Evaluation 7

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

I believe I have found that preparation is key to success. Our preliminary task hardly had any work done to it before hand; we put together with a script some basic ideas and couldn’t wait to begin filming and editing, rushing into the process. This year, research was much more important. Looking into real media products was the best way to decide what kind of media product we wanted to create. Once that was acknowledged, further research into the chosen genre, our target audience, music, camera angles and titles were vital in order to produce the best film opening we could. We knew from our experiences with the preliminary task, filming outside would have been more difficult and so location was decided indoors in order to have better control over the surroundings, in the way real media prodcuts use a studio environment to control the atmsophere for certain scenes. We also learnt from our mistakes and found that our first ideas were not necessarily the best. A good example of this was changing our title name and title font more than once after speculation, discussion and audience feedback on the matter.

After our preliminary task, we found that the music available to use on our film was limited and so the decision to create our own was definitely best. We could then create exactly what we wanted instead of trying to muster up a piece similar to how we imagined.

Overall, I believe we have progressed well within our research and practise into the new technologies that were available to us. Our film opening has been carefully thought out with many minor details that when put together have produced a film opening I am ultimately proud of.

Evaluation 6

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

During the production of our film opening, we used a lot of new technologies that we had not been familiar with before this year. One major example of this were the Apple Macs we were given access to in lesson. Both Gina and I had to get used to the small changes such as holding down Control before right clicking in order to copy and paste objects. We also had some trouble with the internet on the Mac’s, having to go through a lengthy process every lesson in order to allow the internet to be shared from the Administrator’s area to our Log-in area. There were some programs that were exclusive to the Apple Macs and so hadn’t been used before by Gina or myself; I-photo and especially I-movie that we used to edit our film opening, were both completely new to us; however the editing process was easy enough to understand. There were however, some drawbacks to the program such as adding our own titles. To add our own text instead of using the fonts I-movie offered automatically was quite complicated involving screen grabs, editing in Macromedia Fireworks and adding freeze frames.

Using Blogger to keep track of our process was also a completely new experience. It was quick to set up and blogging was made easy, using the given icons to upload photos and videos and transferring over into the “HTML” format in order to embed codes for things such as Prezi (Prezi was also a new interactive presentation software we had never come across before).

On the other hand, one major issue we had with Blogger was trying to upload my music onto the site. There was no set icon to upload music without a video to go with it. We attempted to upload it as a video at first however this failed and I decided to seek help on Google’s help forum. I blogged about how I researched into uploading my music on Blogger and how I found what was needed; a “third party site” to upload the music onto in order to create an embed code I could then paste into my blog. At first,“IodaPromonet” seemed the most promising site, yet my registration failed to go through for unknown reasons. “SoundCloud” was then another option and so I made an account and uploaded my music almost straight away and was able to embed the codes onto my blog easily.

I had spoken about on my blog how I used Audacity to record my music which I have had past experience with. I find it very easy to use and to create layers so as I can edit for example, the guitar separately to the vocals. The only technology I used apart from the software itself was a microphone to actually record the music.

YouTube was something both Gina and I were familiar with; however, we had never uploading videos before. We had blogged about our issues with YouTube and the slow process of uploading videos to the site. We found that uploading was much faster at home on Windows instead of the Apple Macs that seemed to be advanced elsewhere, yet disadvantaged in aspects such as speed efficiency on the internet.

Some technologies such as the internet for film research and of course the school cameras used to film our media product, could have been easily overlooked as they did not stand out as new experiences. However, this year, we have learnt a lot about new techniques especially with the cameras. We had to improvise in order to produce the aerial shots we wanted as well as positioning the camera correctly in the bathroom without it being seen in the reflection of the mirror. We had to think carefully about the continuity between actions from shot to shot and also make sure the camera was steady enough in every take.
Overall, our experiences with technology has been expanded immensely this year, progressing onto vast software and internet based materials as well as hardware. 

Evaluation 5

How did you attract/ address your audience?

To target young people, we have used a teenage girl as our protagonist in order for the character to be relatable to the audience. Her OCD may be familiar abstractly to the issues of young people and so allow the audience to empathise with her character.

The music which I created was purposefully inspired by our research of similar media products and the contemporary, acoustic style that was present throughout as to attract young audiences. The lyrics, because they are comparable to a conventional love song, would especially appeal to female audiences. Furthermore, the storyline of our film opening is relatable to our target audiences, considerably to that of the younger generation, due to the dysfunctional family that may be relatable to some family situations.

Evaluation 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

We researched specifically into independant and British film audiences as this is the origin of our film opening. It was important to consider large scale institutions and how they target British audiences as well, as the Hollywood Market is known to dominate the film industry and overpower the British film industry. 
From our target audience research, we found that Comedy Drama’s often attract younger audiences and female audiences due to the elements of comedy, so these have been our main targets. We also found that older generations and male audiences, on a smaller scale, may be attracted to the drama aspects of our film opening. 

Evaluation 3

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

Gina and I created a distribution company name to include at the very beginning of our film opening. We called the company “Moody Cow Productions” to relate through colloquial language to the younger members of our target audience. We used casually 'sketchy' text and a small cartoon image of a cow as well as the comedic sound of a cow's moo, all to relate and target our audience. 
Through our research into production and distribution names, we found the interesting name which originally insipred us, "Red fish Blue fish films". However, this was not a company that was likely to distribute our film. We did acknowledge how similar media products had distribution companies in common such as “Fox Searchlight Pictures” that distributed both “Juno” and “500 days of Summer”. This is a good example of the kind of company that would distribute our film, as it specialises in independent film and tends to stick to similar genres including art house and Comedy Drama’s. 

Evaluation 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

We have addressed certain social groups in our film opening including dysfunctional families, “obsessive compulsive disorder” and stereotypical youth. We attempted to depict these social groups with as much sensitivity as possible without dismissing the comedy aspect of our chosen genre. The music was thus purposefully faded out during the divorce scene, and the girl's OCD is not directly acknowledged, merely shown as a normal part of her life (how the character would see it herself). These methods were used in order to create an empathy for the protagonist and allow the audience to see her life through her own eyes, how the music represents the content she feels with her own routine, thrown off by the silence over the breakfast table. 
We felt, however, that we could be more lenient with the stereotypical representation of the rebel sister. This was because, in our chosen genre, and even the film industry in general, stereotypes are widely addressed and are not often challenged by audiences as “inappropriate” as their inclusion is for comedic purposes only. We believed that by increasing the rebel sister's appearance, we could focus on the comedy her character generates and therefore show in contrast the seriousness of the parent's divorce and the girl's OCD. 

Evaluation 1

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

Gina and I planned and produced our film opening in the genre of Comedy Drama. This genre is widely demanded across the world and would be a difficult market to compete within; audiences look for particular consistencies within Comedy Drama’s while at the same time are searching for something utterly new in order to spark their interest. We kept to the conventions of this genre through the foundations of our film opening using familiar aspects such as a teenage protagonist and dysfunctional family. The stereotypically “rebel” sister and troubled protagonist along with the parent’s divorce are all aspects associated with similar media products.

However, we challenged forms of our chosen genre through the acknowledgement of OCD and the seriousness in which we addressed this. The divorce scene was also a more serious part of our film opening, where the light-hearted music faded out and the parents speech picked up. As our film opening was acquired to incorporate elements of both comedy and drama, I believe we balanced out the latter with the final sequence depicting humorously our protagonist spontaneously bursting into tears.