AS Media Evaluation

1. Evaluation
Nathan Doherty

2. In what ways does your media product use, develop
or challenge forms and conventions of your real
media products.
In my romantic comedy filming opening I tried to follow the
generic conventions in order to the film to fit the genre. However I
also wanted it to be unique and different from the “RomComs” we
often see. I included studio opening credits as well cast and crew
credits to give the film a realistic feel and look. I tried to get big,
cinematic style shots of the landscape to establish where the
character was and what she was doing.
I looked a romantic comedy opening sequences not only for
inspiration but also as my analysis of existing opening romantic
comedy sequences and helped me to create a conventional
RomCom opening sequence myself.

3. How does your media product represent particular
social groups?
My media product represents the social group of teenager girls,
women and couples as they are the target audience RomComs are
usually made for. I think I have managed to achieve this through the
use of music, character and colours I used. The music was a love
song (although not a stereotypical love song) “Us Against The World”
by Coldplay, the character was a strong woman and the colours I
used were soft reds and pinks which is a very feminine colour
scheme.
In order to meet this social group I looked a other examples of very
girly RomComs. I analysed films such as “Crazy, Stupid, Love” and
“Friends With Benefits ” and I discovered that these films are mainly
based around a women and groups of women and focuses on their
side of the story and not so much the mans. I did this by opening the
film with girls running and everything being focused on her to give
the audience a sense of her importance.

4. What kind of media institution might distribute your
media product and why?
I think it is likely that the following institutions would distribute my
product.
•Cinema
•DVD, Blu-Ray, HD-DVD
•Digital Content Services like iTunes, Play Movies and YouTube.
•Film Subscription Services such as NetFlix’s and Amazon Prime
Instant Video
I think this as Cinema is where most films a primarily released
before going onto being made available on DVD, Blu-Ray etc and
nowadays services and sites like NetFlix and iTunes.

5. What would be the audience for your media product?
The target audience for my media product is teenage girls and
couples. I have chosen this as my target audience as teenage
girls tend to favours this genre and boys normally only watch it
with their girlfriends as a couple. However I feel this film is open
to anyone to enjoy.
I choose this target audience as the majority of RomComs are
made for late teens upwards and I saw this as a gap in the
market whack my RomCom is trying to fill.

6. How did you attract/address your audience?
I attracted the audience by making the idea of the film relatively
simple and easy to understand. The bright setting and colourful
font on the opening sequence grapes the audiences attention and
invites them in to watch and enjoy the film. The film “Juno” also
played a part of deciding the opening sequence as it starts with a
music video style opening which I aimed to incorporate in the
finished piece.

7. What have you learnt about technologies from the
process of constructing this product?
Through this process I have learnt of new software like iMovie for
example, which allows anyone to edit video and sound simply but
effectively. You can import titles, transitions and effects like slow
or fast motion.
I have also learned new editing skills as well. The main one being
“Ken Burns” which allows you to crop the video in two places and
the software moves the camera from place one to place two. This
works great for scanning over pictures or panning across and
countryside. Along with this I learnt about fading music in and out
and adjusting the pitch and loudness.

8. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you
feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the
full product?Looking back at my preliminary task I feel that I have significantly improved the use of camera
shots, angles and movements. I have tried to make the shots have more depth and movement
from what I have in the prelim task.
Time management and planning also improved in the main task as new what needed to be done
and when, this really helped when meeting deadlines and coursework due dates.
Another thing I learnt from my preliminary task is that iMovie is a lot better and simpler than
Windows Movie Maker which is used to edit my prelim.
Although my preliminary piece did help us it did tell us what the scenario was and therefore
didn’t leave loads of room for our own creativity which is something the main task did which I
much preferred.
Overall I think my skills have improved over time and I have created a much more professional
opening sequence compared to the prelim task.
However the finished opening sequence wasn’t how I would of liked it to of been as someone in
my group didn’t put the effort in to come out and shoot with me. The person said she would get
her friends to be in the opening sequence but as time went on and she kept cancelling the
filming dates we set so I had to quickly organise it so that it would be complete for the
coursework deadline even if it wasn’t to the stand I would have liked. Because of this it meant
certain elements had to be taken out as I could only find one suitable actor in the time given. For
example, the flashback of the montage was removed as it required three actors. I decided the
best I could do was to focus on the girl running scene which could happen with only one person.
I tried to incorporate different camera shots and angles to make it a bit more interesting. This
opening sequence could have definitely been improved by completing all of what I had set out to
have done with more actors so that I could have included all of the scenes.