Evaluation- Nicole Rawson

1. in what ways does your media product use, develop or change forms and conventions of real media products.

 The genre for our film is mystery drama, it is mainly set in the present day however, it features flash backs to the past as part of uncovering a mystery. For our two minuet opening sequence we thought the best way to approach it would be to try and engage the viewers interest a little instead of telling them the whole film straight away. In our opening sequence we wanted people to be able to tell there was some sort of mystery involved without giving the entire plotline away all together. I think that we did this successfully as it features the uncovering of a hidden letter that falls out of some books. This is a clever way of introducing the mystery as it tells the audience there is something very important about these letters without telling them exactly what it is. We chose to make our plot non linier as it was important that the audience could make the connexions between the past and the present day very quickly otherwise the story would not probably make much sense. This could have potentially created a problem if the audience had not grasped the concept that it was a flash back however by using some clever techniques we managed to make it work successfully. To establish the changes between the two time zones we chose to use a fade in to white/fade out from white which featured a date along the bottom of the screen. This fade looked very effective as it showed a clear difference from the fade to blacks we had used for the title credits. Some of the key things we used to help the audience tell the difference between the two times where the use of camera angles, props and editing. Firstly for both places we used contrasting lighting and props that where very different from one another. An evidence of this is the use of candles, for our 1564 scene it is set very dark in comparison to the modern day. The use of candles in this scene should help the audience make a connexion that this was a very long time as no one writes by candle light any more. Compare this to the scene set in the present day in which our main character can be seen wrapping up items into boxes that have clearly been used for electrical items i.e. the Sony laptop box. 

Lighting in modern scene is allot lighter

Candle scene 

Between the two locations we have chosen to make some of the props the same to give little clues as to what’s going on and create continuity. Take for example the books, the books which are seen to be placed on the table in the modern-day are exactly the same books used in the historical shot.

This is the books in the modern scene

Books in historical scene

This leads me onto the second technique we used for distinguishing between the two time zones the use of editing and camera angles. To ensure that the audience noticed the books where the same in the two locations we made a point of including a panning shot of the books in both scenes. This may not be obvious initially however  if we where to create the full film we would have ensured that more shots similar to this would have been used to establish the connexion. One particular camera shot that I like from the opening two minuets of the film and works well is the one that has the candles in the foreground very blurred.  This shot helps to add to the mystery of the film and is very unique to our media product.

Blurred candles shot

I find that this shot draws in your attention  to try and figure out what your actually visualizing on screen. We chose to keep the editing in the two locations very similar and at a slow place as it seemed to fit the genre of our film very well, for example it wouldn’t have looked right if we had chosen to cut very quickly between many different shots in a historical scene especially since we wanted to keep the editing at a pace in time with the music. The music from our clip I think works very well as it fits the tone and mood and is exactly what we had in mind. To find the right track we had to search through lots of disks before eventually deciding on pastoral from the audio network track 1.

Our font

When choosing a text for our credits we decided that it would look good if we made them look like they had been handwritten in an old English script like the letter. To achieve this look we searched for free online fonts and decided to go with one called st Andrews queen.

This shows how our font looked in the film

One think that is different about our film opening is that we use a voice over. This type of audio is commonly used throughout films to give a brief history of a particular character or to highlight an interest in a particular item.  In the case of our film the voice over was used to highlight key phrases of the letter so that we could hint at more clues in our story line. We chose to use a voice over in our film after we noticed that it had be done in lots of other films for example confessions of a shopaholic and bride wars. Witch we had already analysed in research for our film.

This film also uses a voice over

2.How does your Product represent particular social groups?

The main social groups I think that our film represents is the young male and female genders this is because it looks into the complications of the relationships they have with one another and how they go about tackling these issues. Like the majority of films in our genre we have chosen to stick with the normal stereotypes of the characters in the film. However one thing our film does do differently is compare how the perception of this social group is different in the passed to what it is today. In the opening two minuets of our film we tried not to really create a dominate character as such because of the inkeeping with our mistery genre we achived this by the  the lack of dialogue and interaction with one another. One of the shots we have used in our film could possibly contradict this. This is the shot in witch we have a young female sat on the floor whiles another character walks passed and places book on the table. This to me creates a power argument between the two characters for several reasons. Firstly it is obvious that in the relationship of the two characters the character that walks down the stairs is the more dominant of the two represented by the fact that the camera pans up towards this character and tracks her movements across the room. This character is also higher up in the shot and above the head of the young female. The second thing that shows this character is more dominant is when we show a close up or our young girls face the character is clearly upset and has to look up to see the passing person walk passed however, the power balance is disrupted by the fact that it is the young female is on the screen a lot more than the other character whose face we don’t even see. This means that for the purpose of our storyline it is in fact the young female who will be more important and the other character isn’t really much at all.

Showing how the young girl looks up

Sowing how one character is set higher than the other however no face is seen 

 In our film we wanted the audience to be able to associate the fact that the young girl and the person writing the letter where in a similar situation to each other we did this by dressing the characters both in very dark clothing that could quite easily represent there mood. We wanted the audience to feel the stereotype that this age group feels in that they are easily isolated and feel separated from the others around them. One final thing that reflects this is the tone of the music we have used in our opening sequence it is very low in tone and slow paced creating a sad and mysterious atmosphere.


3. what kind of media institute might distribute your media product and why?

If our film was distributed it think that a fairly large and substantial company  would do this for example Entertainment distributors. The reasons for doing this are that it is quite hard for small independent film to get noticed when competing against big Hollywood blockbusters Especially since there is becoming more and more ways to watch films not just at the cinema. What we particularly liked about entertainment was that they already had a substantial collection of films they had already distributed that include both big budget Oscar winning films along with other smaller productions.

One of the companies who we thought could distribute our film

We did look at other distributors for our film including the British film council however we felt that Entertainment would probably be the better of the two. A main factor in this decision was the feedback from our questionnaire results in which it emerged that more and more people are watching films in other ways such as on demand, online or illegal downloads. This therefore meant we would have more chance of getting a larger audience to watch our film if we went with a company that did more than just  cinema releases.  Another thing that our questioners told us is that it would mainly be women who would watch our film. This means that for distribution purposes we would know how to target this type or audience. Example of this would include putting posters in women’s magazines or showing the trailer for our film along with other films of a similar genre.  Below are some images of magazines we could potentially advertise in.

Examle 1

Example 2

4. Who would be the audience for your media product. 

In order to establish who the audience for our media product would be we carried out some extensive research into the different types of film audience. The first part of this was to go online and read reviews on films with a similar genre. From this research we where able to establish a link between our type of film and women aged 15 and above as these where the type of people who gave the most positive feedback. To back this research up we then sent out a question-air asking people about several aspects of our film who they where and what other films they liked to watch. The question airs we sent out  reflected our initial research and came back with the same results the same results. After deciding on a final plot line for our film we then went onto the BBFC website to establish an appropriate certificate for our film. after great discussion we establish that it would probably be more appropriate for a 15 certificate as some parts of our film would not be appropriate for younger audiences and due to the complexity of the story line they may not have understood it properly anyway

5. How did you attract/address your audience 


To attract our target audience we thought it would be best to find out exactly what they liked. Our way of doing this was to send out some question airs and then make our film reflect there answers. It was important to us that our film was unique to other films in the hope that it would attract as many people as possible. To do this as a group we pulled together a list of ideas of ideas that would make our film stand out that included several shots and editing techniques. The first part of doing this was the application of credits to our film we wanted them to tie in with the mood of the film and reflect the genre as much as possible. Our way of doing this was to make the script look like the handwriting on the letter so that it introduced the audience to feel part of the story as this text was written specifically for them.  In our filming we used a variety of shots that would hopefully make the audience feel that they where part of our characters world. Some of the shots that do this is the montage of shots in witch the character is writing the letter. This is obviously a very private seen  but yet the audience is allowed in and is able to see and hear the deep inner thoughts of the character. The genre of our film was mystery this meant that the people who came to watch our film would want to try and solve what was going on whilst they watched. In our opening to minuets we there for felt that it was essential to put in some subtle clues that the audience could piece together . For example there is the obvious clue of the letters, but there are also some more discrete ones like the title of the books on one of the table " Treasures of Britain".

Handwritten style text

6. What have you learnt about technology from the process of constructing the product. 

For our filming we used a Panasonic HDC-HS80 which allowed us to film in HD giving a much better picture quality. This model of camera features settings for a wide range of shooting situations from close up to far away subjects making it highly appropriate for what we required it to do. This camera features a 33.7mm wide angle lense, to realize shooting at a close distance from a subject both the subject and its surrounding environment this was essential  for some of the pulling focus shots we used in our filming.

The camera we used