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

A production company is a company that is responsible for supervising the filming from concept to completion. They hold the legal and financial responsibility of the movie. They would also be responsible for financing/funding and raising funds for the production. The production company can either be a small company or a large one.

A film distributor is a company or individual responsible for releasing films to the public either theatrically at the cinema or for home viewing. This could be a variety of formats such as: DVD, VHS, and Television. They can do this directly if the distributor owns the theaters or their own distribution networks. If they don’t they will need to this through an external theatrical exhibitors and other sub-distributors.

The money for the film would normally come from big studios such as “universal” or “Paramount” that would fund the film. But if the film is independently made and is low budget the money would normally come from the producers themselves that make an investment. Some film makers would go to a smaller company that would fund them the money usually this would be government funded so there would be certain rules set in place for example a working title film owned by universal that has recently made it to the cinema screen is “Paul” this had a budget of 40-60 dollars compared to a film like “Donkey Punch” by Warp X only had a budget of £1.2 million. Our film in this case would be a low budget film that is independently funded.

An example of a government funded company would be UK film concil. However this company is closing.

The reason behind having titles at the beginning of a film is so that they all have recognition of their part they played in the film. No matter how small a part they played with the production of the film they still need to be credited and acknowledged. Title will normally run in a sequence not all films follow the exact guidelines but they will follow a similar suit. They will usually follow this format:

STARRING FILM'S TITLE FEATURING CASTING/CASTING BY MUSIC BY PRODUCTION DESIGN/PRODUCTION DESIGNER EDITOR / EDITED BY DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY PRODUCER /PRODUCED BY EXECUTIVE PRODUCER BASED ON THE BOOK/NOVEL/STORY BY BASED ON THE CHARACTERS BY / BASED ON THE CHARACTERS CREATED BY STORY / STORY BY WRITER(S)/WRITTEN BY DIRECTOR / DIRECTED BY

We have reflected this with our opening sequence as we have credited the people that were a vital part of our development and production. For an example we have “Directed by” “Produced by” “Written by” “Music by” and “Director of Photography”.

Our film is similar to other films that have already been released in the film market. Some films that would be distributed in a similar way could be low budget films that are not distributed by large companies and are not Hollywood blockbusters. For some examples:

All Tomorrows Parties – Low budget. She, a Chinese – Low budget. Submarine – Low budget. The Blair Witch Project – Low budget.

Like our film these were all low budget films. But just because they are low budget doesn't mean they cannot be successful. For example The blair Witch Project was a very successful low budget film.

Social Networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace and Twitter would also be used to create awareness for our film. We could create groups for fans, therefore more publicity for the film.

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

Above is our inspirational film Brick, its ratings and viewings suggest to us the type of audience we would need to attract, as our concept is based on Bricks theme. 

Therefore here is an example of a member of my target audience.

The characteristics of my member would be:

       Interested in Thriller/Drama films, to a certain extent maybe horror.

Target group: Aged between 15-25.( so young teens/adults )

Listen to a variety of genres of Music.

Interested in TV dramas and programmes such as "Crime Watch", "CSI","Law and Order" etc.

Dress of a casual nature, but still interested in fashion and latest trends, styles, as most youngsters are.

No specific race or ethinicity, ranges to a broad variety of people of all ethnicities, mainly for young people who can relate to the film i.e. like Brick.

James: 18 yrs old and Sarah: 19 yrs old

Evaluation - How did you attract your audience?

Here is our responce to this question. We have used You Tube's annotation tools to create notes over the top of our opening sequence. These annotations highlight the ways in which our film links to other films and attracts our "target" audience. Also how it links into our inspirational/hollywood film, which we gained a concept/idea for our final opening sequence, we commented on types of camera shots, angles, editing, credits and titles, and why we chose these ? Explaining the significance of each in detail. 

 

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

As we were all in seperate groups for our prelimary task, we decided to individual do an analysis of our project, looking back at it, comparison to our final project, what it allowed us to learn, improver, change and how it overall effected the final project.

Final Music Development

Final version of our music, we wanted to create an eary but mysterious atmosphere without portrating our film as a horror genre, but keeping it subtle and creating that thriller/drama effect, using the themes and ideas from our inspirational film brick.

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

Here are some screen grabs of Beth from our production Beth Marwolaeth alongside Emilie De Ravin who plays Emily in "Brick".

Our overall influence came from the film Brick (2005), and we wanted to use some of the dramatic shots they had used but in our own style. Both characters are very similar. But yet very different. Emily has long blonde hair and has her eyes shut in the shots of her, whereas we wanted our character Beth to have her eyes open as we felt this was more dramatic and creepy. Beth has long brown hair, but I think this is a good difference because we didn't want our whole production to be exactly like Brick.

Beth (Played by Emily) and Emily are very similar, around the same age, 17, long hair, and are portrayed to the audience as being very vulnerable and supposedly dead.

The top two images are of the Brick establishing shot and our productions establishing shot.

We really like this idea of the tunnel effect creating in the brick film so we chose our desired location. This worked really well with the mood of the film and really represents a young teenager social group. For example this location could be where they regularly hang out, or it could be a quick route home for the young teenagers after a hard day at work. Both opening link in with the questions the audience ask themselves how/why/who?

We also loved the individual close ups from the opening from Brick. How she looked so pale and ghostly. We liked this idea of how this character - a girl of 17, who normally would take pride in her appearance, is left in a dirty unsafe environment. We played on this idea with our character Beth. Although having nice earring in and a pretty blue dress. Her character and charisma is drained from her. Through the pale skin, dirty environment, scruffy hair and smudged make-up. Now being left in this state she is no longer able to take responsibility for herself and she is just left alone in the cold waiting for someone to find her body.This links in with the representation of this age group again. Young teenagers getting drunk, taking drugs etc. The fact that Beth in laying in a river with the rain falling around her and her pale bare skin exposed gives an even more eerie feeling of cold and mystery.

Evaluation- Changes during production

During the making process of our film, there were a few changes made. Some were due to the fact that the final deadline was quickly approaching, others were because props were forgotten and some were due to the fact that we thought it would make the final outcome look better. 

The first change we made was during filming at High Broom Woods, whilst filming there we realised that we had forgotten the piece of paper that Beth was suppose to be holding in her hand, this is quite a significant prop at the time, but once we had finished filming we realised that we didn't necessarily need it and that we could work around it.
The second change we made was deciding not to have a voice over. Once we had finished editing the footage and added the music we felt that the voice over wasn't needed and the music alone was extremely effective. We felt that if we were to add a voice over that it was take away the drama of each shot and be too distracting.

Another change made was the location of the bathroom scene. It was originally supposed to be filmed in my bathroom, however due to a quickly approaching deadline we didn't really have the time to go back to mine to film it so we decided to film it in the boy toilets. We still feel that the setting has the same effect and gave us all the shots we wanted.

As we started editing the footage we realised that to have all the shots of Beth lying dead was all too much at once, and also it was hard to interlink all the other characters, so we decided to have a shot of Beth and the beginning as planned but to then have shots of Beth lying dead between each shot of the other characters.

Another change we had to make was the bin used when Dave is burning the pictures of Beth. Unfortunately the bin we had planned to used was plastic and because the pictures were being burnt, the fire would melt the plastic, so instead we decided to use a metal wheelbarrow. It still gave the same effect, just was a lot more safer and appropriate.

The last change that was made, was the blood on Jack shirt. Not only did we find it hard to find fake blood that looked real but when we thought about it, the shots of Beth lying dead had no blood in it at all, so for Jack to be washing a blood shirt wouldn't really make any sense. We decided the best thing to do was for Jack to be washing a muddy shirt, this would link him to the woods, as Beth looks rather muddy and dirty.