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Due to compression rates on youtube, our video became out of sync. Our teacher will send you a syncronised copy.

Main Post 12.7

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



For the final segment of my evaluation I have been asked to look at things that could have been improved in regards to both my preliminary task and my final opening product. To do this, I will split the evaluation into three areas: Camera, Editing and Planning.

Camera

In regards to the camera work, my first point would be that we have made a significant improvement in the framing of our shots, below you can see the contrast between two  scenes - one from our preliminary shot, the other from our final edit and see the progress we have made :

The screenshot from our preliminary shows amateur framework setup, for a small amount of time during that scene, all that could be seen was a large amount of headroom. However on the shot underneath, from our final product - there is an improvement in frameworking, the shot shows both a small amount of location and the protagonist in equal light, highlighting the two most significant things about the scene clearly.

Editing

Whilst watching the two videos, I believe as a whole the editing on our final product was much more cleaner, and flowed better than the prelim. Whilst watching the two clips side by side I see significant improvements in the overall looks in regards to the production value, and effort put in to make each clip look like a professional output. The preliminary video was almost entirely composed of diagetic sound, that seemed to alter between different levels, bringing down the quality of the pieces sound. In contrast our final piece had a soundtrack played over the top, giving the piece more quality
Planning


Before any of those areas above could be covered, the stage of planning had to be initiated. Overall i think that this in fact is the most important stage.
Our planning of our prelim was almsot non-existent. It was just a simple case of coming together as a group, and devising our plot and suggesting to each other variations in camera angles that we could use to make our piece better.

Our final product took a much different approach. We were determined to make the perfect piece, which resulted in alot of arguments between peers at the beginning, but our work ethic overshadowed this and we came past it to enter the research stages. For this I researched into other successful films in the specific niche we were aiming for. Detailed storyboards were also made this time around to really justify and put in prespective the plot of our final piece.

While planning we had to pitch our ideas, get feedback from our proposed plot and watched various videos on YouTube to see ways of making a good movie great in terms of editing after our finish product had been filmed.

Conclusion


In conclusion I regard our work a success and the whole process helped me to gain a greater knowledge of the subject.

Main Post 12.6

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

Moodboard illustrating all of the technologies you have used in your production and blog.

Main Post 12.5

How did you attract/address your audience?



A unique selling point (USP) of our film is the dynamic setting and action on screen. Most british films would not feature a high level of violence that our film contains, this is much more conventional in American films, rather than British films. Our idea to use the ending of the film at the begginging is also a unique selling point, creating a sense of mystery around the actions that occured before and attracts the audience to watch the film right to the end to see why these events occured.

Our audience feedback came back mostly positive. The key element the audience liked and responded well to, was the various camera angles used to present the running sequence. When viewing our rough cut, our audience did not respond well to the silence of the opening and the name of the film. Therefore we have rectified these issues.

Main Post 12.4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The target audience for our film is mainly middle aged white British males between the ages of 22-50. As our film is in the genre of crime, I believe that it will attract an older audience as it is for a more mature person as their would be a lot of swearing and violence in the film and wouldn't be for the faint hearted. I believe it will also be more of a film for the working man class, not so much middle class as it is not a the most intellectual film around, however some may still enjoy it and watch it.

I have comprised a fictional person, and have put together a selection of pictures of things that would relate to his life. 

This is George Hanson, he is your average working class man. He works as a builder, doesn't like his job, but it pays the bills. He supports Chelsea and goes to watch them every home game. He enjoys a drink with his mates down the pub every Saturday night. Also likes to go to the cinema with his wife on the rare occasion.

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



Our production company is Kings Langley Productions, and we specialise in crime films. Relapse is a middle age crime film – we have incorporated our knowledge of crime films and the middle age men media consumption to create this niche British film. A similar British production company is Coffee Films. They produce feature and short films. . Coffee Films shoot on film, with a low budget. Like Coffee Films, we are aiming to reach fans of the crime genre, at the same sort of age.

Our film focuses on the lives of men resorting to crime because they cannot get the money- their lives have not been the happiest, and the action is fast paced. Therefore I think our film could attract a Hollywood company used to distributing crime films, because their target audiences, or audiences that recognise their brand name, are similar to ours .

MGM distributed Another Thin Man, The Beast of the City and other crime films. Their target audience is mostly middle aged men. MGM is experienced in distributing to this audience group, rather than teenagers and older women.

On the other hand, Contender Films (distributing both films in cinemas and on DVD)  is a British distribution company which has released similar films to ours. This means that they have experience targeting our audience. Also, as they have recently been acquired by Entertainment One, they have funding available and are linked to other companies which would help them to distribute to a larger audience. 


Main Post 12.2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Main post 12.1

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

After doing research on the crime genre and looking at the films Goodfella's, The Dark Knight and Pulp Fiction, I can see that our film breaks away from these conventions because one of the films has no video footage and all the titles, and the other two have a short bit of footage at the start or in the middle whereas our opening title sequence has the titles mixed in with the footage. The structure of our sequence also breaks away from conventions in the placing of the title, this is shown through the fact that in the opening sequence of The Dark Knight the title is placed at the beginning of the footage, in Goodfellas the title is placed in the middle of the footage and in Pulp Fiction, the title of the film is placed again in the middle whereas in our opening sequence the title is placed at the end of the film. This means that looking at our footage we can see that the structure of our opening sequence clearly breaks away from the conventions.

After looking at how the style of the font and credits is shown in other crime film opening sequences I can see that our film does not break away from the coventions in some ways. In all of the opening sequences Pulp Fiction, Goodfellas and The Dark Knight they all have the titles on black backgrounds, as you can see our opening sequence also does exactly this. Looking at the font in the three opening sequences I can see that they all use an almost smart and clear font, for example Times New Roman, comparing this font to my groups opening sequence I can see that we have stuck to this convention of using a smart font. The colour of the font in our opening sequence is the same as the colour of the font in Goodfella's, the white, which contrasts to the black background however in other crime films including Pulp Fiction and The Dark Knight we can see that they have used bright colours like the bright blue and the bright yellow.

Looking at websites like http://www.filmsite.org/genres.html we can see that crime films are developed around the sinister actions of others, this also happens in our opening sequence as the film revolves around drug dealing and both characters are holding guns as props. When looking at the amount of dialogue in the crime genre I can see that in Goodfella's there is a scene in the middle of the titles with a lot of dialogue, also there is a couple of lines of dialogue at the start of Pulp Fiction and no dialogue in The Dark Knight, from what I can see and what I have read I think that the crrime genre use very little dialogue in their title sequences, this means that as the audience we get more action and less introduction to the characters.

In our title sequence we used a majority of different camera angles as from our research we found that this was done quite a lot in chase sequences. One of the shots we wanted to use was the tracking shot which we found very difficult to use due to limited resources and the fact we had to use a skateboard. We initially wanted to use the tracking shot as it would stick to the conventions of the crime genre, shown in the opening title sequence of Trainspotting. Looking at the narrative enigma in our title sequence at the end we have a slight which character will be shot but by the end of the whole film this will be solved.

The style of our presentation was shot in 4:3 whereas it should have conventionally be shot in 16:9 this was an error on our behalf and if we had more time would have been done properly. In all other crime films I have researched they have all got up beat music with a bit of non-digetic sound underneath. In all the crime films I have researched including Goodfella's, The Dark Knight and Pulp Fiction there is no special effects and the editing is quite fast paced. The conventions of the mise en scene is seen to be quite smart, this is shown in the crime film, Resovoir Dogs where they are all wearing smart suits, we have stuck to this convention as both of our characters are shot in suits.