Friday 2 April 2010
Who would be the target audience for your media product?
Our target audience would be people ages 10-20 years old; I have chosen this age group because this is the age where you are in and around higher and further education or just leaving it so themes and settings present in our media product they would e able to identify with easily.
They can would be of any race and ethnicity but as this is an English speaking film I think, it would be targeted mainly at a UK and US audience as they would get most of the slang and common talk that each characters has in our product.
Due to the genre and that it is not a thriller or action movie with guns and cars chases, I think the target gender would mainly be for girls as they are the ones who seem to enjoy fairy tales more as they get older as in comparison to boys, but I do think boys would enjoy our media products as they would be able to identify themselves with keys element of the narrative, because it is set in a school and it is to do with pretty girls.
The interests that our audience would have to have are an interest in their friends or lack of. They would have to have a lot of friends to identify wit the most popular characters and not a lot of friends to identify with Ben. This is because our narrative has a lot to do with friendship circles and outcasts.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
Our media product is a very low budget one with no known actors or special effects. So the institution that would distribute our work will be one who supports independent and low budget films.
Content film would be one to distribute our work as it is a London based distributor who focus on feature films and have several rights on television and own a US DVD operation( which is part of our target audience), which would be great for our distribution. As I don’t think our film could compete with the mainstream films that would be out at the time of our release, so that why it think it would be a good idea for it to be realised on TV 1st so that the viewers themselves will talk about how good it and that would be a big part of distribution process the viewers would help sell our film through word of mouth and recommendations.
Also the fact that they have DVD rights is important because it could be that then be released onto DVD is that is what the viewers demand because they like it so much.
Also Verve pictures are a UK based distributing company which, distribute films “relevant to today’s society”. I think they would be interested in distributing our film because we address issues that are alive in modern society such as: bullying, discrimination, popularity and growing up too fast. Because of these issues raised in our narrative I think this would be the best option for us because our production company links to our work that we are doing.
Another recent development in the distribution of films if is to place a film on online site which many people have access to which will give you film a lot of views and publicity on possibly future funding to be made again. Youtube is a site which various people in media have found their fame and recognition, just one example of this is Soulja Boy. You tube would distribute my film from the potentially puplicity they could recieve through my film if it is a success
How does your opening sequence represent particular social groups?
Our two main characters are Ben and Tiffany: this is clear from our narrative as they are the two in most of the scenes and have most of the dialogue. Our narrative was written around these two characters. These two characters are at the opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to popularity in their school.
Tiffany is the popular one with friend and followers and she is represented as our plastic girl, through her dialogue, body language, the way she looks, position on frame, and props. Ben is represented as our geek/inferior characters though his dialogue, the way he looks, body language and props.
Tiffany is very similar to the Regina George character who was the main mean girl in “Mean Girls” because she also was a teenager in secondary school, who had two followers/friends who hung on her every word.
Tiffany s represented as the most important and a girl with authority and power by low angle shot of her looking up, this displays authority and power she amounts her peers in her school because in our opening sequence she is the only one who has a shot of this type. Her importance is represented through several single shots of her in the centre of the frame. One of these shots is a personal favourite of mine, it is the shot where you see tiffany walking in the corridor and the camera zooms out from her shoes to a long shot of her walking towards the camera and the camera follows her with a pan then a cut to another shot, this shows how pretty and well groomed she is like Regina George was land like Bell was in beauty and the beast. This is the 1st time we reveal her face and who she is, in contrast to her 2 best friends Amy and Tia where there identity is revealed in the 1st shot of them.
The fact that tiffany has most of the links in our narrative and the opening sequence what she says is just as important as the way she speaks. Her dialogue represents her as a spiteful, mean and insensitive character very similar to Megan Vandegeld from “white chicks” that is from a high social class than most and has a house in Beverly Hills and is the envy of all her peers and like Regina George and Tiffany.
In our opening sequences tiffany says “I don’t care watch where you’re going next time” and her friends say “yeah” in sync, “roll on, I don’t want people seeing you near me you geek” and friends laugh. This shows her insensitivity through the phrase “roll on” she can clearly see that he is in a wheel chair and she does not care and just speaks to him like he is a second citizen. This one of the issues we wanted to address in our narrative and help the audience see, because disabled people are treated as second class citizens in today’s society and displaying it our film can help the audience identify with him and sympathise with him. Also it pushes us towards our specification of modernising a fairy tale as we brought current day issues into our production. Tiffany and her friends are represented as plastic girls through their props as amid shot shots shows them all with makeup and the mirrors and Tia is looking at her nails as the others check their appearance.
Her posting in the frame is very important also. She is put in the front of her twp friends showing she is the most important and she is the one with the most authority in her group as she is at the front and in the centre.
Ben’s character can be likened to napoleon dynamite and he has no friends and spends most of his times in books and involved in “geeky” activities, like multiplayer games on the internet ECT. Just like Ben as he is the only one who attends his own book club and we can see him logging off from a computer in an empty classroom in our opening sequence.
There is a high angel over the should shot looking down on Ben which represents him as an inferior character to tiffany and he doesn’t keep eye contact with her showing he is almost afraid of her, which is contrast to most male/female relationships
There are several low angled shots, and low mid shots which only show Benjamin’s wheelchair, this represents him just focus on that representing him as all about his wheel chair, which is another issue we wanted to address.
We wrote our narrative and, we had to find our cast. We wanted to find the perfect people that would fit the people we had in mind, so to do this we held auditions. Other than reliability and dedication we wanted specific things out of each of our characters.
For Benjamin we were looking for:
• Somebody the audience could sympathise with
• A geeky looking character
• An inferior looking person
For tiffany we were looking for:
• A bitchy type character
• Very pretty girl
• A girl consumed by herself
• Power demanding character
We believe that we found the perfect characters through auditions and we believed they portrayed themselves as we wanted them to.
Look back at you preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt the progression of it to the full product ?
Brief for my preliminary task:
Film and edit a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character. A couple of lines of dialogue must then exchange between charcters&match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180 degree rule should be demonstrated .
Brief for my main task:
The titled and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes (all video and audio material must be original, produced by candidates, with the exception of music or audio effects from a copyright-free source).
The brief for out preliminary was very specific and out lined exactly what we had to do, which made it appear simp0le in comparison to our main task brief when we ere asked for the opening titles of a film the only restrictions we had were it had to be 2mins and the rest was up to us which left us with a lot of work.
Preproduction
For our preliminary task we choose to film a man walking into a room where there is a woman sitting down when he would then conduct a police interview. For this we had a storyboard, which was easy to do because we already knew the characters stage direction. But we did not have a photo storyboard or location reece which presented us with problems. The place where we filmed was cramped and there was a lot of outside noise which was bad for continuity.
We did not have a shooting schedule which seemed to prolong thing because we were thinking what to film next and we filmed in chronological order moving the camera away and back to and from the same place.
We didn’t have any pitch, treatment or mood board to present our ideas to get feedback to improve on, which minimised the chances of our final product being of a high standard.
We didn’t have any rehearsals which affects the way our actors were on set.
Where in our prelim task we just decided we was going to do a police interview, for our main task we done extensive research and textual analysis to help us decide what fairytale we was going to pick and portraying a convincing opening sequence, and rehearsed with our cast a lot.
We pitched our ideas to our class using our treatment and went back and drafted another one until we had a good enough one where they could find no fault with it. We had a mood board to help convey our ideas so they would understand a bit better.
We had auditions that helped us find the perfect cast member we are looking for to fit the character, we described in our treatment.
We also had a shooting schedule which helped things run a bit more smoothly and we are able to get rid of some cast member earlier than others, because we planned it like that, which it made it earlier to manage cast later on.
We had a storyboard and photo-storyboard which we drafted and re-drafted until it was as good as it could be. We also performed a location reece which helped us detect potential problems with our location and note them down. We also had to get timetables of certain areas of the school to know when we are able to film.
Production
Still adjusting to the equipment it took me longer to set-up and time was wasted trying to figure out where things go and how to do certain things, for example where battery goes or which way round the tape goes in, all things that waste little amounts of time the add up when you have a limited amount of time and location.
Because we didn’t have auditions or rehearsals that cast were not sure of their lines and they were not very good actors/actresses which worked against us. The titled and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes (all video and audio material must be original, produced by candidates, with the exception of music or audio effects from a copyright-free source).
This was a contrast to what I was like when working on my AS opening task because further practice, work shops and use of the equipment made it easier to use and operate the equipment, manage cast and plan for the actual day. This obviously allowed things to run much smoother and quicker.
Post Production
Just like with everything else, editing was very new to us and we didn’t have much practice with editing. So whilst editing it was very slow because we were new to the programme that means it took up times to find certain things and we didn’t really name our rushes that we made so when it came to find certain shots that we have uploaded which wasted our time.
In our AS we were much used to the AVID technology because we had a book that taught us all the details of the programme and we had much practice, so this meant that we were able to edit a lot more efficiently.
In our prelim all of us edited at the same time which again we very time wasting, but in our AS task we edited at different times and recorded our progress in a editing log which made it much faster while editing.
Evaluation and Feedback:
Prelim:
In this task the feed back I received and my evaluation for this task was very important because it was the feedback and evaluation outlining the problems and issue that I had with this task, such as not being able to edit without assistance, problems with the equipment, casting problems, all that helped me see what went wrong with this task and remember and don’t let it happen in my main task. The main lesson I learnt was to, plan my work fully, have a shooting schedule, do a location recce and hold auditions for cast. All these things I have taken away and applied into my main task, with out the evaluation and feedback, these problems wouldn’t be properly address and sorted out. If I was to do anything different I would re-shoot, making sure all my shots are perfect and that I had a variety of shots for when it came to editing it would be easier.
Main:
In contrast to my last prelim task I was receiving feedback through out my whole task, this helped me a great deal as it; pointed out what was wrong with my work, suggested ways I could improve my work and overall the feedback I received helped me make my work better that it would have been without it. Even though the feedback I received conflicted with my ideas I had I knew it was all constructive criticism which would benefit my work in the long run, which it did. As the feedback I received came from the people from our target audience, I had to adjust it in order for it to live up to the targeted audiences expectations for they are the individuals that I would hope tyo go and watch my film if it was ever made.
Key lesson I have learnt from this task is: how to take criticism, how to use Avid and other equipment with much more confidence, I am more knowledgeable about the whole filming process and distribution, I know more about individual roles in production.
If I was to do anything differently I would have reshot some of the scenes and shot we have because they are not at their best which our latest feedback indicated.
How do you attract/address your audience?
The first thing you hear when our opening sequence starts is our opening music, which is upbeat and hip. This appeals to our target audience because it sounds like most of the music they listen to or are exposed to on the radio.
Our establishing shots show in and around the school this would attract our target audience because they are still on or just leaving education and would want to see why we are in a school, what is going to happen and where are going with it, so it keeps our audience wanting to carry on watching.
We have a series of cut away shot showing Ben and Tiffany’s actions across 2 different ends of the school and theses shots never reveal their identity or faces, just that one is in a wheel chair. So the audience is instantly intrigued because they want to know who they are and why cant we see their faces and why do we keep following them around the school. This will not only attract our target audience it will also attract any audience because viewers will be very curious as to why we can’t see them.
Our audience would have to prior knowledge of the genre of teen films as our opening has clear codes and convention of teen film that the audience can identify with being that it is in a school and the costume of our actors clearly shows that they are in uniform.
The themes of discrimination and bulling will interest our audience because they would want to know what Tiffany is being so nasty to Ben, what has he done to deserve it, and the audience is going to feel sympathetic for him especially because he is in a wheelchair.
Many other teen films have addressed the same themes we have in our opening sequence, like Superbad Napoleon Dynamite, and ‘Drill Bit Tailor’ which all show characters being bullied and discriminated against in their school just because they are regarded as geeks and less popular than other students. These films are all teen films, and all these films are very successful.
Our film is a teen film and it has an area of comedy in it. These two together appeal to a very wide audience because are popular genres. Teen films are very popular all over the world, this genre mainly appeals to teenagers and young adults. Comedies appeal to the vast audience because everybody loves to laugh and it is a good escape when watch a film.