Evaluation

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

Comparing our Media Production with Films I had already done deconstructions on, I found that some films had started either with a song or diegetic sound going on in the background and as ours is a Romantic Comedy I think that the music we chose (Michael Bublé – Haven’t Met You Yet) fits in perfectly with what our film is going to be about. This song continues throughout our 2 minutes.
We researched through a number of Romantic Comedy genre films which gave us a few ideas for our film, although we did have a good idea of what it was we wanted to happen, we just needed a way to link it all together.

We first edited on the name of the production company. We made the Red Balloon Productions bold over the presents because we wanted the production company to stand out so our audience will know who has made the film.

We then made the title of our film transition in from the left and the right, this was also happening as the camera is panning down towards our main characters house which is where our 2 minute film begins. We chose red as the colour for Love, as many red things are associated with love or romance, it also stands out against the colour of the sky.

We then transitioned another name onto the screen so the audience will know who else is also playing a main part in this film.

We then added all our names under the editing subtitle so our audience will know who was involved in the making of our film. These credits were appearing as our film was continuing to play.
We have had the credits continuing to play across the film product as this is what a large percentage of films today do.

Here we took separate point-of-view shots of Tom and Chrissi. We also used a romantic effect to make it seem like a more romantic meeting, so our audience will realise that it's these people that meet and fall in love. We felt that this would tell the audience what genre of a film this is going to be, as RomCom's commonly use this effect.

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

Our media product represents the older teenage group (16+), it shows the opportunities they have to meet new people whilst still young, and how easy it is for them. It also represents the fun loving teen social groups of today, who like to go out to meet up with friends in bars. It can also represent the sort of freedom that teenagers have today. We see in this 2 minute extract that the female character is the main focus and has taken the dominant role, as for most of the 2 minutes we only see her and what she's doing.
When we meet our male character he's quite clumsy, and this could suggest that he's trying to hard to impress on the first meeting.
The costumes of our characters are kept pretty casual which creates a relaxed atmosphere, and so we know that their meeting isn't a formal or business meeting, that the audience knows it's going to be a romantic meeting.


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

Our Media product we feel fits the definition of an independent film. We researched it online and wikipedia states that: "Independent films are sometimes distinguishable by their content and style and the way in which the filmmakers' personal artistic vision is realized. Independent films are made with considerably lower budgets than major studio films."

Remember Me is a film that is very much like ours, as this is an independent film as this was made on a low budget, it is also a romantic film.
Our Media product would be a independent film because we didn't use expensive technology for example CGI. We also had limited locations which we could film on, and we also used cheap props.
The limited locations of our film include two houses, and outside of a pub, we had to use one of the houses as the inside of the pub.




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

Our Media product is mainly aimed at female teenagers (15+ as our film we thought should be certificate 15) and also older women. We also thought that our film should be aimed at a 15+ audience because the people we gave questionnaires to were all students over the age of 15 and 16. We also think that they are the age group that would be most interested in our film as it's a RomCom.

We put our film onto our Media FaceBook group, we then added friends and asked them for their comments on it.

We thought this would be a good idea to put it onto FaceBook because this is where most female teenagers spend a lot of their time, so we thought we could get a good amount of comments on our film if we were to put it on here.






5. How did you attract/address your audience?

Our target audience was mainly at female students ages 15 and above, it is also aimed at women of any older age. To address our audience we showed our 2 minute film to students at school around the ages 16+ and asked for their comments on it.

Zoe Miller
Age: 17

"it was really good, i loved it"

Imogen Cooper-Moorhouse

Age: 17

"i thought it was great, i enjoyed watching it"

Holly Masters

Age: 16

"Oh wow, i loved it, the editing was really well done"

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

I have learnt a number of things during the making of our product, the main thing being working with the Apple Macs, as i had never used one before, but once you got the hang of it, it was fairly simple to use.
For example our film product was filmed all through the daytime, but when our main character was going out to meet her date we wanted it to look like it was evening time, so we changed the lighting effect to make it look slightly darker. This effect we found was difficult when our main character was entering the pub, this was because we had direct sunlight on our location, this made it difficult for us to darken as we had light reflecting towads the camera off various objects.

We managed to overcome this problem by slightly changing the brightness and contrast of the scene, and then making it slightly darker.

I also learnt how to remove the audio on each section of our product, we did this so you wouldn't be able to hear it over the top of the music we chose to play across the extract, which was something else we learnt, adding music onto a product.

We learnt how to use different type of effects to add romance to our film, like the dreamy romantic effect at the part of when our characters first meet.

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

I feel that I personally have learnt how to use the Apple Macs to make our product look more professionally made, such as usign different effects and transitions to make our product more entertaining and to keep our audience engaged.
During the filming of our product I learnt how easy it is to make a continuity error, this made us think much harder and concentrate more when stopping and then starting the camera to think how we had finished that take, and how we need to start the next one.

It was little things like the speed I had to walk into each shot, I realised it had to be the same speed all the way through, this was quite difficult at first because I was walking into the shot before the record button had been pressed, instead of the film then flowing it had jumps, so we decided that we should start recording and I should start walking from beind the camera, and we found that this worked a lot better.

I have also learnt how to use different cameras, before we started our real product I was unsure of how to use the filming cameras properly, but during the making of our main task I learnt how it worked and how to use it.

I also learnt about shot reverse shots, match on action and the 180 degree rule, which had to be remembered throughout our filming and editing.
I feel that since our preliminary task, my use off media technology has grown as well as my knowledge about the technologies.