instead of a parent it could be a girlfriend or partner who has been brought to see it, therefore our secondary target audience would be 12-40 females.

Evidence of audience:
There is a vast amount of evidence which proves that there is an audience for action movies, some examples of movies which have done well in the box office are Fast and Furious 7 (2015) which made a worldwide total of $1,516,045,911 at the box office. Another movie which did very well at thr worldwide box office is San Andreas (2015) which received $473,790,832. We also have evidence that a British action film can be successful at the worldwide box office this is Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011) which took in a total of $545,400,00.

Changes we made for the audience:
The changes that we had to make  to attract a wider audience were very limited. The reason for this because the final film that we had created was fit for all our primary and secondary audiences which meant there were no major things that we needed to change to apply to a wider audience. Some changes that we made through out the process of making our film were adding a female role into our opening, we did not feature this character in person because there wasn't a way we could include her into what we had already planned so instead we just included her voice. The role that this female played in our film was similar to moneypenny from James Bond. The reason we decided to include our female role into our film was because it meant it would attract our primary and secondary audience, it would attract males because of the male gaze and it could also attract more females because she may act as a role model to some women.

Our BBFC rating:

For our film to be able to viewed by our primary and secondary target audience we feel like the best rating to give our film would be a 12A. Doing this would allow us to reach all our target audience. By giving our film a rating of 12A we have followed lots of other films which are from the same genre as our film. An example of a film similar to ours which has the same rating is James Bond Spectre. Something the BBFC take into account while selecting a rating is tone this is described as "The overall tone of a film or video and the way it makes the audience feel may affect the classification." Something that we have thought about when trying to decide our classification is language, in our ilm we would not use a lot of strong language and it will only be used where we deem appropriate therefore our film would still be able to be classed as a 12A. We researched the BBFC guidelines and they said that "The BBFC's Guidelines state that strong language (e.g. f***) may be passed at 12 or 12A, depending on the manner in which it is used, who is using the language, its frequency and any special contextual justification. Aggressive uses of strong language may result in a film or DVD being placed at the 15 category. There is some allowance for puns on strong language at this category. There may be moderate language." In relation to violence we would only include moderate violence in our film because it is not necessary to include over the top violence like what would be in a horror film, doing this would still result in our film receiving a 12A certificate. The BBFC say this about discrimination "Any discriminatory language or behaviour will not be endorsed by the work as a whole." In our film we do not feature any type of discrimination which results in us being able to keep our 12A certificate. 

Working title is one of the UK's biggest film producer and they market at their audiences in different ways. Something that working title do  is not use regional accents in their films because American audiences may not understand some parts of the film or not be as attracted to watch it. On the other hand Warp Films which is an indie film producer, when they create films they will use different accents because they are not trying to appeal to a huge audience, and not trying to attract a big American release. We are similar to some indie films because when we cast our actors we did not use big well known actors.

Evaluation Question 1 Vodcast

In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge films and conventions of real media products

My Vodcast

Ident
Examples of films with similar ident times:
Bridget Jones Diary:
Universal -20 seconds
Studio Canal - 16 seconds
Miramax Films - 14 seconds
Working title -10 seconds

About a Boy:
Universal -20 seconds
Studio Canal- 15 seconds
Working title - 10 seconds

Titles

Captain America: Winter Soldier

The Brief (my production)

The Brief (my production)

Shot Types
These are they type of shots that we used in our film that were also used in films i have researched:

Establishing shot

Over the shoulder

Close up

Long shot

Mise en scene

(shot framed so it looks like a corner)

(actual location showing that it is not a dead end)

Evaluation Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups

There are 7 key areas of representation these are:

• Social Class and Status
• Age
• Gender
• Ethnicity
• Physical Ability/Disability 
• Sexuality 
• Region Identity

Which social groups we represent?

The main social group that we represent in our film opening is male teenagers. There are a number of reasons why this is the main social group that we represent. One of the main reasons is because the actors who play the lead roles as the protagonist and antagonist in our opening are both male teenagers. One way that we have portrayed them as teenagers is with their clothing. The protagonist in our film is wearing a hoodie and joggers, these items of clothing are what you would typically find an average teenager wearing.

Gender/Sexuality:
We appealed to the female gaze with the use of our male protagonist. Our protagonist is stereotyped as a strong male, this stereotype attracts female viewers. Both of our lead characters are male this is also another factor which attracts the female viewers. Sexuality is not a huge part of our film because their is no sense of romance. Both the male characters in our film are straight which is stereotypical for a character from this genre. 

Ethnicity:

In our film opening we represent a white ethnicity group. The reason this is the ethnicity group that we represent is because again both our main roles the protagonist and antagonist are white and have a white heritage. The location that we filmed our opening in is a town in the Yorkshire called ilkley, the majority of ilkley has a white ethnicity so it would have been difficult to have different ethnicities in our production. Also because we have a small budget this resulted in use casting our friends because this was the easiest option and because they live in ilkley it meant they have a white ethnicity. This may result in our film not appealing to different ethnicity viewers.

Characters:

In our film opening we only have two characters. The protagonist is played by Tom Cross.

Agent Cross

This character is Agent Cross he is the protagonist in our film opening. Agent Cross is a white male teenager. We chose Tom to play our leading role because he is well built and attractive which is a key convention for the protagonist to look like this in action films. Having Tom play our protagonist will attract male and female viewers. It will attract male viewers because men will take inspiration from Tom because of the ways that he portrays his fitness in the opening. It will also attract female viewers because of the female gaze. We have appealed to the female gaze by including Tom in a gym scene where he is working out. We have based Tom of characters such as James Bond but a younger version.

This character is the antagonist in our film opening, He is played by Will Laing. In our opening we dressed Will in black to portray that he is the antagonist and the evil character.We tried our best to portray Will as an evil character by his clothing in our film.

          Antagonist 

Physical Ability/Disability:

The physical ability or disability of a person in a film is one of the key aspects of representation. In our film opening both character have physical ability and there is no one with a disability. The Physical ability or disability of a person within a film is another key aspect of representation. In my production all the characters have physical ability. The reason for not casting a disabled person was because there wasn't any reason to do so, also I do not know any disabled people and as a student i decided to cast my friends to make the process.

Class and Status:

In our production we casted a White British characters with southern accents, to represent 

Cinematography in Paul

This is the establishing shot. The mise-en-scene gives the viewer a very good understanding of the time period and sets the scene straight away. In this shot there are lots of object s that make the time period very believable and real.

      This is a shot from the opening scene, it is an extreme long shot which shows a full view of the scene including all the surroundings which gives you a sense of what the area is like. It gives you a greater understanding of the location. The weather in the shot makes it look dramatic which fits the mood. 

      This a close up shot. It helps portray the emotion on the girls face and makes the viewer interested in what it is that is making her looked shocked therefore making the viewer intrigued in the situation and wanting to keep watching. There is a shallow depth of field making the girl stand out more and also letting the viewer understand here emotion in greater detail.