Final Evaluation

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

Our film has stuck to generic conventions held about Gangster films, people can tell our film is a gangster film from some of the iconography we have included. The audience can tell straight away the genre of our film as our first shot shows the main characters in suits (Black trousers, shirts and tie) which are commonly linked with gangster films. A good example been Reservoir Dogs where the main characters all wear suits giving the audience the impression they are an organized gang.

Other gangster conventions we include is the sleazy, urban poker game that doesn’t look totally legal, then we have old style guns and cars in a modern setting these often feature in classic gangster films.
One thing we do differently to most conventional gangster films is that we have a first person narrative where the character Joe Porello introduces the characters then as it gets to him he talks directly to the camera. Apart from the film Goodfellas (link below) this isn't common in gangster film so using this challenged some of the common conventions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJ2RofOEAEU

The conventions we have used indicate some of the films that have influenced us and our work. The costume been suits is very much like Reservoir Dogs like the pictures above show. Also the edited screenshots of our main characters showing the characters face and telling the audience their name is similar to the screenshots used in the opening sequence of Snatch.

Our opening sequence is very similar to the opening sequence of Snatch as they both use a narrator and the screenshots of the characters, Snatch was a big influence on our film and that is portrayed in our film. The opening title sequence to Snatch can be seen in the link below. You’ll notice the character screenshots coming up is very similar to the way ours comes up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlMtolxdcEE

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
The characters in our film are aged between young males and it doesn’t have any women in. We do use a stereotype of gender they are very powerful males, we also use a stereotypes of gangster, and they are dressed like stereotypical gangsters. Another stereotype of gangster films is that they contain a hierarchy of dominance as a character builds up his power only to have it taken away from him. In our film this is Chad Dawson as he looks like he is going to win he ends up losing everything. This is a common theme in gangster films.
The characters in our film reflect our target audience, we have a target audience of young males aged 18 to 30 very much like our characters. This gives our audience characters they can relate to as they are also more aware of gang culture.

Our characters above are very similar to those in Snatch (shown left) as each character has there own purpose and each one has a different background behind them. The screenshots used tell the audience who they are and that they are going to be the main characters.

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

If our film was to be produced it wouldn’t be a big Hollywood blockbuster however it wouldn’t be a small budget film. It would have a moderately large release because it is a popular genre of film and uses some very original ideas which make it more unique than other films. After doing research into distributors we decided a good company would be Metrodome Distribution who distributes smaller budgeted films to cinema and DVD although they have distributed some cult films such as Chopper. We would look at having a moderately large cinema release although the style of our film (black and white with colour in graphics) may also appeal to the art house audience, much like Snatch and lock stock and two smoking barrels did.

As our film is for an adult audience and contains a lot of language and violence there isn’t really an opportunity for merchandising unless we looked at gambling side with cards and suits etc. However the classy style suits, and gambling theme would be good to use as advertising for the film. As it is aimed at young males it could be advertised in men’s magazines and also have cinema and tv trailers

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
We carried out a lot of research to find out our target audience, the questionnaire was most useful at this. We decided our target audience was males aged 18 to 30 much like the characters in the film. Similar films such as Goodfellas, Snatch and Reservoir Dogs have an 18 age certificate rating the same as ours, and the audience is very similar. These films have also gained a cult following as they have been so popular so our film may appeal to that kind of audience as well.
After looking on the BBFC website we resolved that our film would be classified as 18 as it contains strong language, violence, drugs and sex references. As well as a criminal theme that could be seen to promote crime and gambling. Giving our film this certificate means that we are aiming at the adult audience and males aged 18 to 30 are likely to watch our film and similar films, we also found that they are less likely to be offended by any of the content we have said we would include.
Here is a link to the BBFC website that includes the different types of film classification:

http://www.bbfc.co.uk/

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

We attracted our audience by doing something that isn’t common in all films and making ours more unique. The use of the stylish titles for character screenshots is different and eye catching to the audience. Also the use of black and white with the colour of the images makes it different and more original. The target audience of young adult males are used to watching this genre of film so this gives a different and new style to the genre.

We used a lot of shots that we hoped would include the audience and make them feel more involved in the storyline. A good example of this is the garage scene where they are playing poker. In this we use a lot of point of view shots to put the audience in the point of view of the man looking across at the other character.

We are put into the point of view of both Ricky Sykes and Chad Dawson. This helps to build up the tension as both characters keep putting in chips.

In the same part we also use close ups to give an impression to the audience, we give close ups of Chad Dawson's cards and then a tilting extreme close up of his face where we see a slight smirk. This leads the audience to think that Chad is going to win but in the end this is not actually the case.
Using these different types of shots gives the audience a different perspective and involves them into the film.

6. What have you learnt about technology from the process of constructing the product?
The camera we used was a HDV-1000 video camera which gave us a much better high quality picture, allowing us to film in HD and widescreen. There is a much better zoom feature than with previous cameras we have used, giving us 20x optical zoom, we also had more control, you can use auto and manual focus which allowed us to do pulling focus. The on ly disadvantages are the sound recording is on the camera so this isn't good for distant sound however this didn't affect us because we recorded our sound separately.

One problem that we did encounter whilst recording was bouncing focus, where the camera would keep going in and out of focus, this was due to the colour and the background of some objects been too close to the camera, This could be resolved by doing the shots in manual focus however we altered the shot slightly so that this problem didn't happen.

The camera really enhanced our film as we have got to shoot a much better quality film, another thing that enhanced our film was using the flash recorder (or zoom recorder) which allowed us to record sound separately and match it up with the video in the editing process. Recording sound separately meant that speech didn't have to be right up close to the camera to be picked up and also reduced the risk of getting background sound such as wind. This was also good for recording our narration separately for each character.

For the editing process we were able to use a more advanced kind of software than we had used p reviously and used Final Cut Pro. This was quite easy to get used to and gave us more features we could do with our film. To start with we just imported all the clips we had, gave the ones we wanted to use names and then created a rough edit. this made it easier to alter bits and make it perfect. This software allowed many effects such as colour correction and sound bridges as sound and video were separate. It also allowed us to import files such as the music we used as a soundtrack and images from photoshop for the character screenshots. Photoshop is good for image editing and allowed us to create professional looking screenshots that you would see in a film such as this.

7.Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Here is a link to our preliminary exercise:

http://www.youtube.com/watch#%21v=khliel9iOnk&feature=related

When we were given this task we had to put a lot of work into the planning stage, we all came up with film ideas and eventually decided on a gangster film. From this we were able to research into the genre and find out about the iconography and conventions of gangster films. Things such as suits, organized violence, gambling and crime were common themes and features of the genre. We all analysed a film each that we thought was similar to our film and gave us inspiration and ideas of shots we could use. Then we had to plan our filming, we came up with a storyboard of what we wanted our film to look like and a shot list of all the shots we wanted to include. This meant that on the day we came to film we were prepared and organized and we didn't have any problems. We filmed some shots that weren't used in the final cut but it was better to film to o much rather than not enough.In this project during filming we have used a lot wider variety of shots than we have before, such as establishing shots for the setting, match on action shots to show specific actions and point of view shots to involve the audience. We have also experimented with using slow zooms and tilts which helped to add more of a range of shots. Overall I think because we have become a lot more confident with the equipment it gave us the confidence to experiment with our film by including these shots and also by doing something original with the black and white effect.

Comparing this project to our preliminary task I am a lot happier with this project, I feel we have produced something that is a lot better quality and flows a lot smoother, this is due to more experience and much better equipment to work with.
Overall I feel we have been very successful at fulfilling the task of producing a 2 minute opening sequence to a film, I feel the ending opens it on for the rest of the film and after posting the video on Youtube (link below) and Facebook we have had a lot of positive feedback from people who have watched it they have all seemed to enjoy it and wanted to see the rest of the film. We got some people around our target audience age to view our video and give feedback, we recorded this using a webcam and some of the comments they gave were:

• Good stylistic editting.
• Liked the black and white feel with the colour of the titles.
• Liked costumes, shirt and tie.
• Good story.
• Props and setting very good.
• Good music
• Very much like gangster films such as Snatch. Guy Ritchie feel.

They gave us a lot of positive feedback and the target audience feedback video can be seen below:

Overall I am incredibly pleased with the project and the two minute introduction we have produced, I am pleased that we have achieved everything we aimed for and after hearing the feedback from our target audience I am convinced we have produced a film that meets the criteria of a modern gangster film. I feel we have produced something better than I could have imagined it to look so I am very pleased with the project, I am really looking forward to carrying this on in A2.

Here it is our final finished two minute introduction. What Goes Around...