Our Finished Product.

We have finished both our main task and preliminary exercise and they have both been burned onto a disk. This concludes the whole coursework task and everything that we researched, inspired us and our own work has been posted on this blog; so we believe everything has been a success.

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?

From the beginning of the task all the way up to this point I have learnt a great deal regarding camera work, editing, technique and continuity. Although he concept of the continuity task is easy to grasp, our group had to re-film our continuity exercise because one of the three tapes we used vanished when we came to edit it. Although this put us behind the other groups, we continued filming and managed to learn a lot more about continuity on our own. In the continuity exercise we included an 180 degree rule, match on action(which was used in our main task) and a shot/reverse shot. . This made us think about the Mise en scene as well for example shadows from the harsh classroom lighting, tripods in the shot and other belongings.After losing one of the tapes from our first continuity task, we took great care of the tapes, camera, props, tripod ETC in the main task and no mistakes were made. Our knowledge of continuity made sure we used the same props and costumes throughout the opening of our main task. Although we experimented with camera shots and editing in the main task, we made sure that the little dialogue we used in the opening was in time by using one continuous shot.

From the preliminary task we learned more about how not to use just any old shot to try and make it look interesting, but to use the camera and different techniques to our advantage and therefore achieve realism. One of the ways we did so was by using hand-held camera shots. this was useful when our main character was skateboarding because it gave the audience the sense of what he is doing and giving them an onlookers approach. We used quite a few high angle shots within the sequence to give the audience yet another way of looking at the characters with a birds eye view.> We also used alot of panning movements to give the audience a look at the setting and what kind of areas they might recognise in other parts of a full film. Pans also showed the typical generic convention of urban locations. We also used our knowledge of the effects in subtle changes to camera angle. If there is a low angle the character/ seem more powerful and significant. If a high angle is used then the character/s seem less powerful and insignificant.

From doing the first continuity task we went straight onto editing for ourselves and although we were shown the basics on how to edit on iMovie, we learnt how to put the whole film together within our group by copying each take so none of our material was lost, adding music and titles, deleting clips and cropping clips. All of this is second nature to us now and we feel confident in editing material in the future.

Evaluation Question 6:

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

The use of technology helped with the process of constructing our finished product in lots of ways. We were able to use technologies we are used to and others that we grew more comfortable with using.

This a picture of the kind of digital camcorder we used for actually filming our material. It's size and the fact that it is portable made it really easy to use it in many different places, including on a roof. These cameras are very useful for producers on a low budget and the the small LCD screen saves time and makes it easier for us to view the material we filmed straight away and overwrite what we wanted so we didn't have to waste film. One problem was that it was quite an old model, however this was because none of the members of our group had their own digital camcorder they could offer, so the school's cameras were fine. We also used a tripod to keep the camera still and at the level we wanted while allowing us to pan and tilt neatly.

We used Apple Mackintosh computers to edit, update our blogs, find pictures, research our genre ETC. We also used a scanner to scan in original pictures of our storyboard to our blogs. This was useful in showing us how our initial ideas changed into the final product and how some of the first ideas seemed unrealistic or other ideas would work better.

This a picture of iMovie, which is the software we edited our material on. The labels on this picture shows you how you can use iMovie. When we learned hoe to use iMovie properly, we found it relatively easy to upload, crop clips, rearrange clips and make our opening into how we wanted it to look.

We used quite a few websites for research and adding things to our blogs. Youtube was very good for finding influential films that we wanted our film to take some elements from (shifty). For the titles in our opening, we found a font on Fontspace.com that worked very well with our opening, we decided to find a font online because the default fonts on the Macs aren't edgy or different.We used blogger to record our progress and research. It is a quick and easy way of adding in pictures and videos and we can edit the posts to make additions and put in details of what we did and how. This was a more sufficient way of keeping all the work together and it is easier to focus visually.

Evaluation Question 5.

How did you attract/address you audience?

Genre Conventions: The genre conventions that we intended to include in our film are meant to be closely linked to the genre conventions normally found in other crime films e.g Kidulthood. These conventions often include: Urban locations which are often derelict (used in our film), Youths (used), Drugs/Alcohol (used), genre related music (used), Slang or expletive phrases (not much dialogue in film to include much), Informal clothing (used), Strong sense of masculinity (used). A suspicious and tense atmosphere is gradually created as the lighting gets darker as the two characters meet in the dark underpass , this also occurs when Billy stops skateboarding and takes out the head phones, at which point the background music stops. This is when the audience gets the idea that there may be some kind of trouble coming up.

Use of Music/Sound: The Background music we used in our film opening corresponds really well to the genre because the hip/hop genre we chose is a popular genre with our audience.The song we used was and instrumental of Still Dre by Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg. As mentioned above there is not much dialogue in the opening so we kept it short and to the point to keep the audience in focus with what's going on.

Use of Mise-En-Scene: The Mise en scene in our opening is closely linked to the genre conventions e.g. the urban locations. As the location is in sync with the typical conventions, we feel that they will be attractive to our audience. As I have mentioned before, costumes we chose for our characters link to how we attracted the audience. The Hoodies, baggy jeans and t-shirts are obvious conventions of our chosen genre and our audience could also be related to the social group the costumes represent. The use of props also links youths with the crime genre such as the drugs package, ipod, skateboard and knife. These props wouldn't be inappropriate in other films such as Shifty, Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction ETC.

Cinematography: We used digital cameras and natural lighting which worked well with the darkening tone and feel of the film, this was also useful in helping the audience picking up the growing tension towards the end. Our main aim to attract our audience was realism and we believe this was the most risk free way of doing so.

Editing: By using lots of short cuts of film placed together we managed to create a fast paced opening which links to the fast paced lifestyle of our audience. By using a skateboarding sequence this was fairly easy to create. The skateboarding was a nice touch because we could film Billy doing different things and experiment with what went best with the rest of the opening, so by editing time we had a lot to cut, but a lot of good material to choose from. Aside from using graffiti type font for our titles which work well with our genre, we decided against using any special effects because it contradicts the aim of realism we wanted to create. There is a really thin line between was can be realistic and what is obviously put in to exaggerate reality, and a lot of crime films rely on realism to draw in suspense and tension, so we didn't want to add in things that weren't needed.

The USP (Unique Selling Point): Concluding from the last point, our idea of realism and how the younger side of the audience can relate to the kind of lifestyle we created here. Many younger viewers need to be confronted with blunt, in-your-face realism in order to acknowledge how other social groups, or even their own social group, lives and deals with problems they are faced with. Many people just don't want to see actors pretending to be in a situation that has so many flaws and realism issues.

Evaluation Question 4.

Who Would be the Target Audience for your Media Product?

The Target audience we decided for our film is people aged 15 to 25 and also male dominated. This picture of a crowd at a festival is a direct image of the kinds of people I would expect to watch a film like ours. This is because most of the crowd is male dominated and also because they are all listening to the kind of music I would expect the target audience to listen to (indie, rock, rap, drum and bass). They are all carefree as we would expect most youths to be while at a music festival and they are all dressed accordingly to how their style is, which I would expect to be baggy jeans t-shirts and hats for males and mainly careful emphasis on hair and 'nice' clothing for females. They are also the kind of people you would expect to be into films much like the British films I have already mentioned such as This is England, Shifty, Slumdog Millionaire and the popular TV programme Skins.

Some of the people we showed our film opening to were asked these questions:

• What was your favourite part of the opening?
• What did you least like and how would you change it?
• Would you want to watch the rest of the film after watching the opening?
• Do you think the opening was realistic and believable?
• Overall, did you enjoy our film opening and what mark would you give it out of ten?

Q1- Answers
“My favourite bit was when the delivery boy jumped over the camera it was quite cool”
“The setting of the stabbing is good” (the underpass)
“I quite liked the skating and the quick pace”
Q2- Answers
“The dialogue was a bit unclear at points”
“The shots were sometimes a little shaky”
“The speech was a little unclear at the end”
Q3- Answers
“Yeh it seems quite action packed”
“Yeh definitely"
“Probably, but it does seem like a film i would have to be in a certain mood to watch”
Q4-Answers
“Yes it’s very down to earth”
“The stabbing was a little staged”
“Yeh, obliviously you couldn’t pay anyone to act but the actors you chose were quite good”

Q5- Answers from 10 people

2 people gave 9/10
4 people gave 8/10
3 people gave 7/10
1 person gave 6/10

Evaluation Question 3.

What Kind of Institution might distribute your media product and why?

After going over the conventions and qualities our film opening contains we believe that our film would be shown at Art house cinemas in contrast to big budget Hollywood films that would be shown in complex cinemas. This is mostly because it cost basically nothing to make and its dull, gritty nature gives it a certain quality that not everybody is accustomed to watching on a trip to the cinema. As explained in Evaluation question 2, our film opening is quite similar in terms of crime conventions and representation to Kidulthood/adulthood and Shifty, both of which had very low budgets. From this analysis a director like Eran Creevy or Noel Clarke would be accustomed to make a film like ours. Much like these two films our budget would be in the range from £100,000 to £800,000. Although a low budget film like ours would probably lack in money to market and distribute it well, we could use small production companies to produce a very well made film. Many production companies converge in order not to lose a great deal of money if one of their films is not as successful as expected. We think this would be a good strategy because we can't rely on a good marketing campaign on such a low budget. The production companies that were used for films like Shifty would be ideal because they are in keeping with the kind of film we would want to produce. Companies such as Film 4 or Film London could be good choices as they have produced films with more gritty factors and less distribution, yet they succeed in producing decent films that quite a few people would like to watch.

Usually with Art House films on a low budget, the characters that are cast to play realistic and perhaps lower class characters are either up and coming actors or completely new stars. This would be ideal for our film because we wanted our characters to be working class and young, so it would be useful to use characters from that kind of background with some knowledge of what kind of life the characters might have. This technique has been mirrored in Shifty and Kidulthood/Adulthood.

In order to get a decent amount of marketing and distribution, it would be useful to receive help from companies that fund or help with the distribution and marketing of low budget films regularly. Even if we wouldn't have as much marketing as many films that are released, it would be a disaster not to have any, so by perhaps by marketing our product via the internet, we would not only be giving access to information about it to everyone around the world, but specifically to our target audience. Our Target Audience are very common users of Facebook and as we know Facebook has been used for marketing techniques before we feel that this would be a good pace to start appealing to the target audience. Film festivals and free screenings would be very useful for distribution and exhibition of our film as well. This would trigger a very strong component when earning money in the British Film Industry and that would be word- of - mouth. This Is England became very well-known because of the contribution of word of mouth.

The UK Film Council is very helpful in giving more money towards distribution of posters and other advertising techniques through national lottery funding. Our film would be quite likely to receive funds from the UKFC because of its gritty nature and its contribution to making great British films on low budgets. However, Working Title are well known for converging with Universal Pictures and therefore being able to fund a great deal of distribution to many British films, much like they did with The Boat That Rocked.This could give us a lot more possibilities with distribution and marketing, but I think the main thing for us is to get the film well liked by the people and critics who watch it in Art Houses rather than complexes. Critics who watch our film are very influential over who and how many people watch our film, it would also be useful to have good feedback for events such as the Bafta Awards because many people choose to watch low budget British films after they have been praised at the Baftas or won a awards.

Evaluation Question 2.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Age, gender and class are a particular set of representations within our film opening. The three character we used represent the same kind of social group. Although Tom is the more aggressive/dominant character, their youth, clothing and involvement in drugs relates them all to the typical youths that are associated with drugs and violence, and adds a kind of reality to the storyline. As the characters are youths, this is a good attraction to our target audience because they are relatively the same age. The film opening is very much male dominated much like the stereotype associated with drug and knife crime. It is clear that the rest of the film will be male dominated. The Class Representation we chose to use for our characters is working class because many people in today's society link the crime element in the genre conventions to the urban setting and lack of politeness that is associated with the working class. The drugs and knife are also direct elements of crime that are often linked to the working class rather than middle and upper classes. Drug use and dealing alongside gun and knife crime are a huge problem linked to the working class as well. We used a back street with a derelict building, a skate park, and an underpass to make a strong link between the kind of characters we used and where they would be. For example we would not put working class drug dealers in a row of town houses near a high end shopping complex because it is unrealistic. Instead we chose our settings because they are well known for being dangerous and people of higher classes tend to stay away from derelict areas of any town or city.

These characters are very similar in terms of clothing and props, however very different in terms of their roles. Their clothing is very similar because they are typical of the 'skater boy' image consisting of baggy jeans, t-shirts, and hoodies with trainers, Ipods and skateboards. They both also have some involvement in drugs. However, they are very different because although we expect Billy to be a main character throughout the film, he unexpectedly dies at the end of the opening, whereas Freddie is a main character throughout the 3rd and 4th series of Skins.

The messages and values they represent are that their stereotype mat not be new to the drug scene, but knife crime should not be focused just on particular social groups represented by race or class. The masculinity could also be a very clear indicator of violence and aggression. We chose Billy to create these particular messages and values because he is a direct image that it is not just one or two social groups that can become involved in what is represented in the Crime genre. He does fit well with the genre conventions but with a different kind of characterisation that most audiences are accustomed to seeing in films such as Shifty and Kidulthood/Adulthood.