evaluation questions

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


Our media product is supposed to be a crime thriller; initially our product uses conventions of real media products. The opening shots are backed with diegetic sounds of a police siren, which introduces the initial theme of crime in this media product – this theme is something that is typical of a thriller film. The setting of the film is in a block of flats; this urban environment is also a convention that is typical of a thriller film. Next, the clothing and props worn by the character at the start of our film are typical of this crime thriller genre film. The tracksuit bottoms, black jacket, trainers and the gun carried by this character also strengthen the theme of crime in our media product. The editing and camera style of the opening sequence is also typical of a thriller film as it includes; hard cuts, some interesting transitions and fast paced editing. In these instances our product uses conventions of real media products to validate itself as a conventional crime thriller media product, but it is the storyline and characterisation after the opening sequence that makes our media product progress to develop and challenge conventions of a similarly categorised media product.

the setting for our film.

After the focus of the film has shifted from the first character to Theo’s character, this Media product changes from using conventions of the thriller genre to challenging and developing conventions. Although the themes of violence and crime are still prevalent in the film from the use of the gun as a prop, and the diegetic sound of the guns shot. Also the camera shots create focus on the gun. The setting remains the same but the editing changed from fast paced to slow paced, an interesting and different editing style for a film in the thriller genre. The protagonist character – Theo, is one that challenges the conventions of similar media products as he is not a typical hero character. His bumbling character and lack of street knowledge is emphasised by this counter-typical slow paced editing, the camera focus on him playing with the gun, and the 

way he runs away from the scene of the crime towards the end of the film. This strange take on the hero character is how our media product seems to challenge the typical story line of a thriller as he ends up being the character that is seen to commit the crime. However it is really only the characterization of this protagonist in our media product that challenges the conventions of similarly categorized real media products.

2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our media product was thriller film opening. It featured a youthful cast of three characters. The ways of representing these characters would vary from the clothes and props, to the setting, and the editing used to portray them.

The first character; played by Charlie Lavender was dressed to resemble a teenager from an urban environment. This led us to dress him in tracksuit bottoms, trainers and a black hooded jacket. The clothes we chose to use for this character were designed to make him look like he was from an urban environment. Also the fact that his character is supposed to be running away from the police sirens at the very start of the film shows that this teenager from an urban background is related to crime – gun crime in particular. This in itself is very stereotypical of a teenager from an urban area in relation to crime or clothes that people from that social group would wear.

The setting is in a block of flats in the centre of town, this setting for the character associated with crime to be running though is also stereotypical of his social group as people dressed in these clothes and who are involved in criminal activities are largely expected by society to live in these areas. The editing used when this character is largely fast paced, this is to make him seem faster and more reckless running through the estate. These characteristics making him seem more desperate to get away from the police and to get rid of the gun.

The next character, played by Theo Emerson is supposed to come across as a young working adult. Due to this character profile he is dressed in dark smart trousers and a smart black jacket. His character is designed to be a small source of comedy in the film. He is a bumbling character who comes across as less streetwise than the character previously making this a somewhat negative stereotype of this young adult.

The editing around Theo’s character is very slow paced; it contains many tracking shots and less hard cuts. This is to mirror the slower lifestyle of an adult’s life. This is negatively stereotypical of an adult in comparison to the younger character.

The final character is someone who is barely in the film, he is portrayed as a teenager who skateboards past Theo and is accidentally shot. As he is skating we decided to dress him in skinny jeans, vans trainers and a green jacket. These are supposed to be typical clothes worn by a skater type character.

3) what kind of media institution might distribute your media product?

Adulthood - a film similar to ours, produced by Cipher Films

The kind of institution that would distribute our media product would be a company that has previously distributed products similar to ours. Our product is a crime thriller set in the UK on a council estate which deals with the themes of violence and crime with a youthful cast. Companies that have distributed films with criteria similar to that would be Cipher Films and Revolver Entertainment that have released both kidulthood and adulthood; two films with similar themes, settings camera styles and of a similar genre. Cipher Films or Revolver Entertainment would distribute our product because it has a very specific target audience and would be popular film in the Uk which is just like other films that they have distributed. 

logo of revolver entertainment

4) who would be the audience for your media product?

For our media product we have chosen the thriller genre, and as you can see on our blog (target audience) has the figures in which the audience these films attract, the Pearl & Dean Film website shows a profile of the audience for every film that the company show. As an example the profile of the Horror film Paranormal Activity; this film has a near enough 50/50 gender split showing that there was equal interest taken by both men and women. As the film was rated a 15 by the BBFC  the age range of this films audience starts at 15 years old. the majority of the audience (55%) falls under the 15-34 age range. As for classes the specification is slightly confusing so here is the categories simplified.

A's = bankers, lawyers, directors, and other high powered jobs

B's = teachers, nurses, managers, graphic designers etc

C's = skilled jobs, office workers, plumbers, electricians

D's = non-skilled jobs

This class split shows that the majority of the audience is in class group C1, which is skilled jobs and office workers.

With regards to our film we have decided to use the profile of two films with similar settings and with what we think have similar target audiences; About a Boy and Harry Brown. About a boy because of the city setting and intended age range. And Harry Brown because of the themes and setting the block of flats and inner city setting, also the themes of gun crime and violence. So our target audience would one similar to Harry Brown or About A Boy, and i think it would be a someone in the 15's-30 age range and would be more likely to be a boy than a girl. Also a person viewing our film would be a middle to lower class person. 


5) Target Audience

Our film didn’t challenge the typical thriller genre and the story line didn’t suit a stereotypical story to what you usually see in thriller films, so the audience won’t be mainstream but will be highly specific and niche.  

The targeted audience age range was from 15-35, dominantly males similar to Adulthood but with a broad class and ethnicity. Because we made our film very British, and we said earlier that it would be produced by a British Independent Production company such as Cipher, I don’t think if our film was exhibited in other countries such as the US it would be a success at all because of the locations, setting and characters the urban genre makes the audience very restricted and limited.  


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

During the construction of our short film we have learnt how to film on the digital video cameras, we all used the cameras during the construction of our preliminary tasks - a 30 second video. And also during the filming of our actual media product we all had some time using the camera. For example when Simon was acting in the film either myself or Haseeb would be filming and while I was acting either Simon or Haseeb would be using the camera. We have therefor learnt how to record on the camera, how to zoom in and out,  and also how to take still shots using the video camera’s photo setting. 

Also we had to edit together the shots we captured with the cameras in order to create our film. this editing was done on the editing program called Final Cut Pro, on the computers in the media suite. This editing involved importing clips from the camera to the computer, selecting the correct shots and then cutting the seperate shots together. Also we learnt how to use the video transitions to link certain shots together on the program giving our a film a more fluid feel. We had to edit the sound of the clips also; certain clips had sound that was far too loud and was not in keeping with the rest of the film so we had to change the sound levels and at times even copy the sound of one clip over other clips to keep the sound at a constant. 

We had to create a backing track for our film, this was created using the program called Garage Band. We each had some level of input to the creation of this background music and also included some diegetic sound to make some of the things happening on screen seem more believeable, fo example; the police car siren at the start of the film when the character is running. We learnt how to use this program Garage Band to a level that enabled us to create a believeable array of sounds and a contemporary background track.

Lastly we had to create a blog on our film, we all had to add posts to the blog and we all learnt how to upload videos, photos, maps and essays to the blog in order to document our progress during the contruction of this media product.  

Overall we all learnt how to use each piece of technology to a certain degree. 

7. looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

from our preliminary task i feel we have learnt a  lot in the form of the 4 technical codes, sound,camera, editing and mis-en-scene. as we look back on our preliminary now we can automatically identify mistakes we have made. firstly we weren’t big fans of editing as we didn’t have any experience in this field, but as we edited this clip it gave us some help in handling the software, this resulted in us being confident and also when it came to our final film we had 3 people wanting to edit the film, unlike the preliminary when know one wanted to edit. 

Secondly sound was another area in which we have learnt a great deal in, both in non-diegetic and diegetic sounds, putting sound on to our clip was a great struggle at the beginning for all of us ,but as we started playing with sound we got the hang of it and now were not perfect but we have improved a great deal, now as you can see in our final clip we have added sound in certain areas to give the film a bit of tension to engage the teenage audience. garage band was a software in which we had to get our mind around in order to handle sound the reason for this is when adding sound on a clip we  had to do so through by importing or even exporting the sound from garage band. which made it easier for us to do.