Media Studies – Evaluation for AS
Project
In this document, I will be evaluating my AS media
project called Counterplay. I felt that overall, we had done a good job on our
AS project, as we thought through what sort of shots we wanted and took the
time to think about how we wanted to portray each character in each shot and
such. We could have planned our storyline better as we made some late changes
in the process, and we had to re-film some bits because of setting but other
than that we didn’t come across many issues. Our strongest point would be the
editing I think, as we all contributed and therefore had more than one opinion
on shots and certain edits. The fact that we had good software available to us
also helped quality wise as well as having a camera of our own and when
rendered I was pleased with the result.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or
challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Before jumping in and making decisions about how we were
going to form our film intro, we first did our research which led to us
debating on different forms and conventions of other films. We originally
decided before research we wanted to start our film opening with a chase and
make it an action-thriller, and our research ensured us of this. Based on this
research, we used one of the conventions from James Bond – Casino Royale. The
convention we used was the soundtrack, which can be seen/heard on the link
below.
The reason we took the idea of a soundtrack and used it
in our own film was because we thought it worked well as it added tension to
the chase scene and keeps the audience on edge. When we first saw the James
Bond clip, we all agreed on what impact the soundtrack made and therefore
implemented it to our own.
We then decided to develop a convention used by Lock,
Stock and Smoking Barrels in the way of introducing each character into the
opening. We introduced our characters as done in the film however we changed it
to suit the mood of what was happening, and therefore didn’t include dialogue
but instead included a freeze frame with the name of each character then
sliding in, as seen below.
We felt this suited the opening better because we wanted
to keep the mood of the chase and we felt that having dialogue wouldn’t have
really gone well with our film opening. We had a soundtrack as well to make it tenser
and again if dialogue was present I don’t think it would have worked with the soundtrack
as you wouldn’t have been able to hear the names or music properly. I think the
strongest point about this technique was when it transitioned into black and
white as the freeze frame came in, and this is because it gives the
introduction of characters more of a gangster feel as the writing comes in. The
contrast in colour of the text and the shot makes the text stand out while
still showing the character, which again I thought worked really well.
We analysed a couple of scenes from the Godfather as we
knew we were going to have gangsters in our film. After analysing, we had to
make a decision about our characters and decided instead of going with
traditional gangsters like the Godfather has, we’d challenge this convention
and go in the opposite direction with more modern gangsters. Now that we’ve
finished I feel we made the right decision in analysing the Godfather clip as
it gave us an insight on what we actually wanted on ours and having traditional
gangsters wouldn’t of really worked well with our setting and storyline.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
I feel that our film opening portrays the social groups of gangsters in
a strong way, and this is done in many forms. It represents the more modern gangsters
which are present certainly in a lot of movies in recent times, which makes it
more realistic. I feel we represented the modern gangsters in many ways;
clothing, slang terms and speech, and just the setting in general made it seem
like a more realistic situation.
You can see in the pictures above about what is meant about the
clothing, as traditional gangsters are usually seen in bowties and suits in
comparison to the more modern gangsters who seem to be in just regular clothes,
as it’s more appropriate and realistic in today’s society. We could have
improved on how we represented this social group if we had changed the dress
sense up a bit, maybe tracksuit bottoms and a hoodie with hoods up, and this
would have made who the gangsters were clearer to the viewers, and feedback has
told us this as well.
We also could have made the opening more realistic by making it more
action packed and violent as usually that’s how modern gangsters are portrayed
as. If we did change the clothing and made the gangsters seem more violent, our
opening would be more comparable to films such as Kidulthood and Adulthood and
8 Mile, both portraying modern gangsters in a very realistic way.
What kind of Media Institution might distribute your product and why?
It is more likely that a mainstream institution would distribute our
film opening and this is because the independents prefer smaller films with
different genres rather than the common action-thriller. However, the
mainstream institutions have more of an interest in this genre and tend to
distribute it a lot more and on a much bigger scale.
I feel an institution like Revolver Entertainment would consider
distributing our film opening, for the reasons that Revolver are a smaller
institution and therefore would take more interest in an opening like ours in
comparison to one like Universal, and also the fact that they’ve distributed
british gangster films before and therefore fits our genre perfectly. Even
though they’re a much smaller company Revolver have distributed films like
Kidulthood and such and most of the films they distribute are actually much
more similar to ours in comparison to Universal.
Another way we have distributed our film ourselves has been through
uploading to Youtube and then sharing it on social networking sites like
facebook and twitter. This was useful as it meant we could get feedback from
our friends and was an easy way to get feedback rather than using things like
video feedback and emails, and on top of that was free of charge rather than
using distributors.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
I feel there is definitely a varied audience for our media product, so the
age range would be from teenagers to young adults, however the majority of
these would be males. This is because males tend to prefer action-thrillers in
comparison to women, so the majority of our audience would be males.
I feel the age range would be varied because a lot of people enjoy
action thrillers no matter what age they are because they are action packed and
enjoyed by most males, but more specifically teenagers-young adults. Children
wouldn’t be the audience for this film as it contains bad language and violence
which might distress them and therefore parents wouldn’t let them watch it,
which is why the age range starts at around teenagers. I also think that even
though there might be a few people over the age range who would be interested
in watching this film the majority wouldn’t of, and this is because of how it
is more modern and different to traditional gangster films. So I based the age
range on where the film is set, the soundtrack and the storyline. The storyline
is another thing I based the age range on, as it’s more of a modern song and
more modern in comparison to traditional chase music and has a different feel
to it.
How did you attract/address your audience?
To attract and address any audience, you have to make them engage and
really understand what’s going on in the film. Even though this was hard to do
in just a film opening, we done this in various ways, and the first one being
camera shots/angles. We used this to our advantage to help describe how the
characters were feeling and make the audience realise what was going on, and by
doing this is reels them in and allows them to engage in what’s happening.
Another way we attracted and addressed the audience was through
soundtrack. This was a key way to engage with the audience as the soundtracks
present, especially the main one played through the chase scene, help make it
seem tense, fast paced and keep the audience on edge as to what’s going to
happen next. We used each soundtrack for a reason, whether this was to create
curiosity or tension, and we found that this worked well and we achieved what
we wanted to based on feedback.
A final way that I feel we attracted and addressed the audience was
through editing. I found that each cut made was timed well so that there were
no continuity errors and by not having these errors it kept the audience reeled
in and not put off by mistakes. The main edits included of the freeze frames of
the characters and their names showing up, and this edit was very vital in
attracting the audience. This is because it helps us to understand who exactly
these characters are and makes it clearer for when they’re talking about each
other.
We could have improved our opening and helped attract the audience in
more by changing the main soundtrack during the chase. We took a risk in adding
this particular soundtrack because it isn’t like traditional ones and through
feedback we saw that viewers didn’t particularly like the soundtrack and thought
a traditional one would have been better. This is something we all agreed was a
valid point as we could see how some viewers might not like or understand the
main soundtrack.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing
this product?
Before
starting our film opening, I had little knowledge on technologies and only
really understood basic editing on iMovie and basic actions on the camera. From
making our film opening, I feel that I have learnt a lot about the different
technologies used in film-making.
As said I
only really knew how to use iMovie in a basic way to edit and I used this
programme for the preliminary. We encountered problems using this software and
agreed we would use Sony Vegas Pro 10 to edit in our main film opening. This is
because the software was more professional and was easier to import/export
files onto. Once we’d finished filming we all contributed to the editing of it
and by doing this I’ve learnt many things on Sony Vegas Pro, like knowing how
to add fades in sound, colour correction techniques and more. By having this
knowledge it’s helped me as I now know how to use Sony Vegas Pro in a much more
efficient and professional way and can continue to learn how to use it better.
I also feel
I learnt a bit about the camera we were using too. We used a different camera
to the one we used in the preliminary which was more professional and better
quality, and through using it a couple of times I briefly learnt about a few
features on there. I feel I could have learnt more about the cameras functions
however as I wasn’t the cameraman, this wasn’t necessary.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel
you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
I feel the preliminary definitely helped us realise a
few things and has helped us piece together our main opening. The first thing I
feel I benefited from the preliminary was time management skills. Whilst
filming, we did experience some issues with time and keeping to it and
therefore had to rush about a lot to meet the deadline. This helped us realise
we needed to attend to filming and editing and such quicker than we did in the
preliminary and we did, and through doing that we managed to get our film in on
time.
From doing the preliminary another thing we realised
was that we needed to really think about what shots we were filming and which
ones we actually wanted in the film. We wasted a lot of time as we filmed
certain shots which ended up being no good or we felt we needed to expand our
range of shots and therefore it caused us to waste time. So from this we learnt
that when doing our film opening we knew we had to incorporate a range of
different shots to keep it interesting, to which we did.
Feedback
As mentioned a lot of times already, we received a lot
of audience feedback which was very beneficial. Whether it was positive or
constructive criticism we took everything on board and used it to our advantage
to make changes in our film, which is why we have so many drafts. Here we can
see various types of feedback, which include of video feedback, facebook
comments and an email.
Email Feedback
Video feedback:
Facebook Feedback:
Conclusion
To conclude, I think overall we have achieved what we
wanted to with our media product and are happy with the result. We have learnt
from the mistakes made and we know what we need to improve upon for our next project,
however we are happy with the success of the film opening and enjoyed learning
from it.
