Evaluation Question 7

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

At the start of this course we were set a preliminary task that involved us having to create, in groups, a shot film with whatever genre and storyline we wanted. The only criteria we had was that we had to ensure we included a match on action, a shot reverse shot, 180 degree rule, someone pulling up a chair and dialogue. This was different to our final media product as it is just a film opening and therefore does not need to tell a complete story.

Our film opening is very different to our preliminary task in many ways. One difference is that the genres are the complete opposite as our preliminary task was a rom-com whilst our final product was an action thriller. Another difference was that our final media product had detailed and realistic credits at the start like most real media films, whereas our preliminary task had basic credits that rolled at the end.  

When planning for our preliminary task we created a story board and shot list and had a basic idea of the storyline but did not do much else to ensure that it all worked smoothly. This is different to our final film for which we did a storyboard, shot list, title timeline, overall film plan, props and costume research and much more, all of which can be found on my blog.  This planning meant that our filming process ran as smoothly as possible compared to our preliminary task. The planning meant that we knew what shots we needed, the order of the scenes, the exact props and costumes we need and what order to edit our film in.

Compared to our preliminary task, our final film is a much better quality and standard as we were more organised and we had a better knowledge of the equipment through using our experience from our preliminary task to learn from our mistakes. The shots and camera positions for our final film are improved from our preliminary task as we learnt to use the equipment properly and knew about different shots and angles from our film opening remake so that we could experiment with them in our film. In both our films we used a tracking shot which in our preliminary task was very wobbly as the ground the dolly was on was not flat. Although we had this issue in our final film, it was nowhere near as bad and can barely be seen when watching our film opening. The lighting in our films is also improved as our preliminary task is the same brightness throughout which is not realistic e.g for the date scene in the evening compared to our final film which uses different shades of lighting to create the correct atmosphere.

Our editing skills have also improved from our preliminary task to our final film as we have had more time to experiment with IMovie and were also able to use what we learnt from our preliminary task and our film opening remake to editing our film to the best standard.  Our use of transitions sound and continuity have improved from our preliminary task as we though more about the type of film we were producing and made it look as much like a real film as possible.

After carrying out this task, I feel much more comfortable with the equipment and editing software as I am more informed on how to use it and through trial and error have learnt the best way to carry out tasks. I think that our final film is successful in matching the criteria of being a 2 minute or less film opening.

 

 

Evaluation Question 6

Evaluation Question 5

How did you attract/ address your audience?

As mentioned in my evaluation question 4, our target audience is both males and females aged 16 to 24 and our film certificate is a 15. Our films main cast is a male and female aged 20 and 23, this will attract our target audience as they are around the same age as the actors and therefore relate to them and feel more involved with the storyline.

In order for our film to appeal to our target audience, we made sure that it was certified at their age range and contained the action and thrills that would keep them hooked. When filming and editing our film, we made sure that a tense atmosphere was created within it, in order to attract our audience. We also looked at real media film of the same genre as ours in order to gather ideas and see what films were popular and why and what parts were not.

I carried out some audience research on a female aged 17, when asked what she liked about the film, she said " I like the storyline as its different to other film and I like the fact that the main character is a woman because  you don't often see that in action thriller films.". I then asked if after watch the opening, she would go and see the film if released, she replied " yes, I would go and see it as it look is interesting and I like the that the woman is the hero" These replies show that the use of a female as the protagonist will attract audiences (especially the female audience) as this is non-stereotypical and different to most other action films.

Our film also contains multiple generic conventions of an action thriller such as a knife and violence and tense music. These generic conventions will therefore attract audiences who like action thriller films, this is our target audience.

Evaluation Question 4

Evaluation Question 3

 

 

 

 

Evaluation Question 2

Evalution Question 1

 

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

 

All films have generic conventions that are associated with and specific to a genre, for example all Westerns use cowboy hats, six shooters, and horses and spurs to place them in their genre.

Our film has the generic conventions of an action thriller genre, as it contains violence with face pace action and intense, dramatic non-diegetic music. Our film opening also leaves the audience with an enigma code as they are unsure on what going on and are left wondering how the characters have got in to the situations we see in the film opening. As an action thriller, our film has many generic conventions similar to real media texts of the same genre and are film rarely challenges these.

 

Much like real media products of the same genre, our film uses conventions such as weapons like the knife used when Agent Thomas stabs the suited henchman after escaping. The storyline of our film also means that various weapon will be used within the rest of the film including guns, knives and fists. This is similar to other action thriller films that have these generic conventions in the media text for instance James Bond Skyfall which has knives as well as gun in both the opening sequence and throughout the film

 As well as the props, our film opening uses tense low pitch non- diegetic music which is another generic convention of an action thriller. This convention is often used in action thrillers to create a dramatic effect that keeps the audience in suspense about what is going to happen next such. Almost all media texts use both diegetic and non-diegetic sound and music to create an atmosphere for the product an example of this would by the action thriller The Bourne Supremacy which uses low pitch tense music in scenes such as the car chase. 

 

The font of our film titles is minimal yet dramatic which is shown as the title, The Escape, written in white and on a black background looks sharp and clear giving a professional and serious feeling to the film which then helps to indicate the thriller element to our film. Fonts like this are also used in other film of our genre such as Skyfall as shown below.

 

There are different camera shots and angles used within our film opening and in terms of action thrillers high and low angles are quite generic. Real media products with the same genre as our film often have generic conventions of high and low angled shots as they can be used to clearly show power or weakness which is a key feature in action films that often have a protagonist and antagonist.

Our film can be seen as challenging conventions as the main character and protagonist in our film is a woman as a pose the typical butch muscular male figure like Bruce Willis in Die Hard or Daniel Craig in James Bond. We chose to use a female as our protagonist because there aren’t many action thriller films that have the woman as the hero. One film that influenced us on our decision was SALT in which Angelina Jolie play the main character, who is a spy much like the main character in our film.

Our Final Film

My logo design for our institutional company

 

 

 

 

 

 My institutional production logo

 

Individual research on the institutional logos for mainstream and independent companies

Individual research on the institutional logos for mainstream and independent companies


Every production company has an institutional logo, the type of  institution that the company is then affect the look of their logos; this is due to things like budgets.

Independent companies such as Film4 or Warp films  tend to have less money than the big mainstream companies partially because they are usually British and so do not have as much funding as the mainstream American companies. Logos for independent companies are often quite basic, as shown in the images to the left. They are also generally just images that contain no movement or animations. One of the reason for these simplistic logos is that most independent companies don't have any where near as much money as mainstream companies so therefore they have less money to spend on creating big animated logos that are only really seen for about three seconds at the start of a film.

Mainstream companies tend to have more money meaning they and spend more on their logos, which shows as most have animations or movement in them. Mainstream logos also usually involve the whole scree rather than just an image on the screen like most independent film company logos. Mainstream logos also seem to use more colours and designs than independent logos and just look like more time has been spent on creating them as a pose to the independent institutional logos.

This research will help when designing my production company logo as it will allow my to design a logo suitable and appropriate for the type of institution we are.

The type of production company we want to be

The type of Production Company we want to be is an independent institution because there is less people for our ideas to go through so less changes will be made. We chose independent because we would like full control over the storylines of our films, how they are filmed and what actors we use. However, due to independent British film institutions not having high budgets compared to places like America, our films will be of a low budget and therefore not distributed to many countries or cinemas, therefore we would like American funding to help Penguin Productions use good technology and editing tools to create our film and make it appeal to our audience.