Evaluation - Q1

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

In our study of film openings, we were able to research different openings of films to get an understanding of how we can put together our work.

When we were researching a range of films openings, it was clear to me that they all had opening title sequences. The main information that the audience could see were, the name of the title, director, producer, main stars, production company and distribution company. An example of this would be the musical "Grease" which includes all of the jobs which are stated above.



For the introduction of mise-en-scene, I wanted to make clear of the where? when? who? elements so the audience can make clear of the narrative. The where element was in a school, we conveyed this by having the main character being bullied and locations of corridors which relate to a school. The when element is shown through two people. The film revealed that Jess (the leading role) was thirteen through voice over and then showed her at the end being a different person as she was older. This gives you a brief idea of when this was set; which I hope is in the present because I wanted the film to be current. The who element is reasonably easy because our opening film is emphasised on just the one person. This is done by the camera always focusing on her and the audience start to grasp an understanding of who she is through the voice over.

When researching different films, there was one film which I particularly thought showed clear mise-en-scene. It's set in America which we establish through dialogue, in a high class suburb which you understand due to the houses. There is a close-up of a poster showing a Halloween party which covers the when element and for the who, you are introduced to a strange character (because we first meet him sat in the road next to a sharp corner), which we follow through the beginning of the film so you know he is the main character. His name also being the title of the film contributes to this; "Donnie Darko".



In "Cold Mountain" which was one of the films we researched, we were introduced to two main characters with one not being visable. The film started with a woman on a voice over so you then know that she has an important role. We are then lead to a man in the world war (as he is in a trench) , who is looking at a photo of a woman and without no one actually saying the evident, you know that the woman and man are in a relationship.



We only have one character that is the focus, therefore the audience understand the identification of her having special powers which they can follow through the development of the narrative. The early awareness of the antagonists are distinguished which allows the audience quick views of realising who the good and bad people are.

This provides us with early relationships in "Rejected" (our opening film) and "Cold Mountain" from what I have said above. It is important to identify the relationships between different characters at the beginning of films because you can follow with less confusion. This may apply more towards higher classification films because they have a more profound meaning and cause more confusion. However, with this you could argue that once you are getting older, you should realise and understand the meaning and story lines of the film.

In "Six Feet Under", the music is a brilliant example of creating mood for the audience. Through the music, the audience can expect "Six Feet Under" to be mysterious as the music is slow and has a strong beat to keep you alert and interested. The music has to contribute to the whole film along with the text on screeen that you see at the beginning. With the moving images of death and the hands parting at the very beginning conveying the thought of death once more, the music has to relate to this which is successfully achieved in "Six Feet Under".




In "rejected" our music has a relaxed element and also mysterious indication for the audience to hear. The audience are following Jess to a cluimax where we find out why she is bullied and acting isolated. Because the audience wouldn't find out until the end, it was a mysterious mood we wanted. Therefore, I think the music should have a less relaxed element to allow the audience to only keep this feeling of what is going to happen.

Music Issues

At the beginning of our video, we had different shots outside which implemented the different sounds that was on the shots one after another. We turned the audio down at different times, when, for instance, a car would drive by creating a lot of noise. This made a huge difference as it made the music smooth together and flow nicely onto the next frame.

We added the background music on at the end because we needed to know the timing of the video before putting the music on. The music at the beginning didn't match with the feeling of the film, with the feeling being as a mystery and the music slightly too jolly. George put the music together on a software he has at home called "Apple Garageband". After the mutual feeling of the music being too jolly, we decided it would be a wise idea for George to change the beginning in an attempt to match the mood and feeling; mystery. We both thought that this was succeeded when we had completed our peice.

Heres an illustration of what Garageband looks like:

Reliability

Having casted our leading role, we found out in a short period of time that she wasn't the best for realiability which was slightly hard to believe as I cast her due to the fact she does Theatre Studies at A-Level and therefore assumed she would be experienced and be more passionate in performing the role when she said she would happily play the part. With time becoming of the essence, I decided to take her part leaving us to quickly film the 10 seconds of footage which was with her. It worked out a lot more sufficient for us as my role was the director so I had ideas of what I thought would look good, which I could bring to the film.

Weather Conditions

 Due to the weather, we have been unable to film because the conditions are too cold for the camera as condensation forms inheriting it to break. Temperatures reached up to -16c around our region and having two feet of snow in the locations we wanted to film in.

This is an image showing the depth of the snow, which makes it clear of the difficulty we encountered.

The snow came up to two feet around the school and so not only with the school being shut, making it harder to contact George, my working partner on the film and the actual filming itself! It took along time for the snow to start to clear. This meant that once back at school, we would be filming with snow when having filmed before, there was no snow and so continuity was important else it would be clear that we filmed on seperate days and wouldn't convey any realism. The filming that we had done was at the beginning of the opening and it was about 20 seconds footage which I knew we could film again having decided that the snow wouldn't go for at least a few weeks due to the snow fall and low temperatures. Because of this, we were able to film all our outside shots in the snow.

Typical Target Audience Member

 
 

For our film "Rejected", the type of target audience that would appeal to the genre of the film would be a boy or girl. The age range would be any ages as it targets a family film as our classifaction is a PG. The image I have uploaded is a typical audience member, his age is 16 and the genre of films he enjoys to watch are mainly action and comedy. His favourite films are, "Saving Private Ryan" and "Kick ass", starring Aaron Johnson who is one of his favourite actors. Hobbies that he enjoys doing at the weekends are skiing at a local centre and football, drama and rugby. He also likes playing on his x-box and watching television programmes including, mock the week and top gear.

Target Audience Questionnaire Evaluation

Target Audience Questionnaire Evaluation 

How important do you think the special effects are?

72% of people we asked thought the special effects were important.

How important to you do you think music is in creating the mood?

86% of people thought music was very important to creating the mood.

How important do you think titles are for a opening sequence?

61% of people that we asked think that the titles of an opening sequence are important.

Having seen the statistics, it is important that we have music as our audience have stated it to be the key importance out of all three. 

Target Audience Questionnaire

Target Audience Questionnaire 

Tick

                                                                         M          F

Your Gender

                                                                      11-13   14-16   17-21

Your Age 

Circle

Favourite Genre of film                            Action Comedy  Thriller                                                                                                                                                               

                                           

                                                                       Rom-Com Horror  Something Else

Scale. 1- Priority to 10- Last thing to think about.

How important do you think are special effects?

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How important to you think music is, in creating the mood?

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How important do you think the titles are?

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