Evaluation: Amy Tilley

Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real life media products? (film openings)

For the 9 frames here, the frames are in order in rows. Row 1: Frames 1-3 Row 2: Frames 4-6 Row 3: Frames 7-9.


Frame 1:
The titles start with after the opening scene with an upbeat pop track in the background. The title is introducing the production company, on a black screen. The font is consistent throughout, however the colour changes. The production company is in bold as it is the most important aspect of the title screen. The upbeat music puts the audience in a good mood, and suggests the film will be a comedy.

Frame 2:
The second frame has a straight cut transition from the last scene, and it then introduces the producers of the film. Again the font is consistent and the main part is in bold and the colours change. The titles are basic, and vary in colour.

Frame 3:
In the third frame, the main actor is then introduced as the last titles fly out. The character is shown at this time to suggest the audience she is the main character and has importance in the film. She also would be a well known actor and therefore this keeps the audience appeal.

Frame 4:
The fourth title page is telling the audience the title of the film. It is shown on a black background. This makes the title more vibrant a visible to the audience. A straight cut is then used to cut to the scene of the characters at school.

Frame 5:
This shot is a mid shot of two characters in the film. It shows them laughing in a school environment and therefore can use familiarity to attract the audience. It makes us aware of the target audience of the film is set in a school, and therefore aimed at younger audiences. The actors names fly in to introduce them and use the same font as the beginning of the film.

Frame 6:
A mid shot then shows the confused expression of the main character, suggesting she is new to the school and doesn't yet know what to do, she seems to find it hard to fit in, which is a constant struggle for young girls now a days to fit in with societies norms. She is plainly dressed unlike some of the other people in the class, meaning we can emphasise with her that she doesn't yet fit in. There are three cast members being shown on the screen in different fonts.

Frame 7:
We learn in this scene that she does not know where to sit in her class, as there are many different social groups which she must chose to be apart of in order to fit in. This means that the audience can familiarise with this as this aspect may apply to them. The scene also uses comedy and romance, as Lindsey Lohan finds herself in an awkward situation of sitting and a girl's boyfriend's seat and they start kissing. This adds humour to the scene. One of the supporting actresses is introduced in this scene. Because she is a well known actor the word 'and' is prior to her name.

Frame 8:
The scene then cuts back to the two friends we saw in the beginning suggesting they have some importance throughout.

Frame 9:
This then shows a mid shot of an angry looking man, supposedly a teacher. The titles tell us that the film is based on a book, and that is where the idea for the film came from. We see some humor in this scene, as the main character spills a hot drink over her teacher, this adds humor to the scene and we learn about the character that she is clumsy and unlucky.

 

Frame 1:
The titles start with after the opening scene with an upbeat pop track in the background. The title is introducing the production company, just like Mean Girls. I have not included the production company logo in the influential film analysis, however it did include one, and therefore we followed the conventions of this.

Frame 2:
In the second frame, myself and Lucy tried to match the production companies. This was shown in the Mean Girls 9 frame analysis on a black background with colored writing. We chose to do this as well, expect make the writing white. The music is introduced in this scene, similar to the influential film. It is an upbeat pop track and therefore suggests that it will be a comedy, or a film of good nature. 

Frame 3:
Because in Mean Girls they had two production companies set out like this, one naming the producer, we wanted to include this so it had elements of our influential film within.

Frame 4:
Just like mean girls, the first scene introduces the character. The character is not shown, but in fact her name on a black screen after the production companies had been named. We chose to have an over the shoulder shot of the main character with her name on the scene, because in Mean Girls Lindsey Lohan is a well known actor, whereas in our film they would less likely to be well known.

Frame 5:
Just like our influential film , the other actors are named next. However I chose to skip ahead to name the editors, following the title conventions in our influential film. We used a smaller font to introduce the editors, and then a bigger font to introduce their names. We also changed the colors for each word to fit with our influential film.

Frame 6:
This shot can be used to set the location, as we can see that it has moved to an external shot, and because this is in the opening it lets the audience know that this location will be used for multiple scenes in our film. For mean girls, the opening is set in a classroom and therefore suggests that the classroom will be the scene present for most of the film, which it is because it is set in a school and this is made clear.

Frame 7:
This scene, we see a long shot of Georgia. This introduces her fully to the scene, as we can see her costume and makeup. We tried to make her costume as close to stereotypical teenage girl, by looking at current fashion trends. In mean girls this seems to be the case as she is wearing typical girly clothes, albeit a little bit different as she is dressed for school. We also tried to create the genre through the clothing, because if the girls are dressed like stereotypical girls, like in most romantic comedy films, then it suggests that this too is a romantic comedy film.

Frame 8:
Barney is then introduced in this scene as the two girls meet him at the same time, which is the main part of the story, which adds humor to the scene. This is also in Mean Girls, some humor is added when the main character spills a drink over the teacher, although this is not the same concept it is still supposed to add the comedy part of the 'romantic comedy'.

Frame 9:
The title of the film in Mean Girls is shown in the beginning, however we chose to subvert this and put it at the end, as we wanted to tell the story first so the title 'caught' would make sense. It fits the title conventions of the producers names, a white font with a black background.

Question 2:  How does your product represent particular social groups?

Within our film opening, most of the characters that are portrayed are female. This is because most romantic comedies are centred around females. To represent these female characters, we used stereotypical views that we researched. That is, the characters are fashion conscious and dressed as society would expect teenage girls to be dressed. Our character costumes may differ to our influential film, because ‘John Tucker Must Die’ is an American based film, hence fashion and social expectations may differ.  In despite of much of the cast being female, the whole film is centered around the male character, and him being ‘Caught’, he appears near the end of the film. Barney represents an antagonist, and in today’s society of romance, males are seen to cause heartache and conflict within friendship; of course this is the stereotypical view of males.  Males are seen to be dominated and socially orientated, which is portrayed in our film as there is one male character, and he standing solitary throughout, i.e. Until he meets all three girls and tries to ‘play it cool’. Our film’s target audience is the younger teenagers (13-17), which is when people start to get into relationships etc.  This could mean that our audience can familiarise with the situations we have shown in the opening. The majority of romantic comedies are based around conflicts between relationships, work and marriage, so I felt to create a film for the younger generation, I had to accurately reach out the younger audience using different techniques. We presented age by the type of clothing that our characters are wearing. For example Barney is wearing a beanie hat, which is a growing trend associated with the younger generation. The female characters are wearing flat shoes or boots, nothing too ‘sophisticated’ as this may associated with the older generation of women. However, when comparing our influential film ‘John Tucker Must Die’ the representation of characters may slightly vary, as it is a US based film, and ours is a UK film. They may differ because socialization and fashion is different, another point to consider is the time the film was produced. ‘John Tucker Must Die’ was made in 2006, and fashion has grown and transformed since then.  I overcame this by researching stereotypical teenagers using magazines and other recent UK romantic comedies such as ‘Chalet Girl’. Chalet girls offers a completely different concept, but still focuses on romantic themes. 

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

Here is link to a YouTube video. It involves a voice over of myself detailing what institutions I can use to fund, produce and distribute my film.
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jWNiCoB1y4

Question 4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

This is Gemma Tilley. She is 16 year old and lives in Medway. Gemma enjoys spending time with her friends and going out with her boyfriend. She enjoys shopping with her sisters in places such as River Island, Topshop and Zara. Gemma is a hopeless romantic, and enjoys watching films such as The Vow, The Notebook, Mean Girls and John Tucker Must Die. She prefers to go the cinema to watch these films, and then later buying them on DVD and watching them at home with her friends.

When Gemma is at home, she enjoys watching TV programs such as 'Friends' 'Scrubs' 'New Girl' 'Gavin and Stacey' and 'Britians Next Top Model'. She watches these programmes on E4 and BBC 3.
Gemmas music taste ranges from pop music such as 'Katy Perry' to bands such as 'Arctic Monkeys' and 'The 1975'.

I think our film would appeal to Gemma, as she seems to be a stereotypical girl, who enjoys girly things. If we were to show this at her local cinema I think it would appeal to her and it is similar to many similar films she enjoys watching.

Question 5: How did you attract/ address your audience?

Here is a post for how I researched my audience, so I had a clearly insight in how I address them. I used questionnaires and asked teenage girls of the age 17 to answer my questions:
Note: Please click on this post to enlarge it, as it is unreadable at this size.

This is the link to attract and address video, I created using the 'annotation' button on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9RfMVCyYt4
I had a few problems when uploading this to YouTube, I had to change the video because It wouldn't allow me to upload a duplicate. This means the video is slightly shaky, this does not effect the annotations.

Question 6: What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

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

Here is the link to question 7: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZg9tCRNqVw 

Here is a video created with windows movie maker, I used copy right free sample music from Microsoft. This video includes both the preliminary and main task clips merged together, comparing all the micro elements in both films. The quality of the preliminary isn't brilliant, as the process involved me re-downloading it.