Media Studies AS Portfolio Evaluation

By Evie Rapson

IntroductionFor my coursework I worked with Nicole Haigh to produce

a two minute opening sequence to a film. Throughout

the project I contributed to all aspects of the making of

the film. I featured in the sequence briefly, I took part

with some of the filming and helped with a lot of the

editing and choosing appropriate music.

In what ways does your media product use, develop, challenge forms &

conventions of real media products?We looked at the thriller genre when creating our film.

We combined different media elements to help us portray this genre such as:-

-low key lighting in the scenes where the killer was present.- a continuous non-diegetic score to accompany the cinematography.

Both these elements helped to create the more sinister atmosphere often associated with the thriller genre.

I think in the end all of the elements came together well as when we did a questionnaire as feedback 10/10 people identified our film as being of the thriller genre.

How does your media represent certain social groups ?We tried to represent characters in a

way which would be familiar to an audience.

•We kept to the stereotypical ideologies of females being weak and men being the stronger sex. •We tried to portray this through our camera angles and mise-en-scene:--We dressed the man in a large black coat, enlarging his outline, making him look stronger and more powerful. Black also gives a more sinister appearance.- High angles on shots of girls bodies to reinforce this stereotypical image of females being weak and also slightly higher angles on the boy to represent the idea of teenagers being weaker than adults..

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

- It doesn’t have the charm and glamour of a Hollywood film – it is much darker and more gritty. - It doesn’t inlude lots of special effects often associated with the Hollywood institution.I think Film Four or BBC Films may be interested in backing our product because:--It has an interesting storyline (about the girls solving the riddle and trying to stop him, not just the kidnapping), and some of the elements of this are not as typical of the thriller genre, which makes the film of more interest to an audience .

We would distribute our film to a British film production company because.....

Still shot from Film Four’s Trainspotting

Who would be the audience for your media product and why?

- Both male and female- Of the age range 15-25- Mixed race – although, because we only used Caucasian actors it may not necessarily appeal to all cultures.- Of the socio- economic status C2-B, because our storyline is slightly more intellectual and so may appeal more to the skilled working class upwards to middle class, but would not be of interest to working or upper class.

Our target audience for our opening

sequence is.....

. I think this is a good target audience because it is quite a broad band which caters for more than one class group which gives us a wider market for ticket sales and hopefully a larger profit. This is backed up by our results from the questionnaire we sent out to our target audience – 9/10 people said they would like to watch the rest of the film.

How did you attract/ address your audience?

- Took into account all of the seven points which all good opening sequences include.- Tried to create a sense of time by using transitions as fades to black and the flash of light leading into and out of the dream sequence and effects like changing to black and white.- We tried to build up tension (which is a big part of the thriller conventions usually achieved by a fast pace of editing) by the use of a non-diegetic score and editing. Even though our editing is quite slow paced it compliments the score (in the questionnaire 10/10 people said it complimented). Our shots also fit the score which is parallel rather than contrapuntal, which helps the audience to identify with the genre and to build tension – 8/10 people said music was the best genre indicator.

When creating our opening sequence to try to attract the audience we.....

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of

constructing this product?-How to film and edit, using the cameras from college and the Apple Macs (this included framing and setting up of shots.)- How to import video footage onto the computer from the camera.-How to create a blog using ‘blogger.com’.-How to upload videos onto youtube.

I have found that using the internet is a good way of bringing media together to create an interactive project. Before I would not have known how to do any of these things and I think that I will continue to use these programs and techniques to develop my skills at producing a finished piece of media.

I have learnt a lot during this project.I have learnt ...

At first I found applying transitions between shots difficult but overall I found the process of editing quite easy, particularly cutting shots.

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

Looking at our preliminary task we have come a long way. Our editing and shots were much better in the finished sequence along with the mise-en-scene. In the preliminary task not all of the editing was smooth and some of the shots were slightly jumpy.In our finished sequence we also added transitions, effects and a non-diegetic score which we didn’t have in the preliminary task. The storyline in our finished sequence was also much more complex. This was because we were not limited to a set of instructions as to what we had to film as we were in the preliminary taskI think in the development from the preliminary to our finished piece we have definitely developed our creative skills and this is shown in the quality of the finished piece.

Conclusion

Overall I am pleased with our finished sequence as I think we have managed to capture the genre well and I think the shots and music compliment each other. If I could produce this again I would probably change the scene in the flash back, maybe changing the music to create a different effect, but overall I am very pleased with the outcome and we have received some good feedback from our audience. I have thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience of this project, particularly filming as we had fun working together as a team and experimenting with different shot sizes and angles. I think one of the best aspects of our sequence is the unity created between the shots and the music . I think that considering this is the first time Nicole and I have ever done anything like this, we have done a pretty good job and created an acomplished finished product.