Our final film

Evaluation question 7

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

Our preliminary task and final product are undoubtedly worlds apart.

One of the main contributing factors to this is the timeframes in which we completed them both; our preliminary task was completed inside of a few days whilst our final product has taken us months.

During this time we have gone from picking the first idea suggested and just going out and shooting it completely spontaneously to spending time researching genres, planning out characters, and storyboarding different ideas.

This really helped us to refine our final product whereas we simply did not have time for this with our preliminary task.

Fortunately we didn’t have any continuity errors in either our preliminary task or final product as both were filmed on single days with no major events happening during the filming of each.

Thanks to the time we had for preparation we had managed to create various things, such as a storyboard, script, shotlist and such, which aided us in completing the filming of our final product swiftly; the absence of this was not an issue with our preliminary task thankfully as we needed far less footage and almost everything was improv.

When filming our preliminary task we couldn’t really film extra shots as there wasn’t many that we were sure that we wanted, however when filming our final product we ensured that we filmed way too much and often kept the camera on in-between shots (which actually led to the piggyback shot).

Our preliminary task was also my first experience in directing, and so I feel my confidence was somewhat unmotivating, however by the time we had completed this and our Resevoir Dogs opening re-make I feel that I had adapted to the role well and I can only hope that this is reflected in our final product.

Unfortunately we had to use quite an old camera for our prelimary task with an inbuilt mic and so the image and audio quality left some to be desired. However, with our final product we used a rather lovely Nikon DSLR with a Rode mic, and so image and audio quality was much improved.

Editing was another stage in which we greatly improved; with our preliminary task we only spent a maximum of 2 hours editing, however our final product has had a ton of time put into it editing, with a great deal of refinements and changes being implemented along the way.

Whilst editing our preliminary task none of us had used iMovie before, and so we were learning on the fly; however with our final product we’d had a lot more experience.

Overall I’m extremely happy with the progress I’ve made from our preliminary task to final product and that I have learnt a great deal; the overall quality is far better, the planning was far more meticulous and thought out, the ideas were refined.

I’ve now had the pleasure of directing 3 film openings and helping to edit all three, with which I feel that I have learnt a great deal about film and video production.

Evaluation question 6

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

I certainly learnt a lot about the technologies we were using whilst making this opening. I'll admit I've never done much more video editing in the past than using Windows Movie Maker (fun fact: that hasn't been updated since 2012 and you can't actually download it anymore!) and this project took me from never touching proper editing software to feeling very confident with using it. We used iMovie, which whilst certainly not as advanced as other software such as FinalCut, it was enough to do what we wanted. Being the main editor (with help from Courtney) I feel that I really learnt a lot from the software and found that by the end of post-production I was comfortable enough with it that I had started to colour grade shots, equalise audio, and other little things which help to refine the look and feel of our opening.

When we were filming I did not operate the camera much as I was directing, however I do not feel that this negatively impacted my experience overall as I'm an avid photographer (currently doing a GCSE in it alongside my A-levels), and in fact the camera we were using (Nikon D4s), is essentially the bigger, better, and much more expensive version of my current camera (Nikon D3300); and so the use of the two is identical.

I certainly learnt a lot about directing, however, as this is the first time in which I have directed a project. The main thing I took from it was that even if you're not confident yourself, you need to act as if you are and the whole thing goes by much smoother. I also learnt that some of the best ideas come up during filming, and that it's important to get those few extra shots as it could make or break the final product. For tips and advice on directing I turned back to a YouTube channel which I used to watch a lot, DSLRguide, and hearing everything from someone who's doing what I was about to do felt very reassuring.

Evaluation question 5

How did you attract/address your audience?

As we had elected to have our soldier characters be stereotypical chavs, we had already addressed our target audience of 15-25 year old males and females. This was useful as it diminished the risk of having to add others which may have made the audience to simply think of them as 'token characters'. This helps our audience's engagements to the characters due to their similar ages, and would help them to relate to them throughout the film.

As an independent company we wanted to show our views on gender equality (something which has become more shown in film, such as in The Hunger Games series (2012-15)) through our film. This improves our engagement with our predominantly younger target audience (of which equality is a rapidly improving and talked about subject) and should aid both public opinion of our film as well as our production company itself.

Due to the inclusion of an opening speech in our film opening, it is clear from the start that our film will have a structure and presents to our audience clearly who they will be following and gives a brief overview of the current situation. The father-like figure of our presenter aids us here as it gives our audience someone to look up to and listen to, whilst also being able to view them as a source of humour.

Due to the military focus of our film we are more likely to attract a predominantly male audience; to counter this we ensured that we had more female characters (with one leading chav squad) to attract more females. This helps to attract a wider audience and thus we would in turn gain more profits from the film. The exclusion of the male gaze theory in our film also reduces the risk of patronising female audiences and making their counterparts in our film feel more genuine and equal to the male characters. Later in the whole film there will also be a significant 'top brass' officer, who could be a male or female; male would be more stereotypical however female would help in attracting a female audience and hopefully improving public opinion of our film.

Evaluation question 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our target audience for our film is 15-25 males and females. This is because our film revolves around teenagers within this age group, and so this audience will either be in this age group, or slightly older but still have the associated memories and such fresh in their minds.

As I found in my audience research previously -which was comprised of people almost entirely within this target audience- our target audience is mostly in favour of mockumentaries (although not often able to name many, however it is a relatively rare genre, and so this is not a concern), and many like independent films (more so than I had anticipated actually). This is reassuring as it shows from first-hand data that our target audience likes and is aware of our genre.

With the lower end of our target audience being 15 we were initially concerned about our film being unsuitable for this age range due to the military focus. However, as we developed the storyline and characters we came to the conclusion that this would not be an issue as there is little actual fighting (mostly training, covert ops, or at HQ/barracks) and that any fighting is presented in an extremely lighthearted and humouous way. The fact that our film not taking itself seriously is also useful here as it both contributes to the comedic factor of our film whilst detracting from the potentially negative effects of showing military content to younger people (thanks to this we doubt that the hypodermic needle theory would come into effect).

Evaluation question 3

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

To distribute our film we would use the internet, instead of traditional TV and Cinema. This is because it helps us reach a wider audience (as our film is aimed at a niche audience this is important as it is more important that we reach as many people as possible), is much cheaper than traditional media (as we are only an independent company we need to save money wherever possible and don't have a big budget to spend on a massive distribution company such as Universal, one of the Big 6). We also wouldn't need to have any ties to traditional media sources, and thus being a new small company won't negatively impact us. This method of distribution would also allow us to easily access our target audience -teenagers, as they are the social group known for sitting on the internet all day and so they are the most likely to be the ones to come across our film when we advertise it on social media (our planned method of advertising).

An example of a film which has been heavily distributed is A Field In England (2013), which was made available on various internet-based on-demand video services, such as Amazon video and Netflix.

Our film would be available ideally through as many internet-based on-demand video services available. The most important of these being Netflix and YouTube Movies; Netflix would attract a wider audience who are willing to watch a film however YouTube movies would earn us more money overall (fewer views but much more money per view). These are two of the top internet-based on-demand video services available internationally, and would allow us to reach our target audience.

If we had the funds available we could also create our own website with a built in player, which would allow for our audience to watch the film at the standard price for SD quality, or pay more for a full HD (1080p) video stream, or to download.

Evaluation question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Evaluation question 1

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