Media evaluation

1. IN WHAT WAYS DOES MY MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

To start my evaluation I will show a film opening I analysed and compare it to mine.

BLOW 2001, NEW LINE CENIMA, director : TED DEMME

The opening starts with scenes of men and women and children farming the ingredients to make cocaine as it is a key part of this film it makes sense to start with this it then gets to the part of the scene where George Jung is sitting with some friends talking about the cocaine a voiceover then comes in and it begins to tell his story right from child hood this is where he tell you how he didn’t want to be poor like his dad it then progresses onto his movement away from his family and how he then discovers drugs.

SOUND

can you hear me knocking a song by rolling stones is used in this opening as it is a song that was very popular around the time that cocaine was becoming popular in America and being introduced into the mainstream this is just something that seems to make sense to me as a viewer because it seems to be chosen for authenticity reasons more than anything else.

EDITING/CENIMATOGRAPYthe length of the shot when you first see George Jung is about 25 seconds long it is a mid shot of him which zooms in on him as he is speaking instantly showing you that this is the main character and that is the reason that this shot was chosen and the dialogue was done to match this kind of shot.

MISE EN SCENE

Once again when you first see George it is a very important moment as the room he is in is very bare and plain with just what seems like some meat freezer curtains hanging up I suppose the room was made to look like this to enforce to the viewer that nature and shadiness of the business this character is doing.

My groups film is very different to this in most areas as BLOW is not a noir BUT it does have some noir stylistics, just like my groups film Blow has a voice over to help move the story along into new areas and give the viewing audience a bit of back story.

Brick (2005, focus features, Director: Rian Johnson) is a neo noir I researched and this film gave me a lot of ideas to put into my groups film such as using an enigma to keep you audience hooked , in Brick there were 2 enigmas to keep the audience hooked we opted for one which was how many people did our main character kill and what one.

Our film used some of the key characters of film noir we had a damaged hero who used to be good getting caught up in all sorts of problems we had a truly evil character who usually remained hidden and mysterious and we had a femme fetal. We made these characters more modern than what they would have been in the heyday of film noir our main characters were much younger than what they would have been, this was to make our film appeal to our target audience more. Our main challenge of noir stylistic was not being so obvious about our character choices and being more subtle like Brick was by having a brown haired femme fetal but putting her in red to signify her status in the film we chose to have a blonde femme fetal but not give her any red clothing.  Also in the synopsis of our film it is noteworthy that the other female that is seen in our film is almost like a henchman to our femme fetal. Also we chose to make our hero a bit more street savvy than the usual noir hero making him look to the audience like he can handle anything but his softer side is shown when he is caught up in the underworld of society and his frailties show. When editing our film we tried to keep the pace fast and gritty to make the audience feel uncomfortable during the scenes of the assault we used a jump shot to make the fake hits look real.


1. HOW DOES MY MEDIA PRODUCT REPRESENT PARTICULAR SOCIAL GROUPS?

 In our film there is a reasonably wide array of people represented in our film but before I talk about what is in the film I will mention the things that aren’t. In our film there are no truly adult characters the sensible ones who are there to offer smart opinions this is just for one reason and that is that we felt our film was to speak to teenagers and early 20s so the more of those age ranges were represented than others. Our film has no minorities in our film however this is just because our group was all made up of British white; I would imagine that a film regulation body would notice this even though there is nothing sinister going on and I’m sure this happens with some films. In our film noir both sexes are represented, there is a male drug dealer the dealer was made male for realism as I would imagine that female drug dealers are few and far between not saying that there aren’t any but if we did have a female drug dealer we would have been really challenging the norm. There is a man who is caught in a very sticky situation this is a classic noir stylistic and this was the reason it was put in our film to make it feel much more like a classic noir. Our femme fatale was a woman already in this relationship with a drug dealer but she is very knifing and when meeting our main character she never told him this but in the end it all backfired on her which generally happens in noirs as the femme fatale usually ends up dead or behind bars once again we put this in to make the film have a noir style. When making our film we didn’t directly think about ideology but you can’t make a film without at least considering them or them being there anyway, our film shows how easy it can be to get caught up in a lot of trouble and no matter how confident and invincible you think you are nothing can prepare you for how tough life can get.


3. WHO MIGHT DISTRIBUTE OUR PRODUCT?

Our film could be possibly picked up and funded by BBC films as they tend to like investing and funding low budget films that they can see becoming cult hits they also aim to make strong British films with range and ambition, bringing the best of British talent to audiences. BBC Films is at the forefront of British independent filmmaking, and co-produces around eight films a year, working in partnership with major international and UK distributors. This is why I would also see our film being viewed at a film festival like the raindance film festival as they tend to show a lot of independent films from across the UK, US and Canada. As I would expect BBC films to be our most likely source of distribution I could see our film being shown on BBC FOUR, then maybe BBC THREE if it became popular enough, the film would probably be on just after the watershed because of the 15 rating I would imagine the BBFC would give it.

The audience for our film would be people who like a film that would keep you guessing and enjoy film with a dark undertone, crime, and even a small love story. The British Board of Film Classification would probably make our film a 15 in classification because there is some drugs ,violence and a bit of bad language this would be ok to us as our main audience would be 18 to 25 year olds a large proportion of the main cinema going audience. In viewings of our film we found out that our classmates thought the film had a good enigma and they became hooked by it, this was what we wanted our opening to end up being.

Synopsis for opening
Open with a man sitting in a corner, head in his hands covered in a hood. The man appears emotional as he throws objects from nearby over the room. He sits in the room as he thinks. As he thinks he has a flashback, seeing a man walking down a road and seeing a girl, their eyes meet and the problems begin. The film goes back to the man in the room he has various flashbacks which could link to the story which will follow, leaving an enigma for the audience.
Synopsis for rest of narrative 
Later on the man is getting ready for a party with some of his friends, they talk about the girl he saw earlier that day and he finds out from his friends that her boyfriend is a physco drug dealer.
At the party the guy and girl begin to talk then they get together, the boyfriend bursts in on them and hit’s the guy then proceeds to chase him out the house where he catches him and they both fight. During the fight the guy picks up a metal pipe that’s lying on the ground and brutally attacks the drug dealer, killing him in the process.

4. WHO IS OUR AUDIENCE / HOW DID WE ATTRACT OUR AUDIENCE?

Our class mates were mixed on what they thought the film would end up becoming some got our preferred reading and others could not see what would happen this means for us our enigma worked.

To address our audience we made a film that would speak to teenagers and young adults by mainly featuring them in the film. In our opening we used some mystery by placing flashbacks and images of dead bodies to give the audience some possibly misplaced association to keep them thinking about why it has been shown who is linked to it and that kind of thing we all do in thrillers where we go “oh it’s that guy but wait he also was there and involved” we done all this to create a link to the audiences mind and keep them hooked. The reason this suits our target audience is because the opening has a enigma which sets up the rest of the film and based on our class screening we achieved to make an enigma and fits our questionnaire.


5. TECHNOLOGIES USED?

During the process of this project I have used a lot of different hardware and software, during the research stage I was using my blog to document the things I was finding out putting a few YouTube clips up to help illustrate the things I was talking about in this I done a lot of digging around the internet to help earth up some facets about noir that I might not have found out in lesson or from books, the research stage also involved watching a few noir and neo noir films on DVD to look at how noir has evolved and changed over the years and the things I learned and saw could then be applied to my groups final piece. In the planning stage I was also using YouTube to give me some ideas on what our synopsis could be. During editing and filming we used a HD tape camera, lighting equipment, microphone, tripod, Facebook to keep in contact with the group, hotmail, phones, Finalcut pro an editing programme, logic sound software, voiceover recording microphones.


6. WHAT I HAVE LEARNT?

In my preliminary exercise I found that there were errors and just some improvements that could be made which made me think more about what my groups final edit should look like from the preliminary exercise called “The exchange”  I noticed that at times continuity was a problem as we didn’t seem to make much notice of it and just hoped it would all fit together so when it came to making our main film we all made sure that we noted body position what hand certain things are in so that if we cut mid shot or had to get another angle the continuity would not be a problem. When planning our film it was important to keep in mind a schedule so that we did not get behind on our project and so that we could keep organised, we set dates for filming in different locations this helped us to organise our shots correctly so that when it came to editing stages we could find what we wanted very quickly, also because of these two dates we set it made us have in mind what we wanted to get done making us get our filming done in just two days.

Since our first project i feel i have learnt a lot about filming such as the 180 degree line rule how important ECMS is to how producers make their final product and that they don’t just get lucky they think about every single minor detail to make a finished product. I also learnt that getting more shots and angles than you need is better than having not enough and that is what i found out after my first two projects.

When making our film i was heavily involved in the writing of the script and picking some key shots we wanted to get then when we came to filming as cameraman i decided that when i had an idea for a shot that i would talk to the group and see if they thought i should get it and we would then being to run through what the shot should look like without filming it then once we were comfortable we would then do it. On our film i made our production logos that went at the start of out film and also the distribution company logo these went at the start of the film i also made some key decisions on effects and shot sequence during editing as well as putting them together. In our group i undertook the role of cameraman but I also did some acting in the film and had a large part to play in the editing of the film, picking effects to go over clips to make them look like flashback sequences and various clip placements. A selection of music was gathered by a member of the group and we all had our say the piece that ended up in our film I was the one who placed it in and adjusted it accordingly to any other factors and sounds in our film the final thing I done in editing was to place our titles in making them fit into screen and not take away from the action. For the preproduction i wrote up the original voice over script which somebody else then integrated into the main screen play. i also done a rough copy of the storyboard so that we could then get a idea of the shots we wanted to do this was then done in neat by our art director. I completed a production schedule so we knew our filming dates. I then found our locations with help from our art director who allowed us to use her home as a film location, I then did a risk assessment for one of our locations. After editing I then as well as every other member of the group done an evaluation sheet taking down thoughts of our film from other classmates and our tutor.