You Call It Crazy - Two Minute Film Opening Final Product

7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in progression from it to the final product?

I feel that I have learnt a lot and progressed significantly since the production of our preliminary task. When our preliminary task was first started, we had little knowledge of the media subject as a whole and was basically going of our own instinct. However, we soon realised that to produce a media product, you have to be meticulous in your planning and processing to get to the final product. Personally I feel it was the thrill of actually using a camera to record our own footage, that we thought little of the storyboard, our own ideas, camera angles, locations ect. When you compare this to our two minute film opening, 'You Call It Crazy', straight away you can see drastic improvements as a lot of thought was put into it.

Throughout this process, my knowledge of technology has drastically improved as previously I had never even used a Mac computer so struggled when trying to our preliminary task. It looked extremely unprofessional as we couldnt get the right contrast with the lighting, filming outside effected our sound and it didn't have a sense of fluidity about it when it all came together. Our task had no music, very little transitions and poor editing and I have since learnt that those are key elements to a film as they are what create the atmosphere.

Thorough planning and research is vital so as you know what audience you are addressing and how your story is going to progress. For our final media product, we did a lot of research into the conventions of a comedy drama therefore enabling us to make it more appealing. I think the biggest lesson we learnt was that your first idea isn't necessarily going to be your best. Our original idea was to go down the horror/thriller genre route however as neither of us enjoyed watching these films we realised that this would be a mistake and switched to focusing on a comedy drama which proved to have successful results.

6. What have you learnt about the technologies from the process of constructing this product?

 Through the process of constructing our media product, I think I can safely say that Jess and I have learnt to use a range of technologies that were available to us and that we hadn't previously encountered. The main thing that I had learnt through this process was how to use a Mac computer as neither Jess and I had ever used one before. One of the things we had to get use to was the lengthy process of having to connect it to the internet each time we used it, and also different buttons on the keyboard that did different things. Some of the software and programs on the Mac's were also knew to us and in paritcular i-Movie, which is the program we used to edit our media product.What we also found with the school Mac's was that the internet connection was limited and not very fast so we struggled when we had to upload our videos to Youtube. We found that it was easier to upload them straight to our blogs however both these ways was very time consuming.

Another process that Jess and I were unfamiliar with was the use of blogging for our coursework. The formatting of the blog was quick and simple and I found that this was a more modern and interactive way to produce our coursework. It fit in especially as we are doing a media A Level so it makes sense to use the technologies available to us.The only problem we experience with the blogs was trying to upload the original music that Jess had created for our media product, however blogger offered an easy solution with its help forums and soundcloud proved to be the best website to use.

The internet was a technology that we were both obviously used to however we did find that as the process of our media product went on, we were also learning things such as uploading our music to our blogs and videos to youtube. And although we had both used a camera, we learnt a lot more about the camera's setting and how to improvise and position the camera to achieve the best angles possible.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

Our target audience research found that when producing our two minute film opening, we would be attracting and addressing a female audience between the ages of 15/24 years. We did this through the use of our characters, storyline and contemporary music. 

Our characters are relatable and by using a teenage girl as our protagonist, it will arouse a sense of familiarity within our audience. Although not every teenage has OCD, her suffering through a problem will be similar to what other teenagers are going through and will allow them to empathise with her. 

 Studies have shown that over half of all marriages end in divorce so this storyline is relatable to alot of teenagers in modern society. 

We attempted to attract our audience through the use of contemporary music and pulled inspiration from the acoustic love songs of Taylor Swift. With a huge fan base consisting mostly of teenagers girls, we felt to use similar music would attract the same audience which is our target audience. Jess was able to compose an acoustic piece with a similar feel to Taylor Swift song so already we have established a sense of comfort and familiarity.

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

When researching our target audience, we found that we would attract a similar audience to that of romantic comedies. With this information on hand, we decided we would focus our two minute film opening on an audience of females between the ages of 15-24 years. We would attract younger audiences due to the comedy, and a slightly older female audience for the drama. Studies have suggested that men may be attracted to our media product for the drama aspect.

When Jess and I showed our media product to this particular age group we had generally good feedback with many of them finding they could relate to our protagonist. I feel that our media product has the right conventions that are best suited for this age group.

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

Through our research of many different media institutions, we came to the conclusion that 'Fox Searchlight Pictures' would be the appropriate choice to distribute our media product. This institution specialises in independent and British films as well as the comedy drama genre which fits the specification of our two minute film opening. They are known for tackling serious issues such as cancer in 50/50 and teenage pregnancy in Juno, adding a lighthearted and humorous twist while also addressing the issue. I feel they would be able to capture the British aspect of the teenage girls life while also allowing for the comedy drama aspects to shine through.

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our media product represents the social group of teenage girls and does this through the storyline as it encompasses elements of a teenage girls life with the myth that no one will understand the problems they are going through.  We focus in on this idea of a dysfunctional family and the stereotypical 'rebel sister' however we are careful not to come across as too judgmental and instead portray them in a comedic way. We also highlight suffers of OCD and again are careful not to be too dismissive about their situation while still being comedic. I believe that our media product could represent the typical and modern day family that are becoming ever used in this particular genre.