Wednesday 11 May 2011

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The protagonist for our film was a male between the years of 18 and 22, dressed in a smart and casual style. As we wanted to keep things simple we decided stick with the dominant ideology by using a white male as seen in most mainstream films. We chose the dress style of casual to make it clear to the viewer that this was just the average male.

However, in a way we do challenge the representation of the male in our film. We do this by placing the male character in danger whereas usually in many mainstream films it would be the female character that would play the damsel in distress, however in our film it is the male.

Evaluation Question 5

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

Throughout constructing both the opening credits product and the preliminary project I believe I have both developed and learnt a lot of skills about technologies through this process, most specifically through the filming and post production processes. Although, I did do media at school I focused more on the pre-production side so this allowed me to learn more.


The first main piece of technology I learned about was the generic filming equipment (camera, tripod) and used them in both an indoor and outdoor environment. I also learned about several different terminologies to do with camera shots (over the shoulder (OTS), tracking, panning, long shot, close up, low angle and high angle).


I believe I learned a lot more in the preliminary task as I was the only person in the group who was not in front of the camera so I was given the position of director, so I learned a lot about positioning the actors and how a certain shot should look which definitely would help for any future filming projects. However, I did find it much easier and more interesting behind the camera than in front of it which I was in the opening scene.

However, I felt I learnt a lot more about the post-production technologies especially with the editing system. It was also very interesting to see how it all comes together through cutting, adding sound, adding special effects and making sound bridges.

Who would be the audience of our film?

When discussing our film it immediately became apparent that we would try to make a film that would be appropriate to all ages so we wanted to make a film that would target an entire family. To do this instead of researching a film I decided to research the BBC TV show “Doctor Who” as it is one of the BBC’s most popular TV shows and is a hit among all ages. Looking at the show it uses a fantasy and fairytale type adventure theme to keep children “wowed”, it uses detailed and slightly complicated story arcs to keep the interest for adults and also has scary aliens and dark tones to scare both the children and adults to keep all ages thrilled.

“Doctor Who” roughly 6 million viewers an episode making it one of the most popular shows on television so it became apparent to me we would have to use similar techniques in order target the same type of audience. We then decided to make a light horror fantasy that would include mystery elements and action sequences much like “Doctor Who” which already targets a certain audience which is also the one we were aiming for.

I also looked at “Pirates of the Caribbean” again as it also extremely successful being one of 7 films to gain a billion dollars the same with “The Dark Knight”. In fact looking more in to this we discovered that 6 of the 7 highest grossing films of all time that gained more than a billion dollars worldwide were all fantasy films, making it clear that our film would be likely to be very successful.

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

I feel that the two companies that would be likely to distribute our film would be either Warner Brothers or Disney Studios. This is mainly because after some research these two film studios are the two with the most history of the fantasy genre, Warner Brothers have had massive success with the Harry Potter franchise being the most successful franchise of all time taking in over $6.3 billion, they have also had success with Christopher Nolan’s Batman franchise currently taking in over a Billion dollars across two films. Disney Studios have also had huge success with the “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “Chronicles of Narnia“franchise by making them also 2 of the most successful franchises of all time.

I feel that our film would have a very simple marketing system of simply one official site and two trailer consisting of a teaser and theatrical trailer. A few clips would also be released via YouTube and the official site to gain more interest in the film. I think the film would also get an official Facebook page as well as that would definitely get more interest in the film due to the several million members.

However, seeing as our film is likely to have a very small budget it is incredibly likely we would have to co-produce it with another British company such as Film4, this has also been done with hit films “Shaun of the Dead” who co-produced with companies Universal and Film4 and “127 Hours“who worked with Fox Searchlight Pictures and Pathe to make their film.

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

For our opening credits media product we decided to choose the genre of a light horror fantasy that was based in a realistic world. This was for several reasons but mainly because it meant we could keep things simple for example having the majority of the film in a normal world meant we didn’t have to worry about the design of a location as we could use normal rooms rather than have to dress up the rooms. We also just decided to tweak the ending to give it a fantasy type feel however due to some lost footage we couldn’t quite make the film to the standard we aimed for.

To help look capture a feel for this type of genre I looked at films such as “The Dark Knight” and “Stranger Than Fiction” which were both fantasies set in a realistic environment and I analysed there opening credits/scenes, this was very helpful in allowing me to see how they were filmed and the tone they had. It also helped me to see how a fantasy element was produced in a film based in a real world.

We decided early on that we wanted our film to be kept very simple to not create any problems later on; we also decided we should keep our locations to a minimum of 2. By keeping our film simple we decided to confirm the codes and conventions (“rules”) of the genre rather than decide to challenge them as we thought it would be very time consuming and complicated to think of ways to challenge the genre and its forms.

Thursday 31 March 2011

Todays Lesson 24th March 2011

Today Ben wasn't here however as our group is pretty far behind so me and Brendan will be out filming. We will be shooting in our location of the forest. Hopefully we will get a large amount done, upload it and continue Monday.