Ben Cawdrons Media Evaluation

Me in deep thought about the course

I wasn't expecting AS level media to be easy but i feel i have done fairly well, considering i hadn't done it for a year...

Me being great

Forms and Conventions

James Bond: Casino Royale's opening title sequence is film noir style. It matches conventions of a film noir piece.

For example: costume, smart dress (suit); props, guns; characters, antagonist, protagonist, femme fatale; lighting, strong lighting, high-contrast between black and white.

In our film Noir OTS we had alot of unintentional, diegetic sound such as wind and cars driving past. (One of the problems with filming outside without a decent microphone.) We resolved this problem by; 1, adding a non-diegetic soundtrack, and 2, having an inner monologue playing almost throughout.

The film noir genre uses a selection of stock characters; for example, protagonist, antagonist, and a femme fatale. These characters are fairly specific to this genre.

I feel that our film has met alot of the forms and conventions of a Film Noir OTS aswell as challenged some of them e.g. the costume.

Audience

The most likely audience to watch our piece is male,

the protagonist is a male and there is alot of violence

and drugs amongst the first few minutes.

For our market research we took our film noir OTS into a few assemblys and handed out questionnaires and tallied up the results.

The result was that many teens aged 15-19 emjoyed our OTS and would pay to watch it.

We planned on streaming our product online as our target audience generally spedn alot of time on the internet whether it be facebook, youtube or other similar websites.

We decided to classify our film as a 15.

This is because we have involved violence

and drugs in our piece.

The reason it is not an 18 is because we did

not want to limit our Target Audience. Also

we did not involve any sex, or particularly

explicit language.

Representation of Social Groups

Because our OTS is aimed at 15-19 year olds we thought we would make our main character around the same age group to make him more relatable to.

We used 3 different locations for our filming;

Tom's House, Jayde's House and an alleyway.

We needed to show the protagonist in his house getting ready, getting shot and also the other characters in another location organising his death.

Our Femme Fatale is only shwon in one scene of the OTS.

She is seen kissing the protaganist's killer and walking away into a car.

Attracting My Audience

We have decided to stream our OTS online as our target audience statistically use the internet often.

Our OTS would not be suitable as a trailer for the film as i feel it gives away too muchy of the story. However i feel a trailer could be made out of the footage recorded for the OTS with (if needed) a few small extra shots.

We used Blogspot.com to blog our progress along the course of creating our Film Noir OTS

For the audience the blog can experience the troubles etc. that encountered along the process of making the OTS

I feel i did not successfully complete the blog as fully as i could due to technical difficulties aswell as bad time organisation.

Before finishing our film plans we watched some film noir style OTS' for example the opening to James Bond: Casino Royale. This is done in the film noir style as it is in black and white, still camera angles, dark mysterious lighting, and the props used e.g. guns and costume (suits and dresses)

Critical Theories

Our Femme fatale had long brown hair, wore a silky red dress and was very mysterious. matching the conventions of a typical Femme Fatale

Our OTS was created in the aim of leaving the audience on a cliffhanger, enticing them to watch further and question the storyline.

Once again a typical convention of an OTS.

Our OTS inferred the semiotics of violence right from the start in which the protagonist is being followed down a dark alleyway by a man with a shaven head fastly approaching him in an aggresive manner.

This shows the audience that the man is going to someway violently react to the protagonist.

Progress made and Planning

When we were given the task of creating a Film Noir style OTS we sat down as a group and thought of key conventions we wanted to incorporate into our OTS.

we decided we wanted a gun and a smartly dressed hitman inciorperated into out OTS. However it took us a long time to arrange to meet up again and discuss this further as we were all badly organised. So we nominated Jayde in being in charge of us all and she soon got us working.

I feel this task has made me realise that i am very bad at organising myself and others, it has alos helped me realise other peoples weaknesses in the group which i was considerably stronger at and helped them with it. for example editing.

Institution and Distribution

Evaluating my work has made me notice my own strengths and weaknesses, i lack ability in written work however i excel in practical work (being a kinesthetic worker i'm not too surprised)

Having previously done media and making alot of music videos etc. in my spare time uploading was a very easy task for me.

Also me and Ben Hawkins are used to working together on media productions and so we can help eachother out with problems the other may have.

I four OTS were to be shown in a cinema i feel it would not get many viewers for several reasons:

Film Noir is an old genre with a nich market

The resolution on the camera would not easily be able to be shown on such a large screen

Technologies and Constructing my Film

I found the editing stage of the OTS to be the easiest as i had alot of experience editing with iMovie as did Ben Hawkins. Using this advantage we quickly edited our film and had enough time to re-edit a few times improving our product.

As our target audience was the 15-19 range we though rtincorporating violence would entice them into viewing.

We also used actors of their age group to make the character more relatable and the film more enjoyable.

We had a very basic film plan however we kept making creative decision on the days of filming and editing.

After finishing one edit of the film we then showed other classmates and got their feedback in order to better our OTS before having a finished version.

Our group was constantly assessing the work already done to see if there were any bits that needed to be, rewritten, improved, refilmed, and extra filming that needed to be done etc. right from the start.

The End

Distribution and Exchange

The Protagonist

Femme Fatale

Locations for Action

Deconstructing Film

Blogging

Preferred Reading

Market Research

Femme Fatale

Dark Lighting

Large contrast between light and dark

Audience Types

Opening Title Sequence

Consumption

Production Process

Sound

Users and Gratifications

Stock Characters

Semiotics

Costume and Props

Self Improvement

smart clothing e.g. dress/suit

Guns

Me And My Project

Film plan

Online Presentation

Review and Evaluation

This online presntation allows our target audience to see why and how certain decisions were made during the production of our OTS.

Editing

Meeting our audience's needs

Cinema Screening

Uploading