Evaluation - Kieran Owens
1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
The example of a media product I will be using is one of my inspirational movies, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Based on a book by George Orwell with the same name. Much like our own film it follows a person living in an autocratic dystopia known as Airstrip One(formerly known as Great Britain). We have followed many of the conventions that were used in Nineteen Eighty-Four.
1. Our film starts with the logo of our created company, 'good feelings' - We used the laser type style to give off a science fiction feel as it matches the genre of our created film. We tried to use a professional using, but somewhat scientific looking font as well. Whilst not quite as attention grabbing as the lion roaring at me, the subtly fits the tone of our movie well.
2. Starting with a blank screen, with nothing but the sounds of seagulls and waves crashing was meant to give a dream like feel, as the character was meant to be sleeping. Many films of the genre use this chance to give exposition (Star Wars and Nineteen Eighty-Four both do this.) to set a scene. But we intended to give very little information from the start, leaving the nature of the autocrasy and the world we have created subtle and enigmatic as this allows the audience to create their own image of what it must be like.
3. We then began to show off the bedroom that would be our main set, using the widest shot we could to show off how plain and colorless the surroundings were. This allows for the audience to think up a world where very little creative expression is allowed, as is rather typical of movies with similar premises (Nineteen Eighty-Four and Children of Men are both examples of this, where Government Censorship is prominent in the created society.)
4. The first on-screen command is shown and a mysterious voice speaks out, telling our unnamed protagonist to wake up and get ready. Nineteen Eighty-Four gives this 'big brother' character a face, whilst we chose not to do so. The reason we do this is so that we can add further enigma to the autocracy that rules over our character. We did take inspiration from Nineteen Eighty-Four in the form of the television giving orders / speaking to somebody. Using the screen as a way for the hidden rulers to speak to the people.
5,6 7 and 8.We decided it would be best to show our character getting ready for the day, it allowed us to show some other subtle details about the world around him, his colorless bathroom, his black and white attire that leaves very little to look at. By using very little color we allowed the world to seem very boring and dull, as was the intention. We wanted people to see the world as boring as that's how our character perceived it. This is very different to Nineteen Eighty-Four, which doesn't even introduce its main character in the first scene, it has a nameless group of people in overalls, presumably workers. It still makes sure to avoid the bright colors or much if at all expression, as this allows the people to seem almost brain-dead in their performance. Completely at the will of Big Brother.
9. The scene is transitioning into the news show of the screen used, the protagonist didn't have to use a remote or anything for it to happen, allowing the audience to think about how it may have happened (has their been an advance in technology that allowed it? Was it set like that? Do the government control what he watches?) and allows us to show some 'propaganda' to help build the 'big brother' atmosphere that is prominent throughout the film.
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
As our character only actually has a single character, the only 'social group' it has to represent is that of your typical young man. But with his world being so different to that of the real world it would be hard to do so in a conventional sense, we don't give him any dialogue and only give him a simple motivation of 'freedom' - The reason being that it allows the audience to essentially project themselves into our protagonists shoes, similar to a silent protagonist in a video game.
The only other 'character' we have is the faceless big brother, who as mentioned doesn't have a face. We chose to do this to create an enigma surrounding him, It allows the audience to create their own mental projetion of what he or she might look like.
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
The production/distribution company we created is called 'Good Feelings' and it's theme was to be that of a science-fiction based company similar to that of LucasArts. But if I were to have a larger company distribute my movie it would be Icon Film Distribution, a UK based company that specializes in small independent movies, but has met mainstream success with movies such as Paranormal Activity and Transporter 3. I chose this because it's a UK based company that specialises in independent movies, and mine is a UK based independent movie. But thanks to it's box office successes it's clear that the company has a knack for what it does, and choosing the right titles. It also has more than 200 titles under its belt, so the company has experience in dealing with smaller studios such as ours.
4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
Through researching the typical audience for sci-fi movies and other similar media products, I discovered that the main target audience tends to be young adult males and middle aged men. We decided it would be best to target an audience we better understand, and so we decided to target young adult males as we both in fact are exactly that. It made it easier for us to find ways to appeal to our target audience and make a product that we thought would be better suited for them.
Through researching the typical audience for sci-fi movies and other similar media products, I discovered that the main target audience tends to be young adult males and middle aged men. We decided it would be best to target an audience we better understand, and so we decided to target young adult males as we both in fact are exactly that. It made it easier for us to find ways to appeal to our target audience and make a product that we thought would be better suited for them.
5. How did you attract/address your audience?
With the premise of our product being a society overwhelmed by rules we believe it would appeal to them as they find themselves joining the adult world, many starting full time employment and having to adapt to a completely new ruleset to that of school, many learning to drive and having to learn the rules of the road and so they can feel very overwhelmed having so many rules thrown at them. The aim of our film is to appeal to this mindset by making a world with so many laws and rules that the audience can relate to our protagonist. It also helped that we made our protagonist silent, it better allowed the audience to project themselves into the world created and try to imagine what it must feel like to be so alone. By not allowing him to say his emotions, the audience can instead let their own feelings paint the picture and allow for them to perhaps experience the protagonists isolation.
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
A basic computer with unspecified parts was used, as it contained all of the necessary software we needed, as well as access to the internet for particular parts of the editing and distribution process. This is a list of the websites and software we used.
Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum Edition 11.0 : This was the tool we used for pretty much all editing, It's a professional tool used even by proper film studio's and is well known for it's relatively easy to use layout whilst more complex techniques are still possible using it.
HD LE Writer 1.0 : Software that comes bundled with the camera that allows us to extract our recorded film clips from the Camera's SD card whilst maintaining the HD quality. Allowing you to specifically select which clips you need.
Blogger.co.uk : A blogging website that allows you to make your own personal blog(s) that link directly to your google+ account (which means it also links to your gmail and youtube profile.)
Youtube.com : Youtube is a video-sharing website that allows anybody with a google+ account to make a profile and upload video clips at particular qualities. It adds the clip to a public sharing platform (unless the video is made specifically private) and allows anybody who stumbles across it to watch it. Also allowing for comments, likes and dislikes and subscriptions so people can continue to follow your work if they enjoyed it.
FreeSFX.co.uk : FreeSFX is a website that provides royalty free music and sound-clips to be used by anybody. This is where I obtained all music and sound-clips used in both my preliminary and my final product.
There was also the physical tools and equipment needed for filming, which without we would have been unable to do pretty much anything!
Camera: The Camera we used was the Panasonic HC-X900 HD model, which is capable of filming at 1080p HD quality, Thanks to this ability to film in such high quality the film overall looked better. We used this camera to shoot everything we had.
Tripod: A simple tool used to prop a camera up and keep it still, We used the tripod for most of the filming so that our shots could be steady and more precise, further increasing the quality of the finished product.
SD Card: The SD card is simply the memory card that saves all the filmed footage when it's being recorded, using HD LE Writer 1.0 we extracted the filmed footage we needed off of the SD card so we could go onto editing it all.
USB Flash Drive: A USB Flash Drive(16GB) was used to store any SFX we obtained from FreeSFX, Any footage we had extracted from the Camera's SD Card as well as the unfinished project files so we could continue to edit them at a later date. Allowing for quick access to the things we needed no matter what computer we were on.
7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Looking back at my preliminary task, the biggest issue that I personally as part of the group faced involved my job as the editor, I had never used Sony Vegas before and so knew very little on how to use the program when push came to shove. So one of the most prominent problems with the preliminary is the editing, an over-use of fade, some issues with ambient sound jumping in between cuts and audio being too loud in comparison with the rest of the audio .
Now that I've had some experience with the program I believe I've gotten much better at using it, watching a few basic tutorials on youtube in preparation for my job as editor meant I could use a bit more variety and avoid the rookie mistakes that I had made the first time around. I could also get the editing done a lot quicker since I didn't have to waste time familiarizing myself with the software layout or how to do things in the program.
Looking back at my preliminary task, the biggest issue that I personally as part of the group faced involved my job as the editor, I had never used Sony Vegas before and so knew very little on how to use the program when push came to shove. So one of the most prominent problems with the preliminary is the editing, an over-use of fade, some issues with ambient sound jumping in between cuts and audio being too loud in comparison with the rest of the audio .
Now that I've had some experience with the program I believe I've gotten much better at using it, watching a few basic tutorials on youtube in preparation for my job as editor meant I could use a bit more variety and avoid the rookie mistakes that I had made the first time around. I could also get the editing done a lot quicker since I didn't have to waste time familiarizing myself with the software layout or how to do things in the program.
Another issue that I experienced involved the overall organisation of my group, With their only being two members in it, we had to spread the work out a lot more and we often found ourselves confused or overwhelmed by the workload, which lead to a degradation in quality over the course of our preliminary, especially during the planning and filming phases, where if just one of us was not available there was literally nothing we could do about it.
When it came to the main task, we made sure to prioritize organisation and give ourselves similar if not the same roles in the group as last time, whilst there was still only two of us, we had experience in the jobs that we had done during the preliminary so it made much more sense for us to assign ourselves to those roles once again so we could get the work done a lot quicker, a lot more efficiently and to a better quality than the first time around.
When it came to the main task, we made sure to prioritize organisation and give ourselves similar if not the same roles in the group as last time, whilst there was still only two of us, we had experience in the jobs that we had done during the preliminary so it made much more sense for us to assign ourselves to those roles once again so we could get the work done a lot quicker, a lot more efficiently and to a better quality than the first time around.
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