Technical Skills Learnt

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

Blogs: During constructing this media product we were given the oppertunity to explore blogging in order to upload, organize and share research and planning ideas, alongside offering oppertunities for audiences to interact and experience our work through a range of media: film, audio, text and images.

This was my first encounter with blogging. We used a website called Blogger in order to create our blogs, display and record our work. I feel that this style of work had both benefits and drawbacks. Firstly blogging was beneficial as not only did it allow me to access my work at all times, both from at school or outside of school, but it also provided a more organized and effective way of presenting my product and the process by which I achieved the final product. For example, because a blog is a multi-media experience I have been able to upload and display my product through the editing process, from the first incompleted version, right down to the refined final product, allowing audiences to witness the development of editing skills and the effect different editing can have over footage.

The only issues I had with this style of work was the re-occurance of technical problems with Blogger and other websites used to contribute towards the presentation of our blogs such as SlideShare.com and Youtube.com. On several occassions we were unable to upload, display or complete work because of faults with the websites being used, problems that we would not be faced with if we were to use a more traditional form of presentation, such as pen and paper. Though in saying this, I do not feel that the product and my work would have been as effective and interesting to audiences had it been presented in this way.

IMovie: Although I had previous experience with the software I feel that my understanding and editing skills have improved and the creation of this product had provided substancial oppertunity to develop my existing skills. I have learnt to refine trimming clips and to use minimal effects and transitions for a more professional effect.

Garage Band: In order to create the voice over required for our opening two minutes in order to provide audiences with a better understanding of our product we had to use the Mac application Garage Band. Similiarly to Blogger, this was my first encounter with the software. Although finding it difficult to use and understand initially, I soon got the hang of using the software with the help of group members and we produced an effective and successful piece of audio that contributed greatly to our product.

Audience

Who will be the audience for your media product and how did you attract/appeal to them?

Firstly, before deciding upon what audience we were going to target we had to take into consideration the classification and target audience's of films previously analysed during research. Brit Grit films are most commonly rated an 18 by the BCB (British Classification Board) because of strong language, "impressionistic bloody violence", "hard drug use or reference" and "graphic sexual scenes or references".

For example the opening two minutes of Green Street involves an extremely violent and agressive fight scene, whereby we see characters attack one another with heavy objects, such as bins and telephone boxes, before ending on one man glassing another, understandably giving it the 18 classification.

An exception can be seen in Rock 'N Rolla, which is rated only a 15 due to "pervasive language, violence, drug use and brief sexuality" -taken from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1032755/

These norms therefore influenced our film and therefore our target audience. Our film is aimed at males between 18 and 35, targetted mostly towards male audience members because of the football themes shown and violence. We also understood audience members over 35 to be unfamiliar and uninterested in the themes explored throughout our film, believing that they would be more interested in informative, mature films such as The Krays.

Although, we have made attempts to challenge the usual target audiences of mainly men by exploring more emotional themes and moments between the two main characters which will hopefully appeal to women audiences more as women have a tendency to find interest in films such as Rom Coms or Romance films. As well as the usual ongoing displays of violence and rivalry between gangs that will attract male audiences, we have decided to add a more personal and emotional storyline too that will appeal to female audiences, who prefer subtance and emotion, not just an exciting spectacle of events.

Representation of Social Groups

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Use, Develop, Inform Conventions

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

Our choices for musical accompaniment for the opening two minutes of our film included:

Fast Fuse- Kasabian

Grounds For Divorce- Elbow

Living For The Weekend- Hard Fi

Here you can see a comparison between our opening two minutes and the opening two minutes of another Brit Grit film and the similarities between the musical accompaniment and use of sound:

Our film:

Rock 'N Rolla: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EL4SALjhcWE&feature=related

(Presented as URL as embed code was disabled)

Comparison to Preliminary Task

Compared to your preliminary task, how much smoother was the organising, filming and editing of your finished production?

Finished Film

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zngfv8sIuf8

This is the final version of our project, I posted copies of the film onto Youtube and Facebook once again in order to gain some audience feedback. Comments from audience members include: