Audience Feedback

I  did some audience research involving my class and a class of students in the years above and got them to write down comments of what they thought of the opening two minutes and here’s what they said;

I have got about 20 responses for my audience feedback, which are all generally positive.

The majority said they liked the shots selection and variety of images used and that the poem was very fitting with the images.
Others said the 'music worked well'.
'It was very moving'.
'The story was engaging and fitted the images'
'The old pictures were really effective'.
'The title 'A Broken Promise' works well, it's really sad and goes with the film'.
'The actress was really cute'. (not that that makes a difference)
'The footage is flowing and doesn't jump from one clip to the other'.
'I really like it, i can also relate to it :('
'Really love the poem, has so many meanings'
'good variety of shots'
'Like the close up shots, work really well in getting you emotionally attactched to the little girl'
'How she cries at the end, awwhhh'

My criticsms however;
a few people mentioned that a 'couple of the shots were shakey'
'could have used a tripod'
'The mouth doesn'st move in time with the words the girl is saying'

The pictures above are a few of the comments from the year above, who were alot mor critical than my own peers. I'd by lying if i said i was totally happy with all of these comments however i take all comments like this constructively, and will be sure to work on the negative points in any future productions or work. Lokking back a month after making my opening two minute film i do agree with some of the comments and think it probably would have been pbetter the sync the words in time with how the mouth moved.

Evaluation

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.

Editing the Footage

All Footage gathered, everything filmed...now time to put it together.

During some class lessons we have had time to put our film together, firstly I started with putting in my production logo, then going from there. To put all of this together i used adobe premire pro, so if you want to use a piece of footage or picture etc, you have to import it.

To change the length o the clip to get it to the desired time you want you drag it to the let frame and use 'I' to cut the footage in when you want the clip to start and 'O' when you want it to end. You then have to drag image and audio down to the time line for it to come up on the right. You can also use effects on both the audio and images such as cross dissolve or gradually fade. I found this really easy to use ater a couple of times.

I used a piece of music composed by Brian Eno and Yoori Kim called 'In meinem Himmel' however the specific bit i wanted in my opening two minuets was not long enough to cover the whole of the footage, so i had to copy the audio clip a number of times and choose when to cross disolve them so it seemed like an extended piece of music. On top of music i had audio which was a poem read out by a little girl, that describes the loss of her father.

Choice of Location

For my location, I have chosen a scenic, quiet place in the countryside. I chose a location like this because it gives off a peaceful poetic feel, which i wanted to try and get across as the words being said in the opening two minutes are very powerfull, and i wanted a contrast. When i filmed it was also a nice day and was sunny and light which was exactly what i pictured for my film..and obviously wanted after all of the snow and cold weatehr we have had recently, which at first didn'tt stop me from filming but after I had shot some videos and went to edit them when i came back in to school, I realised that it was simply too cold outside to get a clear picture on the camera and the lens was steamed up making the picture unclear unfortunately.

We also filmed at the Tiffey Valley in wymondham, where the girl playing the part sat on a bench amonst this lovely scenery.

I did some of the filming in our field, when it was both covered in snow and once the snow had cleared.

Script for 'A Broken Promise'

This is the poem which will be said in the first two minuets of the film.

I am not the way I used to be
I am stronger and wiser as you can see
Remember my words my father said;
As he cradloed me up and laid me to bed
You will someday be a lady with a life of your own
With someone to love you as i have shown
I will always be herre to lend you a hand
To help you guide you when you don't understand;
Somehow I believed his words, I see
he was not the father he turned out to be.
Instead he was a man that did not care'
My mother was my father because he was not there.
I often cry myself to sleep
My fathers love was not mine to keep
I miss my father i won't lie
Not a single hug, or one last goodbye.
He is now a free man to roam
Not worrying of his family or coming home;
He walked out of my life and never turned my way,
Oh why daddy, why didn't you stay?

After this poem has been read out, the little girl acting this part says;
My name is Amelia Archer, I'm nine and three quarters, I live with my mum and two sisters, and my dad, well...my dad, he ran away.

Film Progression..

So after my idea to base the opening two minutes of a film on the theme of a plastic bag, in the genre of a mockumentary, went horribly wrong and didn't work, I decided to do something else.


The film I'm currently in the process of editing is about a young girl called Amelia Archer, who at the age of nine is a budding poet, the opening two minutes consists of her reading out a poem she has written about her dad who ran away leaving behind his three girls and wife for another woman. based on a true story. I have decided to call the film 'A broken promise'

So far in class i have put together just over the first minute. I will be posting my storyboards and what i have done so far in the next few days. Apologies for the lack of blog updating recently due to family commitments, but will keep on top of it from now on.


these are a few snaps of what i have done so far, these are accompanied by music and audio (voice over) which is a nine year old speaking.

With this filming, I ahve tried to use different shots, using a wide randge of angles and i ahve cross cut scenes, and also used transition within the audio and music so it's flowing and doesn;t jump from one piece of music to the next.

Story Boarding...

This is just a Story Board, which is a drawn order in which I'm going to shoot my shots!

Here is the establishing shot, which will pan from high to low or left to right.

Media Ownership

Some nations can influence and control their media greatly. In addition, powerful corporations also have enormous influence on mainstream media.
In some places major multinational corporations own media stations and outlets. Often, many media institutions survive on advertising fees, which can lead to the media outlet being influenced by various corporate interests. Other times, the ownership interests may affect what is and is not covered. Stories can end up being biased or omitted so as not to offend advertisers or owners. The ability for citizens to make informed decisions is crucial for a free and functioning democracy but now becomes threatened by such concentration in ownership.
The idea of corporate media itself may not be a bad thing, for it can foster healthy competition and provide a check against governments. However, the concern is when there is a concentration of ownership due to the risk of increased economic and political influence that can itself be unaccountable.

Media cross-ownership is the ownership of multiple media businesses by a person or corporation. These businesses can include broadcast and cable television, radio, newspaper, book publishing, video games, and various online entities. Much of the debate over concentration of media ownership in the United States has for many years focused specifically on the ownership of broadcast stations, cable stations, newspapers and websites. Meaning, that when one organization owned any two of these media outlets, that organization was involved in "cross-ownership."

The Big 6
1. General Electric

Which has media outlets such as NBC and Telemundo, Universal Pictures, Focus Features, 26 television stations in the USA and cable networks MSNBC, Bravo, CNBC, The Weather Channel and Syfy. GE also owns 80 percent of NBC Universal. As of 2011, GE's share in these companies has been sold to Comcast, who themselves own Versus, style., G4, E!, Comcast SportsNet, the Philadelphia 76ers and Philadelphia Flyers. The company operates through four segments: Energy, Technology Infrastructure, Capital Finance and Consumer & Industrial

2. Walt Disney Company

Is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into live-action film production, television, and travel. Taking on its current name in 1986, The Walt Disney Company expanded its existing operations and also started divisions focused upon theatre, radio, publishing, and online media. In addition, it has created new divisions of the company in order to market more mature content than it typically associates with its flagship family-oriented brands.

The company is best known for the products of its film studio, the Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group, and today one of the largest and best-known studios in Hollywood. Disney also owns and operates the ABC broadcast television network; cable television networks such as Disney Channel, ESPN, A&E Television Networks, and ABC Family; publishing, merchandising, and theatre divisions; and owns and licenses 14 theme parks around the world. The company has been a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average since May 6, 1991. An early and well-known cartoon creation of the company, Mickey Mouse, is the official mascot of The Walt Disney Company.

3. News Corporation

News Corp is an American multinational media conglomerate. It is the worlds second largest media conglomerate in terms of revenue. The companys chairman and chief executive is Rupert Mordoch. Holdings include: the Fox Broadcasting Company; television and cable networks such as Fox, Fox Business Channel, National Geographic and FX; print publications including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and TVGuide; the magazines Barron's and SmartMoney; book publisher HarperCollins; film production companies 20th Century Fox, Fox Searchlight Pictures and Blue Sky Studios; numerous websites including MarketWatch.com; and non-media holdings including the National Rugby League.

4. Time Warner

holdings including: CNN, the CW (a joint venture with CBS), HBO, Cinemax, Cartoon Network, TBS, TNT, America Online, MapQuest, Moviefone, Warner Bros. Pictures, Castle Rock and New Line Cinema, and more than 150 magazines including Time, Sports Illustrated, Fortune, Marie Claire and People.

5.Viacom

Holdings include: MTV, Nickelodeon/Nick at Nite, VH1, BET, Comedy Central, Paramount Pictures, Paramount Home Entertainment, Atom Entertainment, and music game developer Harmonix. Viacom 18 is a joint venture with the Indian media company Global Broadcast News.

6. CBS Corporation

Owns the CBS Television Network, CBS Television Distribution Group, the CW (a joint venture with Time Warner), Showtime, book publisher Simon & Schuster, 30 television stations, and CBS Radio, Inc., which has 130 stations. CBS is now the leading supplier of video to Google’s new Video Marketplace.

Technological Convergence

Impact of Technilogical convergence on film institutions and audiences:
Technological convergence refers to the systems of technology by which media is produced and distributed to the audience.
Technology has converged to enable audiences to communicate, consume and interact with the media, and create their own media trhrough one piece of technology.
This has made communication, consumption, interaction and production a more convienient, more portable and more integregated expirience.

The convergence of technology has enable cross-media convergence to take place - the coming together of traditionally seperate forms of media i.e radio which can be listened to via the TV, TV and Newspaper can be consumed via the web and films or games can be consumed via phones or games consoles.

Examples of Technological convergence with relevance to film instituions/audiences;
Computers
Broardband Cable
Cameras - Digital, HD, 3D etc.
Cinemas
Flat screen, High Def TVs
Blur-Ray dvd
3D technology
Apple and Itunes
Sony and playstation 3
Microsoft and X-box
Nintendo and Wii
Virgin Media etc.

UK versus Hollywood

Hollywood Dominates
Different cultural deals and appeals
Successful partnerships

Film four relies on joint partnerships with other companies to make films:

Slum Dog millionairre: Cellador Films, pathe pictures
Trainspotting: Polygram, Figment Films
Four weddings: Polygram, Working Title

Film Four relies on American studios to distribute films to an international audience

Slumdog Millionairre: Fox Searchlight
Trainspotting: mirrormax Films
Four weddings: Gramercy Pictures

Audience and Institutions: UK Film Notes and Revision.

Recently in media we have been focusing on different parts into making a film, and here are a couple of Key terms i think are important to remember:
Production: the processes and decisions that take place when making a film.
Distributing: Advertising, merchandising and delivering the film to the market.
Ehibition: the different ways in which the audience can consume the film.
Synergy: In media, synergy is the promotion and sale of a product (and all it's versions) throughout various subsideries of a media conglomerate e.g. films, sountracks, video games.
Walt disney Poineered synergistic marketing techniques in the 1930's by granting dozens of films rights to use his mickey Mouse character in products and ads and continued to market disney media through licensing arrangements.

Synergy in film:
20th Century Fox produces, distributes and markets films















Owned by new Corporation
Which is owned by Rupert Murdoch
Who owns: Sky, News International, Haprer Collins, my space.

Proliferation (through Technology)
Downloading: Itunes, Ipod, apple TV
Digital piracy: DVD's Filesharing
Social networking sites: marketing and Buzz
accessibility: everywhere????
Control: audiences and Industries.

''The importance of technological convergence for institutions and audiences''
What is Convergence?
when two or more technologies come together to create new technology
Audiences: everything in one product
Institutions: Audiences ties to one product.

Hollywood Versus The British Independent Film

When the first of the rebooted Batman series, opened in 2008, it was shown in 4366 screens in the UK; when the British independent filom, This is England, opened in 2007, it was shown in only 62 screens. What does this tell us? Well, Batman, even though it was the first of the new series, was, nevertheless, part of a franchise. An earlier series of films had been made and exhibited (to varying degrees of critical and commercial success) only a few years previoulsy, but the character is something of an icon in American (and worldwide) popular culture and many people of the key cinema going age range of 15-25 will be familiar with him; furtheromore, he is historically significant in popular culture, having appeared first in the 1940s, which may broaden his appeal and there were ready made promotional partners - the comic books, cartoon DVDs, toys, T shirts etc existed long before the Dark Knight movie. Why else would it appeal? The title, Dark Knight, siginfied a new, darker, mature approach to the story which might attract an older audience. On top of that, director Christopher Nolan was noted for his sophisticated, intelligent approach to movie-making and star Christian Bale was noted for starring in left of field movies that appealed to an adult audience. All these features, plus the publicity and marketing (it had several official websites instead of the usual one) backed by the financially empowered, vertically integrated global media conglomerate, Warner Brothers, with its obvious links to Time-Warner-AOL (though it ended its ties with AOL in 2009) as well as DC Comics, the publisher of Batman (which it owned), made this movie an event release and cinema chains are in the business to make money. As much as possible. This is England (and remember, we're talking four years BEFORE the TV series), cost £1,500,000 (as opposed to The dark Knight's budget of $185,000,000) was a specific type of British movie - one that falls into the working class genre; a film that used the medium to explore working class issues and to highlight the class system and the often violent and dysfunctional effects it can have the working class community. There has been a history of this kind of film in the UK from the early 1960s, although those films often used major stars of stage or screen. It was never going to have a massive box-office appeal and was shown largely in independent cinemas. The writer-director Shane Meadows did have a significant reputation, had been nominated for numerous awards and had won several British Independent Film awards. This is England went on to receive critical acclaim in the UK and the USA and won a BAFTA for the best British film. A number of production companies were involved: Big Arty Productions, EM Media, Film4, Optimum Releasing, Screen Yorkshire, UK Film Council, Warp Films and Optimum was the distributor in the UK. In reality, the two films were not competitors, but this gives an indication of how difficult it is for a British film, particularly one that is liable to have more of a British audience - and perhaps even a specific British audience - to compete with a film made by a powerful American media giant with a global audience (and it was, not incidentally, scheduled to open at the beginning of the British school summer holidays of that year, to maximise its audience), but if you owned a cinema chain, which film do you think would bring in the most money?

Production Logo

Production Logo 1 - scrapped.
Since the break during christmas, i had to analyse what skills were needed to animate my production logo, going by the idea of 'gnawfolk productions' the outcome was not good, and i realised when talking with James that, I would have to use skills that we have not learnt yet, as this was all A2 stuff. Kind of set my self an unrealisticv goal. So i had to tyhink of a new production label...and here it is. Dog Paw productions.

It starts off with paws travelling across the screen,

 they then all fade,

bar one which the focus is then on that one, zooms in to it,

 and fades into the words 'dog paw' which are ironically in the shape of a dog paw.