Evaluation

(1) How does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?

In our project, we decided to film an opening of a mystery thriller involving revenge, betrayal and murder in a Film-Noir style.

From research, we decided that the best decision for our group was to choose a piece of atmospheric music produced by 'Deep Focus' he is an up and coming DnB artist on YouTube and offers free music for his fans. So we didn't need any copyrights or anything as he said he would be pleased to get his music out there. I searched many different kind of music, and when i showed my group they all said it would reflect the mystery thriller of our project perfectly, and it did with many lessons used up by syncing the music and making it match to the shots we took, it went very well.

Our group both liked the whole corruption of murders so we decided to base our synopsis on that. And from that we showed in our project different ways of how murder corruption could be achieved, we decided to use flash backs and memories. This will show an even more mysterious feel to the project.

As most noir films use first person voice over to narrate the story with flashbacks, our film opening also used these elements. This went well to show how George was feeling and was telling the story, but as we had to stick to a 2-3 minute limit we found it very hard to describe everything.

The murder that takes place in our film reflects the fact that noir films do not have hopeful themes or happy endings, and the murder in our sequence is the enigma because Sebastien doesn't actually die, he returns and George finds him and wants revenge again. Just like a classic Film Noir.

(2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?

There are four characters in Undercover Depression, two having major parts and two minor. The two main characters are George and Sebastien.

We wanted to show that George was an male adult between the ages of 25-35 and so we made deliberate choices about how he should be dressed and how he should act. A leather jacket, light jeans and trainers were chosen. The cold, wintry weather added to the dark, shadowy mood of the film.

Noir films often contain a scene where one character is looking for revenge and our Film Noir project represents that to. With George looking for revenge on Sebastien for cheating on his girlfriend and ruining his life.

We decided as a group that George should act in a stereotypical manner for this age group - unsmiling, moody and serious, and make him look like an undercover cop. This also reflects the mood of a typical Noir thrillers, this adds alot of tension to the atmosphere and grips the audience more.

The second character of Sebastien is deliberately shown to make him look an obvious character and to show he isn't meant to still be here, and we did this by using close ups of George's reactions and it went very well and really made it feel more shocking that Sebastien was still alive.

We wanted to show that the two young male should confront each other. Decided this should take place outdoors where it would make it feel like just another normal day. Noir films often take place in dark landscapes with very little lighting to create a sinister and gloomy atmosphere so we decided to set the confrontation in a glum place in the park where the memorial place is. This is where George finds out that Sebastien isn't really dead and that he is still alive.

The other two minor characters are played by Martin Osborne and Amy Stansfield. Martin was meant to look really mysterious, so we decided to dress him in a hoody and to make him wear dark clothes to give it a real suspicous feel. For Amy, she was the girlfriend and we decided her wearing a red coat would make it feel more of a femme fatal. And makes it more of a classic Film Noir.

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

Based on the opening sequence, its popularity would depend on the popularity of film noir at the time of making it and the demand for difference and choice. As teenagers are always looking for a choice of entertainment there will always be a market for films aimed at teenagers. For this reason, if we aimed our film at teenagers, then this shows that we would be aiming for a big major company to distribute our film, like Working Title as they would have the money to distribute our film. However, the opening sequence to our film Under Cover Depression did not take up too much time to produce and there was hardly any money involved during production so it might appeal to smaller, independent film companies. An independent film would need only a small budget for producing, marketing and distribution.

(4) Who would be the audience for your media product?

Me and George decided that the typical audience for our film would be around our age, in the regions of 15-25, Late teenage young aldults. The reason we have chosen this age range is because not only is it easier to know what people of our age are interested in, but we can add our knowledge of film noir from what we have learnt in theory, plus all the skills we have acquired through the Preliminary and Exchange Exercises, and combine these with our ideas and creativity skills to complete a film that teenagers are not going to get bored with after the first few seconds.

We have decided to rate our film a rating of '15'The reason why is because I think our film would be more a ‘15’ rating than an ‘18' rating, as a lot more gore, drugs, violence, suicidal references, nudity, and possibly some exposed indecent [sexual] behaviour or sexual violence would have to be used to push the rating up to an ‘18’.

(5) How did you attract/address your audience?

To attract an audience in our opening sequence, we cleverly used enigmas and mysterious circumstances, all of which would be revealed later in the full movie, yet the viewer would have to keep watching until the end of the film when all loose ends are tied up in the concluding stages of the movie. With egnima's attracting the audience we could tell that we had been sucessfull and we had positvie feedback.

We wanted to create a slow-paced opeining, with added slower paced music track which added a more noir-style effect to the project than what a fast paced track would. Plus, to slow the pace down even more, i edited the shots and slowed them down adding effects. The effects i used was the colour correction. I used it in the flashbacks to create a dreamy and much slower paced atmosphere.

We didn't keep the background music, because i feel that the music on it's own works a lot better than with background music. We made the music volume fade down to a lower level when the voiceovers came into use. This is so that George's voice was much clearer and louder.

(6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? (You could also mention the significance of using these technologies).


Prior to this course, I had been used to windows computers, and have never used an Apple Mac before this was an unusual challenge for me to cope with it and i feel i have learnt a lot, but i still believe that windows computers are better and more practical. I am used to some begginer editing programmes and some professional editing software, this include Windows Movie Maker and Sony Vegas Pro 9, i still prefer Sony Vegas as i am used to it and it's has tons more effects than what Final Cut does on the Apple Mac.

During production, I used a DV-tape Camcorder. Prior to this course, I had only used a Tv to laptop recorder in my personal life. I have been used to using more complex, modern technologies so using an old-fashioned DV-cassette tape Camcorder was o.k but it was the first time using a good quality camcorder.
The editing software we used was “Final Cut Pro”.

(7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? (You can make reference to The Exchange too).

For our Preliminary Exercise, it was Me, George, Sebastien and Martin. We had a problem with capturing the footage of the establishing shot of a person walking down a corridor and opening a door, because the corrider was to narrow but we over came this. We also had some issues with the sound and the microphonel. We soon overcame this issue and resolved it.

We were set another task, to polish up our skills, where two characters were to exchange an item without talking. An easy to understand plot and a location that was best-suited to this type of story meant we had understood the interpretations of different actions within a sequence. Quick cuts between shots maintained rhythm and pace set by the chosen music. However their were some minor issues about placement of the characters and we have learnt not to do it again.

When looking back at our pleminary exercise and what we have achieved with two people in our final project i think we have improved greatly and in some areas excelled other groups with only two people.

We discussed the job roles and made it equal, George did most of the pre production work, and i helped, also he was the main character, whereas i did all the editing whit help from George and i also did the camera work and all the technology jobs behind the scenes.