Evaluation of the finial ProductJoseph Shaw

Group 2Three & A Half Productions

Question 1

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

realmedia products?

Character Types

• Our characters are the sort of characters that you would expect in a typical war film our characters consist of two soldiers that have escaped from a concentration camp one of them gets blown up and the other is missing in action, you also have the wife of the solider that is missing and an officer that delivers the MIA letters to the wife. We have these characters as they are similar to some other war films that are in the same genre like Black Hawk down, with the officer delivering the MIA letter, Saving Private Ryan, Jarhead and Behind Enemy lines.

Setting

• For the setting we researched the most realistic place where the fighting could of happening back in 1943 around the time that our film was set, in this case it was set in Germany at the start of Hitler’s downfall. We had to get the setting right or the realism would be lost and then it wouldn’t be as attractive as the war film it’s meant to be.

Narrative Structure

• In our film we wanted to show the effects that war has home or away we did this by having one of our characters getting blown up and a wife of a missing solider receiving a MIA letter these are all to keep the in with the realism of the war. The film follows the missing soldier once he has escaped from a concentration camp and he discovers one of his friends blown up.

Iconography (significant objects)

• For the significant objects had to be researched way before we started to film as we needed to make one of them, find some and also buy a few one of the main things that we needed to research was a realistic MIA letter so that we could recreate one, this meant find the right font, paper colour and envelope, another significant object was the uniform that the missing soldier, officer and the wife wore as they needed to be as real as possible as the film would lose all authenticity.

Sound (Both diegetic and non-diegetic)

• In our film we have used music nearly throughout our film this is to bring in the emotion through the film for the wife missing her husband and from the blown up soldier dying and the different situations that the missing soldier is in, we have also put an explosion into our film to bring the film to life and also to enhance the realism.

A Few Shots Before Our Film

Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

• In our opening sequence of our film we have a soldier that has escaped from the concentration camp Dachau this is the main character that is followed throughout the film, another character is the wife of the missing soldier who has escaped the camp she is represented to be very emotional and is stereotyped into being a home wife, this was portrayed by the clothes that she wore and the house to be in perfectly tidy. We have two other characters one of them is an officer that delivers the letter to the wife and the other is a dying blown up soldier that is discovered by the missing soldier.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

• In our film we don’t really have any dialogue as we didn’t think it would have been needed in the film as because of the situation of the characters, the first thing that is see in the main characters scared as he is running for his life. The officer that delivers the MIA letter is well dressed and walks exactly how he’s meant to. We have the wife who is shown opening the MIA letter telling her that he is missing then there is a tear drop that fall onto the letter emphasising that she is crying.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

• We have made the opening sequence of our film negatively as it shows that everyone gets hurt in the war not just on the front line but also back at home, this has been done by all the different shots that we did like showing our blown up soldiers gut all over the place and the wife crying as she finds out that her husband is missing in action. The main way that we made our film is by using reaction shots and close up; these catch every emotion and details of the war.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

• With our film the audience are made to feel sorry for the characters as the wife has found out that she might not have a husband, a soldier get blown up for a reason that they don’t know and the missing soldier is trying to escape to save his life.

A Few Shots Of Our Film

Question 3

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

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

• For the type of film that we created I think that the people who where to distribute our film would be a larger company, like Sony, Warner Brothers and Pathe all these are large company that have bigger budgets to spend on the Prints and Advertising as they will be able to reach a much larger audience for our film whereas if a smaller company where to distribute our film they would have to aim the film at a much smaller ‘niche’ audience like the distributors of Adulthood. I think that because of the type of film that we have made it would be aimed at a larger audience therefore the company needs to be able to spend a lot more money on the advertisements as it would have to each a male dominated audience with ages ranging between 15-65. The advertisement could consist of billboards, posters, teaser trailers, newspapers, junk kits and press kits.

A Few Shots Of Our Film

Question 4

Link to our Interview • http://wbsmediagrouptwosam.blogspot.com/2009_05_01_archive.html

Please click on this link to view our interview

A Few Shots Of Our Film

Question 5Attracting your audience

How did you attract/address your audience?

Pre-Production• In the cast of our film we had four characters which were

meant to be young adults around the ages of 19-24 this being that the demographics audience of our film could relate to them much more and therefore the audience would understand the reality of war much better and realise that the only thing that war brought was pain to everyone, home and away. When we story boarded we knew that someone had to die and we knew that the way they died was important so we went for a soldier getting blown up we knew that this would be good at attracting our target audience. During our planning we didn’t really know what sort of lighting would really be needed if any, so we just used natural lighting as this would be realistic.

Production • During the production of our film we found that

there were different shots that we wanted to use but hadn’t storyboarded therefore was an issue but we had a few in mind that we had to have as we thought that they would be very important for our target audience like a close up of Jack dying and his guts falling out, different shots of Zac running with a gun and a explosion, these were key for our target audience. Our lighting was natural so there wasn’t any bits that where bright and then dark in different places.

Post-Production• For our production we have created a soundtrack that adds allot of

emotion and sadness to the film as it changes to the parts where the wife opening the letter and when Zac finds the other blown up soldier, but there are also fast paced bit where Zac is running though the woods and then investigating an explosion that we had to create with the help of our teacher.

• The certificate of our film hasn’t really been decided as of the shot of the guts but from our research I feel that it would probably be a 15. When we were editing we needed to make the scene in the house less colourful so we used a filter so that it was dull but not black and white. For the credits we used an American type writer font so that it continues the theme of the war, the credits where plain black.

A Few Shots Of Our Film

Question 6 Technologies

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

Technologies• I have learn that there are many different types of technology that

have to be used in order for the film to be made in from this I learnt how to the DV/HD video cameras that we were given to film our opening sequence on I also learnt how to transfer the film that we had taken on the tape to the computer, to do this we used a firewire that we connected to both the camera and the Apple Mac. I also learnt much more about the programme Final Cut Express, this was the programme that we used to edit our film on, we also used piece of software that was called LiveType we used this to make our credits. And finally we used Garage Band which we made our music on this was so we got the music just how we wanted it instead of a soundtrack that wouldn’t fit. We also used the internet to do some of our research some of it was researching what a MIA letter looked like.

Some of the technology that we used

DV/HD Video camera

Firewire

Tripod

Mac BookPro

Garage Band

Finial Cut Express

Garage Band

Question 7

Progression from Preliminary Task

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it

to the full product?

Progression from Preliminary Task• From our preliminary task I feel as though I have learnt allot from it as when we

did it there were lots of mistakes that we make, like not doing enough planning and research into want we were doing I feel as though, if we didn’t do the preliminary task then we wouldn’t of realised how hard it would actually be. We learnt that we needed to do loads more research than we thought we would have to do, also that we need the right equipment as when we made our preliminary sequence we didn’t have a tripod this was needed greatly and luckily we had one, as without one all the movements through the camera were made much worst as the camera picked up all the movements. One of the main things that we learnt was that our storyboards needed to be as detailed as possible so that when it came to filming we knew exactly what shots we needed and where they needed to be. When we storyboard on our finally piece we spent much longer on them putting in the different times that each shot would have and also if there was any speech in the shot. Our research was in much more depth as we needed to find more props that were harder to get like the guns and helmets, costumes for the soldiers and the wife and also the guts.

Progression from Preliminary Task• During the editing it went much better than our preliminary task as

we knew so much more about it, we even made our own music in Garage Band so that the whole film fitted in with the genre of ‘War’. All our different transitions were better as when we filmed it the shots ran over so there was extra time to cut and edit each shot. In the end I feel as though our Preliminary Sequence help loads and without it our finial product wouldn’t be anywhere near the level it is, giving the time we did it in.