as media 2011: April 2011

EVALUATION

IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVECTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

Our movie is a thriller-crime genre we define our movies with these genres due to the context in our movie such as; the location the establishing shot is outside Manchester prison, also another choice for the genre is the context(plot) and dialogue. The plot consist of a release convict being release from Manchester prison after four years he got sent to prison due to being involved in money laundering and being the right hand man of a drug empire he only received four years because the mass amount of money Biggie (the main character in the movie) made. Once he's released from prison he meets his close friends and business partners Marcus Reid and Clive Martin they escaped the same fate as Biggie because Biggie didn't say a lot of information during the interview. The two friends brought a getaway car to pick up Biggie they enter the car the have a brief conversation about the money the recently escaped convict has this seems like a general talk until the near end of the scene Clive shake his head to Marcus, Marcus then return the gesture by making a symbol with his hands this suggest they are going to do something to get Biggie wealth. The next scene is about Biggie being dropped of at his house to meet his girlfriend, Nicole however she isn't there while he's in the house feeling confused to were his girlfriend is there's a mysterious adult male dressed in black making a phone call to unidentified people with instructions with an activity which is going to occur later on in that day, much later on in the movie we find out its was Biggie's business partner. Later on in the movie Biggie open the door to three assailents they attack Biggie and realise they are struggling so the mysterious man in black is order to shoot Biggie the scene goes dark as the scene is displayed again we see the ex-convict on his living room floor the assailents believe he's is dead.

Our media product compare well and differently its compare well because of certain elements in our movie such as the scene were Biggie get shot gunshots are common in thriller since there is a good guy and a bad guy. However in terms such as Camerawork, Sound, Mise En Scene and Editing they all compare expect for Camerawork because the equipment we used is only a couple of hundred pound this may be a lot of money in normal terms however in video camera terms its a small mass of amount in Hollywood productions the len's used are worth $50,000 or more in rare occasion so our production wont have a proffesional as like most movie productions due to Camerawork however with the sound its very well thought due to who were trying to aim at because the music and instrumentals are mainly grime and R&B so this help to aim the media product are teenage males. Also the Mise En Scene (props) the suits used by the two actors in movie Clive and Dominic are meant to represent gangsters I think the props help to show the image of 'Gangsters' the most famous gangster movies like 'The Godfather Series', 'Goodfellas', 'Scarface' etc. All contain suits as a key props clothes in all these famous movie all have this element in these movies the clothes gains you respect and people think highly of you by how you're dressed. So throught these movie I think this is why we use the prop of suits, we have another prop in the movie which is a black tracksuit clothing this idea was thought through the idea of what the colour black this colour represent death various thing like trouble which is good because our movie has a scene were three men are dressed in black clothing they are therefore represented as mysterious and not to be approach or wise the consequence are lethal like the main character learns in the movie and the other reason we used this set of clothing is because how people in tracksuit clothing as stereotyped as. People who dressed like the men in the movie are branded as people who are up to no good even tho most cases this opinion which is heavely expressed as a fact is true however you can't judge people in modern day society by how they are dressed.

With these different camera element and props it make this production not only original but hard to duplicate.

WHO WOULD BE THE AUDIENCE FOR YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT?

Our main primary audience is late teenagers (seventeen-nineteen) and adults (twenty onwards as it genre is Thriller and Horror. However this is based on real elements such as a convict just been released and former business partner going to pick him up due to his family wanting nothing to due a family member being involved in gang and illegal methods of making money also a safe house what Biggie returns to is realistic because the house is decorated particularly like a family home. With these genre’s considered the movie is also aimed at a male audience rather than a female one because women prefer more of a comedy and romance this isn’t biased but it’s a opinion expressed as a fact. This movie is a gangster movie which has the theme of power and how the theme of power is broken through betrayal and breaking of friendship. We decided these genres because it contains element of Drama and scenes of a violent nature, especially one of the last scenes in this movie which leaves the main character in a near death situation. The fact that it contains dark scenes as well as distressing and discomforting scenes, we knew this wasn't appropriate for ages of 15 and under. So an 18-age rating would seem like the best option. This age refers to any males that are either in Key Stage 5 (therefore are in college) or middle working class males who enjoy thriller action based movies.

The factor considering this choice of rating are Location: one of our locations we used was outside 'Manchester Prison' formerly known as 'Strange ways'. The prison was opened in June 1868. It’s a category men’s prison located in Manchester were we done our filming this prison was made due to the ‘New Bailey Prison’ in Salford need replacing and it closed down in 1868. The prison was designed by Alfred Waterhouse in the latish nineteen century, the prison used to keep male and female prisoners until 1963 the prison then became male only a static in 2005 said it holds over 1,200 convicts we believe that number has certainly increased. Another interesting fact was that the prison had an execution shed in B wing. Another factor affecting this rating was context, context here meaning dialogue and scenes, although there isn't swearing there are talks about 'prison', 'money' and 'death’; the speech near the end of the movie involves one of the characters ordering the third member Kane to shoot Biggie, these are common factors associated with most modern day thriller movies today. Also one of the last scenes in this video is of Biggie (Fidel) on the floor appearing to be dead due to a gunshot. Guns and violence are common with most if not all thrillers today however its not only thrillers what have props of weapons and guns they can be seen in most genre’s this is quite revolutionary in the twenty-first century of film and media.

One of the entrances to the prison. The Biggest entrance of Strange ways we used to film, the establishing shot show that the metal gate is the biggest entrance of the prison.

Also we used other famous thrillers to get ideas of what rating to give it such as, 'Body of lies', 'Salt', 'Gone in 60 Seconds' however the original idea was to do a comedy but we soon realized due to of Dominic smartly saying ‘It’s hard to do a thriller because it is hard make material to make people laugh and with a thriller movie you can make and use some great effects. Such as slow motion and normal every day media television production like fading in effect and fading out. Some of these movies had less factors than our movie, this is why they had a lower rating than ours. We had some common elements with what these Hollywood Blockbusters had. The element where things like props and location, clothing was the most likely element that is similar to Hollywood production what are made today the suits were expensive.

HOW DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT REPRESENT PARTICULAR SOCIAL GROUPS?

The representations of social groups is negative, it fulfills the stereo of young black males as being up to no good. All the member of the movie are all black males therefore our movie is partly based on opinionated views of inner city culture since their isn't no young white males in our production it's like white males are more better represented even though you can't judge people due to skin colour. Also, this is a negative portrait of gender that males being socially incorrect by breaking the laws as the main character Biggy (Fidel) is represented as an ex-convict and gang member going home after a few years in prison; in the movie Biggy was charged of money laundering and being gang affiliated however his fellow gang members try to take his money and kill him. This is a common conception of the society we live in as everyone is looking out for themselves. Unfortunately we were not able to get female actresses into our final video so this shows females as still being below males even though a lot has changed in our current society. The movie shows how Manchester gang reputation and culture is. This is presented through media products such as television and newspapers. Notoriously, manchester is famously known as 'Gunchester' this is due to the notorious gangs it has produced through out its history which are now thought to be some of the most feared gangs in europe, the most famous of these gangs are "the Gooch Close gang" and "the Doddington crew" (infamous gangs of manchester). Also this isn't good for our city image lifestyle and culture because people think that main cities like 'Manchester' are full of anti-social hoddied delinquents that are up to no good but this is a biased miss-concetion manchester is widely known and has a good reputation for good industry and is one of the first places in england to embrace the industrial revolution and produced one of England's most important mills "Quarry bank mill" but as well as this manchester houses one of the worlds greatest football teams "manchester united".

The representation of age is also negative due to young males being up to no good and will do loads of ruthless things to get money and prove their status in the gang culture lifehood. The way the storyline is setup is can be almost believable at times due to the elements of this movie. Such as the ex-convict, real location used and lastly how Biggy's friends double crossing him at the end of the clip.

Moreover, to give our movie a more authentic feel, we used typical manchester accent and dialect. This is to include more realism into the movie and audience can feel like they are watching and listening to a real time event.

However, we thought of doing a different genre entirely something more of a comedy but as a group we lack the comedic experience and instead decided on what sort of environment and society we live in as a plot. Also because we realize that there wouldn't be a professional or good plot for a comedic approach and we might not be organized enough. We even had a favorite film to look up to which is 'Anuvahood'. Although we finished filming and editing before this movies came out in the cinema but we still made an effort to try and change it to a comic gang movie. This however didn't come to fruition mostly due to lack of time as well as weak plot. so we changed our plot to suite a more mature audience and gave it an element of realism by putting in a real life or death scenario for our character Biggie which gave our movie a more mature edge and in making the plot more complexed allowing it to appeal to a larger spectrum of the adult community.

WHAT KIND OF MEDIA INSTITUTION WOULD DISTRIBUTE YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT AND WHY ?

The company Optimum Releasing founded in the late 20th century is releases many films however worldwide it is more known for releasing anime movie which are animated movie.It's a film distributor that is working in the UK this company releases 200 movie a year approximately. It mainly works with low budget films which are British this is good for British movie due to Hollywood dominating the movie business. Since this would be our first film we generally wouldn't be able to get a high budget because to get a high loan you have to a good reputation since we would be young and new to the movie movie business with no reputation therefore we would be known as rookies in the Hollywood business of movie making. The closest movie this distributing company has worked with that similar to our movie production would be 'Dead Man's Shoes' release in 2004 it was co-written and directed by Shane Meadows and Paddy Considine interesting fact about this movie Paddy Considine stars in his own production as 'Richard' which is the main character. Dead Man's Shoes' is about Richard a former soldier coming home to his small town of Matlock, Derbyshire he has an mentally-ill brother called Anthony, the former soldier has flashbacks of the men who bullied and abused Anthony and starts his revenge on the gang of lads. This movie had a small budget it's estimated budget was £723,000 although that is a lot of money in movie budget terms its a small budget compare it to a blockbuster like 'Batman The Dark Knight' the budget for that franchise was $185 million I think their is such a contrast in the budget because of distributing techniques and reputation of Hollywood. In the 'Dark Knight' they done most distributing techniques which are the normal regular one's that most movies do however they done a viral marketing stratergy which isn't a average one however it's unique and original. This campaign was called 'Why so serious'? This involve fans of the BatMan franchise to go out and find clue for when the 'Dark Knight' is coming out, it was a great marketing campaign because it had large numbers attending together trying to find clues. I mentioned 'Dead Mans Shoes' because of the similarities it has such as; Genre and Plot.

Genre both movies are mainly viewed as a thriller based genre. Plot both movies have a theme of revenge .The movie we made the revenge theme don't start till much later on in the film, however in Dead Man's Shoes the theme of revenge is throughout the entire movie Dead Mans Shoes has a twisted ending.

Since the movie would most likely be a low budget film it would most likely get shown in a corner house cinema. Corner house cinemas shown movie that are local and made in the UK. These small cinemas are responsible for making small budget movies like 'Dead Man's Shoes' possible to even make it in the cinemas so our movie would most likely be shown in corner house cinema Manchester, the corner house cinema in Manchester is located at 70 Oxford Street this cornerhouse not only shows films but also it release different pieces of media such as; Art has a gallery which has interesting pieces from all over the globe and Books also they sell magazines, postcards. Independent exhibitors such as corner house are also there for films with lack of distribution and marketing again such as Dead Mans Shoes. One of the most successful independent films to break through it into main stream cinemas was shifty it was exhibited in 50 cinemas which is highly comendable for an independant film most of which barely get to break through into mainstream cinemas at all due to to lack of marketing and distribution but also down to low funding.

DEAD MAN'S SHOES(2004)

HOW DID YOU ATTRACT/ ADDRESS YOUR AUDIENCE?

We attracted our audience through the use of several different methods these methods would be; Camerawork, Sound, Mise En Scene and Editing.

Camerawork this help to identify who's got power and status in this movie this was achieve through certain shots such as the MCU (Medium Close Up) of Fidel outside the prison gates. Another shot that shows power is the one of the last scenes were Fidel (Biggy) is laying down on his floor due to being injured by one of the men who entered his house uninvited, this shot is helpful to show that the main character who was once strong is now weak and fighting for his life. This is contrasting to the power he used to has these shots are common in thrillers to show such themes as 'betrayal'. This helped to attract our audience by using 'violence'.

Sound this was one of the factors if not the factor what helped to attract our audience in one of the scenes Fidel is shot by one of the three assailants who entered his house the gunshot sounds the noise was simply made by banging on a wooden table it’s sound unprofessional the idea of making a gunshot sound like that but it produced a very realistic sound this will relate to a male audience rather than female who prefer more a romance type movie. Another way we applied our music to appeal to our audience was by carefully selecting a genre which will represent our music best we looked through a number of genres such as R&B which is a genre of music what seems to contain elements of hip hop, soul, R&B and funk the abbreviation come from the traditional rhythm and blues and hip hop but none where suited for the image we tried to create but after a while we settled on the genre known as Grime this the genre of urban music that first emerged from the artist ‘Bow’ East London in the early twenty-first century. This was because of its up beat sinister rugged sound which is what we needed for the mood of the scenes most specifically the confrontation scene but also we used this genre because after conducting some research we found it to be a popular genre among young adults and teens and helped to create the atmosphere we wanted to create we established that by looking at films with a similar genre to ours such as Noel Clarks "Adult hood" & the previous movie “Kidulthood’’.

Mise En Scene; The French term translates as 'put in the scene'. This therefore refers to all the visual details a film-maker can include the props, setting and lighting additionally it also includes details about the actors outward appearance(including make up, costumes and performance), body language(including facial expression) and the way they are placed in relation to each other by the director. Mise En Scene is the method of communicating a mass of information in a film and is equivalent to long descriptive passages in a novel. The props and costumes were helpful to target our audience. The car used in our movie was a 'Fiat Grande Punto Sound' this helps because with simplistic cars you're more likely to target a middle class working audience. Also the costume we used such as suits and black tracksuit clothing was helpful due to the character and there role in the storyline you immediately knew that the two men in suits were accomplices of Biggie's, then the use of the black clothing is helpful because the colour black is associated with fear so this colour helped to show that these men in black clothing are to be aware and cautious of.

Editing this helped to improve our production by quite a bit because it helps the viewer to keep interest otherwise they would lose interest. This method of editing is called 'Continuity editing'. Editing is now an important process in film making. It combines shots and sequences together.

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT ABOUT TECHNOLOGIES FROM THE PROCESS OF CONSTRUCTING THIS PRODUCT?

From constructing this product we as a group have learned how used the technologies such as the 'camera's' which Loreto college gave us to use and using the program 'Final Cut Pro' on the Apple Mac's. Final Cut Pro is a editing program designed by Macromedia Inc, it support many video formats another good point to this software is it has encoding presets for such devices like Ipod, Apple television and Blue-Ray disks overall 'Final Cut Pro' isnt proffesional but it's a good way to edit clips and give them a proffesional feel and look.

We learnt many methods and techniques these are; not breaking the 180 degree rule although we have learned this from the beggining from our prelim task its a rule we remembered not to break otherwise the production would have problem such as re-taking scenes and shots we gladly didn't break this rule many times. Another technique to achieve a much still shot it would be best to use a camera stand a stand is effective for achieving many different shots the main one's that can be achieved are high and low shots due to being able to move the camera stilts. You would use lower the stilts to represent someone a being powerful or somebody that is important in the storyline if camera is facing down at someone is shows that person is scared or not to be thought important of through 'point of view'. Most shots were achieved through the use of a camera stand, in this production the only shot which weren't achieved through the camera stand were the scenes that Biggie(Fidel) is laying down on the floor due to the gunshots and the camera is slowly ascending to see his face the next shot which was done through free hand was the shot on the floor where you can see the footwear of the assailents this was to hold suspense and witheld the identity of the attackers until the last moment to hold suspense.

In the editing part our production has improved a lot due to us learning as a group how to use different and new effect such as dissolving (in and out fade) effects and many different effects like Rippling/Ripple, Slow-motion and inserting text onto the movie for credits.There isn't much to mention about Fading except its used for starting/ending of a scene it also helps the viewers(audience) to know when the end of a scene is fading and continuity editing is probably the most common form of editing as most of the time you won't pay attention or notice it being there. Slow-motion was a intersting effect one 'The Matrix' is famous and well known for this effect this blockbuster commonly used this great effect to show important scenes in the movie but also they used it to show fight scenes at a much slower frames so the audience is able to see it this make the viewer apprectiate the scene much more and can see a lot more detail in Slow-motion. Finally the last effect we used in our production was the ripples effect we only used it once however it came to good use because we wanted to create fear effect and uncertainty just like the main character had so we wanted for the audience to feel the same as the storyline is based through his point of view (pov), the fear element was for how the men in blackclothing are unidentified attacking Biggie we also used the 'Ripple' effect because we don't want the audience to know that Kane has a gun so we used this make a suprise element the scene is dark as all you can hear in people speaking accompanied by gunshots. From this our movie seems significantly better. Also its gained a much more professional effect since many popular movies have such effects like our movie.

LOOKING BACK AT THE PRELIMINARY TASK, WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU HAVE LEARNT FROM THE PROGRESSION FROM IT TO THE FULL TASK?

We applied the methods and techniques from the previous work in the prelim video to the main task such as 180 Degree rule, use of camera stand also our video is much more better than our prelim because of many different factors such as; Props, Editing,Camerawork and Sound the audience what have viewed the movie say the favourite things about the production made by the group are the music in the production and the storyline how realistic it is this is good having a realistic feel because they can relate to it.

Props in our main task is better than the most props used compared to most groups due to the use of a Car in the video this prop provided us with new shots that you could only be available to do inside a car plus the lighting in the car is good for when the is an important part in the movie e.g the gestures made between Clive and Marcus, the car is original and if I was going to do another movie like this I would make sure a car would be available to have on the props list, also the note in the video (letter from Biggies girlfriend) is original because its hand written additionally the fact it is had written suggest that Nicole (Biggies Girlfriend) was in rush if the note hand written if something is made through a computer input they had time around to make the document. The success to a overall good production was due the use of how the image of crime and gangster was achieved I believe this was done through the clothing suits and black tracksuit clothing the crime theme is achieved through the black tracksuit clothing, the gangster image was made through the suits we now have a knowledge for what props these kind of movies need to have. Also the rest of the props contributed to the overall task. The best prop overall would have to be the car because like I mentioned before you do various shots in and outside the car also not a lot of groups thought to have a prop like a vechile and use it.

Editing we improved with this because of the more use of the program 'Final Cut Pro' overall the effects that were used such as fading (in and out) these kind of effects make it more professional since most of media products such as movies and television have fading effect the are commonly used at the start of the scene or movie and at the end of the scene another technique we used was the slow motion we had to use an effect like this to show a significant part in the movie and we also done continuity editing this is done every media product wherever its a adverts or something as long as a movie, continuity editing is essential for a media product.

Camerawork we tried to learn from our previous mistakes from the prelim such as shaky camerawork. Shaky camerawork is an unnecessary mistake not to mention unproffesional and can be easily avoided using a camera stand or the use of a better cameraman. We learnt the punishment of shaky Camerawork which was retaking of shots for the production this reduce our editing time however proffesional camerawork was important because without clips you can't make a movie. Also in the main task we avoided breaking rules like the 180 degree rule.

Overall it was a successful video and this has made us as a group appreciate the effort gone into movie more than before. This as a group has made us consider the movie making business as something to consider as a job in the future we think this has been a learning curve however our co-operation skills weren't that good at first but we learned how to work as a unit. This has been a good experience and interesting.

as media 2011

Friday, 15 April 2011

Saturday, 9 April 2011

LOCATION SHOTS FOR THE MAIN VIDEO

Friday, 8 April 2011

SHOTLIST FOR REAL TASK

Wednesday, 6 April 2011

Friday, 1 April 2011