Evaluation Notes

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

Used- One of the conventions we used in our opening scene is putting the films title 'Dejection' towards the start (within the first 30 seconds). This copies the conventions of many films, including; Juno, Superbad and 21 Jump Street. The effectiveness of this is that the viewers already know what the theme of the film will be about, this can be from the font, size and even the meaning behind the name. This convention is often used and we thought it would be good for our opening sequence as it helps show the importance of the title.

Another convention we used is our text featured on black screens, to make it stand out and to show its importance. The importance is shown through the text being the only thing on the screen, also it being the complete opposite colour to the background really makes it stand out and makes it hard for people not to concentrate on it. This is used in films like Star Wars, when the producer title and the scene setting are shown.

The final convention we used was the establishing shot, this shot is used to set the scene of our movie and is often longer than the rest of the shots in the opening sequence. This convention is used it lots of opening scenes like; Ferris Buelers Day Off and 21 jump street. We used this convention as the setting shows a lot about our character and this was a big part of the meaning behind our story, that depression can happen to anyone (even an everyday person like Tom)  so you should be considerate to everyone.

Developed- A convention that we developed was the voice over of the character in the scene. We took this conventions from a film called “American beauty”, where the character has a monotone voice over of his death. We used a voice over for a scene in our opening sequence, however we gave emotion to our characters speech through what he said, the way he said it and the uses of pauses to create suspense and tension.

Another convention we developed was the jump cut we used. We developed this by changing the way both shits were filmed. The first was filmed by hand then there is a jump cut to another shot being filmed by a tri pod. The reason for one half being shot by hand was because it was a tracking shot and needed camera movement whereas the other was a still shot so we used a tri pod. We added a jump cut to shorten the length of the scene as the “Passer by” walking wasn't relevant to the opening sequence. We got the idea of using a jump cut from the film space odyssey.

Challenged- There were very few conventions we challenged, however one of these was the first person shot supposedly looking down on the main character. We did this with the “passer by” holding the camera shaking it around, the cameras perspective made it look like the main character was being shaken. This isn't a technique usually used in filming as its not very professional, however it worked for what we needed so we decided to use it.

Another convention we challenged was the use of a long blur. This effect isn't ever really used for this amount of time due to it distorting the whole screen and making things unable to recognise. However we wanted to emphasise the state that our main character was in and to show viewers what it would be like from his point of view. Looking down at our character he appears to be quite peaceful, although this certainly isn't the case, shown through the blur effect.

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our media product represent a few different social groups. Firstly his choice of clothing shows he is from a middle class family which is shown through his branded clothes, however the fact that it is dirty and old show that Thomas has been through some tough times.

Choosing our actor was important as we wanted somebody who our target audience could relate to, this would need to be an average looking teenager who doesn't stand out above anyone else. For this role we chose Henry Low as he fit the role quite well, included he had the right outfit.

The age is also important for our character as our target audience will be mainly people aged around 15 - 17. this was easy for our group to find someone willing to do this as that is our years age range, Henry is 17.

We also chose Henry as he has quite a generic hair style ( short, brown ), making him seem normal and not stand out much. this is good as we wanted to show that even the simplest looking/ most basic people can be affected by depression.

Our character would behave unusually and be quite conserved and shy.he will also be fairly quiet and anti social due to the mental health issues he is going through, through our characters actions is where our target audience will be able to relate the most so it is important that we get this right.

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

The type of media institution that would distribute our opening sequence would be an minor company like film 4. this would be good because our film would have a very low budget and very little recognition after making our film, however film 4 are well known and any movie they distribute will already have a fan base which will guarantee sales in box office without any advertisement from the producing company. Although if solely wanted to make money off of our film and we would use a company like 20th century fox or Warner bros, but our film is based around sending a message to viewers and is more for the use of helping others rather than making a profit.

Film 4 are a well known professional distributing company and have produced films like '12 years a slave' and 'Inbetweeners 2'. These are just two of their very successful films and will give anybody who knows our film is being distributed by Film 4 will be extremely well made.

Although Film 4 are a good company they rely on a low budget when producing and distributing films, so they will have to co-produce the film with a production company we designed our self's. This company is called 'Stonehenge Productions'.

4.Who would be the audience for your media product?

The audience of our product would be anybody, as depression is a huge thing that should be understood by everyone. however are main audience are students aged 15-17 as depression occurs quite a lot during this time and this will be their first experience of it and so will need to know how to deal with it or if you don't have it how to help others around you who might. Our film shows viewers all of the things that could go wrong with depression and how people with it might feel if they are left alone with it to handle themselves. This means that out of all the students aged 15-17 our main target audience are those people who don't suffer from depression, allowing them to help those who do.

Our audience would also be people who enjoy coming of age films and films that are quite personal and emotional. This might not be a very big audience as our film is quite specific however what we would be achieving for our audience is far greater than most big blockbuster films, as they might bring entertainment but ours will bring support and guidance.
  
5. How did you attract/ address your audience?

Character: For our film we needed a character that our target audience could relate to so we chose someone who was around 15 -17. We also made our character to appear as if he was from a bad background. The clothes he was wearing were worn and muddy, however they were branded clothes which weren't cheap, to show the rough times weren't caused by lack of money or bad parenting but that it was caused by mental health and stress. This shows to our audience that this can happen to anyone and that they're not alone. The setting can also be relatable because it is set in an underpass in a small town which isn't anything abnormal and is somewhere that most people with an average bring up would live.

Text: The text we used throughout our opening scene was one from iMovie and we used it on a template that put the text to the left corner of the screen so that it was visible but not the most important thing. We used a different template for the title as this is the most important text in our opening scene and also tells a bit about the film through its definition. The font we used was a bold font which was slightly plain and looked as if it was default, however we did this on purpose to connote how plain and average the character in our film is. This is important as it shows viewers how depression can occur in anybody. The template we used was a plain black background which featured between each shot, this was to slow the pace of our opening scene down and to make it more dramatic and emotional for viewers.

Sound: We used a variety of different sound throughout our opening scene but the main one was the soundtrack used from a website called Bensound (Tomorrow). It is a very slow paced song and is quite soft this is to emphasis the emotion our viewers should have, as our character is committing suicide due to depression. It also links/ cross bridges a lot of our scenes together nicely and gives it a nice flow throughout or else it would have been just smash cuts meaning the opening scene wasn't put together very well.

Title: Our film title is Dejection, although its definition may not be known to many students aged 15-17, it subtly describes the whole film and is related to the main theme in our film. Dejection - noun - a sad and depressed state; low spirits. Although people shouldn't judge anything by its cover we knew that people did, thats why we wanted to use a word that literally meant depression so that when anyone read it they would know what its about and if they were interested then they would watch it.


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

During the planning and construction of our piece we used multiple different websites, software's, cameras and gadgets.

some of the websites that I used to present my research and make my planning more organised and look more interesting, include; Prezi, Voki and Slideshare. Firstly when writing up my research I would use word or power point to make sure all the contents was correct. Then I would paste my research into one of these websites depending on the work i'm doing. 

For example Voki is perfect for task five and the character development as you get to create your own character however you want to and can get them to describe themselves. i used this to create Jason Reitman and have him talk a bit about his life, we also did this for our character Thomas.

I used Slideshare to upload my power points to blogger as one whole slideshow. similarly I used Prezi to upload a slideshow to blogger, however there are endless designs on Prezi making my research look a lot more interesting.

We also used technology during the filming and editing of our opening scene. We could have use one of the schools cameras however we used an iPhone instead as the opicture quality would have been a lot higher quality. To support the camera during the filming process we used two different types of tri-pod's. The first being a normal tri-pod which can change in size quite a lot giving us more possibilities for different shots.

The second tri-pod was a gorillapod which is extremely malleable and allowed us to get low angle shots and shots that were slightly difficult to shoot without being in the shot e.g. Thomas' perspective shot. to connect the iPhone to the tri-pod we had to buy a joby iPhone tri-pod mount.

when editing all of our shots together we used a software called iMovie, This allowed us to detach sound from video, organise clips, shorten, clips, add in names/ text, add in fades between shots and add filters over the videos. I also used Photoshop to create the institutional element for the opening scene. on this software i used tools like; the brush tool, outer glow and the polygonal lasso tool.


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

The first shot is of a character opening the door to a class room. The shot was filmed by hand, so wasn't very smooth. also it wasn't lined up straight and was more of a high angle shot, however high angle shots are used to make the character look weak and this wasn't the case for this shot. The most important error from this shot is that the top of the characters head isn't in the shot, this is usually used to show the lack of importance of the character in this shot, but in this case it just shows poor filming as this character is the main character for the preliminary task.

The second shot reveals the characters face after the match on action, however we continued to film poorly and didn't get the whole of the characters head in the shot. also the cut from one scene to the next wasn't completely in time and appeared to be quite jumpy, which could have been avoided by cutting the second scene down slightly at the start. The camera quality in this shot shows that it is extremely poor and that this is something we will have to change when we are filming the opening sequence.

The next shot was a slow pan shot also filmed by hand, making it look unprofessional and bad quality, this could have been filmed using a tri-pod on one of the tables. This shot was longer than the other shots so that there was a variation of different shot lengths, to show some thought had gone into the filming process.

 The next shot introduced a new character and was filmed using a tri-pod as we had realised the poor quality of previous shots. Fortunately this shot happened to include the characters whole face allowing viewers to see his importance. This was a much more clean/ professional looking shot which already shows progression from when we started. The only other thing to think of is the type of shot e.g. over the shoulder shot rather than a mid master shot.

The final shot clearly showed not much thought went in to the characters facial expression, at times they were lifeless and others smiling. This is something we really needed to think about as our whole opening scene was mainly the characters facial expressions to show his emotions. To resolve the lack of expression through the characters face we had to cut the shots short making it look unprofessional and rushed.

Overall I have learnt quite a lot about filming since my preliminary task, including things like; camera positioning/ angle, character facial expression, the importance of different shots and how they can represent power, the importance of camera quality/ stability and when editing to keep a range of different length shots to keep viewers attention.