Q5 How did your film attarct/address an audience?

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Evaluation- Q4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our product is aimed at many different types of people for example the main group of people that you would consider watching our product would be the older generation because the original film noir's came out a long time ago and were in black and white so the older generation may feel they could reminisce while watching our product. However our detective was quite young and the sequence is in colour not black and  white meaning that this may attract young viewers because they would feel they could  relate to the characters.

Overall the storyline can be followed by any type of person no matter what age, gender and background. It is easy to follow so it can attract  younger viewers. Other types of people that might like to watch it might be groups of people who enjoy murder mystery type films, families who like to spend time bonding while watching a film that you can talk about. 

Due to modern technology advertisement of our product could influence who watches it. For example parts of it may be online to watch attracting a younger audience, I would still be on DVD and in the cinema so many age ranges could watch it especially if it has is a PG rating. Youtube, facebook and twitter would advertise the film to younger people as they could share what they liked and it would make the viewing more accessible to them. Also if our film got the funding to be on a site such as Netflix or Amazon Prime then it would attract the younger audience as they pay to be on these sites so that they can watch a variety of films. In addition to this, if we got funded to be on Sky or Virgin Media films then we would attract families and an older audience as they usually pay for these packages to watch with the family.

The older generation may also want to watch it if advertised in things like newspapers or magazine articles because these are the type of things this generation like to read and will trust what they say so if portrayed in a good light our product would appeal to this age range too. Also the fact that it would be in the cinema would attract this generation because they probably wouldn't have the internet or may not like to use it and they may trust the cinema as they have been around for a long time unlike Sky, Netflix ect. Our detective may also interest the older generation because stereotypically they like to watch things such as a touch of frost, Midsummer murders and Agatha Christie's Poirot all of which are detective based, modern stories with a similar storyline to our film noir's.

Also, detective based TV drama's and films are coming back into fashion at the minute in the UK, examples of this are things such as Broadchurch and the remake of Sherlock Holmes with Jude Law and Robert Downey jr. The return of the detective based genre gives our film a wider audience because it is part of this genre but also different from the generic ideals, making it more appealing to a variety of different people. However, most of these TV drama's appear after the watershed at 9 o'clock meaning that they are not seen as family based drama's. The same happens with films, the majority if detective films are rated 12 or sometimes 15 giving it a smaller, more defined audience. This may give our product an advantage because it doesn't have those restrictions and more children would want to watch it as they are new to the genre.

Overall, our film noir is aimed at the all audiences, regardless of age or gender. However, there will be some people that don't find our film appealing because they don't like this genre of film, this will more than likely be children but dependent on the child's interests they may want to watch our product. The older generation would more than likely find it the most appealing because they grew up with these films but they may not like the modern spin on the genre.

Evaluation- Q6: What have you learned about different technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Throughout the making of our final product we used a lot of different technology types to fully construct our sequence, this included our research and planning and other aspects involved when finishing the coursework piece. 

When filming we used a Sony Handycam. this gave us a good resolution for our filming. We didn't use HD because there would be no point as not many people have HD software to view it on, plus it would make the file too big.

In the preliminary task we used the same the camera which allowed me to get used to it. From this I learned how to film a range of different shots with the camera such as close ups, mid shots, establishing shots and a few others. Without the practice i think that the final product wouldn't look as professional as it took a while to get used to the camera and how everything works on it. 

In the film a lot of the filming is in dark settings, meaning that additional light was needed as the camera couldn't provide this. We found this out because after we had filmed part of the product it was too dark and you couldn't really see what was going on. 

A tripod was also used during filming both the prelim task and the main task. It was used to steady the camera, give different angles and heights and to give the camera a good range, in addition to this whilst filming the opening sequence we used a dolly to steady the camera and keep it at the same height whilst we moved it. Unfortunately this didn't work because the video came out quite shaky so we had to film again.

Because the sound on the camera wasn't very good we decided to use a voice over for most of the sequence with only a small amount of actual dialogue at the end. We recorded the voiceover in a recording studio which was fairly easy to use, this took quite a long time but was worth it in the end and it was easy to add when editing. 

For all of the editing we used adobe premier on an apple mac. The mac was useful because it had everything we needed already downloaded onto it and due to the good quality of the screen which was quite big, it was easy to edit and it looked quite professional. Adobe premier and GarageBand are the two programs that were used for our editing. Adobe allowed us to edit all aspects of the film and GarageBand is what we used to choose and edit the music on, which we then added on to adobe premier. Overall both were quite easy to use. Adobe had a timeline in which we could order each clip to ensure continuity. It was also easy to upload the clips onto this software, once the clips were transferred from camera to mac which made everything a lot simpler.

Our blog and social media were both also used as part of our final project because we did the evaluation and a lot of the planning and research on the blog, in addition to this social media was used to share our sequence. Youtube was also used to research different film noir clips. After using these forms of the internet I feel a lot more confident when researching and sharing different forms of media. Blogger allowed us to record our progress throughout our coursework task. It was a good form of technology to use because it was online and accessible from anywhere not just the classroom or the sixth form. I could record my research, planning and other things from home or anywhere with the internet. It also allowed us to add pictures and Gif's which were very advantageous when showing examples of work.

Our main challenge when creating our film noir was recording the voiceover. We had written out the script and used a recording studio to record the monologue. However, we had never used this technology before and had nobody there to help us. It took us 2 hours to record a 40 second piece of dialogue due to our inexperience with our surroundings. This time wasted held us back whilst editing. However, Once recorded the media was easy to transfer onto the mac and easy to add into our product due to the high quality technology we used. 

Evaluation- Q3: what kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Warner Brothers is one of the most famous institutions for film noir and therefore would be the best choice for a institution to represent our product. When Warner Brothers started out they had little money and their aim was to make distinctive films that would definitely sell. To do this they decided on the genre of film noir because it was very popular at the time and it was a cheap industry. Many of the first films they made in the 20's had many close ups and it was very dark due to the set being quite poor and these features made sure the viewer didn't see this. 

 Most film noir's are the same, they were all in black and white,(there was no colour TV at the time) the characters are the same, there is a detective, femme fatal and some other generic factors. By doing many of these films the same made Warner Brothers money because they did it cheap and they sold a lot due to the huge demand of the same type of film at the time. 

Now Warner Brothers is one of the biggest industries in film and would be perfect to finance our film as the advertising would be easy to access, it would go to a global network of cinemas and afterwards  it may be released on DVD or/and online. Warner Brothers own the Harry Potter film series which is the biggest film franchise in the world so to be associated with the institution would be a major benefit. Other warner brother film productions are: Sherlock Holmes, the lord of the rings film series, the hobbit film series etc. o be associated with these film series' would immediately give publicity to our production as most warner bro's films are big budget, successful film franchises.

Warner brothers is a conglomerate of TimeWarner, on of the top media conglomerates in the world. TimeWarner owns many different types of media distribution such as most magazine companies, news channels, TV channels etc. These companies could all promote our product as in the long run it would probably make the company more money. Examples of this would be TV spots, Radio spots, magazine reviews/articles.

Due to TimeWarner producing so many film noir's over the years there would be a good reputation of the genre of our product.

Lionsgate, on the other hand is a more modern company (formed in 1997) it's a lot smaller than Timewarner but has many subsidiaries  of which have produced some major films. Examples of these films are; the hunger games series, the divergent series, the twilight series. Similarly to Warner Brothers, Summit entertainment is the most famous conglomerate of Lionsgate. Lionsagate would be very advantageous to use because it is more modern than Lionsgate and is more independent. However it doesn't have a history with film noir and our production would probably be one of the first in this genre for the company. Although this aspect would make the product unique it may also be a risk as it wouldn't be what people were used to and this may be a major downfall.

Overall, I think that Warner Brothers would be the institution to use due to it's history with film noir, it being a big company and that there are many TimeWarner subsidiaries  that could be useful in marketing.

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

http://prezi.com/qtygyahm9jye/present/?auth_key=irlvukh&follow=i8rz3xtel6wz&kw=present-qtygyahm9jye&rc=ref-121322083

Above is my answer to this question via prezi.

In addition to the presentation, i would like to add the following:

There were many steps taken in the preliminary task which helped me with my own product. One  step was a result of trial and error for example some of the shots in my prelim were shaky so i realized that in my opening sequence i would need to rectify this by using a dolly.Another thing the prelim task did was allow me to see what would and wouldn't work in my film, i would ask others what shots they liked from my preliminary task and then when i got their results i knew what i should and shouldn't put in my full product. In addition to this, the prelim task gave me skills i would need in my final product.

As i started my preliminary task my group were given a camera and asked to shoot a variety of shots within and outside of our sixth form, we were given a time limit to do this in and were briefly shown how to use the camera. The time limit helped me when doing my final product because we had a time limit within that too so getting used to it helped me quite a lot. Learning the shots also allowed me to gain knowledge for my final product and also the prelim task enabled me to experiment with different types of shots.

The preliminary task also gave me a brief chance to learn how to edit in on the apple mac, i'd had little experience with editing before so was starting from scratch, if not for the prelim i would have been learning whilst making my product and that wouldn't have allowed me to make some of the mistakes i did with the prelim such as the sound issues. We used Adobe Premier Elements, this was a good, easy software to use for both my prelim and film noir.

Planning and scripting was another key element of my progression. When making the prelim my script was very basic and had little dialogue, this made it quite boring and unprofessional so i found that going into more depth when writing a script was essential. Planning came into this as well, i spent a limited time planning what i was going to write or planning what i wanted the prelim to be like and this was a major downfall so i found that when planning for my film noir i needed to look deeper. To do this i looked up the 'maltese falcon' opening script. This gave my group the idea for the voice over instead of complete dialogue. 

http://victoriaelson-tam6formmediaas.blogspot.co.uk/2014_12_01_archive.html first script.

http://victoriaelson-tam6formmediaas.blogspot.co.uk/2014_11_01_archive.html second script.

As you can see from these two above links, we changed and edited the script because we found from research we did in the prelim task that our first script would be too long and some of the characters names weren't very realistic.  

Learning about and researching our genre was another aspect which had to be looked at during the prelim and final tasks. By doing research of films such as maltese falcon in the early stages of the prelim task, i felt more confident with including the codes and conventions of film noir. Here is an example of some of my research done after the prelim task and in the early stages of the full product being made: 

http://victoriaelson-tam6formmediaas.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/the-detective-in-film-noir-and.html

http://victoriaelson-tam6formmediaas.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/codes-and-conventions-film-noir.html

This research gave us all the information we needed regarding props, costume and scripting, without this we wouldn't have been able to follow or challenge the codes and conventions of the genre.

Another part of the planning progress for both the preliminary task and the main product was story boarding. Whilst planning for the prelim my group made a storyboard in lesson. It lacked relevance to the final cut of the prelim and didn't go into much detail. However, in the full product our storyboard was fully annotated with in detail drawings and differing shots. The story boarding helped very much in filming and editing as alongside the script we were able to have a high level on continuity within our full product because we could refer back and make sure everything was in the correct order. 

One thing that i feel my group could have done better on was organization. As previously mentioned time was something we had little of and the prelim task showed us this, although we did learn our lesson with running out of time in the preliminary task, we didn't organize ourselves in the best way possible. Despite having a planning schedule, we didn't always stick to it and this caused problems with assigning jobs and having to re-film certain scenes which held us back with editing. 

Link to our preliminary task

Evaluation- Q2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Stereotypical Femme Fatale

The actors in our film noir were all teenagers which is unconventional for this genre as the actors are normally middle aged. By using this age group we should attract a varied age range as young people could connect with the actors whereas older people can connect with the storyline more. However, because you don't actually see our femme fatale the opening sequence is male dominated meaning that it may not appeal to both genders, only men.

How Femme Fatale's are represented in film noir:
1.  long hair (blonde or dark), make up and jewellery.
2. They usually have cigarettes which have sexual connotations of liberation and phallic power.
3. The dress they wear defines the woman.
4.Iconography of violence is a specific symbol of her unnatural phallic power.
5. A framed portrait of a woman is common.
6. They are usually the murderers which indicate narcissism or duplicity.
7. Women are generally centre frame or drawing our attention by focusing on the foreground.
8. Visual style expresses mood through darkness, both real in underlit and night-time scenes, and psychologically through shadow and claustrophobic settings which overwhelm the character. 

Our femme fatale exceeded these expectations because she was quiet and let the man be in control. You couldn't see her face which normally you would in classic film noir's as she would want to be the center of attention.  This stereotype of femme fatales in film has been challenged in our product, as said before this may make it less appealing to women because of the lack of female actors present, but the differences made may also attract women. This is because in most film noir's the women are viewed as bad people, who were objects and not that clever but in our product the woman, although not seen much, isn't presented in this way at all. She is clever, a good person and there is little objectification of her. This would allow the female audience as a whole to see the change made in our film as a good one and make women want to watch.

Teenagers as a group may have seen the film noir genre as old fashioned and perhaps boring. However, our product is in colour, more modern and has younger actors than usual. All of these factors make the product more appealing for this social group. The younger actors will allow teenagers to connect with the product more, this is because people of the same age group usually have the same dialect and mannerisms, therefore this social group will see this within the product and feel drawn to it. In addition to this, because our product has no age restrictions teenagers will be able to watch it no matter what age. This will give our product a wider audience. Also if our main target audience (men from 40+)  are sitting watching our film noir it may influence their children or grandchildren to watch it with them, because they are old enough. Another reason this social group may want to watch our product may be because it is quite different than anything done before. This is due to the modern spin on quite an old genre, the changes that we have made to our product in comparison to the stereotypical idea's of film noir make the product unique, perhaps drawing attention to it not only from teenagers but most other social groups too.


Dissimilarly to our femme fatale, we didn't change much when it came to the detective. Here is a stereotypical film noir detective:

The main stereotypical attributes a detective from this genre has is:

• Cigarettes
• A trilby hat
• Long coat
• Middle aged
• Heavy drinker
• Fairly quiet
• A 'mans' man

Apart from the heavy drinking and middle aged attributes our detective fits this description quite well. This means that many men will be able to engage with our sequence due to the fact that they may want to be like this mysterious man. Also the upper class male may identify with the idea of drinking and smoking in a 'classy way' due to the similar stereotype of upper class men being similar to this. However, as sad before, the young actor may attract teenagers more and from all classes as the location is a normal, working class household.