Final Product

Here is our final 2 minute film opening 'Fall of Justice'.

My only critic on the opening is that we could have lowered the music in the background slightly so that Dawson's narration could have been heard a bit better, as the music was slightly blocking his voice.

Other than that, the editing came out really changing each clip into black and white turned out a lot better than we had expected, actually proving to make quit a nice effect on the final product, as did the little editing transition shots of a camera flash during the first scene of the film opening, it worked quite well.

Overall, I am quite pleased with the final outcome of our groups film opening and think that we all did an excellent job working on it

Media Studies Evaluation Q7

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

During the course of the preliminary task,  our task was to film someone walking down a corridor, opening a door, sitting down in a room and swapping dialogue with another person. This, naturally, was done in separate stages. First off, we had to create a story board of what was to happen in the video and in what order, by drawing a picture, writing a small description of the shot, and what camera shot was to be used (establishing shot, close up etc). Then we learned the basic tools of using the camera, boom microphone and the camera tripod which enabled us to widen our available list of shots that we could use for the task. Some of the shots we did use in our preliminary task were:

 - Long shots/ Establishing shot of the corridor

 - Close up of hand when it's turning the door handle

 - shot reverse shot during the dialogue (180° rule was used between this (when you film behind one persons left shoulder, you must film behind the other person's right shoulder.)

There was a list of different dialogue that was available to use, for our group we chose this script:

Person A: Hey, I was wondering if you've seen a USB, I think I left it here

Person B: Uh, what colour is it?

Person A: Silver.

Person B: hmm, No I haven't seen it... Sorry.

Although this was mostly my first time using a camera to actually make a short film,  completing the task was actually relatively easy. There was three of us in a group so we all took turn to record the task so that everyone could learn to use the camera properly. Doing this small task did have a massive impact on how we developed our skills before we planned for our actual film opening as it gave us the room for adaption when it came to planning for our actual film opening when it came to elements such as drawing up our story boards, learning how to use and experiment with different camera angles and shots, and how we can do research and planning in more depth and detail.

Below is our final Preliminary Task which was uploaded onto youtube

Media Studies Evaluation Q6

Question: What have you learnt about Technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Planning and Research

 Blogger:

So that we could keep track of our progress and add updates about our media product. For this, we had to make a Google account for this so that we could sign up to blogger considering it is a website which is connected with Google.

Prezi:

Prezi was one of the few main methods we had at our disposal to use for creating posts to put on our blog for updating our media product and to make the presentation of our overall blogs look more nice. This form of powerpoint was quite difficult to get to grips with at first but after making a few presentations with it, it became easier to understand the controls to work it and progressed on to make more detailed presentations for our blogs.

Microsoft Word:

Most people already are aware of how to use microsoft word and it is probably one of the most commonly used ways to make posts for our blogs along with microsoft powerpoint.

 Google:

This was the search engine that we used to do all of our research which included searching for film distributors and information about our target audience, their demographics etc.

 Youtube:

We used youtube throughout our first upload of our prelim task, target audience interviews and idea pitches to the class. Youtube also filled in as another form of our research into our media products chosen genre such as analysing various student video analysis videos. So that we could upload our videos though, we had to become familiar with creating a channel, learning how to upload videos and embed them into our blog posts.

Construction:

 For recording our media product, we used a Panasonic NV-GS500 to capture each of our shots and scenes for our film opening. The camera itself is easy to use as it has quite basic controls and we were taught how to use them throughout the production of our prelim tasks so we had already come to good grips with using the camera before our film opening project began. After learning the basic tools for the camera, it gave us the freedom to experiment with different shots and movements so that we can get different and more interesting angles that will accommodate our film opening such as establishing shots, close ups and extreme close ups etc.

  Boom microphone:

This helped us to get a higher quality sound whilst recording rather than just relying on the microphone built into the camera, the boom microphone also had a fur cover so that it could still pick up sound, but also cancelled out any unnecessary sounds such as wind etc. this was an easy tool to use considering it only had to be plugged into one of the ports on the camera and held in the right position to record the best sound.

  Computer:

A Hanns. G computer was used throughout the entire process of working on our media projects, obviously, this helped us do almost everything that didn't require recording; Editing, Research, blog updating etc. some of the software used for editing the film clips and sound were a bit difficult at first but once we had learned how to use the basic tools, we slowly developed our skills at using the software.

Evaluation

After the evaluation, we will use Youtube to upload our finished media products and to receive feedback on them, also, as well as youtube, the media product will also be uploaded onto our blogs on blogger as part of our final posts.

Media Studies Evaluation Q5

Question: How did you attract/address your audience?

Our target audience for our media product are Males over 35, during our research and planning we interviewed one of our school's ICT teachers; Mr. Healy, who not only fits the categories for our demographics but he also fits our prime target social class (A/B). We did the interview so that we could find out about general interests of someone in our demographics so that we could adapt our film so that it would appeal to more people and attract a larger audience. From the results of our interview we managed to grab a general guess at what our target audience's views on what certain aspects of media are such as TV, Music and other Films.

We asked Mr. Healy about what his favourite type of music, TV and films were and what he liked about each category and what they didn't like on each subject. From our interview with Mr. Healy, we found out from his answers that his interest in music is very widely ranged, he'll listen to almost all genres of music and he does prefer the more old-style jazz music, more specifically when it's included in older films which, we found, actually relate to our genre but mentioned about how he also had a interest in Jazz music that has a sort of Modern-techno twist, which sounds like something that would tie into an similar genre of music, Electro-swing.

Mr. Healy also told us about his interest in Detective/deduction type shows such as CSI or Elementary (the American version of the BBC series 'Sherlock') although he detests programs that include unwanted or unnecessary information and events in them such as relationships included in a TV show which has no need for it, a good example for this would be shows such as Bones or Greys Anatomy.

As well as Film Noir, Mr. Healy also enjoys action films such as Bladerunner, Indiana Jones and to be more specific, films that have been directed by Ridley Scott such as Alien etc. Unrealistic Horror films with a supernatural style (such as the Paranormal Activity series or the Scream series films) have a very low interest with Mr. Healy, or more-so a dislike for them.

The impact these results had on how we attracted and addressed our target audience meant that we could take use these results as an extremely rough guideline as to what people who like film noir are interested in, in terms of different forms of media which meant that we could adapt our film so that it will include the right elements to properly attract a possibly larger audience towards our film.

So that we could secure a good audience for our film, we needed to add some elements into the film opening that would intrigue our target audience to capture our audiences attention, edging them to want to carry on watching the film. To do this we added some elements of Enigma into the film, such as: Keeping the murderer as only a silhouette so that the audience get curious about who he is, what he looks like etc.

For the Promotion of our film, we would try to promote it around places such as newspapers (Readers such as the Telegraph, the Guardian etc), Film Magazines, possibly music magazines (if we were to try and promote the music used in the film). Because our target audience is more of a niche audience, it would normally only attract high standard audiences who have a distinct like for certain genres of film.

Media Studies Evaluation Q4

Question: Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our film is mainly aimed at the older audience members as there is a better chance that they'd be more familiar with the film genre, our target audience being males 35+ with a social class of around A/B (with occupations such as Teachers, Doctors, Bankers etc.)

We chose the more older target audience considering that film noir is one of the oldest genres which has slowly, over time, become less popular. After looking at data from the UK film council (http:// media2012-ltilbury-h140.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/target-audience-stats-for-our-genre.html) we found that these demographics (Males, 35+, A/B) were the most popular for our genre, most likely because they find the conventions of the genre more interesting than others.

Using the pictures above, it shows that only 10% of people who attend the cinema would prefer to watch the genre and only a mere 1% would say that film noir is their favourite genre. Out of the original 10% of the audience, the gender by age that watched/enjoyed it more was only 13% of men age 35+, also, of the 1% that said film noir was their favourite, 2% of them were also men aged 35+, But this didn't narrow our audience down to one category completely as there are still some elements in film noir that might still appeal to a very small minority of younger audiences.

Upon deciding our film audiences, we had to consider the BBFC classification. From our deduction, we ruled our film opening as a 15 as we thought this would be the best age rating considering there are scenes which show blood and talk of violence which isn't suitable for young ages. This did help narrow down possible options for a target audience however we could have followed the average film noir classifications.

After the popularity for Film Noir became less popular, most major cinemas had to stop showing them in fear of gradually adapting a loss in profit once people had stopped coming to see film noir's as often as they used to so the genre was left only to be played in independent cinemas, Because of this lack of film noir's showing in cinemas and the decrease in the audience, this introduced film noir into targeting more niche audiences as time went on, this is widely confirmed in the UK film council information and as well as looking into different film distributors, as there was quite a low percentage of all audiences that actually liked film noir and not many film distributors specialize in film noir anymore. This does have an effect on how we could establish our target audience as this narrowed down the number of people who would be generally interested in the film.

We interviewed a possible member of our target audience, Mr. Healy who is age 35+ and considering his occupation of a teacher, falls directly into our preferred demographics for our target audience.

We asked Mr. Healy about what his favourite type of music, TV and films were and what he liked about each category and what they didn't like on each subject, he'll listen to almost all genres of music and he does prefer the more old-style jazz music specifically when it's included in older films. He also had a interest in Jazz music that has a sort of Modern-techno twist.

He also told us about his interest in Detective/deduction type shows such as CSI or Elementary and how he detests programs that include unwanted or unnecessary information and events in them such as relationships included in a TV show which has no need for it.

Mr. Healy also enjoys action films such as Bladerunner, Indiana Jones and to be more specific, films that have been directed by Ridley Scott such as Alien etc. Unrealistic Horror films with a supernatural style.

Media Studies Evaluation Q3

Media Studies Evaluation Q3

Question: what kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Our media product for starters would need a more independent film distributor (a company that organises the release of a film (cinema dates, DVD releases, Country release dates etc)). The reason for this is because Noir films were far more popular back when they were first being made compared to the modern day so back then, they were distributed by more larger companies whereas now there isn't much of a demand for them so the size of companies that are willing to distribute them has decreased over the years as the overall audience has dwindled.

If we were to actually have a real distributor to release our media product if it were to be made properly and finished, after searching through different distributors both major and independent studios which have released films of either different or the same genre, we settled on RKO pictures which is a company founded in 1928 that became known for their distribution of Noir films such as King Kong. Despite not being well known nor releasing many films since it was sold to new owners, it is still fully functional and operating as an independent film company.

Although people like to assume that most to all budget films can become a total flop, there are those lucky films which actually do become a shocking success such as 'The Following' (1998). The budget was this film was surprisingly low at $6,000 ($7,600 today) made by Christopher Nolan along with his friends which was filmed over the course of a year in the streets of London and the homes of friends and family, it was meant to cost as little as possible and made sure that each shot was done right within one or two takes. The film ended up winning an award-winning low budget masterpiece that would usher in one of today's biggest Hollywood directors.

Some Modern large companies that are well known today also used to distribute film noir's such as Warner Bros, 20th Century Fox and Universal Pictures. Most off the independent distributors tended to stay specialised in the same genre rather than branching off to distribute other genre films such as horrors or comedies etc. but, as Noir became less popular and the demand for it decreased, the major companies moved onto the new, more popular genres until the only companies that would distribute Noir films are now only independent studios. 

Media Studies Evaluation Q2

Media Studies Evaluation Question 2       

Question: How does your media project represent particular social groups?

All of the characters that are shown in the film opening all fall into specific characteristic groups and social classes; Their ages are young (18-30 years (the only exception in this case being Dawson who is 36)) Their social class can be deduced to be around the B-C classes (considering the fact that none of the jobs of the victims are actually mentioned, it is easy to guess that their social class is around B-C considering the clothes that they're wearing would suggest for them to be around that area (smart casual)). The sexuality of each character isn't directly shown or said in the film opening but it was aimed for them to all be heterosexual considering the fact that this was the most common and most accepted sexuality during that 1930-40's time period.

Reviewing our film opening, it's noticeable that some of our characters can be labelled as stereotypical, for instance, the  females in the film opening are shown to be quite close to the stereotypical woman during the set time period, for example, they could have been seen as weak considering there was no actual indication that they weren't but the fact that there are 2 female victims and only one male victim. Although, when we see Samantha's body, Dawson mentions that she was a fighter and had guts, that there was signs of her struggling during  her murder, which goes against all of the stereotypes mentioned for 1930's females which could have lead on to thinking that the 2 female victims compared to the one male victim could show that the females were just more of an easy target because they were weaker, therefore easier to kill.

Ethnicity is also another category that is hinted towards throughout the film opening and can be thought of as quite stereotypical, considering that all of the characters shown are white British, and given the costumes and occupations, it's also another hint towards the characters all being around middle class which could lead to thoughts such as all white people are of a middle to higher class lifestyle (which is what seemed to be the tale as of the time period) and that because no other ethnical races are shown, shows that white people are the more dominant race over others.

The location of the opening is also likely to have an effect on some of the stereotypes during the opening, for example; the entire film opening takes place in a city, a large one, which would mean that the crime rate would be considerably higher than if it was in a small town or village which leads to the fact that the murders taken place in the film opening wouldn't actually be that uncommon among the city, and considering that it's a large city, it could suggest that it would have parts of it which were more rough than others which could explain when Dawson mentioned that Samantha was a fighter who tried to defend herself before her murder. Dawson, being the main character in himself, tells us about his social class as we can tell by the way he dresses, walks and his general attitude which would pin him as being yet again, more middle class yet comparing to his occupation and his style of talking, this could lead us to believe that his class is slightly lower than thought.

Music also plays a part in showing a difference in some of the characters, for example; Comparing Samantha's death with the other two victims there are a few differences:

- Samantha's murder took place at night whereas the other's were during the day

- The two victims had the same soundtrack playing in the background whereas Samantha's was different

- Samantha was the only one that Dawson said she had fought for her life

The fact that Samantha has these elements that are different from the other victims tells the audience that she is different from the other two victims and holds some plot to the story.