Thomas Graham summarizes what he learned from creating a media project about gangsters in London. He used stereotypes of different ethnic accents to portray Eastern European and East London gangsters. The Eastern Europeans were portrayed as coming out on top, reflecting a shift in criminal power. Graham learned that proper technology is essential for filmmaking and editing, and that his preliminary task taught him about issues like camera shake and background noise as well as how much editing impacts the final product.

1. Evaluation Thomas Graham

2. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? My project uses a lot of conventions to do with peoples attitudes and stereotypes towards accents. In the scene there is a drug deal between two groups of people, the classic Eastern European ‘gangster’ and a more regional East London ‘gangster’. The media uses these stereotypes of ethnicity a lot so when deciding to make this a gangster based film I also decided to use these two accents for my actors.

3. Continued I also made the Eastern European side come out on top of this deal to represent shift in power in London from these relatively small time gangsters to the real ‘big money’ gangsters from foreign countries. The inspiration for this came from Guy Ritchie's film ‘Rock and Rolla’ which has a similar theme.

4. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? Probably a company like New Line Cinema would distribute a film like this because it isn’t a straightforward action film, it focuses more on the psychological aftermath of living this gangster lifestyle. Because of this it makes the film work on more levels which is the type of film New Line Cinema tend to distribute like Se7en, and The Rite.

5. Who would be the audience for your media project? The audience would be anyone aged 15 onwards, probably a male audience as well. This is because the film doesn’t have a lot of gore and only partial nudity which means it would probably be ranked a 15 by the BBFC. Also because it isn’t just straightforward drug deals, killing and action, it would appeal to an older audience who would want a film that makes them think afterwards.

6. How did you attract/address your audience. To attract a male and female audience I included partial nudity in the bedroom scenes, however this tends to attract men more than woman so it was to attract more of a male audience. Also the use of props like guns, cigarettes, alcohol and drugs just made the film address more of a male audience which is what I anticipate would be the majority of the audience.

7. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? I leant that without the right technologies this process can be extremely hard and arduous, more so that what it was for me. Obviously without a camera it would have been tricky but things like unstable or broken tri-pods, dirty lenses, no lighting equipment etc had a much larger impact on filming than I anticipated. That however did mean that I learnt to adapt and improvise with what I was doing.

8. Continued The need for the right technologies when editing also was of a huge importance. I was fortunate enough to have a mac at school with imovie, live type and other software's which made the process a lot easier to do. Without these privileges though I honestly would have found editing impossible so I’ve learnt that without the right technologies digital film making becomes almost impossible.

9. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? My preliminary task taught me a lot of things, mostly about little things that you don’t consider too much, like camera shake, or background noise. It also taught me more important things like how much film is needed for a relatively short piece, and how much editing takes a roll in the final piece. The most important lesson was probably about the editing and how much editing impacts the film, and how much it can cover up mistakes.