Evaluation

For the OTS task, I worked with Bianca. As Bianca and I both didn't take gcse media before AS we both had the oppourtunity to learn from our previous continuity task groups and physically get invloved instead of learning from the sidelines.

We worked well together as we were friends before this course so we felt comfortable expressing our views, opinions and critism and we could just ask eachother to do a task and we'll get on with it, we were always busy. Also us being friends was an advantage as we stayed after college or worked during our free lessons.

Our OTS was uploaded to 'Vimeo' a site where our target audience is easy accessible, anyone can upload a video or share their criticism or likes.

To get noticed, I'm going to embed the video onto a few social networking sites.

Thankfully, the group I was included in took media before as a gcse and had a lot of experience with filming and editing. Because of this I put myself up as an actor so I can learn about filming by watching and being part of it. During editing there was some trouble with transitions and the whole piece flowing. Thankfully Luke and Rachel knew how to make the piece come together. Because I was in a experienced group, and the task brief was fairly straight forward there weren't anymore techinical difficulties.

We experienced a lot of technical problems during editing, for example when we lowered the saturation and increased the contrast, some scenes just went blank and all you could hear was the audio, when we uploaded the scenes from the camera onto the macs out of 93 clips a few scenes wouldn't upload, a lot of the audio and backing track wouldn't fit in properly either.

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

http://charlotteharrisasmediaschs2012.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/production-meeting-backlog_18.html

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

One of our techniques to attract audience was to have a strong message to female viewers of success and individuality. We also decided to attract our target group of a female audience by being in the film ourselves, we also targetted Thelma and Louise fans so they could see what happened after they drove off the cliff at the end of the original film.

Editing

Unlike mise-en-scene with editing this is where we decided to have a more neo-noir feel to it. This was presented with transitions and jump cuts, especially used in the get away scene to add dramatic effect. However like a classic convention the saturation was lowered to create the black and white effect and the contrast was vastly increased to create the chiaroscuro effect. However, we left the flashback scene with normal saturation (how the colours orginally are to signify the orginal T+L movie.

Also, this course has introduced me to many new media platforms.

• Using Macs
• Survey Monkey
• Prezi
• Vimeo
• imovie
• Foleying
• Slide share

Conventions add meaning, depth and visual appeal, they come in many different ranges depending on the style, genre and story line in film.

We got set Film Noir.

I didn't take media studies as a gcse before taking this course so I didn't know exactly what to expect. I've had a few blogs before, as I study photography but never have been to into them or updated them much. I've used blogger for my gcse photography the past two years, however using blogger for media studies has taught me more things I didn't know I could do. Like how to embed almost any video onto my blog, or how to present a well presented blog with visual and technical appeal in mind.

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

So the first thing we had to do was study film noir in depth.

http://www.e4.com/estings/

Characters

For the characters there was a cross over between classic and neo, the femme fatals are typical conventions, Blonde hair, fur coats, heels, smoking, the make up.. However the detective isn't a typical character, his occupation is, being invloved with crime, but he isn't an anti-hero, he has been drawn in by the femme fatals but not on looks or lust, because they're convicts he wants to arrest. Another factor challenging the typical conventions are his importance compared to T+L, a classic film noir would be constanly highlighting the male dominance however, his name for example, all the audience know's is 'detective' he isn't in control enough to have a name, notice also the posture of the charatcers when they speak to the bar maid, T+L stand up in power and the detective sits down, slouching his shoulders.

Charlotte Harris

Media Studies Evaluation

Candidate number: 4234

How did you attract/address your audience?

Also, as the media product is a sequel, the audience could be targeted at fans of the original movie 'Thelma and Louise', catching a lot of different types of audiences interest, especially women, as the movie was a break through at its time for being an action movie, but with two women staring in it 'Susan Sarandon' and 'Geena Davis' were brilliant at playing the part of how independant the women were supposed to be played and not a lead male characters arm candy. It gave a positive clear message at its time to women that society is changing for the good.

As the sequel is a film noir, the audience would change around, our target audience we were tyring to attract are independant women, bored housewives, women 16/40 years of age.

One of the first things we done was audience led research, we both created a survey each and embedded it onto a few social networking sites.

The era of film noir (1930/40) the male viewers saw themselves as the dominant gender and females as objects.This weren't just a film noir view this was a dominant society view. Our film portrays a different side of the female characters, they're strong, powerful independant females who don't depend upon the presence of an anti-hero to feel reassured or safe. Which does represent a majority of women in society now.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Sound

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

How did you attract/address yor audience?

Links to good examples of what the social groups the OTS represents:

For sound we used a combination of diagetic and non diagetic sound, we just decided what sounded right for example if the audio clip didn't record well enough, like a car going past or the sound not being loud enough we used foleying to empthasize the sound, (like the jump cuts and transitions) to create a dramatic effect.

I bought two of Bob Belden's songs of itunes because his music fits in the classic film noir era, the jazz orchestra fits perfectly with the ambience of our OTS, building tension, portraying the characters mood, like wise with "Elbow - Any day now" for the flash back get away scene.

http://blog.baremagazine.org/2009/09/coco-before-chanel-chanel-in-film.html

http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2011/02/22/men-think-women-with-good-jobs-are-sexy/

http://www.menshealth.co.uk/style/accessories/links-of-london-independent-woman

Links to good research

sources for audience

Typical Film Noir Chiaroscuro

lighting

Our mode of address to the audience is to stay away from crime, most film noirs 'MOA' are warnings to males to stay away from independant 'Femme Fatals.'

Also, instead of traditional film noirs where the audience sympathise with the anti-hero our film noir is going to be a female gaze from both the femme fatals perspective, another reason why women is our targeted audience.

http://industry.bfi.org.uk/distributionandexhibition

http://www.bbc.co.uk/filmnetwork/filmmaking/guide/distribution/links-exhibition-and-distribution-features

http://www.creativeskillset.org/film/stories/film_futures/

http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/distribution/distribution1.html

Our interpretation

The audience our OTS is aimed at is very oppositional to traditional film noirs, instead of a male target audience we have a female target audience. I think men still would be able to enjoy the media product, however they may not enjoy it as much as women would. Relating to the 'National Readership Survey' our Film noir is targetting predominantly the social class who fit into 'D-B' category.

Mise-en-scene

Camera and composition

We decided to experiement with the camera angles; investigating the shots of a neo-noir. having lots of different angles and shots gets the viewer more interested, building more tension.

We also decided for the first shot of the characters to not show Tracey and Lauren's faces to make the viewer question who they are and to portray that their in hiding and their who the detective is looking for.

We decided for the setting of our OTS to follow the conventions of a typical film noir. As our OTS is a sequel to a movie which isn't a film noir, we need the conventions of classic film noirs to stand out. Set in a pub/bar, chiaroscuro lighting, smoke, drinks (spirits)

Use of smoke as a film noir convention

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Conventions add meaning, depth and visual appeal, they come in many different ranges depending on the style, type and story line in film.

We studied Film Noir.

I think my media product includes typical features/conventions of a film noir but does however challange the typical film noir conventions and experiments. Firstly, what is typical about about our film noir is the chairisquro (highly contrast) black and white lighting, the smoke from cigarettes, the pub/bar. Editing, we kept a few classic conventions but did experiment for example the transitions to blend the scenes together (wash in, wash out..) due to the 91 clips we firstly uploded, the OTS has a lot of different cuts like the runaway scene at the end, the camera doesn't track or pan us, you just see lots of shots of us running. Camera and compositon, challenging the typical conventions also, we had a lot of different camera angles you wouldn't supposedly see in a film noir, like POV for when the detective couldn't find T+L, the zoom tracking shot of T+L walking into the bar.. However the sound is very typical. The sound track includes a few 'Bob Belden' songs, his music does fit in with the 1930/1940's era. The characters include two femme fatals (typical) a detective (typical anti-hero occupation) and a bar women (also typical) however, the way we've planned it out is very the opposite of what the message film noir's portray (the men having the power) as T+L do get away like how occasionally some film noirs have ended, but the detective doesnt have a name, portraying his importance.