Evaluation

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

Cross-cutting-  Our cross cutting was inspired by the film 'Da Vinci Code'. In 'Da Vinci Code's opening scene there is a cross cut between a man running away from a killer and a contrasting scene where a man is talking in front of an audience. We thought that this was effective because we liked the idea of there being a complete contrast in two events and yet somehow the audience can tell that the two scenes are linked and they will want to know how. The two screen shots on the right of the text display the fact that both scenes were of complete contrast and yet the fact that they were being cross-cut the audience knew somehow that they were linked.

How we have used this in our opening.

 

In our thriller opening we were inspired by this convention. We believed that it would be a good idea to have a cross-cut between two contrasting scenes where one there is a lot of movement and the other there is not a lot of movement at all. We therefore used this convention in our own thriller opening: the two scenes that we used were the boy in his room with the two men in suits walking fast. The two images on the right are the scenes that we used in our opening. As you can see in one scene the two men are walking and are clearly going somewhere important and the other is of a boy sitting in his room doing nothing.










Shot Composition- In our thriller opening we liked the idea of not showing the faces of people who looked like they were up to something. We got this idea from the film 'The Usual Suspects' opening where the man that is setting the boat on fire's face is not being shown even though you can hear his voice. This keeps the suspense up because the audience want to know who the man is and the fact that his face is covered up helps hide his identity.

How we have used this in our opening.

In our thriller opening we decided to use this conception to help maintain the idea of secrecy. We thought that it would be a good idea to cover up the faces of the two men not seen because it makes the audience think that something mysterious is happening. We use it on more than one occasion in our opening but it is with the men on each. We used this convention whilst the men were walking and also when they were opening the breifcase so that the audience wouldn't be able to identify who they were straight away. We wanted to maintain the mystery and suspense throughout the whole 2 minutes.

2. How does media product represent particular social groups?

Copy of How does your media product represent particular social groups? on Prezi

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

Here is a link to our wikispace page: http://nfgszeus.wikispaces.com/What+type+of+film+is+%27A+State+of+Mind%27+and+how+may+this+be+affected+by+distibution%3F

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

Our typical audience member for our movie A State Of Mind would fit the profile of this:

• His name is Mike , short for Michael which only his mother calls him, and he is in his Mid- 20's.  He has a girlfriend but they are not having a serious relationship. His job is at BT where he works as a tele communicator at a call centre. He went to University and got average grades where he studied Computing and ICT.

• He particularly likes Thriller films and the Spy/ Psychological sub-genre. He is a fan of top mainstream Hollywood actors such as Daniel Craig or Angelina Jolie. 

• He likes to go to the cinema with his 2 best mates and he only likes to go on Wednesday because he is an Orange Wednesday customer and he likes to save money.  He has a lot of free time so he often goes, mainly in the evenings.

• Mike is a big fan of new technology and likes to buy his films on Blu ray but he still buys a lot of films on DVD if they are cheap. He is not a big fan of 3D as he thinks it is a gimmick. Mike likes to buy his technology from specialist shops such as Richer Sounds. He wants the best service and best quailty products. He has a Full HD Flatscreen TV in his apartment with surround sound.

• Mike is not actively involved in politics, however he does sometimes watch the news to see about what is happening around the world. 

• Mike does not read a great deal, he likes to read technology magazines occasionally. He sees no point in newspapers as he can get all the information he needs on the internet.

• Mike likes to travel, he is interested in different cultures and different technologies. He went to Hong Kong when he was 12 and would like to work there one day.

• Mike is a big James Bond fan, he has the entire collection of the films and he considers himself to be just like 007. Mike also likes watching 24 and wishes he was tough like Jack Bauer. He is a big fan of Crime/Thriller TV shows and always records them on Sky. Mike does like Psychological films as well and he has seen Inception many times. He also likes to write on internet forums such as IMDB to discuss the story in his free time.

• Mike is not too bothered about music. He generally tends to listen to Indie music though but he does not really have any preference.

• Mike's main hobby is going to the cinema but he also likes sports and paintballing. He goes      to the bar to watch football matches but he mainly likes to do it to meet girls. Mike has a hobby with military collectibles since his grandfather served in WW2. He generally likes to go paintballing with his friends and finds it very stress-relieving.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

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

We used many different technologies whilst making the opening to 'A State Of Mind'. These were:

Final Cut Express- this was completely new to me but after looking at tutorials I gained a clear understanding of how to use it and I played a big part in editing our opening

HD Cameras/Tripod- To film our piece we used an HD camera on a Tripod and we found it was fairly simple to use. We would film the shots and then upload them onto the Apple Mac that we were using and then put them onto Final Cut Express.

blogger.com- Obviously we used blogger to create our posts. This was new to me but it is fairly simple to use.

prezi.com- I also used the website prezi.com to help me create some presentations. I would them upload them onto blogger.com.

youtube.com- We used youtube.com to exhibit our production and also our preliminary task. After the editing was complete we uploaded our videos onto youtube.com.

7. What do you feel you have learnt from the progression from the preliminary task to the full product? 

Below is our preliminary task full with notes:

When we first started out with our preliminary task we only used basic camera and editing techniques. This was to display the fact that we knew how to use them and also allowed us to develope our skills by starting at the beginning and working our way up.

When we reached our final task we knew that we would need to use more advanced editing and camera techniques. We had already displayed the use of a matched cut and the 180 degree angle in our preliminary task and we knew that we needed to use them and more in our final task. Also, with editing we only experimented a bit with fades in the preliminary task but when it came to the main task we added visual effects like a blur.