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In what ways does your media product use, develop and challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Our product has used conventions of real media products from the same genre; action. The typical format of an action film’s opening sequence has been used in our product to make the audience more aware of the genre, and also to hook in the target audiences. All of the key shots and titles, typical of the action genre, have been used. This includes our editing and cuts which are all straight at the beginning of our sequence. Our props, costumes and locations are all typical of the action genre, as seen in films such Casino Royale . However, we have developed some of the conventions to make our production more original, and hopefully broaden our target audience. Our music choices are our first challenge to the conventions of real media products as they maybe veer away from typical choices. The first track we have used is from the Rock genre, and compared to some of the typical tracks, it is a lot harsher, however, the comparison between this, and the change to the slower mellow track later on, is now a lot more clear, and the change of mood that this signifies is a lot more noticeable. The clear beats in the rock track also fits well to the sharp cuts in our film, and it’s tempo is a lot more dramatic. The change in track is also challenging the conventions as most opening sequences we studied have a constant soundtrack during the opening titles. As the opening title sequence unfolds, it transforms from that of a typical action film to one of an enigmatic psychological thriller; it confuses the audience, and they have to consider what it all means as the film is introduced.

How does your media product represent particular social groups? Our media product only gives initial representations of the characters and their social groups as they are only briefly introduced. However, from the first few minutes, typical stereotypes are picked up on. For example, our female protagonist is a typical feminine character, and she is portrayed to be quite naive as to what is going on in the story. She is in love with the male protagonist, and trusts him completely. Her character represents women to be taking a back seat in the story, however, later on in the rough plot outline we had planned for the rest of the film, she would be breaking that mould, and becoming more of the hero herself instead of it being all left down to the male characters. Our male protagonist is originally shown to be loving, athletic and a respectable character. He is represented as the kind of man that women dream of, and that men dream of being. His character represents men to be strong-willed and to be taking control, for example, when he stops the female’s speech and kisses her. He is involved in all of the action in the sequence which unveils the typical stereotype of the men being the heroes and involved in the drama more so than the women. When our third character is brought into the opening sequence, it gives us a different representation of men; it shows their darker side and that they are much more secretive. Their lack of conversation could also lead to the conclusion that they don’t like to talk as much as females do, and they are happier conversing with people of the opposite sex.

What kind of media institutions might distribute your media product and why? When considering the kind of media institutions that would distribute our product, I researched EM Media ; a distribution company of regional films in the East Midlands. I think that a company like this could be a good distributor for a film, and so conducted further research into distribution companies in the South Eastern region. Institutions such as Screen East and New Town Films came to my attention. They are distribution companies based in the South East, that are interested in promoting local indie films. A company with these policies would be ideal for our production, and would be our preferable choice. However, if for any reason we were unable to use one of these companies, we may consider appealing to the UK film council for a grant. Alternatively, we could approach a foreign distribution company. This may mean including an actor of a different nationality to help the product appeal to their audiences as well as in the UK. This could potentially cause casting issues however, and so we would preferably use our first option or even approach a larger company in the hope that they would take on our production. For example, Entertainment Film Distributors are a major film distribution company based in the UK that have helped to distribute and promote many British films such as St Trinians and Stormbreaker.

Who would be the audience for your media product? When we looked at different films of the action genre in our research, we focused a lot on the techniques that they had used to attract certain audiences. We decided that the main target audience for media products of this type was teenage and adult males. We decided, for this reason, to focus mainly on this audience, however we decided that we also wanted to appeal to females of the same age to broaden the audience, and to increase the popularity of the film. As we are giving our opening sequence a 15 classification due to violent content, we decided that appealing to younger teens was not essential as the viewing rates would be low. We also realised that older people would be less likely to show an interest in our film, although we were aware that there are people, particularly interested in studying film, that would be intrigued by it. For these reasons, we based our characters ages and the issues addressed in the film, around that of people in their late teens and young adults.

How did you attract/address your audience? Once we had established exactly who our audience was going to be, we could mould the making of our film around this. The genre was key in this obviously as we knew we were trying to appeal to a different audience than the average action film. As we were trying to appeal to females, as well as males who were the typical audience of action films, we knew we would need to make it a lot more appealing to them. We decided that a way of doing this would be to make the female protagonist a stronger character and not just the stereotype of a helpless damsel that are so common in this genre. However, in bringing out the strength in her character, we realised that we would need to still keep her as pure and naive as possible, just with more of an edge. This way, she would be seen as a good role model for young women, but would also be appealing for male viewers. Our male protagonist was also a key in attracting our audience. He needed to appeal to both the females and the males in our audience, and therefore we made sure that he would be attractive for the female viewers, and someone the males would aspire to be. Everyone looks for a role model in films, and therefore our characters were our main focus for attracting the audience. Obviously our characters were not our only way of attracting and addressing our audience. We also considered what would instantly catch the audiences attention, and so our sequence starts with choppy edits and music with a strong beat that would instantly wake up the audience and get them interested. The extreme close up of a foot in the first shot, followed by the running, causes confusion for the audience, and so they would want to keep on watching.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? I have learnt much about media technology throughout the process of constructing this product, some of these technologies being cameras, editing programmes such as Adobe Premier Pro 1.5 and the blogging process using www.blogger.com . Fortunately, I was well aware of how to use a blog before the project as I had been using one for several months in advance. This was particularly helpful as it did not take us as long to set up our blog, and figure out how to use it, as it had taken some of the groups. Personally, I think my most prominent gain from the course was learning skills with a camera. As I was in the preliminary task, I did not get to do as much filming as I would have liked, however, I did a fair amount of filming for the main task as I conveniently went on a holiday to New York around the time of our production. Unfortunately, due to the time limit on our title sequence, only a very small amount of this footage was used, but the filming experience I gained from it, and the comfort I now feel behind a camera are huge achievements for me. Adobe Premier Pro 1.5 was more of a task for me as it was something I have never come across before. Originally it did appear to be quite difficult, but once I got used to using it I found it a lot easier to understand and feel my knowledge of editing is now much improved.

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? Looking back at our preliminary task, I can really see the difference in the standard of filming and editing. Throughout the course, I feel that I have learnt how to use a camera and the equipment a lot more professionally, and also have a better understanding of how to create meaning through film. My editing skills have also much improved. In our preliminary, I was one of the actors used and, in my opinion, the quality seems a lot lower in our preliminary due to bad acting. I am in no way an actress, and we realised from our preliminary that we would be at much an advantage to use people studying drama in our main task. I had more of a role in editing on our preliminary than I did filming it, and I did learn more than before about the editing programme during the production of our main task. Our editing was a lot more sophisticated in our main task, using transitions and overlaying our credits onto the main shots. We learnt how we can use these editing skills to create different atmospheres in films and portray the characters feelings. To help us, we studied different user guides and and watched tutorial videos. These enabled us to understand the tools of Adobe much better. Overall, throughout the transition between the two tasks, I feel that I have learnt a lot, and my general media production knowledge has been extended enormously.

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