Evaluation

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

This is a clip from the urban thriller Adulthood, we see here that two males are facing off. This is a side shot where we can see both characters disputing with one another whilst face to face. This shot is effective as it shows just how tense the moment is. One character is aggressive whilst the other appears to be more passive. I would say that this is a medium shot as you can only see the upper torso and heads of the two men. One of the conventions being used is suspense which is caused by the behavior of the two characters in this scene.  

Our scene is rather similar to this as it involves two characters facing off however in our scene it appears that it is more one sided, which could mean that it is a mugging. Ours is slightly more of a long shot as you can see most of the bodies of the characters. The costumes are similar as one of the characters has more urban clothing whilst the other has a slightly more mature style of clothing. 

This is an ordinary credit to a thriller film, this has actually been taken from the film se7en, the conventions that have been used are the suspicion of threat and the mystery that could possibly unravel in front of the audiences eyes. 

Development is key within a thriller,  with this shot we have taken an ordinary snap and edited it by adding a fisheye effect to add to the mystery we did this by using the simple software, Final Cut Express. as well as this we have blended to shots together this adds affect as it mixes up two shots, which is how a thriller should work as it will confuse the audience and make them think about what could happen and what may unfold. 

This is a shot from Harry brown, we have taken interest in this particular shot as it helps us to express the fact that we have filmed this crime in an area that is not a setting that is typical of gang violence.

Our thriller starts in a rural area that is not typical of violence and gang activity whereas in the harry brown shot we can see it is quite urban and we can see there is a large amount of graffiti.

Individual part- We used cameras in an okay manner to begin with but once we start to think of the right shots to make our piece to build more suspense we started to develop our camera angles. We challenged it by putting in lots of different angle and hoping they would work together instead of sticking to basics. With Mise- en scene we didn't really change much throughout our piece we didn't do much to the locations that we picked to film certain bits of the our work we just really left them how they were as they were fine. We could have improved upon that by maybe adding more graffiti and making it look like a much more unwelcoming place where the man gets attacked. To begin with our editing skills were poor. We developed them by watching tutorials and paying around a lot. We learnt quite a bit more when Sean was moved into our group as he is pretty good at editing and could teach us certain techniques which were very hard to do. We challenged the editing but in our last scene putting a fish eye lens effect on the information about the youths which were all around the wall. To further this we started to layer picture upon picture going across the screen giving off a spooky effect. Our sound was hard to make as we tried many times and failed so we used a website called free play music where your allowed to preview and download pieces of music for free but its not copyright as the website is set up and designed for things like what were doing. We didn't really challenge it as we just ended up importing a song that fitted very well with our work. But all in all I think our media product came out very well obviously if we had more time  etc etc we could have improved it slightly but i think all in all we did the best job we could and I'm very pleased with what our group has achieved.

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

Average everyday man, middle class guy, around the age of 40. He's just a nice guy living in a small village minding his own business.

A few chavs, around the age of 16/17, probably lower class boys out just trying to cause trouble and harm others that have done northing wrong.

The 40 year old man was presented in a positive way as he is just walking home whilst having a cigarette causing no harm to anyone until he runs into the group of chavs.

The chavs are presented in a negative way as there acting in a bad manner, they assault the old man which implies to the audience that they are horrible youths just out because there bored and trying to make trouble.

The social groups are represented in a stereotypical way as when seeing a man at the age of 40 years old you wouldn't expect him to go out and cause trouble which he doesn't in our opening scene but at the end of the scene there is an element of suspicion because of all the documents on the wall about the youths that assaulted him. The chavs are represented in an even more stereotypical way as all chavs you see are normally not very nice people, always out to cause trouble and harm the innocent just because they are bored. Our opening scene shows this happening exactly.

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

http://poseidonnfgs.wikispaces.com/what+kind+of+media+institution+might+distribute+your+media+product+and+why%3F

This is a link to the wiki of this question, where we have explained our views and opinions.

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

Create a profile of your ideal audience member – considering:

Age: 28

Class: Upper Middle

Gender: Male

Job: Estate Agent

Location: Born and brought up in Romford. He has a slightly rough up bringing but has slowly moved up in the world to now live in the town Bishops Stortford.

Hobbies, Interest and Pastimes: He goes to the gym every now and again to keep in shape, Likes to spend time and playing football with his 4 year old son. He loves going to the pub on a Friday or Saturday night for a good drink with the lads, He also likes to watch top gear as he is into cars a fair amount and drives a Honda civic type r.  He’s a pretty average bloke who was brought up in a slightly rougher background than others but has worked his way up. This is how he can relate to this film as he can see it from the youths point of view it was just a bit of fun.

Beliefs and Values: He treats people how he wants to be treated; He believes in fairness and is finds people who are snobby and think the world of themselves very annoying and dislikes them as he things they don’t realise what some people go through. Values of his are to believe in God and law as those two things make the society a nice and peaceful place to live in and live life to the full as you only get one shot at it. 

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

this is the link to our finished product with annotations
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsInXE4n0Vg

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

Here is a picture of Final Cut Express open with me working at editing our piece. There have been many skills i have learnt on final cut express just by doing this task. Firstly i have learnt how to import and export videos, Cutting clips down so we don't have pointless and unnecessary footage, How to colour correct scenes, How to add effects into our work, How to add in opening credit and place them in the style, colour, size and where ever we want them in our clip. This task has booster my final cut skills in every direction and I'm sure once we have made our music for the clip that will increase my skills to an even further level. 

This is a shot of a website called free play music where your allowed to preview and download pieces of music for free but its not copyright as the website is set up and designed for things like what were doing. I had never even heard of this site before so by doing this task it has improved my skills to look for website and i will definitely use this website again in my next media task. 

This is just a clear shot of a Mac, mouse and keyboard unfortunately this would have been lots of peoples main area where they have improved there skills. But as i use a Mac myself this task hasn't really improved my skills a lot apart from using Final Cut Express and Photoshop that are 2 programs that run on Mac's which i don't use at home. So this allowed me to help Sean and Tom whenever they came stuck on a Mac as I know my way around them fairly well.

Here we have a camera on a tripod. I hadn't really done much filming like this before I started this task so I've improve my filming and setting up skills as i never really knew how much of a difference a tripod made as i always thought sometimes you could get away with doing half handheld if you had a steady hand but a tripod just does it all perfectly. By doing this task if I was now asked to go and film another groups work for them i would know exactly how to set it all up, which shots would look best and how to film it in a professional manner.

This is a photo of another website 'Blogger' that I hadn't even heard of but was introduced to when starting this task. It is a very good, quick and fairly easy site to use to keep an up to date blog which we need to do for part of our coursework. I had never really used any site like this before but after using this one if I ever want to keep another blog I will definitely use blogger as it is a very good but also professional site to use. The skills I have learnt from using blogger is how to post, label, alter posts, and give a blog a professional layout and design.

This is clearly a shot of youtube. From this task it has made you more aware on how to use youtube and find the clips you are looking for much quicker than you would have before starting this task. As when doing this task you need to find many youtube clips, openings and scenes of films therefore when looking for these all the time you become quicker at searching what you are really looking for and finding it. This skill will stay with me forever as everyone one uses youtube now and again.

Here we have a photo of garageband. We haven't actually finished our piece of music and added it to our work as of yet but when creating many different beats and pieces of music we have used garageband a lot of the time. Therefore I have improved my music developing skills because before we I started this task i had never really made more than 3 songs on garageband so it was nice to improve my skills and get advice from sean as he also has a bit of an idea how to use this program. 

Here the picture is quite faint but it is a photo of photoshop. Before starting this task i had no idea how to use photoshop. When creating our logo Tom who is a bit of a master in this department helped me out and showed me how to do most things on it. Now I understand it much better and can do things on it which I could never do before like layering pictures on top off one and other and editing the colour of them so it looks like a more professional standard. I improved my skills in other areas on photoshop like export at a certain size but the main one was layers and editing the picture.

This is our Facebook page when we just started out with John in our group who left and has recently been replaced by Sean. We didn't really use a lot of facebook when researching, planning and creating our work as we didn't find it as useful as other groups. Most things are on facebook but we just didn't find it that beneficial when trying to promote our company and gain feedback. We found it easier to use other source like websites to research rather than facebook.

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

This is our preliminary task with the annotations on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gv6fN6LgepE