IntroductionThe project which I was working on is the two minute opening sequence of a film. In our particular group there was me, Matt, Liam and Brecon and we decided to call our production team ‘Team 69’ and our film, ‘Charlie’. I did not feature in any of the shots which we decided to use, but for a few of the sessions I did most of the filming, especially the later half of the sequence, where Matt, Liam and Brecon were all needed in the footage. Liam played the role of the Brecon and Matt’s victim as they were violent drug dealers. To help introduce our characters into the roles we used a voice over on the opening half of the footage. This was being spoken by Liam, who was our main character, Charlie. He then introduced the audience to the two local drug dealers just before he is knocked out. This creates a clear image to anybody watching the film because if two people just walked into the room and punched him, it would not be clear what was happening and would cause a lot of confusion.
The order that we chose to follow included a clear set of flashbacks and although this interrupted ‘real time’ you still understood what was happening. Using the flashbacks made the beginning of the story clear as you can understand how we ended up in this position in the first place. When the footage does back to ‘real time’ it is not clear to the audience what actually happened during the flashback sequence, but it is still in a chronological order as the victim is still sat in the chair, exactly as he was when he was punched. The sequence starts with a question of, ‘why is he tied up in that chair?’ which I feel is a great start and as you find out; you are still left asking more questions. It is vital to create enigmas in an opening sequence as it makes the viewer want to continue watching the rest of the film.
During our filming, we only used natural lighting, but the way in which the camera and the characters were positioned made this very effective and it was obviously very natural to the surroundings. Afterwards, we added some soundtracks to our footage. The first track was chosen to show sadness and depression and the second track was chosen to show confusion and create an eerie effect, sort of questioning what was happening.
Q1. In what ways does your media product use, develop, or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?The genre of our opening sequence could be classed as a gangster/crime thriller. The reason for it being this genre is because it is mainly based around drugs and drugs users. There is also a lot of the gang culture and violence involved. Our target audience is teenagers and by using a cast that only consists of teens, helps us address this in a better way.
I feel that our product differs from other dramas in the same genre because the teenagers are not only taking the drugs, but they are dealing them and getting involved in all the gang activity too. This is a good mix and it makes the opening sequence more interesting to watch. Although drugs are fairly commonly linked with teens in current dramas, they do not address the dealers as well. Creating this new combination makes the film that but original and this is vital to getting audiences. I think we did this successfully as from our viewer sample everybody understood at least some of the storyline, but none were 100% correct, so they would need to watch more of the film for it to make total sense.
The main idea of an opening sequence is, to introduce the main characters, give an outline to the story and entice the audience to keep watching. I think that our sequence does this brilliantly as a lot of information is given, but not enough for a viewer to get bored as they want to know more.
Q2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?Our media product has a cast solely of teenagers, so we are representing the teen age group. Although the story of drug dealers mainly focuses on the adult generation, we have shown this using teen character.
The costume and appearance that we have chosen is similar to gangster, or chav, which are both stereotypically linked to antisocial violence. It is clear that we have followed the stereotypical look of these groups as our characters are mainly seen wearing clothes such as baseball caps and hoodies. To further create this stereotype we also looked at the body language. When the characters are talking, there is a lot of swearing and the there are very clear aggressive movements, such as the hand movements, running and swinging a punch. Many people see teenagers as violent even though a lot of them aren’t. We have shown the violent side, but over exaggerated it by using all the drug references and beating up with a baseball bat. We have followed a typical stereotype of a teenager very closely and opening sequences do this a lot because it helps the viewer relate to the characters much easier and get a taste for what is going on.
The representation of teenagers actually being drug dealers, in my opinion, is unlikely to happen, although a lot are seen to be taking drugs. Adults could interpret this as though the younger generation is getting more involved with taking drugs and also selling them, as well as brutally beating for not paying up.
From our feedback, everybody knows that the characters are all linked to drugs and 3/5 people pointed out that there are two dealers and one victim. This evidence shows that we have given the desired image and we have done this by following the stereotype. Although we have lowered the typical age of a thus and gang members, the stereotype is strong, so it can be related to our teenage characters.
Q3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?Some institutions which could possibly distribute our product are companies who have produced teen, drug related, or thug type films before. These companies would know what sort of audiences they will attract and how to go about getting their attention to watch it.
One company who would possibly distribute our product is Stealth Films. This company was part of the production team for the film Kidulthood, which we originally listed as one of our influences. I think that Stealth Films would be a good institution as they have produced films of a similar nature before and they are also based in London. For our type of film a British company would probably be best and as they have worked with people of a similar age, showing similar messages they would know how to go about backing and promoting our film.
Q4. Who would be the audience for your media product?The target audience for the media product we have created would be 16 – 21 years old and a predominantly male group. This is because of the amount of violence and drug references, which aren’t stereotypically linked to girls. Also, the cast is male and in the same age group so it would be easy for the audience to relate to. In the film industry, this audience is part of a mass market and if it became a success then a lot of money could be made and this is vital for any film makers as the cost of making films these days is very expensive, even billions can be spent making movies and all that money needs to be made back for them to at least break even.
The fans of other teen and thug type products would also fall into our target audience and I feel that the fan base would be more UK-wide than worldwide. This is because all the cast are British and we would need a British company to produce it etc. The socio-economic status who would watch our film is C2-E and I have chosen this selection as they are the working class people who would be able to relate to the characters much easier. These people understand the stereotype of a chav and the gang culture so it makes it more worthwhile if the person watching the film could understand what roles the characters were playing.
The results from our audience feedback have come back positive. The group we chose to assess our film were largely people from our target audience and they could understand what was going on, what roles characters were playing and the basic storyline. This suggests that we have identified out target audience correctly.
Q5. How did you attract / address your audience?We attracted the audience by using the same age group for the cast, but they act older which attracts the male viewer to identify with them. Males are generally more interested in films about gangs, thugs and violence than girls are so we have aimed our film more at the male group.
The teen characters have taken up more of an adult role than usual and this does nor normally happen in a film which makes it interesting and because of the age of the characters, the target audience can relate to it very easily.
Q6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?During the process of making my media product, many different technologies have been used.
To keep up to date with everything, we used an online blog, listing all our research, preliminary task, props list, story board and final product, among much more. The blog allows us to upload video clips and also scanned images. This is better for us because we do not have to have lots of printed out sheets of paper, which could get lost and also when editing, we just click a button rather than changing the whole thing.
Recording the footage was fairly straight forward, using a video camera. Editing was done using iMovie. I had never used iMovie before, but once you know the features of the program, it becomes easier. This editing program allows you to cut clips, add sound, remove sound, transitions, effects, text and much more. We used several effects during our opening sequence, such as the black and white effect on the flashback and also softening of the soundtrack before it changed over. We were able to make our product look as professional as possible. This software makes altering things very easy, which is good because it meant we were able to experiment with different things before we decided what the final product would look like. At one point we accidently deleted a few clips, but these were restored using the built-in trash can so that we could then carry on editing.
The use of technology has impacted our project a lot. Without some of this software our product would have not even been close to being as good as it has turned out. It would have looked very amateur and very, very cheap.
Q7. Looking back at your preliminary tack, what do you feel you have learnt about the progression from that, to your full product?
I was very pleased with out preliminary task. We used good shots, camera angles and editing and we have only taken these skills further into our final product. In the opening sequence, the last touches of adding music and fine editing means that it runs a lot smoother and is a lot better to watch. Also, in the preliminary tack we showed two people, but never effectively made them into characters, whereas it the final product we have three, clearly understandable characters.
Because we knew how to use the editing software better, we were able to produce a better product. We added effects to shows which made out footage look a better quality. If we had not done the preliminary task all this would have been new and our product would not have been as successful.
Conclusion
I really enjoyed making this product and I feel that it is of a really good standard. I like the editing and how each shot follows on from the last very smoothly. I also think that the use of the voiceover works wonders as it explains a lot and means that we don’t have too much character dialogue in the first two minutes of a film.
Obviously there are going to be weaknesses of the product and I feel that our main one was the time management. We had a lot of filming to do in the last four weeks and if we had planned our time properly then we wouldn’t have had the problem of rushing the last few sections and instead we could have done some finer editing to make the final product even better.
If we were to make the full film then it would go back to the beginning of the story. The lift of Charlie would be shown and then the viewer would understand how he got into the mess of drugs. The film would end how it started, and refer back to the opening two minutes, but all the questions would be answered and there would be no more enigmas.
