2. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Our film is very typical of the war genre. The character type is typical as he is shown to be a soldier who has been captured and then escaped from prison, he is shown to be very distressed and very nervous in the situation that he is in also there is the wife of the soldier who dies she is shown to be very sad at the loss of her husband. The setting of the film is in a forest in 1943 Germany at the start of Hitler's downfall, this is very typical of the war genre as many of the main battles are were fought in these surroundings, also from my research I found that many of the war films I watched, such as Platoon or Saving Private Ryan were filmed around forests. The narrative structure is fairly typical of war films as it involves a soldier who has been captured who then escapes from prison and is alone behind enemy we have also shown the reaction of a women who has just been told that her husband is missing in action. In our film to look at the significant objects was very important to make the film as realistic as possible. To do this we research the uniforms that the soldiers would be wearing and things like what an authentic missing in action letter looks like. We researched these things by watching other war movies and looking at things on the internet. In our film there is lots of emotional music to emphasise the situations that are faced not only by the soldier but by the people who are indirectly affected by the war such as wives and girl friends. When looking at other films we saw that the type of music changed in different situations for example when someone dies the music is very slow, quiet and soft but when someone is running the music is very energetic.
3. How does your media product represent particular social groups? The social groups that are shown in our film opening are mainly male and there is one women. The male characters are shown to be fighting in the war as that is there role and the women is shown to be staying at home and going about things as she normally would. There are shown to be fairly young as it was mainly young soldiers who fought in the second world war. This is trying to show that there were lots of young men dying before they had started living. There is very little dialogue in the opening of our film as it isn't needed. The main character is shown to be very nervous in the situation he is in as he is behind enemy lines with no support. Soldiers who fought in the war were shown to be heroes who didn’t get scared and we were trying to show the reality of the situation. We show a women receiving a letter saying that her husband is missing in action there is a teardrop shown hitting the letter this shows that she is very sad. In our film soldiers are represented positively in a very negative situation. Using the camera we have shown the negative effects of war, when private Clemance dies from the wounds that he has received. Sergeant Colon is shown to be a positive character who keeps fighting whatever the situation. From our war film the characters are shown to be very stereotypical as they are scared in the situation that they are in, however in other war films they are shown as heroes who are scared of nothing, this is counter typical. The audience is position to like the main character as he is shown to be battling on through the bad situation. They are also positioned to feel sympathetic towards the woman who has received the missing in action letter.
4. What kind of media institution might distribute your product and why? As we decided to work in the war genre when producing our opening sequence, the companies that would distribute our product would be one of the major studios in the Hollywood oligopoly. They would be part of a major conglomerate so there is no need for the different stages to go to different companies. It would have to be one of these major companies such as fox or Sony as the cost of making a war film is very high. This is due to all the effects, props, locations and the casting of major well known actors to help bring in the target audience. Tom Hanks played the main role in Saving Private Ryan and is paid around $20 million per film so a major production company would be needed to be able to pay him.
5. How did you attract/address your audience? In pre-production we chose to do a war film as everybody in our group likes this genre. We also new that we would be showing our film to lots of males and from our research we found that mainly males would would be watching this genre. In our group we knew the story line that we wanted; we wanted a women to be receiving a missing in action and a shot of someone dying or dead. When casting the male characters it was very easy as our group was all males the main issue was to find a female who was young and attractive as this would help attract an audience. It was hard to find the costumes that would look realistic to the genre we used sources such as the drama department in school, shops and grandparents. The makeup we planned in pre production was what the makeup for Jack Clemence, what he was going to look like when he died so fake blood and real organs were decided. When filming our production we wanted to mainly get a shot of the guts, this would bring an audience in. Surveys show that violence and guns are a good male aspect so showing this destruction was a must.The lighting wasn’t planned; therefore we used natural lighting throughout the production. In post-production the music that we put into our film was essential to emphasise the emotions that are portrayed in the film opening.
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? When making the opening to our film and during the preliminary task I have learnt how to use the DV/HD camera and all the different settings on it, such as watching back the footage that we had just recorded and how to the transfer the footage from the camera onto the mac book pros using the fire wire cable. I have also learnt how to use some of the different software on the macs such as final cut express and garage band. Final cut express is used for editing the footage that we had recorded, we were able to cut the footage, add transitions and other different effects. We used garage band to create the music that we have used in our opening sequence, there are lots of different sounds that we were able to use such as strings, piano and drums. We have also used live type to crate the credits for our opening sequence. To create our authentic letter we used the notepad on the Apple Macs using different colours, sizes and fonts like American typewriter.
7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? In the pre-production of our preliminary task one of the main difficulties that our group faced was the storyboarding and losing the storyboards, the storyboards that we produced weren’t detailed enough. We realised when we went into production that it was never going to work and we had to make up most of the shots of the top of our heads. In our main task the storyboards this time were very detailed, they included detailed pictures, time of the shot, what shot was being used and if there was any sound or dialogue in this shot. Though production of our preliminary task the main problem is that we didn’t have enough equipment like the tripod and we didn’t allocate times for making the production so it was somewhat rushed. We also didn’t have a specific location and started filming in one class the the class came back and we had to change. In our main production we decided times, costumes, prices etc. all in pre-production therefore in the later stages of production we could handle the situation. In editing the soundtrack wasn’t very appealing in the preliminary task, the dialogue was hard to hear in parts and I learnt that from our storyboards we could straight away plan the music this in the later stages of our film proved very effective
