Main post 12.7

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 what i believe to be the most significant improve to be as a whole the quality of shooting. For example in our earlier piece due to most of us having limited knowledge on shot angles, shot sizes and how much head room was needed on the focus of each shot.

This is an example from our preliminary task above, as you can see there is way to much head room being shown.

 

This picture above from our main task shows a much better quality in terms of shooting and there is sufficient head room.

Another target was to eliminate a flaw from the preliminary task of a reflection being shown in the window of the camera man, i believe we have done this as I have not noticed any as of yet in our main task.

We also didn't make use of the mise-en-scene as much as we could/ should have within our preliminary task. This included props and costume/ make-up. Therefore, I feel that we have improved as we used props to construct the representation of a school atmostphere, as well as displaying the name of our film using props.

  

Main post 12.6

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


I have used all of this equipment while constructing our media product. Specifically, I have learnt various new skills when using the editing programme; Adobe Premier Pro CS3, including how to reverse a clip, this was used to display the name of our film, how to import MP3 files such as school bell sound and our backing track and how to mix the sounds. We used my Canon camera for a lot of the planning pre-production process, taking pictures of  locations that we would potentially use for filming in. If it wasn't for these new technologies, we would have had to do all of the editing manually like they did several years ago, involving slicing the film strips and putting them together by hand. We also used software such as blogger, this allowed us to post all our work via internet. Several programmes on the internet had to be used, such as youtube (to export our piece and feedback clips), arts of the title sequence (helped us gain a better understanding of the title sequence), the internet also now benefits films of all different budgets especially low budget films as it allows them to promote their film cheaply.

Main post 12.5

How did you attract/address your audience?


Our unique selling points was a character that the target audience could relate to, as well as the comedy element of her falling due to her shoe laces being tied up, an old school joke re-used to get the audience laughing.  We also addressed our target audience with the setting our piece in a school, this is clear to the audience from the use of mise-en-scene, the filming location itself and the diegetic sound of a school bell.

The way in which we attained feedback  in regards to our opening sequence we gathered a range of people that fitted within our target audience. They consisted of three of our friends, two males age 16 and 17, a 17 year old female, and two younger boys, brothers of someone in our group age 12 and 14. We asked these people because we wanted to ask a people from a range of ages, in order to try and gain a more realistic response.


Our media product would recieve a 'U' BBFC rating as it is suitable for all ages, and contains no scenes or content that could potentially upset or disturb young children. 

Main post 12.4

Who would be the audience for your media product?


According to numerous research methods, such as our pre-production questionnaires, graphs, feedback from individuals that have seen the opening sequence, statistics regarding 2010 Box Office data, I have come to the conclusion that our film target audience should be that of a younger audience, primarily aged between 8 and 17 of both genders. This is due to teen and school based comedies being highly watched and enjoyed at the same time by this age range, I believe this to be because they understand and almost relate to what the students are going through be it funny, sad etc.


For example, a member of our target audience could be a male teenager, aged 13 who reguarly attends school. He has a wealth of friends with similar interests such as sport, video games and going to the cinema. Most of which  would go and view the film and hopefully enjoy it, would be able to identify and relate with the plot and setting of our film, and would hopefully find the film quite amusing as it is a comedy. 

Main post 12.3

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


The main role of the production company would primarily be to produce the film, contribruting to the majority of funding. This funding would be used for convergance and advertising, if the film was to be a success this would greatly enhance the repretation of our own film company.


We would require a highly recognisable and established distribution company such as Paramount Pictures to distribute our film because they could supply the film with more funding than that of a less reputable company, and therefore there is a much higher chance of our film going global, also the chance of our film going big in the USA is increased as the Paramount head courters is based in Hollywood, California, United States.


A major benefit of working with Paramount pictures would be they have already promoted/produced highly successful school based comedies such as Drillbit Taylor and School of Rock, both highly reputable films. Therefore they would have a better understanding than most on how to produce our film.

Although this would not be a realistic target as a production company, as I believe they would not justify the funding required to promote our film as there is more than likely to be a film of a similar description being produced by well known cast and crew.

Personally I feel our best option would be to remain local initially, use a low budget British film production company as they are more likely to take on the film.

Main post 12.2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Main post 12.1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

• Structure of sequence: I believe our structure generally supports the conventions of real media products as it successfully establishes the scene, some characters and reavling important members of the crew in a logical order.  
• Style of presentation: Aimed to be very Americanized conventionally, therefore differing from British film conventions slightly. This was achieved with the use of non-school uniform, American vocals in the backing track and the name of the film being '9th Grade' instead of 'Year 8'. The colour and style of the font within our sequence was aimed to follow conventions of comedy genre films; sans-serif, slightly childish and bright yellow font, connoting a unserious tone to the piece, as opposed to using a font such as Times New Roman. The opening sequences of comedy films which we analysed also used a similar style of font, so we were sure that we were following this convention.
• Style/colour of font: We chose a white san serif font on a black background or blended in to the clip. We chose a soft almost hand written font as it matched best to the requirements of a school based comedy, it would not have supported typical comedy conventions if it was in a bolder much harsher font, as it would not have represented the laid back schooling environment we was looking for.
• Genre: The genre we chose was comedy, a school based one in particular. We chose this because ourselves being teenagers could best relate to that than any other genre and through the results of several questionairres suggesting their is a need for more comedy films. Our piece develops the convention of a comedy as within the clip we incorparated several funny moments, an example being te main character falling over due to her shoe laces being tied together without her knowing.
• Narrative enigma: Our piece is stereotypical to the modern conventions of a school, as within every school there will be atleast one person who is bullied for there appearance or intelligance. The only way ours goes against the conventions as we have over emphasised on what the bulling is like, this was decided to have an impact on the audiance making them feel more for the character and question why she is bullied.
• Introduction of characters: The introduction of the main character is immediate and develops the conventions of a comedy, as she is first shown to stumble in to school late. This resulted in the initial laugh, which is key to any comedy opening sequence. However our piece does challange the modern conventions of real media products based around comedy as we introduce more than one main character and not just focus on the life of one character.   
• Camera: Our piece generally chalanges conventios as we have a large part of the opening sequence filmed "hand held". This was used to help the audience get involved with the scene and make them feel like they was following the main character around the school almost experiancing her misfortunes. Typical comedies would have used a more stable method.
• Sound: Our piece challanges the conventions of a comedy as there is no dialogue throughout the whole opening sequence. The only sounds present are a school bell ringing, a backing track and a scream from the main character can be heard when she falls over. The backing track itself develops conventions of a comedy as it is a stereotypical teen based rock song which works in tandem to a school based comedy.
• Editing & Special Effects: Modern day comedies generally have a quirky way in which they reveal the name of their film, our film also does this as we reveal the film name via pens assorted in a formation imaging the tittle being thrown up by a sheet of cling film, we then showed it in reverse to make the audience think the pens fell on to the floor in the correct order. 
• Mise-en-scene: The opening sequence develops the conventions as the main character being a "geek" is shown to be wearing big glasses, high socks and minimal make-up. The characters personer of being clumsey and eccentric also promote the fact she was developed as a character to be laughed at. The bully also develops conventions as he is big, wearing a leather jacket and generall in dark clothing. This is to make him seem "cool" and to be prtrayed as a "popular kid".