Evaluation Question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our film opening has two specific social groups, professionals and teens.

Teens

We were able to represent the main character as a teenager mainly by the way she dresses. Her costume was typical of a teenager, with her jeans (which are an icon of youth) and brightly colored head band. This shows that the character likes a little bit of attention (due to the head band) however is a little bit of a follower in fashion with the cut of the jean. They were skinny and a quite modern color. 

The girls body language also shows how she is a 'teen'. This is because she is quite closed with her hand in her pocket. As well as the hand being in the pocket, the way she walked is rather stereotypical of a teenager. This was because she was walking with a slump in her back and quite sluggishly.
The makeup of the girl is extremely stereotypical of the teen look. This is because of the amount she is wearing and the type of make up there is. There is a little foundation and concealer as her face is clear, however there is the odd blemish. There is obviously some cheek bone definition with the blusher highlighting this. As well as the girls skin having make up, her eyes are highlighted with eyeliner and also her lips with a small amount of lipstick. This is extremely stereotypical of the social group of teenagers and the typical girl next door look.
Finally the use of headphones also shows that she is a teenager. This is because it is very typical of teenagers to be listening to music wherever they are going. 

Professionals 

We showed the stereotype of a business/ professional woman with her costume. The costume we chose was a pencil black dress with a white blazer. This shows that she is very professional and looks like a typical businesswoman you would have seen in the city. The colour was very important of the dress, this is because we wanted it to gave an impression of the woman. The colour was meant to show how dark and mysterious the character is and the white was meant to be a contrast and a slight hint of irony in the mise en scene. 

Evaluation Question 3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

What do distributors do?

Distributors are companies that help you show and sell your film. there are two different types of distributors. there are conglomerates and independent distributors. Conglomerates have a global and tent-pole target audience, whilst independent distributors have a small localized target audience. This is mainly because of the differentiating budget these two distributors have. A conglomerate will have millions of pounds that it can spend on making and being able to get the film to every edge of the planet. Where as an independent distributor will only have a few thousand to distribute the film. An independent distributor will most likely distribute my film. This is because my film is a low budget film and a conglomerate would not want to sell or show this film due to it not making as much money as they need it to make in order for them to get a good enough profit from it. 

BFI - British Film Institute

As the biggest distributor of cultural cinema BFI supplies films to over 600 venues right across the UK. The BFI also works through key partnerships. As the lottery distributor for film, the BFI provides funding for film development, production and distribution. 

The Film Fund is the production and development heart of the BFI. Who support filmmakers in the UK who are emerging and capable of creating distinctive and entertaining work.

The Distribution and Exhibition department works to widen the choice of films available to cinema audiences across the UK in 3 key ways:

Raising awareness: our Prints and Advertising Fund provides £4 million every year to help British distributors promote non-mainstream films.

Improving access: our Digital Screen Network is made up of 240 digital screens across the UK that now show non-mainstream films regularly.

Increasing information: our website Find Any Film is one of the UK's leading websites for film fans looking to watch, buy, download or rent great films.

With these three points in mind and a well known status BFI would be an ideal distributor for our film. 

Entertainment Film Distributors

Entertainment is the UK’s leading independent distributor. The company was founded in 1978 and has showed continuing growth and success since that time distributing a wide range of product and building a significant film library. Highlights for the company have been the release of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Run Fat Boy Run and Hugo.

Entertainment Film Distributors operates both in the UK and the Republic of Ireland and distributes in theatrical, DVD rental and retail fields as well as licensing a substantial catalog in both Pay-TV and Free-TV sectors.

Entertainment films offer innovative and flexible distribution deals that are results orientated and film maker friendly. this distributor would fit in well with our film as it would use its efforts to increase its popularity.

IndiePix

IndiePix was founded in 2004 to bring film fans the very best of independent cinema. Today, IndiePix is  home to the broadest online selection of indie films from around the world, including the latest award-winning titles from the festival circuit, popular indie classics, foreign, documentaries and more. IndiePix also offers a service in which customers and audiences can buy a DVD online or get your film on demand by either streaming or downloading a high quality film, without the wait.

Indiepix is also committed to the spirit of indie film and provide filmmakers the opportunity to distribute their projects while maintaining the rights to their work furthermore they work closely with filmmakers to individualize packaging and marketing plans, and offer the most generous revenue share in the industry. 

Evaluation Question 4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

Who would be the audience for your media product?

This is Jenny Bailey. She is 17 years old and lives in the suburbs of London.
She dresses fairly straight forward as she wears jeans and a t-shirt. She enjoys playing socialising with hers friends, some of this is done through social media, her mobile phone and social meetings.
They types of films that she enjoys include the A- team, Italian Job (2003), the oceans trilogy and also fast and furious. She enjoys watching these films in the cinema when first released with her friends but often watches them online on sites like Netflix or buying them latter on for DVD.
Some of the Television programs that she may watch could include, CSI, NCIS, BBC TV series Hustle, Live at the Apollo, Rustle Howards good news, however will also occasionally watch soaps. The main channels that she will watch these programs and others that are similar to this may include BBC 2, BBC 3, FXUK, Channel 5 and Horror Central.
The type of music that this girl would listen to would be chart hits, as well as a little bit of rock.
I believe that our film would appeal to this person this is because he is a stereotypical "gal" who enjoys typical female things, therefore if our film was to be shown in her local cinema or even distributed online this may appeal to him. Our film may also appeal to her as it is similar to other films that he likes for example The Woman in Black.

BBFC Rating

We decided to give our media product (film) a 15+ classification rating, as we felt that the contents didn't contain any violence or scenes of a sexual natural, and therefore suitable for a slightly younger audience instead of 18 and above.Our film contains more psychological events, than gore and slasher, with it building the tension throughout till the end climax.We wanted it to be structured in this way, after looking at many different examples of films with the same genre, such as Paranormal Activity and Mama, because we felt like this way was the most effective in engaging our audience.

As mentioned before, by making our classification 15 and above, helps us relate more to our audience, with us being the same age as our targeted consumers, we believe that we can add and give all the desires they expect, as we know what our generation appeal to.

Evaluation Question 5: How did you attract/ address your audience?

Target Audience

The target audience for this film opening is young adults and teenagers. We have appealed this to our target audience through the location, location and filters we have used within this film opening. The location we used would have appealed to the target audience, because it was set in a place where most teenagers and young people have been. Most teenagers have either been on a walk or walked their dog through a field. As well as the field, the indoors scene is also one of which the target audience as the house is a typical one that they would live in. Therefore we though that it would have been appealing. As well as the location, the costumes we wanted to be appealing to the target audience. therefore the girl and main character was wearing clothes we thought were typical and stereotypical of both the genre and the target audience. The plot of this film beginning was a little stereotypical of the target audience because some teenagers have the extreme view that some adults are out there to get you and have gone mentally mad.

How could I have done this better?

We used many long camera shots and this would not have kept the target audiences. Therefore we should have taken a more varied amount of shots. As well as this being more appealing to the target audience, it would have made our lives easier as we would have then had more of a variety of shots to pick from and would have been able to have made the best quality of film opening we could have done. As well as more shots to build up tension to the body, the interior shot could have been more varied and have been more interesting for the audience with hints as to who the person is and why they were there. For example we could have had a little shot reverse shot and a close up of the knife to give some hints.
Some more interesting shots we could have taken were ones of family pictures and the stairs to build up an understanding of the girl. So that there is a little more of a connection and emotion for her.

Evaluation question 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Throughout the process of making our opening sequence we used different types of technology to make it at a high standard, where I have learnt lots of techniques and lessons to take on board for the future to do with the technology we have used to make our opening sequence possible.

Apple Mac's/Mac Book-

We used theses Macs to make our opening on. This is because the high quality and speed of this model which was important when using certain programmes and software to make the process quicker. This model of computer helped with the speed of rendering files and importing/exporting to blog, allowing us to save time focus on the elements of our opening rather than the problems with the device it’s on. I have learnt about the machine itself but also gaining knowledge in a range of new programmes to improve the quality of my opening. I have also discovered the battery charge for the Mac books it short therefore I had to ensure I had a charger at hand when needed to save the hassle of losing work and wasting time. From the Macs I have also learnt to remember to have a card reader (USB format) to plug in as the Macs don't have a SD Card slot available. This manage to delay us a couple of time due to the fact our footage was save on the SD Card we had to work on other elements instead of editing our opening a couple of sessions. One other element I've learnt is to ensure I saved my footage on the Desktop before opening it up on an editing software such as Final Cut Pro as it doesn't locate the files if the footage is straight off the memory card. Overall I feel this model has helped with making our opening professional and at a high standard.

Programmes/Software-

Final Cut Pro

This was one of the main editing programmes we used to edit our opening on. I felt it was a quick and easy programme to work and had an easy layout to follow. I feel I'm more confident with the process of cutting shots and deleting footage we didn't need, making our opening flow more to shot to shot. The rendering process took a long time as we had a lot of files and footage to change. I've learnt next time to ensure to convert it into Apple Intermediate Codec format so it doesn't need rendering. This will save time where I can spend it on more editing to improve my work further.

LiveType

We used this programme to titles for our opening film. I felt it was an effective and easy way to produce good quality titles. I learnt that once the title was made the title will automatically connect to the final cut pro programme, making it quick to edit in and less time to look for the file, import and rendering. This programme allowed us to edit titles with realistic font and sizing to match the conventions of our opening film. I manage to learn how to add special effects on the titles to match the conventions and make our opening look more realistic. We used a fade in/out effect which showed a ghost present to the audience. Learning this technique of added effects will help me in the future when making a movie as it flows more easily with effects.

Websites

YouTube

My group used YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/, frequently throughout our project, to upload any new footage or feedback we had produced. We found it easy and efficient to use, and as By the end of the editing stage I was confidant at using this site, being able to add annotations and titles onto the videos/footage independently.

Blogger

My group used Blogger, https://www.blogger.com, throughout our project to record and document all stages of our film opening. It also helped us to become more organised and aware of the deadline dates. Blogger was a key piece of technology used in our project. I was taught how to operate and navigate myself around the site at the beginning of the project. I later learnt how to change the template and layout of my blog, making it appear more professional and easy to use. I also learnt how to embed videos and photos into my posts into the HTML tab, which was a very useful skill to learn, as almost every post contained a video or image. By having these skills it made it very easy and quick to create posts at a detailed/high standard.

Tripod

Standing tripod

I was aware of how to use this equipment from taking photography so I took very little time connecting the camera and ensuring it was stable which allowed us to spend more time on the production and ensuring the camera was safely on the tripod to risk breakages. I feel I was very confident at knowing what to do in this area.

SD Card and Card Reader

I realised that I needed to be more organised with bringing in the memory sticks due to the fact our footage was saved on the Cards so it delayed our progress for editing when we didn't have them for a certain lesson. We had a problem with one of our hard drives; unfortunately the device broke where we saved our footage. Eventually we managed to backup the files and get the footage back we needed however we were lucky. We have definitely learnt a lesson to backup our files onto other devices to ensure we have saved copies in case we lost work. This saves time doing the work again and having to re-film. We found the rendering process took a long time due to the amount of footage we had on our opening, also putting the Card in to the Macs and opening our film on Final Cut Pro was a challenge at times due to the reconnecting process. We have learnt for the future to save the footage on the desktop in the Mac so the program can locate and connect the footage when the Card is removed. 

Conclusion

Overall, I felt I have learnt a lot from the different technology that helped make our Opening film possible. I feel I will learn from my mistakes for the future to save more time on other key elements but I know I have also created a successful final film as I used all the above technology to improve our opening further. I have picked up some key and useful skills to help me in life such as: Card readers, new programs I've discovered and working on new unfamiliar computers. Comparing digital, modern technology to analogue puts the element in a whole new perspective, as digital technology is a lot more advantaged and gives the ability for producers to create for possibilities in film making. From using the above technology to help produce an opening film I can now see why film companies rely on digital technology to keep them in the media industry and on top. From the production to the final editing of a film, technology takes a huge role in making the processes possible to come out with a final product worth distributing for audiences to consume. 

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

The preliminary task was set introduce us to the equipment and process a film maker has to go through to create a product, therefore ensuring that a quality product is created when it comes to filming the final opening scene of our film.  I feel that I've been able to build on my knowledge gained from this task that was set to get us used to the equipment and software and feel that I have made a quality final product that shows all that I have learned.

Planning and research

Barely any planning was done for the prelim task. It was mainly a task that would allow the group to get an idea of how the equipment works and how to get the best possible quality footage for the film in which we have created, therefore I feel that I have learned a tremendous amount about planning and research into making a film. This includes everything from research of similar films that already exists within the genre, but also story boarding and the staging of the shots themselves, as well as the lighting and position of the camera.

Filming

Having been able to see what the camera and equipment is actually able to do this opened a wide variety of possibilities to me and the different types of shots that I could use within my film.

Quality of the image can be affected by a number of things. One of the main problems that our group faced was the lack of light that we used during the filming. This meant that the quality was not as good and therefore required us to re- film in order to get the better quality.

Editing

Editing was the skill I was least sure about after our preliminary exercise because I had not done as much of the post production editing as I’d have liked to and having never used the software before meant that I was inexperienced about this stage. However after doing a large amount of editing for our film opening I’m much more comfortable with the editing software Final Cut Express and although I’m clueless still to some of its advanced facilities, I would now be able to take production footage and create a finished media product that was edited sufficiently and with some detailed work within the edit.

More edits have also been used in the final product compared to the standard transitions that were used with the prelim task. Some of these effects include the use of slow motion, transitions, title screens and even adding sound effects and sound tracks over the top of the film. All of these effects have helped to enhance the film to make it more appealing to the audience but also help to make the film make scenes. 

Going into the future I hope to further develop any film making skills mentioned and to keep learning from my mistakes. Also, as our film opening showed, to continue to exploit new technologies within our media products in order to either enhance the film or to make film making easier.

Equipment and Camera Skills

In our preliminary task we used a flip camera and tripod. This made the footage good and still, however the quality was not that good due to the flip camera. My preliminary task was very simple in the shots that I took, for example we did some long shots to mid long shots. As well as that, there are a couple of tilts, at the beginning there is a tilt down to the feet. We were trying to get an impression of the people in the short video.

In the film opening there is a bit of difference between the camera skills that we used in it compared to our preliminary task. We did not use the tilt skill as much as in the preliminary task. We decided to have more effect with the editing then the actual camera skills. We did use a panning and tilt at one point in time. As well as that we looked at using over the shoulder shots and a variety of different shots that could be used in the editing process.

Sound

In the preliminary task we decided to not use and sound, however use dialogue. This was not as good as we thought it would turn out to be. Therefore we decided in the beginning of our film we would use sound and not dialogue. We chose sounds that built up suspension and made the viewer feel really uncomfortable.

Titles

The preliminary task had no titles in it at all. After looking at different beginnings of films, we thought that it would be a really good idea to put in titles to tell the user who  was in the film and who helped to make it. 

The film - Pretichor

Within this film I completed all of the editing, titles, effects and assisted with the sound.