Evaluation - Q1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Using Camtasia in order to commentate over the conventions that we explored in order to use them in our film opening.

Evaluation - Q2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Representation refers to the construction in any medium (especially the mass media) of aspects of ‘reality’ such as people, places, objects, events, cultural identities and other abstract concepts. Such representations may be in speech or writing as well as still or moving pictures. 

When looking at the characters in our film opening 'On Road' we had to make it appeal to the correct target audience by ensuring the characters acted familiar to the teenagers in today's society. Teenagers in today's society are stereotyped as being on the streets, causing trouble and getting up to no good. We took this into consideration and tried to make our characters to act similar to these suggested stereotypes so they can understand and connect more with the protagonist. Our main characters are portrayed differently:

1. Darnell Williams - Darnell is the main character as the story is told from his point of view. He is a ambitious boy who's chasing his dream and does this even with all the things holding him back. Because he lives on a gritty estate that automatically stereotypes him to one of those gang affiliated boys, also because of this appearance and how he dresses. 

2. Skirmz - Skirmz now is stereotyped because of the way he is dressed and his appearance. He is mainly seen on the estate with give him the look that he is gang affiliated. This is also due to the different sort of acts he gets up to on the estate. 

When looking at whether we represented the characters in a negative or positive way, we had to think about how we wanted the characters to be seen. For example, Skirmz was seen in a negative way because of what he is known for and for his acts in trying to stop Darnell to accomplish his dream. Whereas, Darnell is seen in a positive way, because of his drive for success.

Evaluation - Q3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Our film production company is called 'Lights Out' and our distribution company is called 'Sound Check Films'

We chose these companies because they are both small independent companies, which will not require a large budget to produce our film, we also chose these films because our film is a British Independent film, so our film opening will not require such a large distribution and production company to get our film out there. We looked to imitate a company like 'Revolver' who produced films like 'Ill Manors', 'Anuvahood' and so forth all these films are small independent films, which particularly don't need a large budget to produce.

These companies appeal to the younger audience and this is in correlation with the target audience of our film opening. 

Evaluation - Q4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

The wider audience for teen movies in general depends mostly on the genre of the film.

for example: a horror film may appeal to teens, because it stereotypes young teenagers in horror films as being naive and curious, and they are the ones that always end up being the victims, presenting them as vulnerable. Horror films appeal both to the male and female target audience from the ages of 15-18, however we can also argue that horror films are targeted towards those who are older than 18.

A Romantic Film  may appeal to young teenagers mostly females who are aged 15-18 also, this is because it is more sensible to come to a conclusion that females are more seen to be enticed and drawn into the relationship convention and can relate to the story about this journey of love.

A Sports Film  may appeal mostly to the male target audience, however this genre of film appeals to a target audience with a wide age range, so from the ages of 15-25, this is because in sports films it is mainly about never giving up, and being persistent, it can be argued that sports films can also appeal to the female target audience as much as the male target audience.

The Target Audience For Our Film Opening

Evaluation - Q5. How did you attract/address your audience?

Mise-en-scene & Location:
The Mise-en-scene was important when thinking about how to attract out target audience.
We decided to use Mile End, which looked very urban and also ghetto because of the many buildings, the people around and also the sounds and atmosphere.
The protagonist wore vintage clothing so it was all black, black jacket, black t-shirt and black shoes.
The location and costume appealed to the audience because when the audience watch the film opening they get a sense of a gritty East London environment.

Actors:
The protagonist is a 16 year old male aspiring to be something in this case a rapper, because he is a young boy escaping the troubles of his area to become something big, our target audience can connect to the protagonist and relate to the storyline. although the protagonist is a male many females can also be attracted to the film opening because it is mainly about getting somewhere and aspiring to become something.

Storyline:
The storyline attracts the audience because it allows them to go on this journey with the young protagonist who dreams to become something, by escaping the troubles of the road life, troubles of pursuing higher education and even a job, the audience can relate to the troubles of the the protagonist and again go on this journey with him.

Genre:
The Genre being 'Coming Of Age' appeals to the audience once again because it means the audience follow the journey, many of our target audience think about getting somewhere and not giving up, which is why 'Coming Of Age' is a good genre that our target audience can connect with.

Sound/Score:
The music is Hip Hop/Rap, we selected this genre of music because many teenagers listen to this music nowadays, and ironically our protagonist aspires to be a rapper,so recorded music from our very own studio helped with to dig deeper with the thoughts of the protagonist getting somewhere because it is the protagonist's music himself which he wants people to recognise.

Film name:
 We changed our film name from 'The Come Up' to 'On Road' because on road really highlights the stereotypes of young teenagers being on the street, in our film opening 'On Road' refers to being on the road to success and chasing that dream and never giving up, again a number of teenagers aspire to be somewhere, and the name 'On Road' can appeal to any sort of dream that a teenager wishes to pursue.

Rough Cut Feedback:
The rough cut feedback helped us to improve our film opening because our teacher old us that were too many shots of the protagonist in the studio which made it look more like a music video than a film, so by using many shots around the studio we managed to make it look like a film opening because the audience already established and connected to the protagonist and can understand what he is going through.

The Protagonist in the vintage all black clothing.

The Wide Shot of the gritty urban area.

The Film Title.

Evaluation - Q6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Evaluation - Q7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

When thinking about pre-production and production itself , we can see that not much planning and storyboarding has gone into the prelim task which meant that we didn't produce something of top quality,
however when we look at the film opening and the storyboarding, because, we set the scene, put our ideas down on paper, this helped to produce something of top quality.

Teamwork
Teamwork was very important in the coming up of our film opening, because we merged all of our ideas together and came up with something that the whole group was proud to say 'yeah I helped in the making of this film opening'

What I have learned
The utmost thing I learned about editing the project was that, not a lot of shots were needed in creating our film opening, I say this because we had filmed many shots, thinking that we would of had to use them to make the film opening as good as possible, however because we varied the shots, and made them work together I believe the audience enjoyed the film opening during the viewing in the cinema. I have also learned how to use software like Camtasia, Final Cut Pro, Prezi, to really bring ideas to life when it comes to pointing out the key points in our film opening and the work that was put in.

Using Motion 4

This tutorial helped us and gave us ideas on how we could create our own IDENTS


The 'Library' tab is where i found the best motions to use to make our IDENTS look catchy.


The 'Inspector' tab allowed me to change the colour of our IDENT, the speed etc.

The Change in our film name

We agreed to change our film name to "On Road" I believe this is a good name as it conforms to the stereotype of young teenagers being on the streets, it also works with our film because the protagonist wants to escape from the pressures of being on the streets, and he is "On" the "Road" to follow his dreams to become a rapper.

Prezi on film completion

Thinking about Mise-en-scene

The use of the studio was effective in bringing our film alive, the mise-en-scene brought our film to life.

Taking a break from filming in order to set up for the next shots

Add caption

Thinking about our film opening

there were many shots that we recorded, making sure that we utilised each and every camera angle and shot type effectively. unfortunately we did not get to use all of them but the ones we did use were just as affective.

Shazad Carefully analysing each of our shots in the studio

Film Opening Completed

43. Shazad Edwards, Stephane Bolompa, Nicole Kunaka from 283goswell on Vimeo.

Editing

continuing to edit our film opening, on final cut pro.

Evidence Of Editing: Day 3

On our 3rd day of editing, we managed to add in our opening credits as well as completing our IDENT.

Evidence of Editing: Day 2

On our 2nd day of editing, we managed to refine our rough cut and start our IDENT.

Planning Final Project: Ideas

Ideas 
These were our initial ideas when we  first started the project 

1) Storyline similar to Fish Tank: 
- Young girl aspires to be a dancer while struggling with her relationship with her single mum

2) Storyline similar to Youngerz:
- Young boy aspires to be a rapper: he is pressured by his mum to go to university while he attempts to pursue a music career

3) Focal idea of the riots:
- Follows a group of boys as they are involved in criminal activity while their families are torn apart by their behaviour

Response To Rough Cut

Changes To Be Made In Response To Rough Cut 

Jump Cuts - By layering the shots which jumped over studio scenes, we concluded that these could be match cuts, eliminating any jump cuts and becoming seamless.

Lack of foley sound - Adding sound effects when necessary, e.g. ambient sounds, such as sirens and birds when the protagonist walks out onto the estate.

Dark shots - Dark shots are generally useless, thus we decided to completely get rid of them and replace them with scenic shots. 

Resemblance to a music video - We resolved this by removing the unnecessary studio scenes which made the film opening seem more like a music video

Rough Cut Feedback

After making our rough cut, we were given feedback to assist us in completing our fine cut. 
Some of the problems raised were:
- Jump cuts
- Lack of foley sound
- Dark shots 
- Resembled a music video rather than a film opening 

IDENT

When making our IDENT, we had to consider the genre of our film opening and how we could create distribution and production company names which are relevant to our footage and would also be realistic. Taking into consideration that our film opening follows a young boy pursuing a music career, we felt that 'Soundcheck Films' would be relevant to our film. 

As we have been influenced by films such as Ill Manors and Shank, which were both produced by Revolver Entertainment, we concluded that we wanted our IDENT to resemble its appearance. to do this, we used Motion 4 to create a moving and audible IDENT for both our distribution and production companies.