Evaluation Question 7

Evaluation Question 7

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


The first thing that i learnt from doing the preliminary task was realizing how key planning was. I learnt that in order to get the filming done well we had to know where we were going to shoot, what time of day we were going to shoot, who we were going to have as characters in our film, and what was the actual plot of the film. If we wouldn't of planned this before then we wouldn't of known what we were going to do and how we were going to go and do it.

Evaluation Question 6

Evaluation Question 6

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


For our research and planning we decided that we it was best to do a person to person focus group. We chose this ahead of Facebook because we felt that people couldn't express their full opinions over Facebook. We felt that they couldn't give feeling over their answer over the internet. For example when we asked if they enjoy films such as Kidulthood and Green Street this would of just required a one word yes or no answer over Facebook yet asking this question in person you can ask for reasoning behind their answer. To produce our film the only 2 pieces of technological equipment that we used were the camera to film and the computer to edit. I found that using blogging helped me a lot because it helped me keep on track of what I have learnt throughout the process of developing our film. The blogging enabled me to set out my research and planning neatly and allowed me to present it in a clear way helping me see where i am at and where i have to go. The editing software of premier pro helped us a lot as we could edit it to suit our genre. We were only able to shoot in the day time when it was relativley light so to fit into our genre we had to edit it and darken the lighting which with premiere pro we were able to do this. To get our film onto our blogs we simply uploaded it from premier pro to you tube and then from there, you tube to blogger by embedding it.

Evaluation Question 5

Evaluation Question 5

How did you attract/address your audience?      


We filmed some boys who we think would fit right into our specific target audience. We know the significance of audience feedback and we know that it is very important to know whether we have been successful or not. We feel that overall we have been successful in our project as we can see in the video below that for most of the time that the boys were watching it they had straight faces and were serious. This was what we challenged ourselves to achieve and now that we have done so, is very fulfilling. We set out from the start to create a 'boys' film which they would enjoy and as it seen in the video they have enjoyed it and would like to carry on watching.                         

                                                                                                          

Evaluation Question 3

Evaluation Question 3

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


We have decided that to distribute our film we are going to choose a relatively small distribution company. We are going to use Revolver Entertainment. We have chosen this company because they have done a good job with films such as Kidulthood & City rats which are very similar to our niche target audience, to our film and are aimed at a similar niche audience. We would aim to get our film mainly independent cinemas as we feel that themultiplex cinema companies would not be interested in our film because of the niche market that our film fits into however with independent cinemas we could choose which locations to offer our film im. For example we wouldn't want to show our film in an independent cinema in a small town such as Number 8 Community and Arts Centre in Pershore, Worcestershire because this does not correspond to our market. A suitable independent cinema however would be somewhere such as Clapham Picture House in London becuase a lot of the people who we are aiming our film at would live in areas like these. We would definitely release our film on DVD. We say this becuase if you look at Kidulthood it had a budged of only £600 000 and only made £453,876 gross revenue this suggests that they didnt make a profit but they sold a lot of copies of the DVD and eventually made a lot of profit. To promote our film we would try low budget advertising. We would advertise on youtube channels such as SBTV & GRIME DAILY as we think that people interested in this music would also be interested in our film. This would be much cheaper than advertising on the television or magazines or newspapers. We decided not to distribute our film using one of the big companies such as Warner Bros because of the costs involved and the fact that our genre does not fit into many peoples tastes. Warner Bros distributes a lot of mainstream films in the Action & Science Fiction genres which appeal to a lot of people which will create a lot of revenue and therefore potential profit. 

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our Film was made to represent teenage, urban, working class boys and we tried to do this by making our film similar to Films like Kidulthood and Shifty. We aimed at doing this by creating a very urban setting. In our film we have shots of things such as tower blocks, an underpass, traffic, a lot of dirty walls and graffiti. We tried to represent our chosen social class by the costume that we chose. We decided that we would get the actors to wear hoodies, black & grey coloured clothing and flat peak caps. We think that this is the dominant representation of this particular group of people as it feeds the stereotype of teenage boys being intimidating and threatening. Another way that we tried to represent this particular social group was by the soundtrack used. We chose a beat from the Grime genre because we feel that it fits in with the setting and the characters. Grime is a music genre which is fast paced at around 140 beats per minute which originated from East London. As we are trying to create an urban feel to the film opening this sort of music fits in perfectly. Grime, is a cross-pollinated genre, taking influences from a variety of different cultural styles as well as musical ones, we took into account that a lot of people living in urban areas, such as the setting in our opening would be from ethnic minority groups. However ll of the characters in our film are white, this was because the area of Worcester where we live has mainly only white people available to us. This would therefore challenge the dominant representation of this sort of area and show an alternative representation of the sort of people that should be presented in this sort of setting. The font that we chose to use in our film was a formal, strong sort of font. We chose to use this font as we feel it again portrays the urban feel of order and a strict way of doing things. This could be linked to the laws and police presence surrounding these group of people. It is also important to remember that the people not involved in our film opening tell us as well. There are no girls shown, or no boys with long hair, this suggests that it is expected in this sort of setting for the boys to have short haircuts which could therefore connote the urban upbringing that they have had. At the end of the film opening the two boys go and meet another boy who is smoking. This could reinforce the dominant ideology as in the UK over 25% of teenage boys smoke on a regular basis and a high proportion of these are working class. For our titles in our film sequence we chose to have a regular however serious style which could be argued to represent this actuall social group in general. We chose to fade each credit out by distorting them as they go out to create the urban feeling therefore representing the working class teenage male. Overall I would say that we reinforced the dominant representation of teenage working class boys mainly through the costume that we made them wear and the setting that we put them in. We couldn't of put them in a rural setting or put them in expensive clothes with college briefcases as it wouldn't of fitted in with our specific genre and wouldn't hit our target audience which could therefore lead to a lack of demand, and a bad reputation for our film.

Evaluation Question 1

Evaluation Question 1

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

It is possible to recognise our film as a real film opening because of certain things like the credits and the soundtrack. If you look at most film openings in our specific genre then they are very similar to ours. For example in Kidulthood the soundtrack has a very urban, underground feel to it, very similar to ours. Another way  in which our film would fit into the British social realism drama would be by the way in which the characters seem to be humiliating, cocky and up front. This is shown in the Green Street opening when the characters are coming out of the train station stairs and confront another firm. Both parties clash with each other therefore supporting the idea of dominant ideology as this is what you would expect from most males. We decided that we couldn't really challenge dominant ideology because we would struggle to fit this in to our plot. However we wanted to make sure that our film opening was slightly different from others in the same sort of genre, ''Genres are not static but shifting and slippery, evolving over time'' - Other films in the same genre, such as Kidulthood and Green Street all have dialogue within the first two minutes of the opening, we decided not to do this and challenge this form of this certain genre. We decided this because we felt as though we could set the scene without using any dialogue. We feel that we had to do this because as a group, we feel that it is better to show the audience than to tell it to the audience. We think that it is a much more powerful opening than if it would of been if we would of had a lot of talking in it.