Media Evaluation on Prezi

Media Evaluation on Prezi

Question 7

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

From the last project of the Preliminary task to this task of creating a full product we changed the way our group went about doing things because we already had the experience and went through the things that could go wrong, this time planning it better and making sure that we controlled what we were doing.

One of the main things that our group progressed in is actually getting down to film the shots that we needed and doing it fairly quickly. I think the reason we managed to get this done was because we planned extensively to guarantee getting the right shots, making sure to organize dates and times with the actors, booking out the camera and filming scenes through a few times to give us back-up shots in case something went wrong. We also produced it quicker because we all had experience with the camera and how to put together shots, basically just more knowledge of how to create a film.

Blogging/Research also helped us to be better prepared as we had a better idea of the type of thing we had to produce and a rough guide to what we were aiming our film to be like, by looking at existing film openings and analysing what was good about them gave us a better image of what audiences look for and interest them. It also made us see what shots and music go together well to get the best reaction from the audience which in the long run helped us a lot during filming. It was important for us to research other films so that our final product looks realistic and fits to our chosen genre, it was also important for us to understand what components make a film and how we could include and stick to what a real film opening looks like. All of the research helped us make the film but also helped us to manage our time and control how we wanted the actors to behave and be seen on screen.

One of the obvious things that I’ve learnt from the preliminary task to creating the project now is how to edit on Adobe Premier Pro, it was hard the first time round as most of our group had never used any sort of editing software before so we didn’t really know what we were doing but because we all had a go in the last task it gave us a better say in this film opening task because we all knew what we had to look for and how we could edit it to make the best version of the shots and sequences that we could. Now that we have completed the film opening I feel more confident with the software and understand how to make the material we film flow and play how we want it to look, right down to the smallest details.

Overall I think that the this second task has worked better because the group has worked better together, even though at times we each went off and did separate things when it came down to putting together the final cut we all had a say and made everything from planning and filming come together. I think that we’ve all gained different skills from the first task as we’ve all learnt what it means to make a film, we’re a lot more confident in getting the shots and directing the actors to do what we imagine the outcome to be, we’ve also gained skills in putting the film together as in the first task we made a few mistakes in not getting enough film to work with but having more shots gave us the chance to experiment and create exactly what we first planned out in our storyboards. I think the group was a lot happier the second time round bringing it all down to having the experience, skills and research to back up what your doing.

Question 6

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

During the project I have used a lot of different types of technology to create our final project, examples of these would be Adobe Premier Pro Suite, Adobe Photoshop, held hand video camera and Digital SLR Camera, all of which help me find new ways of presenting the project.

By using Adobe Premier Pro I’ve learned the tools I need to put together music and sound to create a final outcome. Using tools like the razor I could import and cut the shots we had to create scenes that would later be put together with the titles, I also used this tool to create a loop with a short piece of music that needed lengthening to fit with the scenes. It may have been easier just to find a longer piece music but we felt that using the music we liked was worth risking it sounding jumpy rather than using a version that didn’t fit aswell, however after a lot of attention and time making sure it flowed, right down to  each millisecond it ended up working very well with the film. After researching how title sequences appear in film openings I was able to create title stills with the appropriate credits that we needed, these were put slots wear time was supposed to pass between scenes, this is were I learnt about transitions and by using a cross dissolve going into and out of the credits it helped to create the illusion of time passing.

For the opening flash sequence of the company title we used a DSLR Camera to take pictures of the images I had drawn, importing these photographs onto Adobe Premier Pro allowed me to crop and cut the images down to appropriate amount of times to make the images flash into a sequence, overall creating a small anamatic presenting the name and logo of our “film company”. We also used this same technique of photographing drawing to create our anamatic of the film title and the very end of the opening; however we used a secondary programme to fill colour before putting it together on Adobe Premier Pro.

Adobe Photoshop was the programme that enabled me to fill in colour and also variate with colour on our line drawings of the final anamatic. Using simple tools such as the fill bucket to make block colour into the lines but some of the less structured images meant I had to use selective tools to fill in colour where it was needed. I also used a tool called Hue to quickly change to colouring of the images and saving each one for a range of colours. This meant when I imported them into Adobe Premier Pro I could make a sequence pattern with the colours and repeat it so we could lengthen the time of the title (doing this meant we had the reverse the middle sequence to make it seem as though it goes back on itself to loop round to the final still). This software made it easier to show the story of the anamatic because if it didn’t exist we would have had to draw out lots of the pictures over and over again colouring them all which would have been a very long drawn out process.

Overall I feel that all this technology makes it simpler and easier to create and tell a story, each type of software makes it easier for the creator to have as much creative design and influence as possible, from the basic shots to creating whatever it is they want. From having previous experience with all these technologies also helped because I have used a digital camera in Photography and Photoshop in both Graphics and Photography, making it easier for me to show the story in my head and put it on screen.

Question 5

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

The audience of our film would be young women and couples aged 13 -25 so when thinking about how to film our product and what to put in we made sure to try and find elements of normal life and make the relatable to this age of audience.

The settings and costumes were kept very simple and normal to give the audience a cushion of normality and a picture of a happy idyllic lifestyle. Using an everyday affordable house and car and making the couple go to regular dates and hang-outs such as the park promotes an image that you don’t have to be rich and perfect to have the “ideal life” of love and happiness that most romcoms promote. The actors were dressed in regular teenage clothing which helped address the audience and make them see themselves within the characters, it also kept them looking the part and showing the youth in a positive way, it also shows them being interested in fashion which for a lot of women is a relatable factor that they can link themselves with which is why for each scene we considered different outfits for each occasion, hoodies, leggings and Ugg boots for casual scenes and even for the wedding scene we showed a flower patterned wedding dress instead of a traditional white one keeping the youth shown and again showing an interest in fashion.

Other ways in which we tried to address our audience was to create situations that they are familiar with such as simple dates, meeting up with friends, having relationships and then future events that may attract the audience into wanting such as moving in with someone, getting married and having a baby. All of these factors helped us connect the audience with the characters and by keeping it simple the actors are able to give a believable performance. Throughout the scenes the actors appear to mature which attracts the slightly older audience and also appear to have a closer relationship which strongly links with couples of all ages.

The titles and music was done to directly attract the attention of the audience, the decorative font for the credit titles is quite girly and romantic which was done to address the younger ages in the audience and also to project the youth of the characters. As far as the music goes it was picked by our group to target the emotional high and low points of the characters performance to help address the audiences emotions directly.

Overall I think all elements of films are there to address the audience because they wouldn’t be the target audience if their expectations, likes and dislikes weren’t taken into consideration. All of which we tried to do looking at mise-en-scene, performance, sound and even the way the editing was cut to create shots that emphasise the scene.

Question 4

4. Who would be the audience of your media product?

When we chose the genre Romantic Comedy we researched and found out that the main audience that romcoms are viewed by is couples and women this is when we decided to base the storyline around a young couple going through stages of their lives, this way it would appeal to a range of age groups.

 Romcoms typically are about love and the common arguments and incidents that happen during a normal relationship, this is why it gives a comic effect as the audience has something they can relate to. Ideology shows us that love, flowers, marriage, babies the “ideal life” is what women want out of their lives which is why movies aimed at that sort of audience normally conclude with happy ending and situation that the audience can relate too and also aspire to have. I think if you only looked at the “target audience” with mainstream ideology in mind then most of the couples would be there for different reasons, the women for the romantic happy ever after of the plot and the men there for the irony and comic factor of how similar some of the situations are to their own relationships.

There are certain things that the audience expect when going to see a romcoms and all of these qualities are what help narrow down who the audience is, for example the main characters are normally the “perfect” guy or girl with the other being a lot more down to earth and normal giving the audience a very relatable character in the everyday settings that we live in ourselves. This being the expectation means that the audience would vary in ages from about 14-30 and is most likely to appeal to women because the “ideal life” of being in love, happy, secure, have a family is stereotypically linked to women.

As most film studio companies are American the nationality that is most likely to be the audience is American and British citizens, this is because the two countries are closely linked in the film industry and also obviously because they both speak English and would be no need to dub the actors into a different language. Other reasons for it being targeted to these audiences is that they normally use main stream ideology in Romcoms for example a white, straight, couple, normally married in a church, starting a family after wedlock these are just a few example of what the film industries see the main audience being attracted too and expect to see.

From looking at the expectations and other audiences for different romcoms I would say that our media products audience would be young single women, men and couples aged 14 -25 because it’s all about the prospect of what might be and what they can aspire to have. It’s also because they would most likely be attracted to the characters and be able to identify themselves within the characters and scene around them.

Question 3

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

The first stage of distribution would commonly be by a film studio screening the product to an audience in cinemas it would then be pushed through the distribution system going to DVDs sold in supermarkets, rental companies, internet purchasing sites such as Amazon or Play.com, then making its way to downloadable software such as iTunes, quite a lot of movies now go to TV with companies like Sky and Virgin Media giving people a chance to watch it (a bit like renting)  and then there is torrent or streaming sites that people can just play off the internet for free.

Starting at the top of the system with the film studios I think our film is quite mainstream to age-groups and sticks to structure that most Romantic Comedies have making me think that a company like Universal or 20^th Century Fox could potentially be a main distributor of our film as they both show a wide variety of films in many different genres, I chose these in particular because from our research of different films quite a lot of them were produced by these film studios, examples of these films would be 27 Dresses, 500 days of summer and Wild Child. However if you take into context that this is a extremely “low budget film” then I would maybe say that Paramount could be a distributor as they take on a lot of lesser know writers producers and films and help fund and develop them to become better, for example Twilight and Paranormal Activity both filmed, written and directed by non-famous people.

After films are released in the cinema they progress forwards to DVDs which are sold and rented in a variety of places, supermarkets are a big seller of DVDs as they can sell them at “new-in” exclusive prices which overall creates a larger profit, a lot of music and video stores also do this such as HMV and Zavvi which are sometimes overpriced but also sell exclusive offers and special editions that the supermarkets do not have. The DVDs are also largely distributed over rental stores that pay to watch and then have to give back giving audiences a larger choice in the film they watch.

Other new ways of buying cheap films and keeping them is websites such as Play.com and Amazon where they come out on pre-order and then lower in price once it has been released for a while this would play a big part in the distribution of DVDs however new technology has created ways to buy products as files and download then straight to your computer making them portable and easier to watch, software like iTunes is the largest distributor of legal downloading.

After a while illegal copies of the film would start to come out looping back round to the film studios which would initially stop making profits from that film as people can get hold of it for free this is why film studios create multiple movies at a time.

Overall I think that a bigger company like Universal would be the best distributor as they are well known, trusted and create movies that attract a large audience, and even if the movie is unsuccessful they continue with films to DVD and lower the prices to bring in more interest.

Question 2

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In our film the main ways in which we represent the social group “Young Couples” is through costume, performance and sound. In each of these we researched which things would complement the viewing for this group and being in our teens our self gave us a head start to what sorts of things we could use to represent our own social groups.

The costumes that the actors wear were picked to suit the character and to fit in with the scenes being acted. Scene one is showing a casual meeting scene at a party at the male characters house, this is why we have chose to dress him in a chequered shirt with jeans and the girl in leggings and nice top as these are the sorts of clothes that are worn to casual “gatherings”. Scene two is the date in the park where the couple start to like each other, Ben is wearing again wearing jeans and shirt but this time we see his bold trainers which are generally linked with young boys as these colours might look strange say on a working man, Alice is wearing leggings, top, long cardigan and Ugg Boots which particularly in the last couple of years is considered a “fashionable” casual look for teenage girls. During the moving in scene and a shot before that the couple also wear hoodies in, which is a classic ideology of teenagers and particularly male teenagers which normally seen as making them more intimidating to elders and children but here it is just worn as a comfortable outfit for being outside.  In a later scene wear the couple are seen to be getting married we tried to keep the costume fashionable and young by making Alice wear a pink flower patterned dress instead of the traditional white wedding dress; we also thought it kept the youth even though they are meant to have aged slightly, Ben is also kept slightly more casual and fashionable by wearing a shirt and waistcoat rather than a full suit. In the final scene Ben and Alice both wear tracksuit bottoms and baggy tops as “home” clothing which keeps them being seen as a young couple because an older couple (30s+) wouldn’t necessarily be going round the house in hoodies and trackies which are again strongly linked to a younger age and social group.

During the scenes the actors appear to age and act more grown up, at the beginning the couple appear more youthful and in love for example when they fall on the floor laughing after Ben proposes to Alice. They also are quite shy and nervous which obviously for a young couple starting a relationship this would be the case, normally confidence is shown in adults which towards the end the performance starts to show this. The scenes where the couple get married is where we see them as a true couple arm in arm walking out of the church, all of the classic cutesy romantic bits like this are the things that are classically linked with couples; holding hands, kissing, hugging etc. 

The music that goes with the film was researched to fit in with the Romantic Comedy genre that appeals to the social group of “Couples”, the fact that we picked the ones that appealed to us make it youthful as well as fitting to a wider audience. The reason behind the piece was that it had low and high points in the music that fit well with the performance of the actors. The piece is called “Road Trip” which we thought fit well with the idea of the couple growing up and starting their lives, which also fits well with the social group of couples because most people don’t go on a road trip alone. The other sounds and folio that represent young couples would mainly be the giggles in the date scene and the speech during the final scene of the male lead (Ben) in the pregnancy scene.

I think overall each element of the film has to represent the target in some way because we made sure to link everything back to the idea of our target audience and how the viewers would perceive things, especially the way that male and female roles are performed and seen so that the audience can engage and link themselves with the characters on screen.