Wednesday 16 April 2014

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?

Looking over the final cut of our title sequence I feel like I have learnt a lot and have come a very long way considering the reviews we got for the draft of our sequence, our first draft wasn't very well edited and got a lot of bad feedback, luckily we quickly managed to sort this out and am very happy with our new sequence, I am also very proud of me and Nicole as we managed to edit our sequence within a matter of days, which is something we didn't think we would be able to do, especially as us neither of us were experienced with Final Cut Pro and the way it works. I feel with this considered our sequence has turned out very well.
During the project we experienced a few problems, for example we had a great idea for the sequence that we all loved and really wanted to do, but it didn't fit with our original film idea, this meant we had to change our whole film idea and had to do alot more work to get the right information about our new film genre and we had to make sure our blogs were up to date with all the new information and that we were all clear with the new idea.
Throughout this project I have learnt a lot. I have mainly learnt about editing and how to use Final Cut Pro, this was the thing I was not comfortable with using and did not know how to use it at all, however I am now comfortable with the way Final cut pro works and how to use it, and could easily use it again in any other projects. I also learnt about the importance of planning ahead and planning everything correctly, within my group we planned well but not as well as we could've, we could've planned more about who was going to bring what when we were filming and what was happening in general, I learnt that its the small details like that that can make a lot of difference and if I were to do this project again I would make sure that everyone in the group knows what is happening and we all know what we are doing.

Evaluation question 6.

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

To film the title sequence we used Esther's DSLR camera, as a photography student I am fairly familiar with how DSLR's work and how to use them but I had never used one to film before, just to take pictures so I was fairly new to using them to film, however I adjusted easily and quickly worked out how it worked.
However something I wasn't used to was Final Cut Pro which is what we used to edit the sequence.  I had used Final Cut Pro once before when we edited our continuity sequences but I couldn't really remember much of what we had been taught so Nicole & myself both worked out what we had to do using trial and error, luckily we managed to work everything out fairly quickly and soon managed to edit our title sequence.
We used a tripod to make sure none of the shots were shaky, however after our first shoot we found that a few shots were shaky which meant we had to film again, if we had access to one a steadicam would have been better for the shots where the camera is moving or following the actors, that way we wouldn't of had to film again as the shots wouldn't have been shaky.
We also used photoshop to create our company logo, luckily both myself and Nicole are fairly experienced with photoshop and both know how to use it, however Nicole is more creative and alot better at using photoshop than me, so I left that to her.

Evaluation question five.

How did you attract/address your audience?

Evaluation question four.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

We decided that the audience for our film would be females between 12  & 24 years old. We chose this age range because after doing some research and looking into other films of the same genre we found that most of these films were watched by teenagers aged from 13 to 24, so we thought the most accurate way to set a target audience for our film would be to go off of what films within the same genre had set theirs as.
 Another reason we chose this age range is because they are the people who are most likely to have money to spend and time to actually go out and see a film. 12/13 is usually the age where you are just starting to get pocket money for doing household chores, so people around that age will have money to spare as they don't need to spend their money on things like bills, food and clothes as they are still young enough for their parents to do that. 16/17 is the age where you are likely to be having a first job so you will have money to spend on more leisure activities like going to the cinema. Lastly 18-24 year olds are most likely to be in stable jobs and will have a fair amount of spare money to use on leisure activities
The reason we decided females would be the main target audience is because they are the most likely to see teen drama/chick flicks and as thats what our films genre falls under we decided that females would most likely watch it.

Evaluation question three.

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

Evaluation question two.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our title sequence represents social groups such as teenagers in a fairly negative way. Throughout the entire sequence you can clearly see the different stages of the social ladder. You have the outsiders/unpopular kids, the cool/popular kids, the bullies and those inbetween. Although we have mainly stuck to the typical popluar girl trend we have slightly altered it. We didn't really want our main character to be as stereotypical as the rest and chose to make the main character; the popular girl, quite alternative. She enjoys listening to rock bands and wears something stereotypically an 'outsider' would wear. I like this idea because it changes things a bit and shows that typically unpopular people can be one of the popular kids if they tried.
However with the rest of the characters we have stuck to the stereotypes. A main boy being tall and awkward and clearly not having many friends as he walks alone, and the background characters (the bullies, the inbetweeners) just as you would imagine them to be.

Evaluation question one.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
After discussing in our group and coming up with some initial ideas for films we decided a teen drama was most suited to us. Our title sequence is like a short film in itself as it outlines the main plot of the film in a short amount of time and without all the details.
After analysing and watching many title sequences based around this genre I found that telling a story or the title sequence being part of the story was very popular and we found as a group that is what we all wanted to do with our own sequence. We also found from analysing teen drama and chick flick title sequences that a very popular choice of music was an acoustic guitar or something that was fairly upbeat and seemed happy. We also found that some of them had the main characters voice as a voice over narrating the story, but we thought this would be difficult to do as we were only making the title sequence and not the whole film, however it is something I would like to try if I were to do this project again.