AS Film Opening



Evaluation: Question One

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

Evaluation: Question Two

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Evaluation: Question Three

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

Evaluation: Question Four

Who would be the audience for your media product?

As mentioned on our research and planning blog, we decided that the most suitable audience for our film would be 15 to 24 year old male and females. Upon discussing this concept, we decided that this would be the most appropriate age range due to the usage of drugs, sexual content, alcohol, and strong language. Having our target audience as both male and female was decided due to the aspects and content of the film also. Most females enjoy romantic films, which is an underlying genre within our film – Candice and Nathan eventually getting together after a long struggle of being on “opposing teams”.

In order to ensure/prove our decisions, we decided to create a survey monkey (Which you can see here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CSDNV8K) and put it alongside our opening on Facebook, therefore allowing us to get the public’s opinion on what audience they believed to be appropriate.

Our first question on our Survey Monkey was “Are you male or female?” This immediately enabling us to see which gender is going to be susceptible to being influenced by social media, and hearing about our film that way.

This graph shows that the majority of the people that took our survey were males. This could be due to the fact that it is simply because more males are on Facebook, and had heard about this post more than females, or because more males watch videos over their Facebook newsfeed, therefore enabling us to take into account which gender will be more susceptible to public influences over social media.

Our second question on the Survey Monkey was “If male, what aspects of the opening appeal to you?” This question enables us to analyse whether we were correct in our analysis of what appeals to males in films, which then either agrees or disagrees with our research and planning blog.

From this pie chart you can see that we were correct as on our blogs, we noted that males would be into the action part of the film.

Also from the pie chart we can notice that the males are also into the sexual content and drug and alcohol consumption. Even though not as popular as the action, this notifies us that we succeeded on many aspects of our film, and will have the male audience interested at all times during the film.

Romantic interest has also taken up a small segment amongst this pie chart, showing that even though a very minute amount, some of the male population also care about this aspect within films, which means we will also be catering for this audience.

The third question takes into consideration the females which took part in our survey: “If female, what aspects of the opening appeal to you?” As mentioned on the male’s part, this question enables us to see whether we were correct in our analysis of what appeals to females in films, which then agrees or disagrees with our research and planning blog.

From this pie chart, we are able to see, as predicted, that romantic interest plays a very large role in the female interest to films, telling us that we were correct to include this aspect to our film in order to allow a wider audience opposed to leaving it fairly narrow.

Unsurprisingly, sexual content also seems to appeal to the female audience. As this, normally, coincides with romantic interest, this was expected from the females which participated within our Survey Monkey.

However, action makes an appearance on this pie chart in a fairly large way. This shows us that even though the majority of females would be interested due to the romantic/sexual side, action would also attract the feminine audience, even if it is only a small amount.

Drug and alcohol having shown an appearance is no surprise either. Due to the age group which took part within our Survey Monkey, this was expected, as seen on the pie chart within the next question.

Question four on the Survey Monkey was, “How old are you?” As seen on the following bar chart, the majority of people that took our survey were around the target audience which we were aiming for.

This has enabled us to see if our target audience has liked our idea, and if it has been successful in attracting the correct audience. In both cases, we have succeeded.

“Have you shown an interest in this film from the opening content” was the fifth question on our Survey Monkey. This shows that our opening was extremely popular! Even though this chart shows that an interest has been shown, it also shows that you cannot please everyone. Not every movie is going to be a hit with the entire population.

Our penultimate question was “What type of audience do you think this film would be best aimed at?” This question gets us a “second” opinon on what the audience should be. From this pie chart, we can see that the biggest segment is for “Teenagers (13-19 years old)”. This agrees with our original idea on what the target audience should be. As does the only other segment on the pie chart of “Yound Adults (20-28 years old)”. From this, we can understand that the content which we have included is ideal and attracting the correct age group.

The final question was “Do you feel that this film would relate to a specific ethnic group? If so, what one? And Why?”. This question allows us to see if we have created a film which is particularly aimed at a specific are of society, opposed to it being completely generalised.

From this first chart, we can see that more people didn’t think it was specified to a specifc ethnic group which is what we were aiming for. However, a few people did think that it was specified, which is why we included the following parts to this question to find out more.

This chart gives us information on what ethnic group the public thought our film was aimed at.

As we can see on the chart, each ethnic group is equal. This could be due to the fact that the idea of it being specified to a particular ethnic group is down to interpretation opposed to the film leaning towards a group.

This final chart gives us the final piece of information that we need to see why some people felt like our film related to a specific ethnic group. The largest segment on this pie chart is casting. As there is both black and white people as the main characters within this film, this could have influenced their opinion. With the content being the second largest segment on the pie chart, we can see that it is an important aspect on influencing people’s idea on whether a film focuses/relates to a specific ethnic group. The final segment is location. With it being set in urban London, people may instantly think of the black community, not due to racism, but because that is what the majority of urban “chavy” areas consist of.

Evaluation: Question Five

How did you attract/address your audience?

Evaluation: Question Six

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

Evaluation: Question Seven

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

Preliminary Task:

Media Evaluation: Question 7

Final Product:

Update: Film Idents

In today's lesson we created our own film idents for our film opening using Adobe after effects.
 
The first ident is to show the studio that the film was created in:

The second ident is to show the production company used:

Update

Today we edited all of our scenes together with music fitting in perfectly. Over the next few lessons we are planning to add in transitions and we are hoping to create our own ident.

Update

In todays lessons we were editing again. Trying to get the music that we've chosen to come in at exactly the right moments, and to make it look right. Also, we had to edit up our voice over sections, and ensure that they only overlap the specific areas which they are talking about.

Update

In our double period of Media Studies today we were editing our final piece together, picking the shots that best showed our media ability. However, we did come across a problem - one of our shots was too dark, so you couldn't really see what was going on and didn't fit the emotion/mood that we were trying to portray.
Also, we came to the realisation that we did not clearly show the relation between the siblings and Candice. Therefore, we are going to take some more shots, and create a "photo frame" of the "family".

Weekend of filming

This weekend we have carried out all of the filming that we have needed! Everything appears to have gone to plan, with our actors acting with enthusiasm and professionalism, the weather staying constant, and the evening shots, where the dark was needed, falling into place.
We organised - for the party scene - to have our group of friends come over to my house, and pretend to party, but as they already knew each other, there was no problem with them relaxing and getting into the "party mood".

Storyboard for Film Opening

Music for our opening

At the beginning of our opening, we want to create a dark, tense and intimidating atmosphere to match Kacey's attitude towards Candice. Whilst searching through Youtube, we settled on this instrumental to this song as it creates the atmosphere we want to achieve:

Further on into our opening, we want to create a depressing scene as it dawns on Candice exactly what lengths she has to go to provide for her younger siblings as her mum is uncapable of doing so herself. We decided on the song below as it creates a very dramatic and emotional atmosphere, and causes the audience to feel pathos towards Candice and her situation:

  

At the end of our opening, we want to create a carefree atmosphere during the house party scene to show how so many other teenagers are oblivious to the struggles that others may have. We decided on this song as it has been played at several house parties that Courtney and I have previously been to and has created a light-hearted and untroubled atmosphere:







Length of shots

Courtney and I have discussed that we dont want to have extremely long lengthed shots because this not only gets boring, but it doesnt achieve anything. The only time we have decided to use long lengthed shots is if we're to have estabishing shots etc.
Our other shots are up to around 6 seconds long. The longer shots being used in conversation, or emotional moments, and the short shots being used in action areas, and hectic moments - like our party scene that we plan on having. Having these shorts shots enable us to give the impression of a really big, loud, atmospheric surrounding for our characters

Prop List for Opening

Box of contraceptive pills
Mascara
Make up bag
Mirror
Bag
Clear bag
Bottle of Port
2x £20 notes
Bottles and cans of alcohol (substitute)

Lighting for our opening

During our planning, we have taken into account the lighting that will be necessary in each scene. In areas where we will be outside, we will obviously be using natural lighting, this is because that is clearly the only lighting available to us - with this we also need to take into account our outdoor filming hours, as we still need to see our characters, and for the lighting to be consistent within each shot so it makes sense.

However, when filming indoors, we are able to have much more of an effect on the lighting available. Therefore, we will be able to set moods and emotions within our scenes, as well as make the locations (events in the locations) more believable and realistic. Types of lighting we will be using indoors will be: artificial low key lighting, artificial high key lighting, and artificial medium lighting.