Media Coursework

Introduction For my project I decided that I was going to make a

opening sequence to a film. So as a group we decided on what type of genre we wanted our opening sequence to be. My role in the group I found was organising the group and also setting people task’s to do and also accomplishing task’s myself. Whilst we was filming each person had different task’s to do, for example me, Louis and Joel were the main characters in our film whilst max was watching over the camera.

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

products?The genre of our opening sequence is a paranormal thriller. We

decided to make it this type of genre as when we tried to make it a horror we found it a lot easier with the materials and sources we had to make it a paranormal thriller rather than a horror. I believe that our opening sequence challenges fulfils the requirements for an opening sequence as we believe it grabs peoples attention straight away with the running scene also in this scene we identify the main characters with quick close up shots of their face which makes the audience realise who its about. Also we set the location and timing of the film as we see the house and the surroundings which is the main location for the film.

This is the house where our opening sequence is mainly set.

This is the alley where the running sequence takes place.

This is where they run out of at the start.

This street is the one which the boys are walking down when they are filming themselves with the camera.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The social group we are representing in our opening sequence is young people but also criminals. The image of the young people we believe is correct as the costumes they wear are common of young people nowadays e.g. tracksuit bottoms, a huddy and trainers. We believe that this is correct ideology as older people believe this is young people and they consider them as young thugs and that's why we have them robbing a house and running away. Also the way the boys speak its the language people expect from youngsters like swearing and slang language.

We believe the lighting we had was perfect as it was dark the main part of the film which helps set the mood for a robbery and break in into the house in which they go and it is night time and it is believed that young people are out at the night time in there groups or gangs. We believe as a whole we have done well and achieved what we have wanted in making the boys the stereotype in which they are perceived in today's world media. The audience responded the way we wanted them to in our feedback as we know that they have seen the boys as young thugs and that they do fulfil the stereotype of young people today.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

We believe a company such as stealth films would be a good company to distribute our film as it has had recent success with films such as kidulthood which we believe is a film with a similar genre to ours but ours has a slight difference as we have made it paranormal by adding in a mystery thing in the house that the boys break into. We believe this company would be a good choice as they have the experience in distributing this kind of product and they have the experience in distributing it to the audience that we are aiming for.

Who would be the audience for our media product?

For us our aim was to attract the audience of young people such as 15-25 year olds. We have aimed for the people this age that are interested in the genre of action and the paranormal genre. We where aiming for the British youngsters with a social economic status not at the top of the economic ladder. We believe that this would be a wide range of youngsters in Britain and as the film would be done on a low budget they would appreciate it and would be able to see themselves in the film and be able to apply themselves to the film.

How did we address our audience?First of all we set the scene with the boys running out we believe this causes

an enigma at the start on why they are running out of the house and panicking, then the audience realises that they have robbed something and understand why they were running. Then there is another question unanswered at the end of our sequence and it is what is the thing that took one of the boys, we believe this is a good cliff hanger at the end of our opening sequence and it is exactly what we wanted to achieve during our opening sequence.

We have got a time of day in our film as we can tell its night time due to the lighting as it is dark and very clear it is night time.

We built up tension and suspense as the boys where entering in the house up to when one of them had been taken this was caused by one the lighting but also the music which we used to create this tension.

What have I learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this

product?During my time doing our opening sequence I have learnt a

number of things such as just using i-movie and being able to create a opening sequence for a film on it and also being able to import things from the video camera onto the computer and putting it on i-movie and being able to cut and changethings such as fading things in and out of our opening sequence, also applying text onto the shot.

Also I have learnt about blogger and blogging things and also being able to upload onto the blog such as our opening sequence.

To get our audience feedback we have filmed them being asked questions and getting there feedback verbally

Looking back at our preliminary task I believe we have improved a tremendous amount. Such as things like cutting from shot to shot it is much more fluent in our opening sequence than it was in our preliminary task. Also we have used the effects to better use in our opening sequence not making it look amateurish like we found our preliminary task ended up. And that was our main aim for our opening sequence to not make it look amateur like.

Preliminary task

Evaluation For the making of our opening sequence I believed I helped a lot

during the making of it, such as helping getting people doing jobs and also in the filming side of the film helping set up the shots and directing the people and how they should be acting.

There are a number of things we thought we did well at in our film such as the video camera effect on our opening sequence, and also when we had the white noise effect on as one of the boys went missing and the camera was dropped I believe these effects where used to great use and didn’t make it look amateurish as we thought it could have done if they were not used in the correct manner.

This is where we got our white noise idea from, our research of films with a similar genre to ours such as Cloverfield gave us the idea to use the white noise and it helped us to put this effect in our opening sequence and use it in the correct way.

This is our film and we believe the white noise has come up great and made our film more interesting and much more professional, I was worried that this would make it look amateurish but when we inserted the effect I was surprised and really happy with the way it had turned out

This is where we got the idea of a hand held video camera effect I believe that this would make our film look a lot more realistic and fit in well as it was meant to be a hand held camera but also it helped the audience get there heads around what the boys had done.

And this is our film and this is how we used the hand held camera effect in our opening sequence. I think that this is a very good resemblance of what I wanted to achieve. The only thing I would change on it now if I could would be adding in the date and time to make it look a bit more realistic and also it would have set the time for the viewers to see.

Overall I believe our opening sequence turned out much better than we first expected as we faced a lot of problems during our time of making our opening sequence.

As I was working in a group it was difficult getting everyone together out of college time as people were busy some nights and others were free also as not all of us lived close to each other it was not the easiest to get everyone together. But we found that when we got together and started the filming as a group we worked efficiently and achieved every task we was set well. Also when we were in college we worked well as a group in doing tasks and also when I set someone a task or someone set me a task there was no moaning and everything got achieved to a high standard as we wanted.

I wouldn't change much in our film really I would only add in that time on the hand held camera to improve it and make it set the time and date for the viewers. But there was one main thing which I was disappointed with and that was the quality in which our opening sequence came out on YouTube I think that this doesn't help our film not look amateurish and as it was a good quality on i-movie we don’t understand why it came out in such bad quality.

Also I would have added in low key lighting and high key lighting if we had the right facilities available to us and more time available but as we didn’t I think that overall our opening sequence has turned out a success and I am happy in how it has come out as we were restricted to certain facilities and time.