Carl Francis

13C-PP

Media Studies

Running – Plot Summary

• “Running” is the story of “Shanice”, a young girl in with the wrong crowd. The film shows us a day in the life of a troubled youth, and the one choice that will change her life forever…

Basic Information

• Length: – 4:38

• Target Audience: Males and Females aged 14-21

• Genre: Drama

• Market Segmentation: C2-E

Market ResearchKidulthood: - We wanted to create a drama based around the idea of the daily struggles that youth face. Kidulthood deals with this issue giving a very specific, detailed example of youth and gang culture.

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

Spin: This short film allowed us to get a taste of how to connote a multitude of ideas in a shorter space of time. The film was based around youth so it links well to our product.

http://shootingpeople.org/watch/film.php?film_id=618

Trainspotting: Whilst this film does not refer specifically to youth culture, we were interested in the idea of how to use a voiceover and how to effectively use a voiceover. The opening sequence of Trainspotting gave us an example of how to do this by juxtaposing and intermingling diegetic sound with the voiceover.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koP4O6QAzx4&feature=PlayList&p=5881F2BFCE68FA4C&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=1

Planning

Storyboard: Using “CellTx”, we were able to create a Digitalstoryboard, allowing us to plan our shot types, camera positioning and plan the placement of the protagonists. Even Though we had to change our setting from time to time due to the fact that the location was unavailable (i.e the park was closed), it still helped us to explore the possibilities of our Camerawork. Also the actors we used for the storyboard were either not the same person they would be playing in the film or were not in the film altogether, howerver, we still thought that it was a valuable experience as we were able to get a glimpse of what our film could look like.

Poster Redrafts/Script RedraftsHow we got the red effect in Adobe Photoshop:

1.Image – Adjustments – Threshold

2.Image – Adjustments – Channel Mixer-Move “Red” bar to middle

3.Image – Adjustments – Invert

4.Image – Adjustments – Channel Mixer-Move “Red” bar to middle

5.Image – Adjustments – Invert

What the red effect does: Red represents anger, an emotion which all of our protagonists would be all too familiar with. We decided that it would be best to show the protagonist in red as it reflects her state of mind when she stabs Nicole.

Running – How does it use, develop and/or challenge Forms and Conventions of real

media products?• Typical of genre: The film represents youth negatively (a common

representation in the majority of today’s media). This affect has been achieved by reflecting the stereotypes shown in contemporary media.

• Toderov – Our film does not conform to Toderov’s theory whilst there is an equilibrium and a disequilibrium, we chose not to return to an equilibrium, as we wanted a degree of verisimilitude in our film; sometimes things don’t always work out the way you expect them to.

• Propps character types – Whilst we have studied Propp’s work, we chose not to give our main protagonist a specific type. We wanted an active audience; an audience that would decide for themselves the type of character that Shanice is.

• Use of a female protagonist – different to what we saw in the other products we looked at.

How effective is the combination of the film, the film poster and the film review?

• The common link between the film, article and poster is the theme of red. Red represents anger and hatred, an emotion which our protagonist would be all too familiar with.

Target Audience

• This film would be aimed primarily at youth, both those who can relate to the characters in this film and those who wouldn’t be able to comprehend the reasons why the protagonist would lash out in the way that she did.

What have you learned from audience feedback?

• Questionnaire – Our questionnaire showed us that drama was a popular type of film. Whilst comedy was extremely popular, we realised that a comedy was subjective and as such we felt that it would be much harder to create a product which everybody within our target audience would appreciate.

How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and

evaluation stages?• Final Cut Pro – We used this programme to create the film.• Adobe Photoshop – We used this programme to create our poster• Adobe Indesign – Indesign allowed us to create our film review• Youtube.com – This website allowed us to post our video online• Blogger.com – We used this to record our progress• Surveymonkey – We used this website to get initial audience

suggestions.• Celltx – CellTx was a free programme that allowed us to create

scripts and storyboards which helped us to plan our work• Microsoft Office (Powerpoint and Word) – These programmes were

very helpful when typing up initial suggestions (such as the treatment) and planning our ideas.

Conclusion

• I feel that the final product was an effective and hard-hitting drama. Even though time was our main constraint (with regards to both the length of time we had to create the product and the 5 minute restriction on the length of the film) I believe that we have created a film that would meet audience demands.