Evaluation

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

Our opening sequence uses a lot of the conventions of real life dramas.

The opening sequence focuses on a teenage boy. Social dramas tend to focus on just one main character and my opening sequence does this as he is the only character who is seen, He fits with your average London/urban stereotype .
The typical clothing of the main character is that of a tracksuit, trainers, baseball cap and a hoodie. This is typical of boys his age and typical of how young boys are represented in real life dramas.
We tried to keep the story line as close to that of other real life dramas, a young boy running away from his evil surroundings and evil temptations for a better life, because these films are popular and work well with the normal conventions of a real life drama, as my piece is British i understand that this can come across as an "Indie" film.

Question two: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our media product represents different social groups throughout. The first is that of teenage boys surrounded by an urban society.

Teenage boys are represented in our opening sequence as the main character who is the main focus of the opening sequence is a teenage boy. The audience can recognise that he portrays the typical aspects of being a teenage boy, he is dressed wearing a hoodie, a tracksuit and a baseball cap which are all items of clothing associated with this age range and fits with the stereotype, criminal and a thug.

The lower social classes are also represented in the opening sequence. The main character is obviously from a low social class as he is seen to have no money, he lives in a torn apart area and there is lots of poverty such as rubbish, stolen items and general messiness in the area in which he lives. The audience can recognise the portrayal of low social class by the area in which the film takes place, the area is typical of those areas within inner London as it is seen to be a place of high crime, drugs and violence.

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

I think that the type of media institution that might distribute my media product would be London Microwave. London Microwave launched in 2006 as a way for new and unknown film-makers the chance to shoot a feature film on a budget of just £120,000. This is known as a ‘micro-budget film’. Only eight films have been produced so far by London Microwave such as ‘Ill Manors’.

Our film fits into the category of the types of films that London Microwave produce as it is produced on a small, limited budget and focus on real life locations and real people.

London Microwaves works in partnership with BBC Films and this would help in the distribution of my film as London Microwave ensure that the film is broadcast on the BBC and this would bring it to a wider audience.

Question five: How did you attract/address your audience?

I attracted my audience to my media product through my use of characters, the unusual plot and the location.

The characters attract the audience because it is the main person that is going to carry the plot and be addressed by clothing, body language and facial features are similar to that of the target audience, this means that the audience will be able to relate to the characters in the film and will be more interested in watching.

The plot focuses on a teenage boy who is escaping the crime fueled life he once had and the London riot is the perfect example of chaos just as whats going through the main characters head. This is similar to other films in the real life drama genre and is a situation that the target audience will either have been a part of or will know of someone who has been in that situation.

The location will also attract the audience because it will feature places that they either live or have experienced and they will be able to relate to a similar environment or find exciting and new.

Question six: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

In the process of constructing our opening sequence I learned a lot about different technology.

The first was that I used blogger. I was completely new to this and so I had to learn everything from scratch beginning with how to add posts to my blog. Throughout this process I have learned not only how to add posts but how to make them look more interesting and attractive by uploading pictures and videos from YouTube.

I had to learn how to use the camera a Canon 1100d in order to film the sequence. We experimented with using different lenses and a tripod, this was a trial and error process that resulted in us using the bigger lens as this provided a clearer picture when zooming in. I also discovered lots of new features on the camera that we tried experimenting with such as the timer which allows a countdown before recording so the actor has time to prepare before filming. I also discovered that using the tripod made filming a lot easier as it keeps the camera still.

Finally I had to learn how to edit the opening sequence using an old editing software called Serif MoviePlus X6. I found this difficult as I have been used to using iMovie and so I was unfamiliar with the way this new software. I had to use the new software as we did not have iMovie available when editing and the camera we used was not compatible with the iMovie software. Through using the new software I learnt a number of new and useful techniques such as how to add effects, music and text which were complicated processes.

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

From working on the preliminary task I learned lots of things that helped me to make the final product.

When making the preliminary task we planned out in advance every camera shot that we were going to use. This worked really well and helped us to have a clear idea of what the film was going to look like so we used this idea for the final piece by making a plan of every camera shot.

When we were filming the preliminary task although we had planned each shot we did not work out how long each shot was going to be. When we came to edit the film we found that the music we had didn’t fit with the length of shots and so for the final piece we made more of an effort to plan the length of shots to avoid this problem.

We also found from the preliminary task that filming outside and using natural light worked really well as we had a very small budget and it provided a natural look to the film so we decided to use this idea for our final piece.