Evaluation Question 4 - Who would be the audience for your media product?

There are many ways that the audience for a film can be decided. But first in order to receive the desired classification it must pass tests by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC). The BBFC is responsible for awarding classifications to all licensed media products for example; films, dvds and games released in the UK. This is done by checking the film against guidelines which are drawnup every few years by and decided upon by the general public, this is because society is different now to a couple of years ago and people can adjust to the ways that media products display key issues. As well as this the BBFC must stick to Acts of Parliament such as the 1984 Recordings Act, this law gave the BBFC the responsibility to classify all media released in the UK to prevent children and the vulnerable from seeing inappropriate content such as:

· Criminal behaviour

· Illegal drugs

· Violent behaviour or incidents

· Horrific behaviour or incidents

· Human sexual activity

This is a picture of our typical target audience member:

His name is Julian, he is 16, and enjoys intelligently created films, such as 'Sherlock Holmes'. He also enjoys comedy-action films, for example 'Hot Fuzz'. He makes regular visits to the cinema to see films that he knows he will enjoy. He also enjoys theater and performing arts.

We read through the BBFC guidelines and we were happy that our film fitted into the '12A' category, this means that it is suitable for people of age 12 or over. One of the guidelines for a '12A' is that 'moderate violence is allowed but should not dwell on detail'. We did not have any violence in our opening scene, but a car chase was involved, and if we were to continue our opening scene it would be likely that it would contain some moderately violent scenes.

 

Evaluation Question 3 - What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

There are two main ways of distributing media products:


This can be done by screenings in cinemas, DVD and television. These are all undergone by the larger companies that distribute films such as Fox or Warner Bros.

The other way that a media product can be distributed is via web 2.0 on sites such as http://www.youtube.com/.

This site contains "user-generated content" making it web 2.0. Obviously it would be difficult to get a major organistation to distribute our media product, however it may not be impossible. This is becuase there are many different things that these organisations will have to put at stake for the product, such as its reputation as a quality distributer, or ther amount of cash that they would invest in the product. This means that there is less chance for amatures work to be distributed in this way. This is also why it would be more likely that our media product would be better distributed on http://www.youtube.com/. On youtube it is possibloe for anyone to upload their own media products, provided they have an account, also it is free to do so however there is no chance of making money back for your product, unless it is bought from you. Youtube is filled with videos of various length and genre, mainly made by amaeurs. For example, 'Where the Hell is Matt?'

Evaluation Question 2 - How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our media product represents young males as a social group. In the opening scene, the characters are seen as risk-taking, challenged and endangered idividuals. The characters seen are stereotypes of todays youth, they are agressive and violent. The scene starts with a young male walking along a road alone. This suggests that he is isolated and that he possbly feels rejected from his social group. As the scene progresses we see this character being chased by somebody in a vehicle. This sugests to the audience that they are stereotypical youths, and that they have conflict between them. Later in the scene we see an older male, asleep in a chair. This suggests that he is not suitable to perform the actions that these youths are performng.

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

Our product is similar to many of the conventions used in other professional media products, for example the titling. In the opening scene of 'Six Feet Under' the titles used are very simple but well positioned.


In our opening scene we decided that we would use the titles necessary to introduce our film, but not go over the top, and attempt to make them fit in with the environment of the scene, this way the titles would not detract from our piece, much like in 'Six Feet Under'













This shot help introduce the character to the audience, it suggests to the audience that 'Ash' (The character featuring in this shot) is a mysterious individual, due to the unusual cloud formation behind him. It also suggests that he is isolated and has nobody to turn to, since he is on his own walking down a road in a desolate area.


In our opening scene it is not entirely clear of who is the 'Protagonist' or 'Antagonist'. In our opening scene we firstly see an establishing shot of a character walking along a road. At this point we are unsure of who he is and whether he is the 'Good Guy' or the 'Bad Guy' of the film.  As the scene progresses it becomes apparent that the character is being chased, at this point we still do not know whether he is being chased by the 'Bad Guys' or the 'Good Guys' Later in the scene when we see 'Aaron' for the first time it then becomes a bit more obvious that 'Aaron' is the Antagonist, as he is wearing a chain, and is also a sleeveless top.

Construction

Filming Problems and Solutions: When we began filming, we encountered our first major problem which was lighting. When we arrived home from school, it was already becoming dark. This restricted our filming to just the weekends if we had the time. However one afternoon we gained permission to leave school early in order to film the scene.

Here is a picture of when we first started filming after school. When filming in this light it was near impossible to make out who the figure was or what he was doing. The time was around 4:30pm when we took this picture.

Location Stills: The film was shot at Ashes house and along the road next to it. This was chosen because of the it is an isolated area, making it easier to film and giving the atmosphere we desired. At first we wanted the house to look abandoned by boarding up the windows, so that it would seem mysterious. However we decided against this as it would be difficult to do, and also we don't actually see much of the house in the scene.

These are some photo-stills of the locations we are going to use.

Edit Issues and Solutions: When we transferred our opening scene onto the main edit station we found that two of the video files had not transferred correctly, and had a slight glitch in them when played back. We solved this problem by copying the original files onto a usb, and transferring them that way.

Music Issues: When trying to find a suitable music track for our media piece we used a website called 'www.freeplaymusic.com' this website is a 'copyright free' music website, where users can download music. The first piece of music we chose for our piece was called 'Valley Of Mist'.

This is a slow, mysterious piece of music. We used this music for the first 30 seconds of our opening scene. We then used a cross-fade into a much faster and heavier piece of music called 'Limp Trusket'.

The problem arose when we were unable to find a suitable track for the last 30 seconds of our piece, after finding a track that we thought was suitable for the last scene, we realised that it didn't really climax at the place where we wanted to end. So we decided to leave the scene at a point that doesnt reveal to much of the storyline. The final track was called 'Dark Angel'.

Titling Issues: When trying to create titles, we found that anything we created that was colourful or artistic didn't really suit the feel of our opening scene. So we went for something a bit more simple.

These are some previews of the titles we created:

This is he first title we produced for our film, however we felt it didn't really look right when we edited it into the opening scene. So we went for a style that matched the rest of our titles.

 

Apart from the 'Andale Production' title, these titles will be layered over the footage, we have positioned them in appropriate positions.

When we layered this title over the footage we had limited space to fit the title

in, so unfortunately it is very close to the edge of the screen, and not in our 'safe margin'.

For our final title we created a typewriter effect for it by using 'Adobe After Effects CS4', which we then combined with a sound effect that we found on a CD. 

Here is a preview of our final title, which will feature at the end of our 2 minute opening scene.

Timing Issues: We were very pleased with the timing of the opening scene. As when we put the piece together, it came to just over 2 minutes long. Therefore no cuts had to be made, and we did not have to include any unnecessary cutaway or titling.

Weather/Illness Problems and Solutions: The weather was a serious issue when we wanted to film. There was a severe amount of snow that came half way through filming, so unless we started again we could not continue filming until it had gone. This delayed our film from being made for quite some time.

This is a picture of the location before the snow came.


This is a picture of the location when the snow had hit.