- In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
- How does your media product represent particular social groups?
- What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
- Who would be the audience for your media product?
- How did you attract/address your audience?
- What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
- Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
With the evaluation, it will allow us as a group to be able t see what might be changed to the media production so that it makes it better in quality and able to change it to fit for the target audience.
Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?
To be able to distribute our media product to a more mainstream audience, we would have to gain the backing of the major distribution companies who have bee known to create major blockbuster films, for example, Universal are less likely to produce and distribute our media product as our production does not suit to what a more mainstream audience would want as these types of audiences would more likely want to watch a media product which has major special effects and big budgets as these are what gains people's attention to go watch films. With most of the major film companies like Universal and Paramount, they are mostly American which would like to produce films which would make a bigger profit to be able to gain better audiences and most of these companies integrate many different companies to gain even more profit, for example, Universal bought the British distribution company Working Title which is now able to gain $80 million to be able to create films to be able to gain a better profit, films like Hot Fuzz. But, even with more niche audience film companies like Warp integrate companies to be able to distribute their films to a wider audience like Warp X which is a music company which distribute certain film's soundtracks which have been included in Warp's films. For us to distribute our film to a wider but more niche audience, we will use a small British company which would cater for these audiences as our production caters for these types of audiences.
Question 4: Who would be the audience for your media product?
Question 5: How did you attract/address your audience?
To be able to attract our target audience of 15-24 year old cinema goer demographic, we created relatable characters that the audience may see as direct representation of themselves and this representation will be able to direct itself to many different sub cultures in the teenage social group which has many different stereotypes, for example, our production used two different sub cultures of the "geeks" and the popular people which can be seen in the teenage social group.
Another way which we would be able to attract the audience is by creating events within the media production which different groups within the social group can relate to, for example, most of the target audience are in their lives experiencing some of the events included in the media production in their own lives. As our media production may not suite some of the younger audiences, we will try to attract a more sophisticated and mature audience by using more mature themes like what many families may experience.
Overall, the niche feel to the film will be able to attract a lot of movie goers as it is an unfamiliar concept to what they may have seen before in a more mainstream production.
Question 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Throughout the creation process of making our media product, we have had to learn a lot of information in how to use certain technologies to be able to get the best media product we can create by using different gadgets which can give a different insight of creating and editing our media product. To be able to film and edit our media product to the best of our abilities, we have had to learn many different skills to be able to pull off the production and editing phases so that the production can be represented as being a real and authentic media product.
Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
To be able to challenge some conventions of the coming of age genre and even most mainstream films is that the stereotyped "geek" character in most films is represented as being intelligent, bringing examples from many mainstream films like Spiderman's Peter Parker and even some television characters which have become cult characters in many niche comedies in Britain like Maurice Moss from The I.T. Crowd where this character is known to be highly intelligent but this is contrasted with his very stereotyped "geeky" and very quirky nature. However, with our main character, he would be represented as being quite intelligent because of his "geeky" appearance however he would be the complete opposite to what the conventions of media films as he would be represented as no way near being intelligent maybe even below average as most people who would be represented as being smart are even less likely to act up to that expectation and that is what we are trying to get in this media product.
The title for our media production could adhere to the coming of age genre and the conventions of real media products as it is seen as a play on word to the main characters real name Matt Dale, as our media production is meant to be quirky and quite strange, the title does not challenge conventions in that way however, in the mainstream audiences, they would not expect title which would be a play on word to the main character of a main character in a niche film as it would not really be understood by mainstream audiences.
Question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?
In many colleges and schools across the country and even the world, there are many different stereotypes which can be given throughout different social groups. For example, our main protagonist can be represented as being similar to many characters to which you would not want to be stereotyped at, like Harry Potter, with this stereotype in college, the main character would then seem to become an outcast as this label would not want to be seen on you compared to many stereotypical "masculine" characters which may be seen in many college social groups as they would want to show there dominance by giving the stereotypical labels which are given.
The person who portrays the very stereotypical geeky social group type character in our media production is Matthew Dale and his regular appearance can bring many comparisons to many different characters. For example, Matthew can be compared mostly with the Napoleon character from Napoleon Dynamite from not just the physical aspects of the way they look like the very regular and niche appearance can be stereotyped to be not caring or just lazy as both characters seem to not care to make their appearances to be in keeping to the mainstream dress sense, not because they are trying to rebel just the simple fact that they are so unenthusiastic to try, they dress this way. For our media production, we have tried to make the characters adhere to certain social groups to make the audience to figure out what social group the characters they belong to for example, for Matthew's character, we have tried to make it as obvious to the audience so they understand how we have came up for the idea for that character to be included in that "geek" social group.
The second social group which is prominent in many college's are those who will be represented as being in the popular stereotype and those which a mainstream society would be classify as being attractive compared to the "geek" stereotype. We tried to represent the popular character to conform to the stereotype of these types of characters having achieved the status they have being doing something which would be seen to be a big thing and these characters to want to care about their appearances and social life. We tried to use a person from this social group to be able to compare to the other main character to be a complete opposite, with Ryan Ashton, he would be a perfect opposite compared to Matthew's character as he would be the stereotype to what popular character's would be like in real life and in Media products. We compared Ryan's character to one which could be the opposite of what Matthew's character is, for example, with Chris Evan's character of Venom in Spiderman 3, although at first he could be stereotyped as being quite "geeky" as he first works at a local newspaper, through the course of the film, he is seen to become even more of an antagonist and this goes with the stereotype that most popular characters in Coming of Age films would not be seen as the protagonist as it is not in their characters nature.
Question 3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product an why?
Question 4: Who would be the audience for your media product?
Question 5: How did you attract/address your audience?
To be able to attract our target audience of 15-24 year old cinema goer demographic, we created relatable characters that the audience may see as direct representation of themselves and this representation will be able to direct itself to many different sub cultures in the teenage social group which has many different stereotypes, for example, our production used two different sub cultures of the "geeks" and the popular people which can be seen in the teenage social group.
Another way which we would be able to attract the audience is by creating events within the media production which different groups within the social group can relate to, for example, most of the target audience are in their lives experiencing some of the events included in the media production in their own lives. As our media production may not suite some of the younger audiences, we will try to attract a more sophisticated and mature audience by using more mature themes like what many families may experience.
Overall, the niche feel to the film will be able to attract a lot of movie goers as it is an unfamiliar concept to what they may have seen before in a more mainstream production.
Question 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Throughout the creation process of making our media product, we have had to learn a lot of information in how to use certain technologies to be able to get the best media product we can create by using different gadgets which can give a different insight of creating and editing our media product. To be able to film and edit our media product to the best of our abilities, we have had to learn many different skills to be able to pull off the production and editing phases so that the production can be represented as being a real and authentic media product.
In the planning phase of creating the media product, we had the idea by using one of the group members iPhone 4S to create our media product as this would give the authentic feel of having a very niche to product as there are small amounts of films that have been created using a mobile device except for many microwave films which have tried to create the niche audience films by using niche equipment. Another reason why we decided on using the iPhone 4S is because the technology that was given to our disposal at our college did not have a very high quality camera unlike this device, this would mean that our media product would be able to take advantage of the use of other Apple products which we can integrate into our media production like using the iMac's to be able to edit our product. However, the disadvantages of using this device is that there was not a simple way to be able put our media product from the device onto the iMac's without using external memory USB's because these would be able to hold a vast amount of our productions footage without it not draining on the devices memory.
Another disadvantage of using the mobile device is that we could not keep the filming steady throughout the production process because iPhone's do not allow us to be able to use a tripod so we can keep the film steady. This proved very important to the filming stage as there was no possible way to be able to keep using the iPhone to film our production and in the lack of time to be able to complete the whole filming process again, we started to use another Apple product by using the iPad because this product comes with a stand so we will be able to keep the whole filming steady.
Throughout the editing process, we used the iMac which we was able to integrate the filming from both the iPhone and iPad into a software programme on the iMac so we can edit the product to the high quality which we envisioned the product to be when we was in the planning stage. We used software like iMovie and Garage Band to be able to edit and create different effects on the final product to be able to ring out the best of what we saw to make the production to be a niche audience production.
Question 7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
In our preliminary task, we had a set specification which we had to create a short film were there was 2 characters conversing and had to include the 180 degree rule which meant that the camera could not change the view of where the character is. We have learnt from our preliminary task many important lessons which we had to consider with our main production, this would include taking into consideration on many of the films conventions like the stereotypes. In our production, we tried to improve the variety and how we actually produce the shots we used as in the preliminary, the way we put across the film by using the shots wasn't very good and we needed to improve that.
In our preliminary task, we had to test out some new shots which we had not have seen before which means we would have to figure out how to film it to the best of our ability, for example, with shot reverse shot, there are many ways to be able to shoot this but we would have to pull it off in a certain style which matches the previous shot, so if the previous shot showed a person conversing to a second character the best way to make this clear in the second shot is to have a over-the-shoulder shot to show where the character is talking.
In the preliminary, we had only had small amounts of knowledge on how to use the iMac's and it's software so we could create the production to make it seem like it was a real media product. In a way, this then gave us the experience to be able to know how to work the Mac's in the future and how they are correctly used without experimenting with certain effects.
