Evaluation Question 2; How does your media product represent particular social groups.
As you can see this teacher (Mr Jones, The Headteacher) is wearing a very smart suit and carrying a laptop briefcase in his hand. This represents that most experienced teachers are dressed in a smart way because most important teachers want respect so they dress smartly. We wanted the headteachers costume to be believable as possible, this is because we want the actor to feel the part but also have a deeper meaning to himself i.e. that he is plotting something sinister.
The school children are wearing a smart uniform and are well-behaved. This is a challenge to the representation that all teenagers are angry and rebellious, but the children, in the audience's eyes, come across as being good but they have another side which is evil, this makes them unsuspected an unsuspected criminal. The reason why they are evil inside is because of the stereotypical view that all teenagers are easily manipulative.
As you can see this is a teacher wearing a casual blouse and smart trousers (Miss Smith, new teacher). The reason why her costume is this, is plian and simple, she is a new teacher and wants to impress the headteacher and the students aswel becuase she wants to show them htat she is relaxed and easy going i.e. give off a relaxed atmosphere.
We wanted the film to be as realistic as possible, which is why we shot it in school becuase this would be as realistic and get our target audince to imagin a normal day at school, which turns into a nightmare for any teenager aged 15-21.
The costume aspect of the teachers is plain and simple becuase the headteacher is dressed in a smart suit becuase he is higher up in the social status of the school were-as the new teacher is wearing a relaxed smart casual suit which states that she is lower down in the social status of the school becuase she is new and wants to dress to impress. Some students are dressed quite smartly and other are not as well dressed, this is becuase some of the students are secreatly evil and the others are just normal students, but the difference is that the smartly dressed students are the evil ones, this is definatly a challenge to a convention, this is that all scruffy children are 'evil'.
For cast our group wanted the headteacher to have a friendly appearence, but have something deeper about his person, which is why we chosen Ryan Sault to play the character of Mr Jones. The reason for this was becuase Ryan has a professional look about him when he is in his costume, but he can quickly change his movments to make it appear that he is planning something (this is achived by his expresionless face). We wanted our new teacher to be as realistic as possible, which is why we chosen Amy Thompsonto play the charact know as Miss Smith. The reason for this is becuase she has a friendly atmosphere about her which help her in her portrale of the character becuase Miss Smith is new and wants to impress people by dressing in a smart casual appreance and have a bubbley, kind personality.
The lighting that we have used was naturall sunlight and occassionaly, when needed it we turned on the school classroom and corridor lights for added realisim to the scene.
The music was very diagetic based becuase we used soundtrack pro to find an errie sound effect that we could use thoughout the film, which added to the atmosphere and the thriller factor of the film
Evaluation Question 3; What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
The film company that I would allow to distribute our film would be Entertainment Film Distributors the reason for this is that, this film company have distributed a lot of great films such as 'The Lord of the Rings' Trilogy and many thriller and horror films such as 'Snakes on a Plane'.
This is the company's logo
Entertainment is the UK’s leading independent distributor. The company was founded in 1978 and has showed continuing growth and success since that time distributing a wide range of product and building a significant film library. Highlights for the company have been the release of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, one of the most thrilling epic adventures in motion picture history, which at its culmination garnered a fantastic seventeen Academy Awards. In fact, since the year 2000 the company’s releases have totaled a remarkable thirty-eight Oscar wins and twenty-two BAFTAs ,encompassing a diverse range of genres.
The reaon why I have chosen this film distribution company was becuase it is a well established company which was been around for nearly 40 years and in those 40 years it has distributed award winning films, this includes horror and thriller. This means that if the distributed our film I would know that it was in safe hands and becuase it is well known people who love trhillers would watch it becuase, as I mentioned earlier, this comapny has distributed many award winning films.
Above is a picture which we believe are is our target audience for our media product.We are aiming our target audience to be between ages 15 - 21 years of age. Due to the amount of screen time upon the female teacher within our media product leads us to target our audience to be more towards the male gender. Although, we still are aiming to suit the female gender with the use of male characters. We are aiming our media product towards the middle to lower class citizens; as the location for our film is in a government and council funded secondary school, if we were aiming for the higher class citizens then we would have set our film within a high class grammar or private school. We felt that we could relate to a wide range of audience if we set our media product within a standard secondary school.
We asked our target audience to name some of their favorite films.
- Batman
- Butterfly Effect
- Hannibal
- Sin City
- Fast and Furious
- Inception
- Lord Of The Rings
- 'I Found it interesting'
- 'I would like to see what happens later on in the film'
- 'It was very good'
We have found on our Youtube page a graph which tells everybody who views it, which age group has been viewing our short film the most and the age group that have been viewing it the most was 15-17 year olds, which falls exactly into our age certificate rating.
- Being a student at school myself it was really easy to understand and i loved the mystery of what is going to happen after the two minutes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zmbaZ7TiWw
This is a link to our film, were if you click on view video statistics which is located next the word views.
Evaluation Question 5; How did you attract/address your audience?
This screenshot is of the establishing shot of our location, the school environment will appeal to those in school and who have recently left as they have memories of their time in school and can relate to the environment.
This screenshot is of our main Actress, Miss Smith, we think her attractive appearance will appeal to the mainly male members of our target audience and attract them to see our film.
This screenshot is of our main actor, Mr Jones, we think his attractive appearance will appeal to the mainly female members of our target audience and attract them to see our film. This character may also appeal to teachers as they can relate to his line of work, we have not targeted this audience directly but this may encourage them to see our film.
This screenshot is of our titles, we feel they are mysterious and therefore would appeal to our target audience, the TV effect would also appeal to our target audience as many of our target audience enjoy watching television.
This screenshot is of the classroom we used during our film, our target audience, people who are in school or have recently left, would be able to relate to the surroundings and would connect to he film better.- Batman
- Butterfly Effect
- Hannibal
- Sin City
- Fast and Furious
- Inception
- Lord Of The Rings
Evaluation Question 6; What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
We used Final draft 7 to write and develop our script it was reasonably easy to use once you had got used to using its shortcuts.
We used Final cut express to edit and create our film, we found the programme to be a bit challenging because we found it to be a bit awkward at times in terms of getting the desired outcome. It is useful because it allows for non-destructive editing as everything is stored digitally so mistakes can be undone at the push of the button: an advantage to the cutting and sticking of reels of footage which would be the case if destructive editing methods were employed.
We used soundtrack pro to import sound effects and music files into final cut express to be edited. We found the programme very confusing only actually using it once or twice.
We used the compressor to compress our film before uploading it, it can be a bit confusing as a programme as it has lots of different settings and features however we managed to get what we needed out of it without to much trouble.
We used youtube as a way of publishing our two minute media product. Before, uploading our film I had never uploaded a video onto youtube before. I found YouTube, very easy to use and is a great way to publish our film.
I used blogger as an archive for my media journey its advantage over other method I could have used for this purpose is that it can display text, pictures and videos and can be viewed from anywhere.
This was my first ever time using an apple iMac, I found this experience to be very difficult and interesting because some of the feature are difficult to use (mainly the shortcuts) but the rest of the iMac itself is easy to use, to a certain extent.
Evaluation Question 7; Looking back at your preliminary task (the continuity editing task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?
Issues with our preliminary task:
- Continuity issues - Car moves position (0:33 - 0:45)
- Sound cut-offs - Door closing (0:56 - 0:58)
- Sound transitions - Intro Music (0:28 - 0:30)
- Jump-Cuts - (1:00 - 1:01)
- Poor titles - (0:40 - 0:45)
'Catechize Academy', Examples of improvement:
- Good continuity - Walking (0:30 - 0:35) - Door Opening (1:00 - 1:08) - CCTV (1:38 - 1.42)
- No sound cut-offs
- Good Sound Transitions - Sound Bridge (1:35 - 1:45)(0:25 - 0:30) - Fade In (0:50 - 0:54) - Fade Out (2:26 to finish)
- No Jump Cuts
- Effective titles - (0:25 - 0:30)
Skills we have improved on:
- Wider variety of shots - close ups, more shot reverse shots, high/low angle shots, long shots, medium shots.
- Better framing and positioning of equipment.
- Tracking and Panning - close up on feet
When I was working with the ATLAS media production company I found it brilliant and amazing because I was working with very talented people who take media seriously, but have a laugh along the way which is fantastic in a group. We all took on different responsibilities, but we all helped each other out for example Sam was the editor, but we all stopped behind after school and helped out with the work, Adam was the Director, but we all gave our own opinions on how we should shoot the film, We all took it in turns working the camera and choosing how to shoot it and where we should set up the camera. Finally I was the creative director which is basically looking after the actors and sorting out the script but we all did this together as a perfect team.
In conclusion I enjoyed working with this group because it has been an amazing experience and I could wish for a better group.
