The document provides an evaluation of a media product created by the author. It discusses several ways the product challenged conventions, such as depicting abuse from a younger person rather than an older one. It also summarizes how the product represented particular social groups and addressed its target audience of 16-20 year olds. The author reflects on what they learned about technologies like video editing software and camerawork during the process of constructing the media product.

1. Evaluation
By Tara St. Louis

2. In what ways does your media product use,
develop or challenge forms and conventions of
real media products?
• The usual convention of this type of film is that the abuser is an older person
who has a lot of influence on the young, abused person. Our product is
different and challenges this convention by using a younger person to play
the role of the abuser which shows that abuse can happen in different
circumstances. This wide shot from the film Precious shows her as facial
expressions looking mostly distressed, worried and angry; her clothes are
too small, not flattering and she looks unkempt. We followed this
convention in our film because we made our character, Grace, look similar.
We did this so that the audience would sympathise with the character.

3. This graph is
showing primary
research
feedback.
My primary research showed me that not a lot of people watched movies. Our groups
specifically wanted to focus on drama because it was something we were all passionate about
and how we approached it was to combine our ideas. So I decided that I wanted to make my
opening sequence very engaging and intriguing so that I could get a larger target audience
watching movies specifically genres such as drama’s because that was my groups initial idea,
because we all came up with drama’s we decided to keep it as that and combine some ideas
from each person to create an opening sequence.
More over our focus group and initial idea was ‘Precious’ the film so we decided to comply
some of the ideas from the film into our opening sequence, as well as pitch ideas of our own.

4. How does your media product represent particular
social groups?
• Our film follows the conventions of representing particular social groups in the following ways:
• Young black women are represented as underachieving especially in education which causes
them to lack confidence and have a low self esteem, especially if they are having family
problems.
• Young black men in the product are seen as dominant, untrustworthy, shifty, unemployed and
can be represented as the working class. Unpaid/ benefits/ law income. Also a lot of restricted
code, colloquial language is used which could represent there class and location.
The story board helped to plan out the characters
feelings as well as giving the camera person
accurate scenes they should take.
However my opening sequence didn’t have any
audio in it because there was to much background
noise, therefore we had to make sure that we had
good footage and images that made our opening
sequence understandable for the audience
watching it.

5. This is an two shot of the two
main characters. This suggests
that they come from a working
class by what the male is wearing
and how he is conveyed in the
image. We picked working class
people because it is common and
we thought it would apply to the
audience.
In the opening sequence we used black people because ‘Precious’ was a young
black child going through a lot of problems and we decided to use that idea.
More over the age ranged from 16-20, we wanted to get an older male to play
the role however we couldn’t so we kept it to young people instead.

6. This first medium shot shows that the character is extremely upset by her facial
expressions, it also suggests that she is wearing clothes that could be revealing
by the way she is covering herself. Our group made the costume look like this to
build up suspense. However the second close up shot is a close up of the
character wearing a hoodie which is showing she is trying to cover her face and
body language with a hood on. The first image the character is at home and in
the second location the character is in flats leaving home.

7. The pregnancy test was a prop that was used
in the opening sequence and this was an
important prop as it showed the extreme
outcome of her step dad's abuse.

8. What kind of media institution might distribute your
media product and why?
• I think that Channel 4 might distribute my media product because it has a well known
history of distributing and producing teen movies; for example Buffy the Vampire
Slayer, Kidulthood, Adulthood and Top Boy. These are all movies that are urban,
feature young people and for example Buffy had strange subject matters that were
supernatural and the main character was an outsider. The other films show a hard
lifestyle and how many working class people live today. These are usually based in
the inner city. Channel 4 also distribute their own films and they were one of the first
traditional channels to distribute their own films. They even have their own film
channel, Film 4. They are very well regarded and encourage and support young film
makers.

9. Who would be your audience for your media
product?
• For our media product the target audience was young adults aged between
16-20. we picked this age group because we did the most research on them
especially our primary research.
The graphs beside show the gender
of our target audience research. The
other graph below shows the age
range and 17-18 year olds were the
most popular.

10. How did you attract/address your audience?
• I addressed the target audience by using a beat from garage band in the
editing process to create tension and suspense throughout the sequence.
Also I thought by doing this it would engage the audience more and leave
them asking lots of questions after they have watched it through.
This is the beat I used throughout the
sequence blocking out all audio.

11. These are the two main characters in the opening sequence. ‘Grace’ looks
emotionally distressed and she is located in the bedroom, the trousers on the
bed also suggest that it could be her step dad’s as he abuses her. The step
dad is not showing any remorse in this image and he looks like he does not
really care and he is located in house as well. Most of the scenes were
located in the house to emphasise the abuse ‘Grace’ was receiving. However
there was a couple shots of her going to college to show her juggling college
life with home life. We thought this would attract the audience a lot because
its an gradual build up of emotions, feelings, stress and tension of the
characters roles.

12. What have you learnt about technologies from the
process of constructing this product?
• I have constructed my product by using a programme called final cut which
allowed me to edit, add filters and video transitions etc.
The image above is showing my product and some of the
editing I did to create my final product. The editing helped me to
engage the audience and to try out new things that would work
effectively. Final cut was hard to use at first but once I got used
to it, it became fairly decent after a while.

13. • I learnt the basic procedures of using the camera including turning it off and on and
putting on the fixed tripod. Even though my role in the group was as an actor I
watched one of the group members take various shots such as a pan shot. From
watching her do this I learned some basic information on using different camera
angles. However next time I would like to take on a more active role in using the
camera.
Close up shot Zoom in shot to show the major outcome
to show affecting ‘Grace’.
emotions.

14. • In my final product I used black and white lighting to show flashbacks of
‘Grace’, I also did this to show events that was occurring. As well as using
black and white lighting I also used normal lighting to show the main
outcomes in the opening sequence. I did this to create effects and allow the
target audience to work out what was happening in the opening sequence.
• The scenes that were black and white create a colour collage and showed
the characters thoughts and thinking throughout the sequence. This should
of helped create a gradual build up of mystery because of the suspicious
behaviour occurring.
This is an normal contrast then a
black and white contrast.

15. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you
have learnt in the progression to the full product?
• Looking back at my preliminary task I wasn’t as organised but with my final product I
became more familiar with what to do and I functioned a lot better because I felt that
we had a plan of who was going to do what, deadlines and what we hoped to achieve
at each stage.I also came better at using final cut because in the preliminary task I
struggled with it but now I feel more confident editing my work on it. The preliminary
task helped set me up for my final product and got me ready to progress to form a full
product. More over in our preliminary task we used audio which was colloquial
language and this helped convey how our social group was. In my main task I never
used audio so my social group was portrayed differently.