1.In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
We chose to display our opening credits in an uncommon way, we begin by displaying all of the actors, crew and jobs allocated, and the last title is the name of the film. This creates a sort of suspense where the audience will find out who the actors are, and who did what, and at last, find out the name of the film, which will fit in with the opening scene just shown. Our production flows with the titles as the titles are somewhat involved with the footage, ie; "Karl Mould" shoots out of the gun, this creates a nice flow of credits being displayed leading up to the final title.
The researched that was carried out enabled us to follow codes and conventions of similar gangster titles, and the end results lead us to use typical props such as; guns, suits, drinks etc. Mafia in similar films do not have much speech and therefore this was kept to a minimum as most of the concentration was on the death of the two mafia guys. We tried to hide the identity of the assassin until the very last moment, and this is how the story will continue, by seeing the killers' face, the mafia strike back at who has hired the assassin.
Conventional products and forms were challenged by using a more modern approach to typical mafia and old style gangster aproducts. The use of CCTV and a bright light next to the focused actor challenges the typical idea of darkness, hidden identities and secrecy.
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our chosen character is the gunman, he is kept hidden and in a very secret state and is the assassin. Examples linked to this may include; James Bond films, The Mechanic, Transporter etc.
They display a lone gunman, who alone can accomplish the mission/contract given to them, and are very good at what they do. The representation of gangsters in the final piece shows what modern gangsters may be like, the house is their meeting place, or hang out area and this is where they are shot, not typical at all for gangster films.
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
The type of institution that would distribute our production would be a small company as the film made by our group is a low market, low budget film, a likely company to distribute a film such as ours may be a British Film company such as FilmFour, which is small and would cope with the low amounts of profit that a larger film company would not. The FilmFour company also has a channel and this would therefore attract its' appropriate audience.
4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
Considering many things as a group we have a target audience of mainly teenagers or a young audience . This is mainly because the characters are young people, the theme music is of something that is modern and in the scene to say, most teenagers would listen to this as everyone of their age group would like the music.
The action in the clip would help attract teenagers as most teenagers would watch action films like the "Hitman" with weapons and people being killed. The fast paced action, gambling, alcohol and killing of the actors in our production would attract a young audience seeking a thrill, and an action packed, contemporary gangster film production.
5. How did you attract/address your audience?
We attracted our audience through our group's Facebook page and our YouTube page which can be found on the following links:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=102530076478614&ref=ts
http://www.youtube.com/user/SimpleMindedProd
With our videos from our project drafts on these pages it helps people find out about our videos. Also the word of the mouth or messaging each other about the video. Telling friends about our production will pass our production on as a sort of chain, by which one person tells another and so on. Because our production begins with the establishing shot of one actor, with cards and a shot glass, this keeps the audience wanting to see more and as the camera zooms out and moves to the assassin, the audience feels more involved in the film and attracted.
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
From the range of products used, we have learnt that technologies are growing ever faster and better for the film industry, programs such as Adobe Premier Pro, After Effects, HD Cameras etc, portray the future of film technology as very modern and electronic.
7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?
Our preliminary task was filmed with fresh ideas, in a restaurant, which was later also meant to become our chosen location for our main task. From day one we have liked the idea of a sort of gangster/mafia type of film, so we did that for our preliminary task, we learnt about the high importance of having certain rules to filming, such as 180 degree rule, the high importance of sticking to the drawn storyboards, and many more. Over the progression up to making our final piece, we sometimes forgot to incorporate or follow some basic rules of filming, this led us to go back and film again, and each time we would achieve a better result, we always progressed and it always led the group to better ideas and progress. We have also progressed in editing a lot, we have seen a high amount of editing tutorials, mainly from VideoCoPilot, this is s website with hundreds of tutorials which we watched and tried to incorporate into our final piece, most were not suitable, but we could take some ideas from them. The preliminary task was mainly covering the "basics" of filming, for our final piece we had learnt a lot more about the production and editing of a film opening sequence and therefore it was more advanced. We also used a wider range of equipment when compared to our preliminary task; this included all of the equipment listed here, more advanced equipment was used, 22" gold & silver reflectors for light management, a TP-1700 CamLink tripod and a Sony HD Handicam. To conclude, we have learnt both good and bad things since the production of our preliminary task, that sometimes things do not work out as planned, and that most of the time, with planning and research, things will work out as planned.
