Wednesday 3 March 2010

Evaluation

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

Our opening sequence uses the normal codes and conventions of any rom-com but in some sense we've developed these codes and conventions to make them our own.The main focus of a Romantic Comedy is the boy and the girl characters because it has to be made clear that these are the characters you will be following throughout the film. The title of our film is Naive City and we feel this is a good title for a Romantic Comedy because love can be very naive at that age and we also felt it had a nice ring to it. As a group we decided we wanted the opening to be editied as a split screen, this was the element we were most scared about because we didn't know if it was going to look right we developed this idea to fit our genre because normally split screens are found in Action Films but we really wanted it in our sequence and I think it worked really well.

The mise-en-scene of our film is another way we have developed the codes and conventions because in most Rom-Coms you expect to see sunny weather,large houses and expensive cars but with ours we have made it very urban and the weather is quite grey (much to our annoyance) but we think it works very well and it fits more with our generation.

The actual titles of our opening are the part of it that are regular in Rom-Coms, we decided to make the titles gender specific we decided that the colours would be pink and blue and as a group we thought this worked really well in our opening.The titles appear on the screen and fade off and this was the element we wanted to be like a regular Rom-Com and I think worked really well and made our piece look more like a genuine Romantic Comedy. When it came to the song for our titles we became increasingly worried the reason for this is because we couldn't use the original song due to copy write restrictions so as we started to look around for solutions we decided to record our own version of the song and we think it fits with the regular codes and conventions of any Rom-Com, the song we recorded features a soft guitar riff and I think it creates a happy positive mood to the piece. Overall I think our opening sequence developed the codes and conventions of real media products but it has elements of regular media products.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?
The social group our product uses is teenagers, we embedded the teen element of the film by the two main characters getting ready in the morning and by setting up enigmas like photos of friends and guitars in the corner, this element was really important for us to get right because we didn't want anyone to get offended.As a group we feel that people in the age bracket of 15-19 Will relate very well with these two characters whether it be saying they like the outfits or saying they recognise the place we shot in we feel as a group people will relate to the characters.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
After many discussions we decided that Nickelodeon would distribute our film. The reason we have decided on this particular distributor is because they have distributed films like Angus Thongs And Perfect Snogging,Yours Mine And Ours most of Nickelodeon's films are targeted for teenagers we felt this would suite our genre and target audience really well and we think they would do this for our film.

Who would be the audience for your media product?
We decided the audience for our film would be 12-19 year olds, the reason we decided upon this age group is because we felt we wanted teens as well as young adults would want to come and watch our film. We also decided on this age group because we didn't want to create a film that we wouldn't go to watch so we catered it to our own individual taste.

How did you attract/address your audience?
We addressed our audience by taking them on a journey through the two characters daily routine we feel that this will grab the audience's attention because we feel the audience will recognize part of themselves in the two main characters also we've used places where most teenagers go on the weekends e.g. Shopping Center's and taking the bus so we've really used place teenagers will relate too.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
When editing our piece we came across all new editing programmes the main one being Final Cut Pro, because none of us had used this particular editing programme before we were all abit overwhelmed, but as we edited a few scenes together we eventually got used to it. Another programme we used for the first time was music maker, this programme helped us record the song for our titles, this was by far the easiest element to produce because it took us the shortest amount of time and it only required one of us to manage everything. During the editing process I learnt alot about myself and I learnt that you need to take your time especially when using new programmes.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

From the preliminary task I have learnt how important storyboarding and organisation is key in producing a good media product. For the preliminary task it took us a very short amount of time to edit and film and we underestimated how many obstacles we would have to face when completing the larger part of the coursework. We also had to rely on a lot of things on the actual day of shooting for example, the battery not running out on the camera, the group turning up on time and the actors being ready on time. We also had to count on memebers of the public wouldn't run in front of the camera and causing us to re-shoot. We also had to overcome the fullness of the editing sweet because there were some days our mac was in use we had to re-work our plans but we managed to edit our overall product in two weeks and that left us time to file out any rough edges and re-work the song and the title.

Overall I feel we have created a very realistic opening sequence and it does a good job of telling a story.


The FINAL Opening

This is the final cut of our title sequence. As soon as we sorted out the music as a group we instantly knew it was perfect (well in our eyes anyway). Personally I think the music does alot to the titles no matter what genre it is and I think our music fits perfectly.

Audience Feedback

On the 24th of February we screened our opening sequences to the rest of our media class and at home to our family; Through audience feedback we were able to determin what needed changing or what could stay the same in our title sequences.

Here are some of the comments people made about our piece.

Belinda Raji: "Its looking really good guys its just a shame about the music."
Katie Banham: "It reminded me of Its A Boy Girl Thing, it works really well in context with your genre."
Leanne Whittaker: "At the moment the song is whats letting it down, if you re-work the song it will be alot better."
Laura Debourde: "I Love It".
Nancy Compopiano: " It was really good I have nothing bad to say about it the music is really good very catchy just a shame you couldn't use the original song but yeah i loved it all"
Emily Dann: "It was really good I loved it all"
Beth Middlecoat: "Wow"

Sean Roberts: "I cannot believe you made that it looks like an actual opening sequence to a real film.I didn't really know what media studies was but it looks fun if your making stuff like that i really like it"
Stephen Wright: " Looks good I don't really like rom-coms but if this was an actually film i'd go and watch it well done".
Rob Mcdonald: "Wow it looks so good well done."
Joe Pearce:"Pretty Snazzy".
Tom Ball:"Yepp its good :)"
Alex Tanner:"I Thought It Was Very Good"

Tuesday 2 March 2010

Audience Feedback Via Youtube

ColeshillMedia
I like the idea of the spilt-screen and you've sustained it really well. The shot of the bus arriving on the male side is really nicely framed. I thought the camera shots towards the end when both characters were walking towards the shops were a bit jerky - and as it was both of them, it was pretty distracting. Good sense of the two characters though. Want to know more...

What Programmes Were Used

Wikipedia:Where we researched other title sequences/genre etc.-
Google:This is where we found the images for some examples.-
Music Programme on Mac :Where we recorded the music for our titles.-
Final Cut Pro:Where we edited together our shots.-
Facebook:Where we arranged shooting days/Got pictures from.-
Blogger:A blog where all our work is displayed.

All of these programmes helped us construct our title sequence with precision.

Tuesday 23 February 2010

Our Opening

This is our opening sequence as a group we were really happy with how it turned out but we felt something was missing, due to audience feedback we decided the music still wasn't right, our teacher Leanne Whittaker said the bass guitar in the song was too harsh against the accoustic and it made the piece seem sinister insted of happy. So on 25/02/10 we were back in the editing sweet and used just the guitar riff but this time it was a electric guitar insted of an accoustic and we felt this gave off the right message to the audience.

Sunday 14 February 2010

Research and Planning-Pictures Of Our Piece






These screencaps were taken from our opening sequence, we decided to make the colours of the title gender specific because it worked in context with the codes and conventions of "Rom-coms", this can be seen in films like "Its A Boy Girl Thing".