questions that must be addressed

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

When making our film we studied lots of teen films to try and pick out certain aspects of the genre that we could use in our film. we looked at films like american pie, old school and road trip.We created typical characters from a teen movie such as the jock or bully, the geek/loner and typical high school teenage girls.We started the film with a flashback, so the main character was the centre of attention from the very start.We started off with a voiceover while the camera zoomed out to show "eduardo" fully.We then told the story in reverse, from the day before.



We used lots of different camera angles, zooms and fades. We also made use of blackouts so if "eduardo" was humiliated we could see his face and fade away, which symbolises how he feels.
One of the typical features of a teen comedy are boobs, parties and drunkeness. Due to the limited settings and time we were'nt able to encorporate these into the film, but given more time we would be able to make a longer film and include all the conventions of a teen comedy.



How does your media product represent particular social groups?

We tried to focus on our characters and realy emphisise the stereotypical views that other people have of them. The loner "eduardo" was a typical geek and a goth. We can see he always gets picked on, has no friends at all, soesnt go to lesson and has ran away to avoid everyone.



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

I did a bit of research into which institution would be best to distribute my my media product. I am using the website http://www.boxofficemojo.com/ it's a very useful website which deals with how much money movies make.

i looked at the following films:

Road trip - $68,540,777 (Dreamworks SKG)
Old School - $75,585,093 (Dreamworks SKG)
American Pie - $235,483,004 (Universal)
Superbad - $169,871,719 (Sony)
Legally Blonde - $96,520,674 (MGM)
How High - $31,178,740 (Universal)

From my research i can see that there isn't a single dominant institution that would be best fitted to distribut my product. To find out which one would be best i needed to do a bit more research into the main distributors. Because the genre is so popular, a big production company would naturally be best to distribute it because its well know and will get the movie into the right places to be sold. I can see from my list that Dreamworks SKG is a popular company and has distributed many major bestselling films. Therefore, from my research i have found that Dreamworks SKG is actually owned by Paramount pictures so naturally this would be the best company to distribute our media product.


Who would be the audience for your media product?

The main audience for our media product would be teenagers or young adults, unless some older adults have a younger mind. We did some research into who of these age groups would be most willing to watch our genre of film, and the age range of 16-23 was the most popular. We tried to relate the characters as accuratly as possible to real life people so we hope that most people that watch our product will feel connected with the people in it.


How did you attract/address your audience?

We attracted our audience by creating characters that people can relate to. If people feel more connected to characters in a movie then they would be more willing to watch it because they will enjoy it more. We also tried to make the films special effects as bright and attractive as possible so it would catch people eye more easily.


What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing your product?

When filming the actual film we didnt have any problems with the cameras or getting the fight shot and angle. it was when we came to editing the film that problems arose. The programme that we used was adobe premier elemnts 3.0.There were a number of techniques that we used. first we had to split the clip and add/delete parts that we did/didnt want. When we hadc the film in the right order wh had to add special effects and titles to the screening. If theres one thing that we learnt about the world of film editing is that its complicated!! but when you've got things in the right place you can do just about anything with it.

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression of it to the full product?

From starting the preliminary task i feel i have learned that there is alot more things you need to plan for, like camera maps, so you can get everything in the right place and if its not then the film wont flow as well because the camera will seem to be jumping all over the place and that there is not thinking behind it and it will appear random. Like i said i found that planning is the most important part of the filming and is what i needed to drastically improve before moving from my preliminary task to the actually coursework.