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

Although at the time we as a group we were happy with our preliminary task as a first attempt I feel that I have developed a lot more skills since then. For the preliminary task I learnt very basic skills about film making and that each scene continues from one another using clear continuity throughout. I feel that throughout this process I have learnt a lot and been able to improve my skills in different areas of film making. As a group we worked a lot better together for our main task as we all had lots of different ideas and managed to bring them together to make one idea that really worked.

I think that I have made huge progress from my preliminary task to where I am now. Now I have a better understanding of how important the pre-production stage is. Our overall product is of a much higher standard than our preliminary task as we all as a group have developed new skills along the way. We made sure our pre-production pack contained everything that we needed to help us during the production and post-production stages which made the process a whole lot easier to carry out.

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

With filming, I have learnt a wide range of camera angles that are used for specific shots. We used digital cameras therefore I learnt the three different lenses used for specific shots, these were 35mm, 50mm and 75mm. They enable you to capture a long shot, mid shot and close up shot. For specific shots that we wanted particularly steady we used a tripod and for our panning shot we used the steady cam to make sure it was steady and smooth, to start with we tried the panning shot without the steady cam and we could clearly see that it was a bad idea as the camera was very shaky and that isn't what we wanted. As we had no dialogue in our film opening we didn't use the microphone because the camera itself was enough to capture the white noise.

I also learnt how to use ‘Final Cut Pro’ which is the software we used to edit out film opening. I learnt that we had to convert it to an ‘MPEG stream clip’ and compress it first of all before starting any of the editing. Once we had uploaded our film to ‘Final Cut Pro’ we could see that on the timeline visual footage was above the line and sound was below the line. A small selection of tools I learnt to use on ‘Final Cut Pro’ were the selection tool, cutting tool, and razor blade tool. One of the mistakes we made to start with was when we wanted to move our visual footage around that we forgot to move the sounds with it meaning that it was all out of place so we quickly learnt that when moving visuals you have to select the sound aswell. 

Evaluation - How did you attract/ address your audience?

We address out audience by using things in our film opening that they can relate to. Such as a 17 year old actor, issues they could face and relate to and using technology. Our main character gets bullied and school and as a result of that becomes depressed, this is something that quite a few teenagers could relate to. We thought that having things in our film that certain people can relate to would give us a wider audience as people enjoy watching films they can relate to. If we had a film that involves unrealistic scenarios that nobody could relate to then we would have a very small audience and it would interest many people.

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

Our target audience was teenagers / young adults. We decided that this would be our target audience as we as a group are around that age so we would have a good idea as to what would interest teenagers. The male protagonist is 17 years old meaning that the audience would be able to relate to him, if the actor was an older person then teenagers and young adults wouldn’t be able to relate to them as much. Our film opening is based around young adults being bullied, getting depressed and thinking about suicide, these are all issues that young adults could face in reality therefore they can relate to it. In our film opening we show the boy using a laptop which our target audience can also relate to as most teenagers own a laptop, older people aren’t as up to date the technology so they wouldn’t relate to it as much.

Evaluation - What kind of media institutions might distribute your media product and why?

Our film is a large conglomerate film as it is set in America so therefore a big institution company would distribute it. They would use brand convergence to help distribute our film, we would have merchandise such as posters etc. to spread the word and make our film more popular. Social media could also be used to help distribute our film, using things like YouTube for adverts etc. Our film would be distributed globally on a large scale, we want everyone to be aware of it so it would appeal to national audiences. 

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

The social groups that are represented in our film opening our age and gender. Our main character is a 17 year old boy so we used things in our film opening that are typical to teenage boys, such as a laptop because they are up to date with the latest technology. We dressed our protagonist in typical teenage boy clothes; black t-shirt and blue skinny jeans with trainers, this shows that he is fashionable like most teenage boys.

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

Our film opening begins with a panning shot going across the back of the protagonist while he is sitting at a desk typing. This opening shot creates a sense of enigma as you can’t see the boy’s face, you don’t know where abouts he is and you don’t know what he is typing. Another way we created enigma in our film opening is by having no dialogue which represents our protagonist as a very mysterious character. We use some extreme close up shots and didn’t show the characters face which creates questions from the audience and again a sense of enigma. The end shot shows his eyes with a reflection of a gun in his glasses, this creates an even bigger sense of enigma and more questions from the audience as they don’t know what he is going to use the gun for or why he wants it. Also seeing the characters eyes gives the audience a chance to sort of ‘be inside the characters mind’ as his eyes gives away a lot about his emotions. We also tried to establish some dull lighting is some of the shots which connotes the negative feeling to our film opening as the boy is meant to come across as depressed. The reason we didn’t want to have bright colours and lighting is because that fits with films that would be romantic and happy and we didn’t want to subvert the conventions of a drama film too much.