MAIN TASK EVALUATIONHollie Tuckwell

Genre - Crime

The genre decided by our group was crime, we chose this as it was what we wanted to do for our main class and whilst weighing up the pros and cons of other genres we found that crime had very distinct features.

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

When producing our main task we decided to follow the same idea as our preliminary task by challenging the typical codes and conventions of the genre crime. Like our preliminary task our victim is young and so is our attacker. When researching we looked at the film ‘kidulthood’ this followed the typical forms and conventions as it shows people involved in drugs and disobeying the law. This helped us to decide to use a girl of who is obeying the law, this adds to the characters vulnerability. We also decided to do this as we wanted to make people aware that something like this can happen to anyone. The victim is also drunk which adds to her vulnerability, this also helps to raise awareness of the dangers of alcohol.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our film ‘case 49’ presents the social group youth through showing the stereotypes of youth. Whilst doing our research we noticed that the two strongest associations of youth is through ‘new technology’ and ‘alcohol’. So decided to show these as our target audience would be able to recognise these features. However when addressing the stereotype of alcohol in our preliminary task it was proven difficult to show obvious signs of the wine bottle in every shot. When filming our main task we decided to take a more subtle approach by showing the victim as drunk through the acting rather than through a signifier.

Another influence that made us want to represent the culture of youth was because we have a very strong association with youth, we thought it would be easy to represent them as we know the way they act, speak and the clothes they wear in order to make our opening as believable as possible.

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

Our attacker has purposely got their hoody up we decided to do this as there is a strong association with hoodys and crime, this is also presented in the film ‘kidulthood’ which shows when all crimes are being committed either a hat is worn or a hood is up. We decided to use the hood rather than a hat to give a sense of mystery to the film. It also puts the audience in the victims shoes as they are also unaware of who or what is behind them. We decided to abide by this stereotype in order to not confuse the audience

What kind of media institution might describe your media product and why?

Like our preliminary task we think that if our film should be shown in ITV1 or ITV2. This like our preliminary task is because all other well known crime investigation TV dramas series are shown on here. An example of this is ‘the bill’ this TV drama has been on our screens for 25years and is one of the most well known crime dramas, this is why we think that our film would be best shown on here as it would mean a strong association with quality crime investigations.

Before choosing the institution we decided to look at the television listings to see what channels showed crime and thriller films, and as a result of this saw that ITV showed most of these genres. We then decided to investigate into the ITV industry further and found that ITV have a large budget. And although the target is for an elder audience, our audience although is aimed at a younger audience can also be quite broad as crime and investigation is normally aimed at a older audience who like to follow and try and work out the plot before it is revealed.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

when discussing what our target audience should be we all had very different ideas , however what we did all agree on was that at the lower end of the age bracket it should be very low, (teenage) the same age as the actors/actresses and that our film is very much based around the idea of ‘youth culture’. On the contrary we wanted parents of these teenagers at the lower end of the age bracket to also watch it as it could help show parents the dangers, parents could als0 spot the youth signs bought up in the film.

We then decided on an age bracket of 16-45 we noticed that this was a very broad age bracket but decided to keep it as we thought that our film would be able to address its content to a wide range of audience, as youth doesn't only affect youths themselves but also the parents.

How did you attract/address your audience?

As a group we decided on many different ways to address our target audience, of 16-45 year olds. This target audience is very wide so in order to attract all ages we had to the issues addressed also very broad. To do this we decided to mix death with action we done this by showing a young vulnerable girl walking home at night on her own, this is a situation which all people young and old, males and females would be able to relate to at some point in their life. So we thought this would be a good starting reference to make. We also hoped that this would make parents aware as well as young people of the dangers of walking home at own at night.

Another way we tried to attract our audience was to make the film as realistic as possible, we done this by using natural key lighting, this is done by street lights and also the moon, we purposely used no other lighting in order to keep the mise-en-scene real. The mise-en-scene was also set in ‘real’ place meaning no set was put up. We thought that this would help to make the audience feel more empathy for the characters as it didn't look staged, this means the audience could get more involved as they would not be put off with the fact that the set did not look real.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?During creating our media product I have learnt a lot about

different forms of technology. One thing I have learnt is how hand held cameras can produce good effects of realism in films, however using it too much can mean confusion for the audience.

A difficulty we found when producing our film was when turning the camera on the tripod it sometimes shakes this meant that we had to re-film that section, this also meant that we had to keep watching back sections to make sure there were no shakes which could ruin the effect or make the film look cheaply produced and very unprofessional.

Another thing we found was whilst filming during the night, lighting seemed to change so filming had to be done quickly and at one point before the sun set. Another disadvantage of filming at night meant that filming was hard to watch when played back, to overcome this problem we decided to film where there were street lights so we could get the best ‘natural’ light source we could without using our own lights to add to effect. We found however that using streetlamps helped with the effectiveness and the realism of our film. One example of this is when the main character is running away the street light is right above her almost splitting the screen in two, this adds to the image of it being late at night.

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

Another problem we faced was at the end of our film and during the credits we wanted the text to scroll in, like a typewriter effect to give it a sense of realism as if a police officer was typing up a case of this murder. This was proven difficult as there was not an option on the programme we where using to do this, so we had to compromise. We decided in the end to have the credits fade in and out using an effect from the programme. But to put the title of the movie we still wanted to use a typewriter effect in the end we done this by creating lots of different frames and adding a letter each time, this took quite a while and a few attempts before we got it right but we where happy with the final effect it had.

Taking all the skills I have learnt and effects I have used if I was to make a film again I think I would definitely be able to put my new skills into practice into making an even better final production.

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

When looking back at my preliminary task you can see a significant difference in the quality of the filming and editing. This is partly down to the wider range of knowledge we had as we researched our genre and film style quite well, but also down the various techniques and shots we used which helped give a much more ‘polished’ effect to the film.

The sound used for our main task is also a lot better, it relates more to the film helping to create tension, where as our preliminary task the music didn’t really help to build up tension it stayed more jolly throughout. We also decided to use non-diagetic sounds, we done this by muting all our clips and adding in music rather than speaking. One example of this is the footsteps in the preliminary task where from when we actually filmed but the footsteps in our main task where edited on.

The final thing i have learnt is when filming a shot try and use a clapper in order to speed the editing process up so you can find the scenes which you know are good quicker. Using a clapper board also means that you do not cut any of the action away. We took this from our preliminary task which we noticed jumped a lot because of this.