Evaluation

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

For our opening sequence we used conventions that any rom-com use, except we changed and developed this to give our own unique style. In a rom-com/romantic comedy you have to make it obvious who are the main characters, as they will be the main focus of the film and you will be concentrating on them the most. Naive City is the title of our film and we think this works really well for a Romantic Comedy because at 17 you can be very naive about love, and the city to me can be a romantic place.

We pretty much knew how we wanted our opening sequence to be, and as a group we decided that doing it in split screen was the best thing for it, though none of us have ever used this tool and we were slightly scared it would look like a thriller or a action film, but this is what we really wanted and I’m glad we used it. In most Rom-Coms you would expect to see amazing sunshine, expensive cars and large houses; ours has none of this (not by choice) and looks very urban, the weather is quite grey and the houses and cars are pretty average, though for our generation it is more realistic. The titles took some time as we had to decide what we were going for, so again we thought of the genre and who would be watching it and decided to go with a traditional title that are very gender specific; we decided that the colours would be blue-boys and pink-girls. This matched very well with the film and we very much like it. We then as a group decided on the transition the title would appear as, we chose one that made the titles appear on the screen and fade out, again we liked this and as a group really could see it coming together. The song was the main concern for the title sequence and we became very frustrating as we couldn't use the original song as there is copy write restrictions and we were in a bit of despair if we would find another song that would work so well like the original one would, so as we started to look around for solutions we thought to record our very own version of the original song; at first we were worried as it was different but after a few tweaks we think it fits with the regular codes and conventions of any Rom-Com. Our version of the song we had a soft guitar riff playing over and over again and It personally creates a happy vibe for our opening piece. This overall developes the codes and conventions, I think.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

teenagers would be the particular social group, we placed the teen element using the two main characters getting ready on a typical morning also by setting up these enigmas like a guitars in the corner and photos of friends on the wall, though we were careful not to offend anyone as we want the people to relate to it. The people that will relate to it the most would be in the age bracket of 15-19 and hopefully will relate to the two characters, whether it is similarities, to themselves, clothes, whether it be saying they like the outfits or places they have been that we have shot in; we feel as a group that we have made it very relatable.

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

This decision was rather easy as we knew that Nickelodeon would be best distributor for our film. The reason this decision was made is because Nickelodeon has distributed alot of rom-com romantic films like, Angus Thongs and Perfect Snogging, Yours Mine And Ours, also most of Nickelodeon's films are targeted for teenagers so this was a easy choice and we feel that it was a good one as it suite our genre and target audience.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

We decided the audience for our film would be 12-19 year olds, the reason we decided upon this age group is because we felt we wanted teens as well as young adults would want to come and watch our film. We also decided on this age group because we didn't want to create a film that we wouldn't go to watch so we catered it to our own individual taste.


How did you attract/address your audience?

To attract our audience we wanted to really relate to what most teenagers are like and what they do, so through our two main characters we thought of starting the film with them getting up to start a typical day, as most teenagers could probably recognize part of themselves in the two main characters and how they get ready, also we've used places most common to teenagers e.g. Shopping Centre’s and taking public transport (bus) hopefully teenagers will be able to address this situation and really see themselves.


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

As I mentioned earlier we used split screen and that none of us have used this tool before, well that was called Final Cut Pro, and because none of us had used this particular editing programme before we were overwhelmed and some of us found it frustrating, but we soon got the hang of it after edited a few scenes together. Another programme I haven’t said that we used for the first time was, music maker, although none of us used this programme we found it rather easy also it took us the shortest amount of time and it only required one of us to manage everything and it helped us allot to record the song for our title sequence; although I didn’t edit as much as others I learnt that too many people trying to do one thing can be very difficult and also how to use new programmes.

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

Preliminary task has shown me that storyboarding and organisation is very vital in producing an excellent media product. The task itself took us a hardly any time at all though i would say we underestimated what lied a head in completing the other larger part of the coursework as we really relied on a lot of things maybe too much, hopping no one would interrupt the footage, and that everyone would arrive on time and that the actors would be ready and nothing major would come up to ruin our plans, also the weather could of ruined the entire thing. The Mac suite was most day over booked and we would have to change our plans entirely, though shockingly we managed to everything on the dead line still leave us time to change things if needed.

I am very happy of the overall sequence and though we did have our differences in the group, I think we worked very well and really spent time and allot of effort to make a title sequence we can be proud of.

FINAL opening

This is our final cut for our open sequence, i like the out come allot and i really think it fits to what we wanted, though i think the music is a little distracting it still fits in with all genres that are most likely to watch it.

Audience Feedback

we screened our opening sequences on the 24th of February in our media class and then to our family and friends; the audience feed back will determines what we need to change or that is good and can stay the same.

comments people have said.....

Balinda Raji: "looks good guys, but shame about the music".
leanne whittaker: "right now the music is letting it down, change that and its very good".
Katie Banham: "It reminded me of Its A Boy Girl Thing, it works really well in context with your genre."
Laura Debourde: "I Love It".
Nancy Compopiano: " It was really good i have nothing bad to say about it the music is really good very catchy just a shame you couldn't use the original song but yeah i loved it all"
Emily Dann: "It was really good I loved it all"

Sean Roberts: "I cannot believe you made that it looks like an actual opening sequence to a real film.I didn't really know what media studies was but it looks fun if your making stuff like that, i really like it"
Stephen Wright: " Looks good I don't really like rom-coms but if this was an actually film I'd go and watch it well done".
Rob Mcdonald: "Wow it looks so good well done.

Audience Feedback Via Youtube

ColeshillMedia

I like the idea of the spilt-screen and you've sustained it really well. The shot of the bus arriving on the male side is really nicely framed. I thought the camera shots towards the end when both characters were walking towards the shops were a bit jerky - and as it was both of them, it was pretty distracting. Good sense of the two characters though. Want to know more...

Research And Planning-Analysis Of A Old Title Sequence "To Kill A Mockingbird"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rP5MutuPVxk

The opening sequence for To Kill A Mockingbird is wonderfully made and exciting to watch. The main focus of the film is innocence and the fact that the main image of the opening sequence is of a child drawing really captures the essence of innocence that the film represents.

The fact that the titles are in black and white really add to the effect of the film. There is no colour this requires the audience to use their imagination especially in regards to the image of the child drawing as it makes us think what are they drawing and what is the significance to this drawing.

The way this title sequence is different from so many modern ones is its simplicity the fact that the titles work so well in context with the film itself if the titles were over complicated it would take away the true meaning of time film.

Research and Planning- The Song For Our Titles Take 2

When we originally planned our opening sequence we wanted to remix the song, She's Got You High By Mumm-Ra. However when we remixed it we felt it didn't really go with the edited footage so we then came up with the idea of recording the song with just the guitar riff and perhaps the underlying bass riff. once we recorded it the guitar was played with the edited footage, as a groupe we thought it fitted really well and we all felt very excited.

ACTORS

Jack Lowe Plays Josh, he features throughout our opening sequence and would be one of our main characters. Jack would be playing alongside Laura Debourde who is also a main character.

Laura Debourde Plays Poppy in our film and features throughout our opening sequence, she would be one of our main characters; and would be playing alongside Jack lowe who is also a main character.