Question 5

Q5: How did you attract/address your audience?

I attracted an audience of people who liked fantasy films through using the conventions of established films, this included the use of as many genre signifiers as we could. These included details such as makeup and costume, music, fantasy characters, location, and storyline.

Firstly are use of costume address the audience and ensured the fantasy genre this can be seen through the character Abor’s beast costume, seen here:

this make the viewer interested as it’s a new character they haven't seen before. Music was one of the biggest genre signifiers as fantasy film audiences recognise soundtracks and their importance in setting the tone and genre of the film. We wanted to create that outcome with our soundtrack so it was made to reflect the characters by having each one associated with a motif which was added at the same time when the character is introduced. The soundtrack also builds to an end when all the characters are together, this build up also helps to draw the audience in as they want to wait to see what it leads to and why.

We hoped the location we used would also help to engage the audience as we hoped it looked similar to that of the Hobbit because of this the audience would want to watch and appreciate the scenery. A section of our location can be seen here:

Although we have a narrator giving the audience some context to what’s happening in the opening, they’re still left with some narrative enigma as they are unaware of how the characters are going to fulfil the task which they have given themselves- which is described by the narrator.

In terms of attracting an audience we have created a Facebook account which goes under my team's joint production name of Outhaul Productions. Here we have posted updates on cast members, filming days, and links to our blog posts, a few examples can be seen here:

Throughout our pre-production and production journey we have been able to spread the word of our film opening because we were in contact with a lot of people. For example when I embarked on making the costumes I was conversing with a lady who used to be in charge of costumes for films and TV shows through this I was able to get tips and suggestions on where to buy fabric from, I was also able to promote our film opening at the same time.

I also showed people of our target audience the rough cuts of our film so that we could publicise it as well as improving the opening. We aso promoted it through word of mouth.

Question 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Question 6

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

My answer can be seen on Prezi here

Question 7

Q7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

My preliminary task was to create and edit a short piece of drama that could be used as an opening for a piece of media. It was a short task in which I acted in an improv dialog between two characters then edited it.

Since this task I have learnt a lot that can be separated into headings these include:

Planning and time management:

I have learnt how to manage my time better when creating media and learnt how to manage multiple shoots by communicating with Amy who I was working with and the cast, this was important as we had to re shoot and take many trips to our location to film as things would go awry or plans would change such as the constantly changing weather, and rain.

Use of organised planning was built upon as we had to make lists for things to bring in for filming days, and ensure organised storyboards, scripts, and other joint documents. This is in contrast to the Prelim in which none of this had to be made or organised since it was improvisation and filmed in school.

Research and audience feedback:

Researching for our film opening along with getting audience feedback was also something I learnt, since for our preliminary task this wasn't needed as we didn't have to researched anything since it was improvised. We also didn’t need audience feedback as it was just a preliminary task and there wasn't much need to re shoot. We actively gained audience feedback for our opening scene by showing people the rough cuts of it and then making the necessary changes. As part of overall research we also learnt how to send out a survey to find out what people appreciated or wanted most in a film. A lot of research also went into looking at other fantasy film openings and requiring knowledge about the correct mise-en-scene to use. Research also went into the location, music, shot variations, and characters as detail needed to be built up to make this a believable film opening.

Pitching:

I also learnt about pitching because in our prelim their was little choice over what we could do however for our film opening we all had ideas on what we wanted to do and thus needed to present them to the class via a presentation to be able to let people have a choice on what opening idea they wanted to work on.

Individual roles and working as part of a cast:

Development on group work was acquired as a lot of important decisions had to be made fairly between the both of us in my team. It was also a learning experience to help manage a cast as this was not needed in the prelim, I was able to run through the screenplay with them before filming and assisted them on the roles their characters would play. It was also difficult finding our cast as a lot of people were not available. It was important to encourage each other and keep up moral when we faced difficulties such as forgetting the SD card in our remote location, or there being very heavy rain. I also learnt to research the character I played to ensure it followed the role.

Idents:

I also learnt a lot about the production of idents as our prelim didn’t call for them. I was able to research idents and then film my own short clip to illustrate my production company name of Breakfast for Dinner Productions, i then added the title onto it to explain and complete the ident.  

Location scouting, sample shoots, and rough cuts:

Since my prelim was filmed in school there was no need to search for the correct location, however because for our opening the location was a large genre signifier we had to go out and search for the best location we could find. This was difficult as the location we wanted couldn’t include paths or other man made things such as houses in the background or else this would challenge the validity of our film opening being of a fantasy genre.  Our location also had to fit in the correct areas that we wanted our characters to come out from- this would give the audience some narrative to the character and their personality. Once we had the location sorted we made a sample shoot, of where the characters will come out from and how the opening will play out, this helped us to identify issues which allowed us to negotiate how we will deal with things such as costumes. We also learnt the best way to gain audience feedback would be through rough cuts we learnt that gaining information on how to improve them was helpful which meant we could respond to what the audience wanted.

Sound:

I learnt a lot about sound and foley- the addition of sound put in after the film had been made- because our preliminary task didn’t include any sound in particular but just our voices. I learnt how to use different objects as foley for our characters footsteps walking through the moorland, for this we used dried ferns and crushed them with each step a character took. We also included sound from final cut pro such as lightning and rain sounds.

FX and Mise-en-scene

For the preliminary task we didn’t have to think about mise-en-scene and FX as it was just a basic dialog to edit. I learnt and improved skills regarding this by creating costumes from scratch along with creating the makeup for the characters, and ensuring everything looked the way we wanted it to look. I also learnt about FX as we wanted to add visuals of a storm along with sound FX of the storm.

Overall, the lesson I would say I learnt the most would be resilience and perseverance with creating this to the standard I wanted. This was difficult to keep up as we faced many obstacles, however we were able to use hard work and teamwork to complete this task.

Question 3

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

My answer can been seen on Prezi here

Question 1

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

Question 2

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

My film opening represented our secondary target audience of females from the age of 12 - 25 who were the usual viewers of fantasy films, because of the female protagonist used.

To replicate the genre correctly and then thus the social group of our target audiences, we used detail in location and costume to give the opening to the film verisimilitude, in this the mise-en-scene of the film was built up for instance the location we used was the most similar to the look of the Hobbit Location that we were able to achieve, and the costumes were as Fantasy like as we could make them.

Our film does represent other social groups through the characters we used in opening as we used females and males, along with a female protagonist, thus we represented both male and female. Within this mix some characters represent other social groups.

Anidone -the protagonist, would be stereotypical of other characters like her from other fantasy genres such as Arwen who gives up family and immortality in order to save Middle-earth from the threat of Sauron along with Galadriel, the elf queen who singlehandedly wields power over Lothlorien in the Lord of the Rings however much less developed the hope for our character would be that she would also be representative of a strong female character, this is momentarily seen through

the explanation of the narration also the look of the protagonist was representative through the costume.

This can be seen here in this comparison of costume, obviously the costume I made for this character isn’t as professional, however it was the best to my ability.

This is also a positive representation on women has a whole as the character isn’t portrayed in negative light.

The next character in the opening is our pixie like character Phex.

As a female character she too represents women, however because this character isn’t necessarily human, it can’t fully represent social group, this is the same for all the other characters. That aside the character Phex is stereotypical to pixie characters, this stereotype of mischievous and ditsy is applied, subsequently projecting it onto the wider group of females, which conveys a harsher sense of representativeness. Thankfully this isn’t disclosed fully in the opening.

Following the Phex character we are joined by Trehsarck,

This is also a stereotypical character for a warrior as this character is depicted as a strong male. We wanted him to be a typical warrior that would be comparable of characters from the TV program the Last Kingdom, some are shown below:

This appeals to our male target audience.  It also appeals to an ethnically diverse audience along with representing them.

Agor is also a warrior like character however this time they are a beast as well, seeing as this is anthropomorphic and not human, therefore it is not representative of any social group. This too goes for our last character Zosil, it’s creature like personality doesn’t fit in to any social group known. However both are representative of characters like them in fantasy films, for instance inspiration came from the Beast character in the live action version of Beauty and the Beast, he can be seen here:

A similar comparison can be made between Zosil and Gollum from Lord of the Rings

Our film opening also represents class as other characters arise to join the protagonist who will lead them in an army, and the leader is depicted as being regal with others below her following, this could be interpreted as classism as the leader isn’t one of a lower class.

However our film opening does not include representation of other social groups. For example sexuality isn’t being represented directly -as the audience are yet unaware of the character’s sexuality. Thus it may not attract a full wider audience.

Region and Nationality is also allusive as the viewer is not informed by the region the characters come from but are able to guess from their ethnicity. However the voiceover gives indication to a region with the accent used, this is representative of our target audience since other fantasy films use similar male accents to narrate.

Lastly it is not fully representative of our target audience or a wider social group as the age range of characters isn’t wide. To be fully representative some characters would have to be of different ages, it would also have to include characters in their 20s to further represent our target audience. This however may not be the biggest problem as our characters defy age in their roles.

Final cut

This is our final cut, it includes our idents and the soundtrack.

Foley

This video highlights Amy and I and our production of foley for Anidone, we wanted to do the sound for the footsteps on the moorland, Agor's growls and maybe snippets of the Phex's voice.

Behind the scenes video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjfsaRv7OXQ

We decided to make short interviews with some of the cast members and display it in a video along with shots showing the actors off camera behind the scenes.

Rough cut 3

In our rough cut 3 we added the audio voiceover, along with the sound effects and the foley we made from the moorland. The final steps we need would be to add the soundtrack and colour correction along with the storm visuals.

Rough cut 2

This is similar to the first rough cut however we improved the order of the shots, the sound and soundtrack along with the audio still needs to be added

Rough cut 1

This is the first rough cut of our film opening Anidone, to create this we arranged the scenes in the order we currently wanted, we still needed to edit in the effects and sounds along with the soundtrack and voiceover also including colour correction.