In what way does your media product, use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
I feel like my media product and final opening two minutes of the film ‘A broken Promise’ conforms some media conventions, as it’s quite hard to avoid or come up with a totally new fresh and original idea which nobody has produced before with film taking up a huge percentage and proportion of media in general over such a long period of time. When first planning what I wanted to produce for my opening two minutes I had my mind set on doing a mockumentary because I really liked the ideas of voiceovers, however I decided against the idea as I found it very hard to convey humour and comedy through a short opening, as there is only so much you can do. After deciding against this I was still certain that I wanted produce a piece with with a poem, where my inspiration came from a childhood favourite ‘Matilda’ directed by Danny DeVito based on the novel written by Roald Dahl, or narration such as ‘The Lovely Bones’ produced by Peter Jackson. I found that films similar to these where narration is used such as ‘American Beauty’, ‘Sin City’ and ‘Forest Gump’ to name a few really draws an audience in and communicates to them the story, it also has a powerful effect in the sense that it allows the audience to be placed in that persons position. In my opening two minutes I opted towards the poem as the poem used was one my sister and I had wrote through personal experience which is where my idea originated from. Here is where my film challenges many other films because it was inspired through personal experience and therefore obviously creates close emotion for me which I hoped to portray in the two minutes and for other people to feel as if they can put their selves in that position. Deciding to go with a drama genre which has a sad story behind it, about a father leaving his family i concluded that this emotion was best portrayed through using a child actor as again using 'Matilda' as an example, you automatically feel sorry for her having a mother and father who care so little.
In what way does your media product represent different social groups?
I think that my media product ‘A broken Promise’ can represent all social groups. Admittedly it wasn’t one of my main focuses or aims to portray this type of representation in the opening two minutes of my film, However I think that any class, social group, ethnicity and people from any background could relate to a problem such as family breakdowns which could potentially happen to anybody no matter who they are or where they come from.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media and why?
What is an institution?
An Institution is a company that disperses a media product for audience consumption.
Where would an institution disperse a film product?
A film would generally go to a cinema either nationally or internationally, it would then go on to be sold as merchandise through shops as DVD’s, soundtracks etc.
What else does an institution do?
Before making a film the directors and producers go to an institution to pitch their idea for a film and potentially find out whether the institution would fund their project underway.
After researching in to films, writing up essays and completing case studies on films such as ‘This is England’, ‘Half Nelson’ and ‘Last Resort’ and looking at which institution distributed them I came to a decision that mine was very similar with all being heavy story based productions they were distributed through mainly the BBC. Other includes the UK film council, Film Four and Vertigo Films.
There are many film distributors and production companies with the main and most well-known making up the’ 6 conglomerates’ which house and accommodate the majority of the film industry. I however wouldn’t want my film distributed by any of these as I would not class it as a mainstream type of film and strongly believe in independent cinema.
I researched more into these institutions to decide whether they really would suit my film. BBC films are in the forefront producing British Independent films and produce many feature films. They are ‘committed in finding and developing new talent’ BBC films appears to suit my film most and produces quality made films as opposed to any of the big 6 with their main aim being to target a mass audience and generate as much profit as possible. I would hope that choosing an institution such as the above would attract the interest of many UK film audiences and help to widen the niche audience market through a form of social realism in film.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
For my film to be successful, it is vital that I establish a specific target audience that I believe my film will appeal to in particular and the demographic that I believe would enjoy the film the most through factors such as relating to the characters and identifying themselves with the setting, the plot and so on. I believe that the main demographic who would enjoy this film are film goers who fit in to the category of ‘mainstream plus’
After conducting audience research before producing my opening two minutes it revealed that this type of drama genre was watched by a mainstream plus audience. Mainstream films are targeted for all cultures and audiences, with the dominating culture and audience being the primary marketing focus, while sub-genre films are marketed towards only one specific culture and audience. Mainstream films often recruit talent from all film genres and backgrounds. Being more specific my target audience would be mainstream plus independent cinema goers. These types of audiences are audiences primarily looking for good, new, innovative films and are willing to veer from the typical films and are generally aesthetically inferior.
I think that my film could target all ages, but mainly ages ranging from 14-45 and most probably female viewers as it’s a sad storyline and statistics show that males in this age range tend to prefer films in the action and comedy genres.
How did you actually address your audience?
Obviously after conducting my market research, I knew who my
target audience was, mainstream plus and the niche that enjoy social realism.
This made it easier in my head for me to address my audience as even if they
haven’t been in a situation like the one being portrayed in the film themselves, they can relate to these ‘real
life’ issues.
I believed
that it is important to engage my audience through an opening sequence, in
order to hook our audience into wanting to see our film and to advertise our film
to get the best audience response. This is why I used a poem at the beginning
with the hope that it would draw them in and be catchy with the use of
narration and diegetic sound. So the story in the form of a poem was my main
form of addressing the audience, however with this I had the aim of wanting to
leave them thinking what the story actually is because in a poem it leaves you
thinking of a meaning behind it, which I personally prefer in films instead of
being given a clear story line at the beginning of a film. Whilst filming I
also tried to use a range of shots, so it wasn’t just the same shot, which
would make it quite boring. I used long shot, close up, extreme close ups,
panning shots, over the shoulder shot, both high and low angle shots to name a
few to keep the images flowing. The choice of character, a little girl, I
selected with the hope that this would grab the audience’s attention because I
don’t think people would be so interested if it was a person of an older age
experiencing this issue, whereas it’s a really hard thing for such a young
child to deal with. I found this out through audience research also. The choice
of sound I used was sad music, this would hopefully address the audience as
it’s sad music and bodes well with the footage and story itself.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of
constructing the product?
When editing my film there were two main programmes I used,
the predominant one being Adobe Premiere Pro, the other Adobe After Effects.
With Media being very new to me I had no experience whatsoever in using the two
mentioned above or any other programmes used in class on other tasks such as
Photoshop. We had the chance to use technologies such as freeze framing, ‘the
wiggler effect’ (which we did on the teletubbies sunshine), creating opacity on
an image, colour corrections and masking. These little tasks and plays around
with the programmes in class did help a little bit, therefore I wasn’t a
complete newbie when it came to editing the opening two minutes. Whilst making
my film I used audio, which I sourced from home and then learnt how to import
it in the premiere pro and place it on the timeline, like the video clips
needed also. Once the clips were all imported and placed on the time line you
could pick and drag the clips to where you wanted them. After playing around on
the programme I found effects which I added to the audio such as fade in and
fade out, I also added clips to the clips such as fade, gradual dissolve etc. I added my titles using the same programme
because I had difficulty in using after effects to create titles. I understood
how to create them and create effects on the title using the wiggler and would
feel confident in saying I can use this particular programme, however it was the
importing which I had trouble with as the background was no longer transparent
after importing it to premiere pro covering the whole image, which was a shame.
Creating my titles on Premiere, I found very simple to use, I had to add each
title separately to the timeline and choose the duration and effects in wanted.
I can say I am more confident in using this programme. However I would like to
learn to use photoshop in order to create better images or new effects.
Looking back at your preliminary task, do you feel like you
have learnt progression from it to the full product?
I have learnt a lot producing my project. The first factor
that spring to mind is the importance of planning efficiently. For the preliminary task we began filming
with almost no planning or we had very little, meaning the ideas we had were
not so great, however the two girls, alice and caitlin I was paired with had
the aim and focused on the task in hand, which asked us to consider shots and
exchange dialogue. Planning a film secondly makes you consider mise on scene a
lot more, considering location and how it fits in with the film, I chose a
quiet deserted track, with the hope that it would give off a sense of loneliness
in relation to how the actress was feeling and the words that accompanied it. In the preliminary task the choice of location
was just the nearest room, basically the thought processing behind this task
was extremely diminutive. It did however help with respect to the fact that I had
an understanding of what sort of thing we needed to do when it came to creating
the film opening. Because this was the first time I used the programmes and
putting together short clips, I obviously had no previous experience and
although we all had an equal role in creating the preliminary task, there were
two other group members and I guess you just relied on them for some of the
workload, so when it came to doing it for myself, I felt very responsible and
was excited at the same time. Lighting was another aspect which I had to
consider when it came to creating my film. Whilst shooting the preliminary, we
had to shoot it a second time because the lighting in the first one was either
too bright and grainy on the long shots and far too dark on the close ups.
Another consideration was the continuity and whether the images flowed smoothly
from one clip to another. When shooting the preliminary we shot a clip of
someone walking through a door from one side and coming in again from the
other, but learning to cut clips at the right point was a very vital lesson
which I actually enjoy analysing and looking at in real films.
