Q7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

We were given a preliminary task to do which will include various camera shots such as establishing shot, tracking shot, match-on-match action etc. This was done to warm us up for the real task. In the process of it, I learned the basics of camera placements and the way tripod could be placed. As there wasn’t a lot of shooting and a range a camera shots, I found it easy and was quick to shoot it. In the plot, we had a person walking into a room, exchanging dialogues with another person and the camera shot must include the 180 degree rule (reverse shot) within the scene. This was the foundation that I felt when I look back because it gave the concept of how to shoot, how to place your camera and also introduced me to the features of MacBook. This was important in the process of making the final film as now I knew the basics of everything and was unlikely to make silly mistake. This would also mean less time consumption as I do not have to spend much time on understanding how to use each thing.

The mistakes I made in my preliminary task help me realise what I need to improve on. From holding a camera to editing, I’ve made mistakes. Throughout the preliminary task, filming was easy I felt. After viewing the video several times, I found out that there is room for lots of improvement- from steading camera while zooming in to polishing some parts of editing to make it to a professional standard. Learning all these skills meant that when it came to filming the main task, I felt much easier as well as having sufficient knowledge about everything. 

Q6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

In the process of making the opening, we had come across a range of technologies. Even though we were familiar with laptops and internet, we had an opportunity to get more advanced. When coming to the shooting of the film, we were given tripod which we used to steady the camera that we were using. Now, this was new to us and so made several mistakes before getting to know how to use it properly. The first thing we were asked to create a blogger account to save all our media work. It certainly helped me as I found each tasks fun to write and publishing it on the blog. I had never blogged anything before so it took me a while to get used to it. Once understanding how to use it, the pictures and the features was also very striking as I thought I found an interesting way of learning.

We used a Sony Digital Video camera to shoot our film. I had experience of using a digital video camera before but the features in this were different. However, it never took us long to understand how to use it. To support it, we had a tripod which made things easier for us, for instance; making the camera steady.

The other thing we came across was an Apple Macbook. Now this was completing new to me, I never used a Macbook before and it was crucial to have known how to use it because it was important in the process of editing. However, with sufficient support and also practice I was able to explore many new things and had understood the technique.

Lastly I have to list the use of Adobe program called ‘Fireworks’. This really helped in the production of our film as to various aspects. We made a logo for our production company using this program and also some of the texts in the titles was made in it.  

Q5: How did you attract/address your audience?

In a gangster flick, one would know the ingredients of how to attract and address the audience. In our film, we wanted to produce a film which is rather realistic to the audience and could be eligible to relate it to their own lives. There is a strong message in our film as any gangster film would have. We tried to point out the type of circumstance a guy with this sort of lifestyle could end up in. In the world gambling, we witness the people who are successful, however the people who struggled are been left out into the dark. Money brings power but it kills peace. It could bring wealth but if not handled properly, it could be tragic. By making this film, we expect to have made an influence in the younger generation on how to lead their lives. In the scene where the character “Breasy” gets attacked, we had a part where he plays Xbox 360- this could influential as many could relate Xbox to their own lives, this game console has had an impact on this particular age group and gender.  

Attracting the audience mean that you must have interesting camera shots and ankles to keep them involved, even lighting plays a big part so does sound effects. Our initial recording was in the day light which later proved to be the wrong sense as it would not help in creating the type of mood we want our audience in. so we chose to shoot at night as this could well suit our topic. It also changed the atmosphere which led to the sort of mood we wanted to create. We included a variety of camera shots such as zoom, bird’ eye view shot, point of view shot etc. Although the two types of shots we mainly concentrated on was low ankle camera shots and close ups. This was to create intensity and also keep the audience aware of the character’s feelings.

In order to attract the audience, we needed to make a film that they would love. The way we could do this was by laying out a questionnaire. We also told people about it and even getting Facebook involved- getting people to comment on our posts within our friends circle. From the feedback, we understand that most people who would be interested in the film would be aged between 15-25. There are also different aspects in a film which a viewer shows interests to:

After the viewing of our film, we decided to get some reviews on it. For this we made a questionnaire which included questions such as:

What genre did you think the film was?
What age group do you think it’s targeted towards?
Did the characters play the role of a black stereotype well?
Would you like to watch the ending? If so why?

In the feedback, it proved that our audience was able to identify the character successfully and the involvement of the characters in each scene. However, they were a bit unsatisfied with the ending, creating confusion as suggested from the feedback we got about ‘Beasy’s’ feeling- some thought it was a flashback when actually it was an illusion that he was thinking of.

Q3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Our film ‘Snitch’ was a low budget British film which did not have many choices in the area of distribution. However, the screening of our film could be ran in a film festival and could take off from there and end up in cinemas (VUE, Odeon etc.) or be even sold globally in stores like HMV or Blockbuster as DVD’s. If we look at films like ‘The Blair Witch Project’ which grossed around $240 million worldwide was a $60,000 budget film. In case of our film, we had to look for best way to promote our film, in a way which could benefit the film further. Self-promotion was the best pick out of the limited choices. We planned to seek help from a good distributor such as ‘Indi Film Distributions’ which would then grab us some attention. In our film, we demonstrated ideas which show technical abilities, for example; editing, special effects, as so expects our film to be a big success.

An alternative way of promoting our film would be through internet as spreading our media production on websites such as www.facebook.com which is arguably one of the most active social networking websites, www.youtube.com would be another website we could use to promote our film as it would contain our film and can be accessed by anyone in the world, watching and posting their views about the film. Adding flesh to bone, I could also make DVD’s or CD’s and sell it in a small market, it involves giving a few for free and if the film gets good word of mouth which I believe it can, we then have a chance of having potential customers who we could sell it to. 

Q4: Who would be the audience for your media project?

Our film is targeting people who are15-25 years old students/working people of mainly African/Black race, both genders because this is said to be the average age of gangster/crime fans. This age group will be the secondary target as well and will be well challenging for us to attract. The reason for settling to this age group would be the genre of the film as it only appeals to younger generation. However we expect a wider audience in terms of the plot we have and also we depend a lot on mouth publicity. Our film will be classified as a 15+ certificate, affecting the young teenagers. The target would be attract both gender as I came to know women are also interested in gangster movies and some may even come to experience the crime scenes.

The type of people we are looking for are those who are a bit rough, free and careless in their lives, aggressive and who experiences the darker side of life, also who generally have a taste for gangster/crime films. We feel that they can make this film a big success as they can really get involved in the film, expressing their feelings and challenging their minds.

Gangster films are easier to make as it doesn’t require an awful lot of location- fly to a different country. However placement of the camera and the lighting are few of the important things that you may need to consider when making a gangster/crime film- take it from my experience. As I am a fan of gangster movies, I know the essence that we may need to add in order for our film to click to the audience. I also think people who generally got a taste for these movies would love our film and be well satisfied. Along with the lighting and camera placement, I also feel the visuals and sound are going to get your heartbeat higher and keep you tightened in the jaws of action.

The theme of the story will be lives in the streets, especially in a black livelihood, and by doing this we have innovation and thus giving it a Unique Selling Point. We researched films revolving around similar themes but could only find a few. Now that we found a few, we started to look at them in depth, so we could emulate them to our film. We considered the importance of the issue and how they handled it.

Although gangster is not a recognisable genre, we’ve classified our film to be crime genre too which makes it highly profitable:

Being both gangster and crime genre (cross- over), “Snitch” targets more audience, being a crime film is more likely to attract a wide range of audience and is the third most popular genre according the poll result above.

Q2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

 Our film revolves around a black livelihood. The lacking in the diversity of the ethnicity was made up by the decision to play the film from a different social group. Straight away in the film, we apply an image of a chav by bringing our main character. In the making of that image, we’ve stereotyped many factors such as age, gender and ethnicity. However we understand the possibility of this offending certain people but we cannot forget that this could attract the film to a wider audience. We thought about avoiding too much stereotypical but felt that this could make the story loose its essence.

Age

•             Young teenagers- Rude character, Ignorant and Arrogant
•             Sense of danger felt by the audience straight away
•             Costumes stereotyping the characters.
•             The costume represents the image of how young teenagers are portrayed in the society
•             Clothing streetwise emphasis hood lumps
•             Baggy jeans, hoodies and straight peak hats

Ethnicity

•              Black/Mixed Race/Arab
•              Stereotypical views of how a black guy is treated, by this meaning that he is a criminal or a crooked character.
•       Afro- Arab
•             How life is tough for a black guy. Maybe relates to the way he is brought up?
•             How it leads on to be careless about life and be mentally weak

        Here are some of the pictures that were taken in process of shooting:

Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The film title we chose was “Snitch” which we thought would give a clear indication of the film’s genre, namely gangster. The opening sequence conforms to the conventions of a gangster film through the use of dialogue, costumes and location. Films like “Adulthood” and “Good Fellas” both use violence as the convention within the gangster genre. The other basic factor that possesses the plot would be the dark lighting which also links to conventions of gangster films. “Snitch” shows intimacy to the genre used in these films as it also crosses through a whole lot of violence/action scenes. We developed from our ideas from these films when planning violence in our film. We were highly influenced by the sequences in both of the films and emulated some of the ideas we could possibly show in our film. Adding flesh to the bone was the use of camera ankles which drew the attention of the audience into the action, it was effective in heightening the viewing experience.

The conventions of real media products influenced us in many ways to achieve our targets. 

http://cheneymediatomg.blogspot.com/2011/04/what-should-we-achieve-in-opening.html

The forms and elements of the gangster genre we looked at: http://cheneymediatomg.blogspot.com/2010/11/elements-of-gangster-films.html

Existing media products which inspired us: http://cheneymediatomg.blogspot.com/2010/11/list-of-gangster-films.html

http://cheneymediatomg.blogspot.com/2010/11/identifying-genre-elements.html

We've had a chance to look at many gangster films which influenced us in making our opening sequence. In the case of violence, the opening sequence from 'Good Fellas' was much inspired which also enabled us to wider thoughts in process of making our own opening sequence. Other factors such as lighting, costumes and locations were fairly easy to choose and forms were made easy by the existing products. 

http://cheneymediatomg.blogspot.com/2011/04/our-opening-sequence.html