Question 7

Question 6 - Technology

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

When researching and creating our film open we used a variety of software and hardware, for research we mainly used google to investigate different films of our chosen genre for references, and found websites like 'The Numbers' and 'Box Office Mojo'. Which we used quiet frequently to research into film distribution and demographics.

We used YouTube to find all of our film openings we used as references in our research and planning, from genres similar to ours and also to find inspirations and ideas from other student products on there. The 'embed' button came in very useful to put YouTube clips on our blogs. This made it easy to evaluate other students work and give something to reference it by. The only negative was the schools internet protection and monitoring service 'Impero', which blocks videos that include key words set by the admins, which sometimes made useful videos unobtainable, this is a good piece of software for school but can inconvenience use when searching for videos like 'The Godfather' which contains graphic violence.

A large majority of our coursework was done using 'Blogger', this is a blogger service which allows posts to be make and kept up to date easily. Blogger really helped us keep our coursework together and in he right order, it also allowed changes to be made easily to blogs that we had received feedback on from our teacher, which means improving our work was easy. I have never used any kind of blogging service but with this i soon learned and was made very easy to use and pick up.


Another major resource we used for our work was 'Prezi', this is a power point/presentation service that is very useful to for making large 3D power points that we can easily embed onto our blogs. It was also very user friendly and easy to use, we used it in our bigger pieces of coursework so that its not layed out to be just big blocks of text, but more of an interactive power point that can include lots of pictures and is stylized differently each time.

For our filming we used a equipment for the first time such as; a camera, tripod and microphone. we all had some experience with a camera but not in an assessed way, so it was a first for us all to mount the camera on a tripod and use it efficiently. It was quite easy to use after we were told the basics form our teacher, a lot of the time we were just experimenting with them all in combination to find good ways to use them, such as tilts and heights, as well as taking into account technical aspects such as lighting a scenes. After we had done the preliminary task using them we had got the hang of it, making the official film opening much smoother to film.

For the final stage of production, the editing, we used 'Sony Movie Studio Platinum'. This software is for editing clips and film footage into videos. We spent a long time using this as the editing is a major part of any film, we had some experience using editing software between us so the process went well, and allowed us to take full advantage of all the effects that the software had to offer making our finished product a very good quality video.

In conclusion, we learnt a lot from all of these technologies during the production of our media film opening, making us confident about using the entire range of equipment and software at our disposal in media productions, no doubt giving us an advantage in future projects in A2 media.

Question 5 - Attracting/Adressing Our Audience

How did you attract/address your audience?

In order to attract our target audience we had to find out what our audience wants and would expect in film openings. To do this we interview people who fit our primary and secondary target demographics and who liked our genre in films, Which is males under 35 for our primary and over 35 for our secondary. We wanted to know from the audience what they would like to see in our new film, so we conducted an interview with hand-picked people from our primary and secondary audiences.




In our interviews seen above we asked questions such as;

- Name, age and gender? Chris Higgins, 23, male
- why do you like to watch action films? thrilling and involved, positive
- what is your favourite action film and why? borne identity, storyline and lead character
- what aspects of action films incise you to watch them? good car chase, gun fights, and good overcome bad, vengeance.
- do you find the stereotypical role of a dominant male and a damsel in distress a bad thing?
- What would you like to see in an action film you haven't seen before?

From our fist interview with Chris Higgins we found out that he likes films that are thrilling and make him feel involved, which is one of the main reasons people consume media. We decided that this was a strong factor that we should include in our film and decided to make it a cross between action and crime/thriller to make the story interesting and have a large amount of enigma and thriller elements. He mentioned his favorite film was 'Bourne Identity' with similar themes.

Using all of the answers from the interview with our target audiences, we then pitched our ideas and developments to our peers.



We plan to attract our audiences by:

Incorporating a strong sense of action through out the film, even though we have not met the typical conventions of an action film due to the fact that we have not used a big city for the setting of our film, but we feel that this will be surprising for our audience and feel different when watched, hopefully making it more memorable. As well as keeping the key theme of 'thriller' active in our film, we will achieve this by manipulating the music and sound effects slowly growing in intensity to fit the scenes and basing this around the key characters heavily during the approaches and encounters of the main character. as well as incorporating fast paced editing and shadow work in the scenes.

A quintessential part of action and thriller films are the plot which can grab the audiences attention and keep it for the entire film, awaiting the conclusion. we intend on using this method of starting off slowly, giving the audience small details as the film progresses so they want to keep watching to find out more, and what will happen. This is the most effective way to keep an audience interested and involved in the plot and film.

Question 4 - The Audience

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Targeting the right audience is crucial for a films success, when a film knows what its target audience is and specifically markets to appeal to them, the film will generally be better received and be watched by more people.

When considering your target audience the factors you must consider are;

- Demographics (age, gender etc.)
- Psychographics (interests/opinions, etc.)
- Mainstream/niche
- Primary audiences
- Secondary audiences

When deciding our target audience we also researched all the audiences and genre popularity on websites like The UK Film Council stats and Box Office Data which also included information like which genre is most popular in which countries and areas.

As you can see from this survey that the two genres; Action and thriller, are rated two of the most popular genres by the general public. The specific gender that is the largest audience is Male 35> as males count for the majority of action favouritism and the age group is 35>




Our film would be premiered at a multiplex cinema as its the most common way of reaching our target audiences of males 35+. The audience is mainstream so a multiplex cinema would be the best place to show it. We got our demographics and great detail of each of them, from the UK Film Council. another graph we found helpful was the rating for the genres. Using this we can see what genre is most popular and which a wide public audience would pick to be their favourite genre of all, using this we decided what audience we wanted to target our film towards. Here is a graph that shows how popular the genres Action, Crime and Thriller are, as we combined the three for the themes in our film.


We interviewed a hand selected few that fit our primary and secondary target audience to ask them a range of questions to improve our film ideas. We asked questions such as "what would you like to see in a film that you haven't seen before?" and " What aspects of an action film entice you?". The answers we received were helpful as we worked the film around the concept of thriller, which was popular between the interviewees. Our film's key aspects are its crime/thriller genre and its enigma heavy plot.



After choosing our target audience we had to chose our BBFC rating which would be certificated 15, as the film includes strong language, and frequent violence. This content would be inappropriate for anyone under 15, and as the film doesn't glamourize violence it makes it look realistic and very negative portrayal to the audience.


These are the all the BBFC certifications ratings.
From choosing this over 15 age certificate, we are more appealing to our secondary target audience of under 35 males, so we interest a larger audience.


In conclusion, our target audience is males under 35 who enjoy action with thriller aspects and enigmatic plot, keeping it an interesting mix.

Question 3 - Film Distribution

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

A film distributor is a company or individual responsible for the marketing of a film. The distributor may set the release date of a film and the method by which a film to be exhibited or made available for viewing: for example, directly to the public either theoretically or for home viewing (DVD, video-on-demand, (such as Netflix or love film) download, television programs through broadcast syndication). A distributor may do this directly, if the distributor owns the theatres or film distribution networks, or through theatrical exhibitors and other sub-distributors. A limited distributor may deal only with particular products, such as DVDs or Blu-ray, or may act in a particular country or market.

Our film, if it was produced completely and we wanted it to be distributed to the public, we would chose a major distributor for promotion and marketing. a big budget and high profile distributor such as; Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, Motion Pictures etc. We would be bigger budget to ensure that the film would be distributed and marketed to a wide audience and be easily accessible. This is because our target audiences is one of the widest  and largest audience to aim for, which means its more likely to be watched by more people.

If we chose a distributor we would choose one that has done films of the same genre before, so they are experienced with marketing to this genre and will make the film as accessible and successful as possible, probably 'New Line Cinema' as they had distributed 'se7en' and 'Gravity' which is a very similar film to ours in terms of its theme and style, and has done very well in the film industry. Although we would use a bigger budget distributor that doesn't mean that the film couldn't be a success if we chose an independent distributor, films such as 'Paranormal Activity' were made with a relatively tiny budget compared to most films that were as popular.



As we would be using a major distributor and using a much larger budget than needed, we would have the film premiered and shown in multiplex cinemas to reach the mainstream audiences. As for marketing the film, it would be ideal to advertise with a trailer on TV, as well as in public places such as; on buses, bus stops, and even billboards.

Question 2 - Representing Social Groups

How does your media product represent particular social groups?
The social groups we explored in our media product were gender, age and social status.

The male character; the key characters presented in our media product are males, which stereo-typically as a gender in films are seen as being the strong, main roles such as hero's and villains, which in this case is true. As the main hero and main villains in films are usually portrayed as strong male characters, we presented the key character in a similar way. but portraying him as an unknown with more mystery his traits are not defined going against the iconic and known threat of the villain.

The victim character is also against some of the common stereotypes such as the male character being in control of the situation, as he is soon in a position of having no power in his home. The unknown characters portrayal is also enhanced by the cloths he wears, the use of dark, concealing cloths such as his biker jacket and helmet, contribute to the characters mystery. We also challenged the stereotype of a young male as they are often the type of character to play a false hero, due to the fact that they are less informed and weaker than the real hero, normally a bigger built middle aged man. We have challenged the stereotype as the young man in our film plays the role of a victim when this role would normally be played by a female in an action film. The victim wears a dressing gown which connotes 'relaxed' and 'laid-back', which can also be seen as vulnerable.

A stereotype we have followed is that the unknown male character has the traits you would expect from a male in an action film and that is one of him being violent and dangerous, although you do not see him being violent in our film opening you will still feel that the unknown male character is dangerous due to the fact that he is unknown and because of this people find them self's labelling him as dangerous.

Gender in our film opening has been presented in a few different ways.
We have represented females in a derogative way due to our cast being male only leaving only one role to be played by a female and therefore we have shown our audience that society is dominated by males, the one part that a female plays is a news reporter which is spoken and added over the sequence when the TV is playing. The use of a female news reporter presents females in a strong manner due to the severity of the report and the strength and volume of the voice, this is challenging the stereotype of a woman in an action film as they are usually seen as a 'Damsel in distress' and they need rescuing by a man who often has to risk his life to save her.

Question 1 - Evaluation

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