Post 12.7: Question 7

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

I feel that i have learnt alot since we did our priliminary task.

One of the things i have developed on is my use of editing techniques. In particular experimenting with new things that i haven't tried in film before. For example the splitscreens in our opening scene was something that i had never done and were a risk to attempt, compared to my most difficult edit in the priliminary task which was probably the match on action shot, something that came to me very naturally in this piece. Here i feel that the risk paid off and me and my group were very happy at how the came out.

Another thing that i feel that we improved on since our preliminary task was that my camera framing has became alot better. For example in our preliminary task there are a few shots where there was too much head room, or too much unused space in the shot. I feel that i fixed this on a majority of the shots in ours by conforming with framing conventions such as the different sized shots with different ammounts of space.

One other thing that I felt that I had improved since my priliminary task was that i now have a better understanding of using music in a scene. I feel this way because in our preliminary we used a silly sounding fast paced banjo song called Corncob for our opening which was a slow paced light hearted film. This didn't fit in to well, even though it was entertaining, on the otherhand in our opening sequence I found that the piece of music that we chose, named Rising worked very well, even getting compliments on it in our peer group evaluation.

 

Post 12.6: Question 6

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Hardware:

Flip Camera:
When we were filming our group interviews and commentaries we chose to use this. We used it because it is small, easy to use, quick to upload and high quality.












Sony Camcorder:
This is what we used to film our whole opening sequence. It was quite an old camera and it was starting to show with it being a bit slow and also having to use tape. Luckily though it was very easy to operate and you are able to know the ins and out of the camera after about 10 to 15 minutes.








Software:

  
Blogger:
This is the website where i documented all of my work and research going into the project. I found it quite easy to use although it's not compatible on alot of computers which meant that some time was wasted trying to get the work up.

Google:
I used google for alot of my research into the film industry. For things like getting statistics for my reasearch to grabbing pictures off google images to put into my blog.

Adobe Premier Pro CS3:
This is the software that we had to edit our film with. I have used it in the past so i was already quite familiar with it, although I am used to a newer version so there was a couple of things i had to get used to. This meant that i spent alot of time helping out my group by telling them how to cut, mix and edit along with helping a few others out along the way.

Youtube:
Youtube is the website where i uploaded all of my videos. i chose youtube over other streaming websites, such as Vimeo because youtube was the one i was most use to and the one i use every day.

Post 12.5: Question 5

How did you attract/address your audience?

To address our target audience we used several tactics. The first one was that we wanted to keep the mise-en-scene exciting throughout. To accomplish this we used prop guns of all shapes and sizes. This was good because it would have appealed to the teenagers of our target audience, who play video games and become enthused at the idea of a film featuring lots of different guns. This also applies to the setting and costuming as well because they are both places and clothes that most people can identify with and see on a daily basis.

Another thing that we did so that we could attract an audience was that we created a story around a fantastic, but based in real life character that people can aspire to be. For most boys, growing up and watching James Bond made them wish that they could be just like him, with the gadgets, the fast cars and the women. We wanted to get across a similar vibe whilst at the same time giving him something to fight for with his detachment from his daughter. This also aims towards the older members of our audience who maybe have children of their own and can therefore sympathise a lot better with Carlson. 

When we came to doing our audience feedback we chose to pick 4 17 to 18 year old males (our primary demographic) and one 18 year old girl who we were interested on her reaction from the film because she wasn't the target audience. They all seemed to overall enjoy the opening, including the girl and came across as though they would put down money on a similar product.

When it comes down to choosing a target BBFC rating the optimal one would probably be 15 and over. This is because our primary demographic of 16 to 25 year olds would be more drawn to it as its not too light or heavy on adult content. However we could also aim towards a 12a rating if we wanted to open it up to a larger audience and cut down on the adult content, or on the other hand aim for an 18 rating and go full on with the adult content whilst possibly restricting the audience.

Though on the whole i feel that 15 is probably the best for Dispatch.

Post 12.4: Question 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

 What we really want is to bring together our fragmented audience so we can reach the maximum amount of people, while still staying within the conventions of a thriller. 

The harder audience we found was the female side. We reached out to them by using the love story between Carlson and the struggle to find his daughter. However the film is likely to appeal mainly to males, as it throws our audience through an adrenalin fuelled roller coaster. 

With a male dominated audience we expect our film to do well in the box office however the film may be damaged by the lack of female themes, on the other hand our film can be successful if it becomes known as a "date movie". Our film is primarily aimed at young adults aged 16 to 24, who are seen to be the main cinema going demographic.

Another audience that would be beneficial for us to appeal to is the modern day console gamer. They would be a good audience to generate interest with because they are into high adrenaline and fast paced games such as the Call of Duty and Battlefield games which sell in millions and send gamers on a massive thrill ride. This is something that we would be attempting to emulate in our film and also something that I think we sucessfully started to delve into and explore in our opening sequence, with the fast editing and exciting music.

If our film went into full length production we would also market it through social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. As technology develops our generation follows social networking in a very active way, which makes it a great tool to connect with the younger audience we wish to attract.

To conclude our film is targeted towards the male audience however we want to use the males to pull in as much of a female audience as possible.

Post 12.3: Question 3

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

The production company have a vital role when it comes to making films. For example they are generally responsible for providing the funds for making the film and actually producing the film. Their role is to create the idea of the film, shoot all the footage and then edit the footage to create the finished film. The companies however, do usually have people in the crew who will specialise and help in things like writing the script and editing the footage together. They will then usually pass over to a distribution company to to advertise and promote the finished film.

There are many different ways in which production companies raise the funds for creating and making a film. One way is that there are a number of charities which help to fund the production stage of new films eg the National Lottery has a branch which does this in Britain. Also there is the option of gaining independent investors along with companies who may be interested in product placement within the film thus getting their brand out there and known for a wider audience. This is called cross promotion and it is where 2 or more companies come together to promote each other, for example in The Green Lantern they teamed up with Mountain Dew in the USA to make it the drink of the film. As well as these two options there is the option that once the film has been finished you can take it and screen it at different film festivals, which could help to raise more funds.

If I was looking for a distribution company to distriute our film Dispatch I think would choose Universal pictures. I would choose them because they are well known within the Thriller genre into which our films falls. Also they have a wide range of connections with different companies which could help increase our advertising and allow our film to reach a much wider, possibly even global audience. Over time they have converged with other big companies which would also help reach a wider audiences. 

A couple of examples of films distributed by Universal are the Bourne films and also Smoking Aces.

Post 12.2: Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our opening mainly presents people of two classes, a higher educated class represented by Carlson and a Lower, more violent underclass represented by the terrorists.


Carlson:

We wanted to present Carlson as an upstanding member of society. This is why we chose to have him wearing smart business clothes and in a house.
We also wanted show that he is an intellectual man so we chose to go with the stereo type of smart man wearing glasses.


He differs from the terrorists because the film shows that he has a job, with him getting ready to go out to work in the morning.
 
Because he is a MI6 agent we took inspiration on his character from films like James Bond and The Bourne series but also the TV show 24.






The Terrorists:

Group of IRA members

For the terrorists we chose to go for more of an IRA inspired approach as opposed to a more modern Al-Qaeda view. We chose this because we were limited by the actors we had and also so that people would not be offended by accidental racial stereotyping.

We wanted to present our group as members of a downtrodden underclass. To try and get this across we asked them to wear mainly black clothing and we also gave one of our characters a balaclava to fit the mise-en-scene of the stereotypical terrorist costume. We also had their scene take place in an abandoned garage to show that they were materially deprived.
Another way that we wanted to present our terrorists was that we wanted them to look organised as well as violent. This is primarily for the plot as we wanted them to actually pose a threat to a highly trained MI6 agent. In order to make this threat apparent we gave them a selection of prop guns to use in the scenes.


One part in our opening that juxtaposes the 2 groups is the split screen shot with Carlson and one of the terrorists doing up their shoelaces. Here we see one nice dress shoe on a nice checkered floor, where as in the other shot we see a haggard old boot being done up on a rough concrete floor outside. This shot shows the far contrast between the 2 groups and their living situation.

Post 12.1: Question 1

In this video we sat down and talked about our experiances of making our opening sequence, what went well, what could have gone better, what we learnt and what we could have done to make the film better.

http://youtu.be/UuzDH7aYoEs