Evaluation: Question 1

In what ways does your media product (film opening) use, develop or challenge forms and conventions real media productions (real films)?

Evaluation: Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Representation is the way certain social groups are portrayed in the media, a stereotype becomes apparent after years of representation in media and can be positive or negative. Above is a video made on camtasia that shows a breakdown of the footage in our film, it also displays the stereotypes and themes that you would find in our film.

Evaluation: Question 3

Evaluation: Question 4

Question 4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

Teen films are mostly enjoyed by teenagers and young adults aged 16-21 as the themes are normally relatable to their lives or are themes that interested in them. Typical themes that would be found in teen films include: coming of age, first love, rebellion, conflict with parents, teen angst or alienation. They usually attract a teen audience as they also normally take place in typical locations that are specific to teens and young adults such as; high school, parties, at home etc. Similarly the characters chosen for teen films are usually characters they can relate to as they either come across these types of in their daily life or can see themselves in the character.  

However the targeted gender of the audience may vary depending on the specific themes as films that include subjects such as; romance, relationships and gossip normally target females whereas films that include; violence, sex and drugs (typically found in Action movies) are usually targeted at males. 

The sub genre of our film opening is Black Feminist Teen Drama and so because of this I feel the audience specific to this genre would attract the audience of black girls from the ages of 16-21.

Specific audience for own film

As our sub-genre very specific/ uncommon we felt that in order to ensure our film was successful we felt it was important to identify the specific target audience that we believed our film opening would appeal to, through the plot, characters, music etc. After careful consideration we believed that the main demographic that our film attract would be young black girls aged 16-21 living in deprived areas. Although the opening created in order to uplift black girls and raise awareness of the issues they face in everyday life, in this way it may be susceptible to a wider audience as we address themes of poverty and single parenthood of which can be relatable to those older or younger than the perceived audience.  

I have created an example of a specific member of my target audience which is displayed below, she is pictured to be a be a young black girl from Brixton (which is a working-class area in London) with a picture of her area in the header. She is shown to be unemployed and looking for work which suggests she lives in poverty, this is proven by her status update and comment on the picture of newly released movie "Ride Along". She has also listed her interest as liking drama films like Boyz in the hood and For Coloured Girls, these are both movies that have inspired our film opening and what we believe are the type of films our target demographic are interested in.

I believe our target audience is represented by the three main characters in the film opening; the hoodrat, the teen mum and the young carer. All of which are stereotypes of young black working-class girls and so relate to our target demographic. In addition to this, all three of the main characters are female and so means that the film is much more likely to be more popular amongst the male gender as they are all bound to identify with at least one of the three main characters. 

Our target audience was also established in the issues addressed in the film, the setting and location. The teen mum and young carer are shown to have to care for another individual, even the young care has to work in order to support her sister which present ideas of poverty. This is also represented the establishing shot at the beginning of our film that shows a flat which is typically identifiable with working class people. 

Throughout the film opening and particularly the hood rat's scenes, we see features of the location such as paint peeling off the walls, a dark dingy hallway and a small elevator which shows evidence of a typical flat. 

The soundtrack to our film would also appeal to this demographic as it is a rap song with r'n'b type singing on the track.This will appeal to our chosen demographic as it is something that they would be interested in and would listen to regularly. We believe by adding the song "All Falls Down" it sums up the message of our film as it conveys struggle. I found the music after searching for copyright free music on creative commons and then soundcloud.

Evaluation: Question 5

How did you attract/address your audience?

This is an interview with a member of our target audience, young black working-class girls created on Adobe Premiere Pro. She talks about what aspects of the film appealed to her and why they did. 

So far we have reached our audience with twitter and facebook creating accounts on both, also we have recently released our film opening at a local cinema exclusive to students.

Our film opening has also been uploaded onto vimeo and youtube so our audience can view it easily, and our film will also be given out to students in DVD format so they can watch it at home. 

Below shows the movie poster for our film opening displaying a movie review at the top and it has incorporated the urban definition of Sistas into it.

Evaluation: Question 6

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

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Evaluation: Question 7

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

WE DID IT!!!

 We finally finished our media project, it's been a LONG journey but we made it (Thank you Jesus).

Distribution Ident

Media Project VS. Group 33

by Pounded Yam on GoAnimate

HARD WORK IN THE EDITING SUITE!!!!

Sophie was busy editing our film on the computer whilst I used the laptop(right corner) to blog at the same time.

Editing the opening of our film.

Concern?!

Last week Wednesday me and another girl from my group spent 3 hours editing our film and thought we were finished, but the next day at our media lesson after getting feedback from our teacher we realised that we need to do it again as the split screen idea made our opening look messy and unprofessional.I have to admit that got me a bit stressed that we may run out of time, especially since we had not re filmed Shardonnay's scenes because of a small issue.

After editing in another lunchtime workshop we got the idea to still go with the split screen but just do it in another way. From this my other media teacher suggested a trailer from the french spy film "Mesrine" to give my group inspiration for how to go about doing it, because of this our ideas for our opening have now been put into perspective.

 I am now more confident about our project as all our shots are completed and are positive that we can do this in time as we will spend lunch workshops and free periods to do so.

ORDER OF TITLES OF OUR TITLE SEQUENCE

Below is the correct order our title will be presented in the film along with all the crew members names. Not all titles are included because we are not big production film, so not every title was necessary (like Music Supervisor). We decided to put or real names in our title sequence considering we are unknown and it is our film, but created fake names  for the crew members even though we did everything ourselves.

Production Ident- Area 51 Productions

Distribution Ident-  Big Tweet Films

(followed by names in title sequence)

Production Name - Area 51 Productions

Distribution Name - Big Tweet Films

Film Title- Sistas

Actor 1- Bernice Mulenga

Actor 2- Grace Moulongui

Actor 3- Shardonnay Hinds

Casting- Jenny Irish

Costume- Abigail Green

Music by- Mark Fuller

Edited by- Sophie Douglas

Production Designer- Bella Dela Cruz

Director of Photography- Benedicty Sukama

Executive Producer- Sheldon Roy Lee

Written by- Adeline Jonai

Director- Camille Jean-Marie

ROUGH CUT FEEDBACK

FEEDBACK :

The split screen was an idea we planned to do from the start but, having seen how our shots looked on split screen made our film look 'messy' and 'confusing, which is not what we want at all. Also one of our characters scene was too dark due to a filter accidentally being on when we were shooting and as stated on another blog post we will redo the shots, as it just makes the clip look very dysfunctional.  

WHAT WE WILL DO NEXT:

On a whole our shots are clear and have good lightning even though we have some minor troubles that will be fixed. We have decided to not have split screen throughout our film, as it was confusing and also the shots for each character were too long or short and so they would end at different times. We will not scrap the split screen idea completely, we have decided to have a split screen put with a different approach.

ROUGH CUT

EDITING PROCESS

Sophie and Shardonnay are in the editing suite finalising the rough cut.

They attempted to make the whole opening a split screen of all three characters at the same time, however we were told by our media teacher that this did not look professional and it was "messy". This means that we will have to spend more time in the media editing suite in order to change the opening to a match cut of the different characters.

EDIT SO FAR: FIRST SCENE

At this point, we have the first scene of our first character(the hood rat) almost fully edited, all that is missing is the background music. This will be added when we have completely edited the whole film. For now this is a preview of what has been done ...

ON THE SET - DAY 3 VLOGS

BEHIND THE SCENES

ON THE SET - DAY 3

BEHIND THE SCENES: RE TAKE OF SCENES

After reviewing our footage, we realised that some of the shots were quite dark, maybe too dark cut and edit. This meant that we had to take out the equipment (camera & tripod), but this time we had to take out an extra light, on another day in order to get better footage.

Grace at the top of the stairs, waiting to be filmed

Sophie filming Grace from the top of the stairs with the light at the top of the camera

ON THE SET - DAY 2 VLOGS

BEHIND THE SCENES/ BLOOPERS