Preliminary task evaluation
- 1. Preliminary task evaluationHollie Tuckwell
- 2. TaskContinuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. (task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180 degree-rule)
- 3. Genre - CrimeThe genre decided by our group was crime, we chose this as it was what we wanted to do for our main taskand whilst weighing up the pros and cons of other genres we found that crime had very distinct features.
- 4. In what ways does your media product use, challenge forms and conventions of real media products?Our preliminary task challenges typical forms of conventions of the genre crime as our victim is a young person when usually you associate a victim with being venerable and of a certain age. This is seen in such crime films as ‘cop land’ the victims in this film are not young girls, this supports the fact that our film challenges the forms and conventions of real media products.
- 5. How does your media product represent particular social groups?Our preliminary task represent ‘youth culture’ it represents all things associated with the youth culture for example drinking, this is particularly apparent now in the contemporary UK. It also follows the assumption that all young people are out drinking until early hours of the morning. This is presented in the time of day our film is filmed (early morning) this was done purposely to follow the stereo type of youth culture in order for it to be more believable. This screen shot shows the time of day and the association with youth culture with the help of the key light (being natural light) and the wine bottle showing the key representation of youth culture to alcohol.
- 6. What kind of media institution might describe your media product and why? The media institution which would show our media production would be one such as Itv this is because Itv is a high budgeted network and so our film would be able to be of the quality it needs to be in order to be affective. Also programmes which follow the genre of crime for example ‘the bill’ is shown on Itv so an association with good quality crime investigation programmes on Itv would lead people to think that our film is a good quality film. This fact is proven by ‘the bill’ being shown on our screens for more than 25 years.
- 7. Who would be the audience for your media product?The audience in which our media product is aimed at is young adults between the ages of 15-19. we decided to choose this target audience as it holds very distinct stereotypes for example: drinking, staying out late, disobeying orders. We tried to address as many of these in our film as possible in order for our film to relate to our audience. We done this by trying to show the wine bottle in every shot, this seemed hard to do but by converging it onto the screen we thought that there would be an automatic sense of ‘youth culture’ on the screen in which our audience can relate to.
- 8. How did you attract/address your audience?When trying to address our audience of young people between the ages of 15-19 we decided to do some research further than our own knowledge of what is associated with young people. We done this by searching on the internet and asking peers what they think is associated with young people. This is the list we came up with: we then decided to address all of these individually and decide on which would be easiest to present in our film.In the end we all decided that alcohol and mobiles both play very strong roles inyoung peoples lives so to incorporate bothinto the film would represent youth culture very well. However it has to be considered that not all young people drink alcohol and have a mobile phone, this was something we discussed but decided all young people know the affects of alcohol and could spot it and also know what a mobile phone is. AlcoholComputers/mobilesHoodiesExamsPartys
- 9. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?Whilst creating our preliminary task we used a hand held camera effect which allowed us to make the audience feel as if they where running with the character, we where also hoping this would make the audience feel more empathy towards the character. However we were aware that using a hand held camera for too long would confuse the audience and also make the film look unprofessional. so whilst taking these points into consideration we decided to use the hand held camera effect but to a minimum for when we progress the film.
- 10. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?When moving our preliminary task towards creating our final task we decided to change things to make the target audience was more clear, to make sure the story line was able to progress further, and to evaluate the shots taken during the conversation scene.When looking at how to make the target audience more clear through the representation of the character we listed thing which we could incorporate into the film as ‘hidden’ messages . In the end we decided to take away the wine bottle from every shot as this was proven too hard when we changed camera angle. Instead we will change the prop to something else which has a strong association with youth. Another factor which helped us to decide to take away the wine bottle idea was to let the acting show the audience that the character was drunk, adding to her vulnerability without actually having to tell them.When looking at how the storyline could progress further we decided to change the fact that the character was already at the victims house meant that the audience wouldn't want to carry on watching, there was a sense of although the victim has been killed its less scary as its light outside and in a house. We will take these points into consideration when progressing to our main task.When watching back listening to feedback we noticed that the conversation scenes where to quick in between shots, the cutting did not look very professional and the voices where not very clear. We will have to make sure that for our main task our editing is done effectively so to not have to many quick transitions in order to keep the film flowing.