Evaluation

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Throughout our opening we have used, developed and challenged different codes and conventions. However, because our film is a mainstream film we used and developed most of the conventions as we needed to make sure that our film suited the worldwide market that current mainstream films do. The conventions of these films allow us to follow what the audience want, hence we can target the worldwide market. Here is a video showing how we have used, developed and challenged the forms and conventions of real media product:

How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Throughout our opening we have presented teenagers and female social groups. This video shows how our media products are representing these social groups and whether they challenge or reinforce the stereotypes of the social groups:

Who would be the audience for your media product?

A lot of the research looking into the target audience that we conducted has been incorporated into our film. We wanted the audience feel as though they could relate and connect to the characters and the situations that occurred in the film. To ensure this happened we felt that it was important to make the characters, settings and situations similar to those of the target audience. This way they could understand what the character was feeling and therefore relate to the character. As our film is a teen rom-com, our target audience is teenage girls. We therefore made the film very similar to that of a teenage life. To present who the target audience is and how we fitted our film to suit them I used 'PowToon.com'.

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

Before choosing the Institution we would use to produce and distribute our film we need to ask ourselves a few questions based on what sort of film our opening will be:

Will it be mainstream or independent?

• Our film is very similar to films within the mainstream industry
• It is our very first film and so we will need a big company that will absorb the losses if we were to be unsuccessful
• therefore we will chose a mainstream company.

Which company would be best?

• We researched many different ideas into which companies would be suitable a few were possibilities:
• Universal
• Disney Pictures
• Paramount
• Walner brothers 
• However after looking back at our research we chose Paramount. This was partly due to it being the producer and distributor of mean girls which was found to be the most popular film in our primary research.

Now that we had what institution we were going to use we could look into paramount in more detail. After much research with the use of websites, such as Wikipedia, I put together a PowerPoint to present it all. I used Prezi to do this, which allowed a creative way of producing a PowerPoint.

All In Time

Here is our end product, it is called 'All In Time'. We have used all the camera shots and movements to help tell Ellie's story, one major technique that helped in the telling of the film is the voice over which gives and insight into her inner thoughts and her life.  

Alterations to All In Time.

As we filmed the opening, although we gained all the shots required, we did not have the facilities to have the screen split into 4 separate quarters which meant we had to rethink the beginning part of our opening as it was not realistic to complete. Despite this it was very easy to rectify and change. We decided to just leave out this particular part and go straight into a medium shot of Ellie walking around the bush.

We also found that some of the voice-over was not relevant to what was occurring in the opening and we felt it would be best if we altered it slightly, to ensure the audience did not get confused with what was going on in the film.

These were quite easy to alter as they were quite small changes, however although small, they did help with the overall flow of the film and understanding for the audience.

The Shooting schedule

We drew up a shooting schedule of when we were recording, and what we were recording on each day. This allowed us to plan in advance what needs to be done and allowed organisation. We not only based the schedule on when we could make it but also the cast was considered. We had to ensure that the timings we chose ran parallel to when Shantai also had time free. It was fairly easy to arrange the schedule as we only needed extra cast for one part of the film.

When it came to filming the opening a few of the scheduled days did not work out due to unforeseen problems, such as individuals being ill. This meant that we became behind on some of the filming which altered when the filming was complete. However what was contained in each event was kept the same and we got the filming done of each section all in the same categories.

The Characters

In our opening we only introduce two of the characters. The main character, Ellie, and her step sister, Chloe. Below shows the information about each character that we will try to express in the presentation of the characters. To do this we used Celtx which gave us the outline to which we could place our information.

Script for All In Time

This is a final plan of what we want to happen in the 2 minute opening we will create, including actions that will occur and what is said by the characters. To create this script we used our research into what other films did in the first two minutes. We felt that in the opening we would show binary opposites to set up the scene and then use a voice over to allow an insight into the character. The voice over also creates enigma as we don't understand what has happened to her parents and why her step dad is so horrible to her, along with her step sister. We felt that this opening followed the code and conventions of teenage romantic comedies.

Story Board - All in time

Our own opening

We have now finished our research into our genre and target audience and so we now have started to look into what we will do in our own opening, taking the research into account. Here we have put the different code and conventions to what we will include in our openings, which will give us a clear, precise idea of what we need to do and what sort of thing we will need to organise. We also established what the characters will be called and what characteristics they will hold:

The story Brainstormed