Evaluation Jake Bretton

Media Project Evaluation: Jake Bretton

Q1) In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and convections of media products?

The genre we chose for our film is thriller with a sub-genre of action as well. A convection of a thriller film in shown in a specific scene in our film, where the male leads are holding a female character hostage, which shows domination and power. Other films that have influenced ours have been transporter and pulp fiction which are shows in the film. The hostage is held in the boot of the car like the transporter film and a conversation is held in the car which is off the main subject of the story of the film, just like pulp fiction. Comparing our opening sequence to another of a similar genre, I would chose transporter. The opening scene is similar because it starts off calm and slow with not much action happening, and then a big change to more action, transporter has the bank robbery and our film has the hostage and death and both are set around using cars. http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=8qcMQ7Db5ag

Q2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In terms of social groups, gender is the main one in our film. Men dominate over women throughout the scenes. The woman is held hostage, tied up and eventually dies, while the men are in charge all the way though the film. Again it is similar in transporter, a woman is captured and held hostage in the boot of the male characters car.

Q3) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

We have used Warner brothers for the distribution for our film. We have chosen this because it is a big Hollywood company that can get attention to the film and put it in cinemas worldwide. Other directors and films with a similar theme and genre to ours have used Warner brothers, for example Guy Ritchie. Products can be made and sold with the films name with it. The car is featured a lot in the scenes so that it can be represented with the film, also t-shirts and merchandise like that can be sold.

Q4) Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our film is the type of movie that people of my age would watch. I think it would be rated at a 15 aged film. It is an action thriller and think it would appeal more to men aged 15 – 25. It is similar to films like snatch, lock stock and two smoking barrels and the transporter. The BBFC certification would be 15 because it contains drug use, strong language and violence. http://www.bbfc.co.uk/

Q5) How did you attract/address your audience?

We did questionnaires and ask people about the types of films they see and If they would watch our film. It is rated at a 15 certificate because of the nature of the film, it has strong language, violence and criminal activity that men would rather be interested in watching rather than women. Some scenes are disturbing to people under the age of 15, the scenes of the girl been held hostage and the final scenes of her dying would shock younger viewers.

Q6) What have you learnt about technology from the process of constructing the product?

We had to learn how to use the camera’s at the start of the course. I had not really used a video camera much before and didn’t really know how to use the functions like white balance and how to edit the film. We did have a few problems through out the process of making the film. When we were filming in the car it was hard to get the shot steady. We resolved this problem by putting the camera on a tripod and fixing it securely into the seat. Another problem we had was the shot from the boot of the two characters opening the door, we resolved this by putting the seats down and sitting in the back to make more room. We had to a problem when using white balance in the kitchen scene, when we panned across it changed the lighting because of the artificial light changed to natural lighting from the windows. It was the first time I had used imovie and after been shown the basics I had grasped how to do it, it helped a lot in the making of our film, it made the film better with how we could easily add music with the help of garage band and use effects and add titles to the film.

Q7) At the start of the preliminary task I didn’t really know much about filming or editing a film, but after finishing our main task I think I have got a good grasp on how to film, use a camera properly, edit and use the shots correctly. I feel like I am using the camera more fluently and producing the shots better than I was at the start of the year. Although I feel I have grown in using the camera I am better at editing the film at the end product. Kidnapped and the total final product I believe, is a good representation of how we have learnt to use the equipment and editing materials to make the final project.

This is a link to a video of audience feedback to our film -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2RkLM3l8dw

Photos for evaluation

Evaluation- Oliver Neilson

1. In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of media products?

Our media production is an Action/Thriller, we generally follow the conventions of this genre, we have our opening scene as an establishing shot, we used this for the opening scene because we thought in the first few seconds of our film we could acknowledge the characters and the mise en scene.

Our production continues these conventions by adding upbeat intense music into our film in times of excitement and intensity, most Action/Thriller films also use music to set the mood like we have done. The use of these conventions gives the audience a clear indication on what the genre is, our use of music and camera shots showed the mood well and gave a good idea to the audience of what genre the film will be. Many films of the Action/Thriller genre use the music to create a mood, for example in Reservoir Dogs the opening scene has a song that sets the mood as good and exciting. we have tried to follow these successful conventions to show our sub-genre.

Our film was influenced by many other films of the same genre, e.g. Reservoir Dogs, The Transporter and Pulp Fiction, these films are all of a similar genre to ours and influenced our conventions, we thought the use of music in Reservoir Dogs was good, and we thought the camera angles in Pulp Fiction were equally as good, we have used similar methods as them and followed the same conventions to get our genre clear to the audience, like when we had the scene with the girl in the boot, this is similar to a scene in transporter because they are both set about hostages and using carshttp://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=8qcMQ7Db5ag

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

The main representation in our film is that the men are dominant over the women, this dominant theme carries on the whole way through our production, we see both men talking about going out into town while they are in the car, this is a stereotyped male thing to be talking about, furthermore the main story line consists of a dominant male force locking up a women in the boot of the car, this is a stereotypical "damsel in distress" scenario. This social group is the one that is mainly represented in our film.

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

Our film would be distribute and produced by a large Hollywood company, in a previous post we have stated our reasons for choosing a conglomerate company, many Guy Ritchie films like "rock 'n' Rolla" and "Snatch" are produced by Warner Brothers, this is why we chose Warner Brothers.

Our film could also be done by an independent company because it would be quite low budget and set in the UK, no exotic locations would be needed and there would be little special effects, only for car chase scenes etc.

If we were with a independent film industry we would not get the advertising that we would if we were with Warner Brothers, like TV, magazines, posters etc.

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


Our film would be aimed at/appeal to people of our age group, the film would appeal more to men rather than women, it has more of a stereotyped male theme with criminal activity and violence, other films similar to ours like the transporter or lock stock and two smoking barrels are labeled 15 and would appeal to our target audience. Our film would also probably be given a 15 certificate by BBFC because it does contain violence and crime.http://www.bbfc.co.uk/

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

We addressed and attracted our audience by doing a questionnaire asking them on their favourite type of film genre and what it is about a film makes them want to watch it.
We feel that our film would attract the male age group of people around 15-25 because it is an action/thriller that contains violence and crime, we thought this was the kind of film that people of that age and sex would want to see at this time.
We also made the film a 15 because people of younger ages could be disturbed by images such as when the hostage dies in the boot or other violent scenes.

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

We first got used to the cameras after doing our preliminary task on the short journey, it was helpful for when we started our main task.The camera we used was a simple small camera, a weakness of using this is that you couldn't use it without a tripod because it would be unsteady, for example, we used the camera in the back of the car but it was difficult to hold it steady, we overcame this problem by wedging it between the headrest and the seat. A good thing about having a small camera was that we were able to use it in the front seat because we had the room. We also faced problems with white balancing the camera, we had to white balance about 3 or 4 times before we got it right when we were in the car, and in the kitchen scene part of the room was natural lighting which made it difficult to pan across to, we had to edit it out to correct it. iMovies was very helpful whilst editing our film and we found it easy to add transitions, titles and music using it.

We also used iTunes for our music, to preview it and sample different types of music.






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

We used this blog to plan out how we would film our project, we used the blog to create a list of camera shots, the script, character profiles etc.
Since the preliminary i feel far more confident doing tasks such as filming and editing, i feel like i would be comfortable doing this task again, i think it was helpful working in a group too, if you were ever unsure on something someone could help, and it was easier learning as a group through experience e.g. going out and using the camera or just having a go at editing and learning that way.
It was good that we had already created a shot list, it helped the process of filming run very smooth, we knew what we had to do and when whereas in the preliminary task it was improvised.

Here is a link to some audience feedback for our film:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2RkLM3l8dw

Evaluation Questions - Callum Lyman

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

The genre of the film that we have made is action thriller and have stuck to this convention throughout. For example, the two crooks in the film hold a female victim hostage. this cliche is used in most action thriller films, where the woman is seen as a vulnerable target, usually aimed at a male audience. events like this are often seen in films like 'The Transporter'.

Our film is based around the same conventions as 'The transporter', and 'Pulp Fiction', as all the members of our group agreed with the idea of two male leads who are unusually comfortable with the idea of kidnap and holding the victim hostage.

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

Our two main male leads are stereotyped as dominant, casual crooks that take a female victim hostage. This event is seen in many action thriller genre films, and is usually aimed at a male audience as we feel it would appeal more to the male audience. Our two hired criminals are in their 20's which could of opened the possibility of a humor aspect for us to have a go at, as they would of been inexperienced and unorthodox.

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

We have decided to use Warner Brothers as our distributor, as shown in another post. Although our film is set in Britain, using only a small budget as no exotic locations or special effects are used, our film could be an independent film. Many opportunity for product placement crop up in our film as have a big role throughout, including high speed chases for example. Clothing is another example of product placement, where as the crooks would be wearing more casual clothing, the richer side of the cast would be wearing tailored suites for example, both having great impact on advertising these types of clothing. If a major distributor were to choose our film, this would bring the opportunity to merchandise on slogan t-shirts, and other clothing used throughout our film.

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

The target audience for our film would preferably be 15-25 year old males, this is because the genre of our film is a high octane action thriller, and other films of the similar genre are usually pigeon holed into one audience because of the references and influences throughout. With the help of our genre related research, it is even more evident that this genre is associated with males rather than females. The BBFC Classification for our film has to be a 15, as strong language, sexual references, drug use and violence are screened throughout, as described in a previous post.

http://www.bbfc.co.uk/

5. How do you attract/address your audience?

Our research shows that this genre of film appeals a lot more to the male audience, as it includes activities that are seen as more masculine than others, violence and drug use for example. All of the activities, including sexual references, drug use etc. are inappropriate for anyone under the age of 15, as deemed by the BBFC. As males seem to be the audience more in favour for this genre, we have used a dominant male cast for the lead roles in the film, while the women have a more submissive and antagonist role throughout. These factors involve the audience more.

This shot of the two crooks upon the opening sequence is shot from behind, this personal view from the rear of the car involves the audience more and makes them feel more included in this shot.

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

Well at the start of the course, we had to become familiar with the cameras, and how they function, and to do this we filmed a 'short journey' as a preliminary task. We used a small camera and the only flaw with that was how unsteady it became without a tripod to hold it in place, we had to shoot the scene in the back of the car a few times, as we were without a tripod and the shot became distort due to how unsteady it was. However, an advantage of using the small camera was how we could film the side on shots in the front of the car, had the camera been bigger, we would have insufficient space to perform such a task. iMovie played a major role when it came to editing our final product, we found it easy to add smooth transitions and titles throughout. The other software we used was iTunes, this was to sample our desired music before we finally places it into iMovie.

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

Since the completion of the preliminary task, I personally have become more comfortable when it comes to the likes of filming and even editing. I think that the fact that we worked in, and as a group, helped a lot, if there was a certain task that I was uncertain about, i could always confer with one of my other group members. The fact that a shot list was already created by a member of our grouped helped move along the process of filming with more haste, and we had a good amount of time then to edit and pay attention to more detail, whereas in the preliminary task, all of the shots, scripts and events were all improvised and look rather amateur and messy when in comparison with our final piece.

Here is a link to some audience feedback:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2RkLM3l8dw

Evaluation - John Selby

1. In what way does your product use, develop or challenge forms or conventions of media products?

Our film genre is action-thriller and we have been relatively safe with sticking to the generic conventions of this genre. For example we have a scene where there is a female victim as a hostage and two males in control holding her hostage. This is a convention used in many action-thrillers as the male is often portrayed as being more dominant than the female as this genre is often aimed at a male audience. The whole kidnapping in general is often seen in films of the same genre such as "The Transporter".

We don't challenge any conventions of a typical action-thriller but we do develop them as our male lead characters are portrayed as being very casual and comfortable with the whole situation of crime and kidnapping which is similarly done in the cult classic "Pulp Fiction" with the characters Vincent and Jules. I feel that our film was directly influenced by "The Transporter" and "Pulp Fiction" as our entire group liked the idea of the two male leads being unusually comfortable with the criminal activity taking place. Our title sequence is pretty similar to the title sequence of "The Transporter" as it starts with the lead characters preparing for a job in a calm and peaceful environment with the titles appearing. Although with "The Transporter" the action immediately starts after the calm opening whereas we chose to provide the problem that the rest of the film is based on instead of an immediate action sequence.

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

We have stereotyped our characters by having our two male leads as being dominant and in control and our female character is a hostage which portrays that the men have the power and are in control while the woman is in danger and in need of help which can be seen in many action-thrillers as the audience is mainly male orientated and we feel it would appeal more to our male audience if this was the case. Our two hired criminals are rather young, early 20's, which connotes a lack of experience and skill as criminals which would have added a humour aspect to the film which later could have been experimented.

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
Our film could be produced by a major Hollywood Studio as many similar films have had success worldwide such as "Transporter" "Snatch" and "Lock Stock...". We have outlined Warner Brothers as our distributor in another post. Although with our film being set in Britain with little budget needed as few special effects are used and no exotic locations, our film could be an independent film. There are many of opportunity for product placement within our film as cars play a major role in the film with high speed pursuits etc. Clothing would also bring product placement as the richest of the characters would be wearing designer clothes and some of the more hands on criminals such as our two male leads will be wearing more casual high street clothes that all could be advertised within our film. If a major Hollywood Studio were to distribute our film there is also merchandising opportunities for Tee-shirts and clothing based around the characters and quotes.


4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
The target audience for our film would be males of 15-25 years. This is due to the fact that our film is a British, gritty action-thriller which is largely orientated on criminal activity. Our data from our genre research suggests that this genre is more popular with males. This is a similar case with films such as "Lock Stock And Two Smoking Barrels" and "Snatch" as our film is very similar to these with a Guy Ritchie style. The BBFC classification for our film would be a "15" as our films does contain drug use, strong language, sexual activity etc, as outlined in a previous post on the BBFC.
www.bbfc.co.uk

5. How do you attract/address your audience?
Our film is aged at 15-25 year old males as our research suggested this was appropriate. Our film is orientated around criminal activity and research has shown that this appeals more to males than females as criminal activity is seen as masculine. It has a 15 certificate because the viewer would be witnessing criminal activity, strong language, sexual references, drug misuse etc. All of which is deemed inappropriate by the BBFC for people under the age of 15. As our film is aimed at males, a male dominant cast is used with male protagonists and the females have more stereotypically passive roles throughout the film. Also there is many scenes containing patriarchal gangs that are largely male populated which gives the male audience an inside view of this life and helps involve them more as an audience.


Here is a two shot from inside the car in our opening sequence. This shot helps the viewer to become more personal with the protagonists as it's shot from the backseat almost as if the viewer was sat there themselves.

6. What have you learnt about technology from the process of constructing the product?
We had to learn how to use all the equipment we were to use when filming our title sequence. We learnt all the basics from our preliminary exercise of filming the short journey. When it came to filming our title sequence we knew we had to film from inside a car so we had to use the smaller cameras which brought detriments to our picture quality but we were able to get all the shots we needed. With the small camera we used a tripod for most shots but found it impossible to keep still when filming inside the moving vehicle. We overcome this issue by clamping the camera and tripod in place when filming inside the vehicle. We also found the white balance hard to achieve when inside the car and a white balance had to be taken several times before we got it right. Another problem with white balance was inside the kitchen of the house as one half of the room was natural lighting whilst the other half was not and as we panned across the room to the natural lighting the colours weren't correct. This shot had to be editing out due to this issue. The main problem we faced was trying to get the right camera shots from inside the car as we had very little room. This was also the case when trying to achieve a two shot from inside the boot whilst the door opened, the back seats had to be lowered to achieve this shot.

We used a lot of unfamiliar software such as imovie to edit and finish our final product. None of our group had previously used imovie before so we had to first learn the basic controls of the program. We then used imovie to edit our film into a final finished piece. We cut many shots as well as cropping shots to get the desired amount of length to our film. imovie also helped greatly in effects for our film such as titles and transitions as we have used fades on the picture and sound to produce desired effects on certain parts of our film as we found often the music was too loud to hear the speech so it had to be toned down.

We used itunes to preview all our songs which were originally collected from a CD provided by the media department of un-copyrighted music tracks and sounds.

7. Looking back at the preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
We used this blog to thoroughly research our chosen genre and plan our entire film. We made shooting scripts and speech scripts, a story board, a list of props and costumes and character profiles prior to filming to make sure the filming process went as smoothly as possible. We pretty much followed the shooting script precisely although we change the final shots of the opening sequence as new ideas came up whilst filming which we tried and later chose to use instead of the original idea. The speech script and the character profiles helped us to create the characters before filming began and we stuck to the characters throughout filming because of the profiles and script helped us recap exactly who and what the characters were like. We have learnt much more about camera shots from the filming process and we have used to newly acquire knowledge such as match-on-action shots in our film with the boot opening. We were able to use the shots and experiment with shots as our confidence grew with the equipment after the preliminary tasks which got us fully prepared for the opening title sequence of our film.
I feel our title sequence is very effective and serves it purpose well. It contains all the appropriate titles needed, it's also a good introduction to the characters and it lays out a problem which the rest of the film can be built upon.


Here is a link to some audience feedback on our title sequence:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2RkLM3l8dw

Similar Film Reviews

Here are a few reviews of films with the same genre as ours to show responses to films similar to the one we are to make.

Pulp Fiction

Film.com - John Hartl - "Quentin Tarantino's latest movie puts an epic spin on a favorite genre, taking it to time-tripping levels rarely tested by its forerunners"

Chicago Sun-Times - Roger Ebert - "Like 'Citizen Kane,' Pulp Fiction is constructed in such a nonlinear way that you could see it a dozen times and not be able to remember what comes next"

http://www.metacritic.com/video/titles/pulpfiction?q=pulp%20fiction#critics

Transporter

LA Weekly - John Patterson - "Immensely exciting and funny"

Philadelphia Inquirer - Steven Rea - "A thoroughly satisfying mix of mayhem and mindless fun"

http://www.metacritic.com/video/titles/transporter?q=transporter#critics

Filming Schedule

Day 2:

We completed filming of the conversation in the car whilst driving.
We use several camera shots while filming the conversation.
We stuck to the shooting script throughout or filming session and all the shots seemed to work well.
The next filming session we hope to film the final scene where OJ and Slink discover their hostage is dead and finish up filming so we are then ready for editing in our final two weeks.

Filming Schedule

Day 1:

We successfully filmed the establishing shot.

Completed all of the interior scenes in the kitchen and dining room.

Made a start on the exterior scenes in the car.

After editing up to now, we have 30 seconds complete of the opening scene. This include the establishing shots, the small exchange of dialogue in the kitchen and several fast paced camera shots when entering the car.

The car journey, the dialogue in the car and the discovering of Mairead's death in the boot of the car still remain to be shot.

Reason for Film Distributor choice

We decided that our film would be distributed by Warner Brothers. We decided this because Warner Brothers is a well known conglomerate company and widely known as a prestigious label. Warner Brothers have distributed hundreds of films such as the Harry Potter series's and many more.

Story Board

Collection of photo's to make up the story board for our film.

Questionnaire Results

Risk Assesment

Characters Profiles - Slink

"Slink" - Mid 20's Caucasian male. He dropped out of education at 16 to pursue what he called the "easy life". By the age of 25 he had a long criminal history of car theft, burglary and assault but soon got involved in much more serious jobs resulting in much more serious crimes. Kidnapping, GBH, attempted murder, no job is too big for Slink.

By John Selby & Jake Bretton

Characters Profiles - OJ

"OJ" - Early 20's Caucasian male. Youth kick boxing sensation, banned from the sporting world due to failing a drugs test. The underground gang scene soon realised they could benefit from his talents and consequently he wasn't unemployed for long.

By John Selby & Jake Bretton

Characters Profiles - Mairead

Mairead - Mid 20's Caucasian female. Only daughter to multi-millionaire business tycoon Patrick O'Shea. Up until recently Mairead has been living off of "Daddy's Yacht" but she has just begun to find her own two feet and has recently married Nigel West, a business associate of Patrick O'Shea.

By John Selby & Jake Bretton