Evaluation

 

1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
My media project conforms to most forms and conventions of real media projects as we wanted our film to seem as realistic and professional as possible as we understood our limitations of our film being ammatuer, however we feel that our film's style of being similar to a documentary is uncommon of most crime films which often mimick an action film to show the events taking place to make them look as exciting as possible.
 
2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Certain social groups are represented in my media project as our film deals with young adults who are just about to move on to adulthood. By having our cast comprised of young male adults we felt this would help us make our film more relatable to our target audience as they would see physical similarities between themselves and the characters. Also teenagers are often portrayed as violent in the media due to them having negative stereotypes surrounding them, by having violence and stabbings as one of our central plot points in our film opening we feel this has made our film more culturally relevant as the audience will be aware of what is currently in the press.
 
3) What kind of media institution might distribute your media project and why?
We chose Channel four films to distribute our film as they have released film projects similar to ours such as snatch, which was also our inspirtation film. Also Four Films often distributes low budget films like ours as they do not have the large funding which US Hollywood productions might have.  We considered a straight to DVD release however we ruled against it as a group as felt a DVD viewing would not be an appropiate format to view our film in it's intended quality.
 
4) Who would be the audience for your media project?
The primary target audience for my project will be 15-19 year olds as they will find the topic and age of the actors relatable to their own personal lives, we also think a male audience will be more attracted to our film as the survey results confirmed that the majority of people who showed interest in our film idea where male and appeared to have more of an attraction to violence than female viewers.

 

5) How did you attract/address your audience?

We aimed to attract our audience by utilising relevant themes of male viewers aged between 16-15 to engage them in our project. We addressed our target audience by having our main role played by an actor who is in our target age group which we thought would make our film opening more relatable, the themes we utilized were ones such as violence and crime which typically do well in films aimed at a young male adult audience.

Our main method of addressing our target audience was a survey in which we assessed what they would like to see in a film so we could place it in ours. We asked questions as to what genre they found most appealing to which the answer was “crime” so we tailored our film to fit the criteria our audience wanted. We also displayed a rough cut of our film to a peer assessment group so we could get direct feedback about how it may or may not have reached the target audience and suggest any changes we should make.

 

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

My main learning experience from my undertaking of constructing this product was the proper way to record and handle footage as this was a new experience to me. I had briefly used a video camera several years before for a previous school project however not to the same effect or level of quality as was required to make a film opening. One of the things I found most interesting to learn was adjusting the camera position by minor tweaks to ensure the composition and angles were being fully maximised. We learnt the value of a tripod to ensure we got a steady shot and made the camera easy to pan or tilt without it appearing shaky.                                                                                                        

Our main method of storing and showcasing our work was a blog which I had some experience with due to previous experience however I changed blog host from “WordPress” to “Webnode” as the blogs I saw that had used the latter platform seemed easier to navigate and also looked more professional. I also learnt how social media can be a tool for sharing a product and gaining support as we posted our survey’s and rough cuts onto sites like Facebook and Twitter to ensure we received a wide range of feedback.

Our editing software was Windows Live Movie Maker as it was software each team member had at home and in school so we had maximum compatibility and could all edit the project at home or school. We also found the software to be relatively simple to use and didn’t want to over complicate things we didn’t feel our project required an immensely powerful piece of editing software and the one we had chosen would suffice.

 

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

The main change between my approach to the preliminary task and the full product was my organisation as during the process for creating my preliminary it was new to me and my understanding was not as developed as it was when I began the full product.

Setting group roles was a good way to address this so everybody knew what responsibilities were these however it took our group a while to start functioning properly as we had some issues with all the group members completing their required tasks, myself included, however our organisation was far improved from that of our preliminary task as we were all aware of the process we had to do and what jobs it required to be completed.

Also our approach on editing was different as it was the preliminary was the first time any of us had attempted video editing so the preliminary was definitely a learning curve for most of us and allowed us to be more knowledgeable and confident when making changes to our rough cut.