2. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? We started off wanting to make an adventure comedy set in a school with conventional characters our age, so our generation can relate them. Our media product’s layout and idea has been inspired by previous media products. Products such as Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Back to the Future and the Breakfast Club. We wanted to create a more up to date and down to Earth version of these films. Our film follows the stereotypes of school friendship groups and subcultures within the school environment. Like previous media products we decided to use a Time Machine that is in the form of something out of the ordinary. In Back to the Future for example a DeLorean was used as the time machine and a Police Box in Doctor Who. In the end we decided on the caretakers closet mainly because it is the only room in most schools that no student has gone in leaving it ambiguous. The main characters of our film can not be more different from each other as they all fit in to the subcultures of the modern school environment. Our main character is seen as to be the normal kid connecting each character and being the leader of the crew. The nerdy character was based on stereotypical nerds in other media productions – Getting great grades in class but being picked on for not being the most social or popular kid on the block. The wimpy character is closed off from everyone else he meets. He is insecure and is showing this by wearing his hood up all the time, keeping quiet and staying out of trouble. Lastly is the athlete. He is the popular out of the friendship group and although he impresses the ladies with his physical skills, he relies on others to think for him.
3. How does your media product represent particular social groups? The characters in our media production represent each major social group within the modern school environment. The characters could not be more different from each other as they all have their own individual personalities and outlooks on life. They each see similar things from different perspectives. The group leader sees things as they are but others with more of a sporty personality see things below him, believing no situation is too impossible to overcome with his athletic skill. The wimp believes every situation is hopeless and impossible to overcome. The nerd is the one who uses logic and his knowledge to overcome his obstacles in dire situations, where it would seem impossible to get out of it. Each of these characters represent a social group in modern society. It is easy to see which is which: the wimpy, closed off character is the emo of the group. The nerdy one is the smart, unpopular and wise character of the group. The sport character is the popular jock of the group, who is ‘cool’ and leader of the PE team of the school. And the average lead role character of the group is the ‘inbetweener’, who has a mix of personalities and traits that make him the connection in the group, linking the friends.
4. lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? The comedy movie industry is huge in the modern society, so our film would hopefully fit in with that industry. It’s been a while since a time travel comedy film made it into the institutions, so hopefully, our movie with its witty humour and inside jokes would get the laughs and attention that it deserves. On the other hand, our production would not be recognised by big well know media institutions such as 20 Century Fox, because they are interested in films they would make money on, films with bigger budgets, better equipment and well known actors. They generally go for distributing these mainstream films. If anyone at all was to distribute our film it would more likely be smaller institutions such as the British film industry. We feel they should distribute our film because it has potential to appeal to a wide range of people because it fits in the category of several genres – Adventure, Sci-fi, Comedy
5. lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll Who would be the audience for your media product? Graeme Burton had a theory that audiences were in either one of two groups, socially grouped audiences and media grouped audiences. Our media production will be mainly focusing on the first group of Burton’s theory. The audience we believe that will enjoy our media production are generally the teenage and young adult generations of the western society. We say western society because we British people are very influenced by areas like America and its productions. With the majority of movies we watch at the cinema being an American film, the western society could really relate to our ideas and characters. They will be able to relate to the jokes about modern society and the types of groups that they will be overstated in our media product. The groups they will be relating to are all stereotypes, to make things more entertaining and funny. The jokes about the issues that the characters themselves are going through will also relate to the ones that our audience are going through themselves, so it can create relations between audience and the characters. The fanatics of time travel adventure and comedy films such as ‘ Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure’ and ‘ Back to the Future’ , will enjoy our genre of film for its modern take on these films.
6. lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll How did you attract/address your audience? We feel we have attracted our audience by dumping them straight into a situation that they could most likely relate to, a classroom environment. They are placed in a situation with the characters of experiencing boredom in lesson during school, which, once again, people at some point in their life could probably relate to. The narration of the main character ‘Jake’ then starts with him introducing himself and making funny comments about the teacher. The viewer may question, why is the voice of the narration sound a lot older than this 11 year old boy who he describes himself to be. I feel this will keep viewers tuned in as no one like to have unanswered questions wondering around in their head. The viewers will then see a transition between film clips when the characters change and the music begins. By using music by the ‘Red Hot Chili Peppers’, an American rock band who have had great success and who’s music has hit millions of people, we feel this will keep the audience engaged and give them some self esteem. In our film we have also tried and added some witty comedy and sly comments. These comments are modern humour and were mostly used through our narrator. Also the mise-en-scene of the clothing over exaggerates stereotypes of modern society that each group these characters represent would find it funny. For example the ‘nerdy’ character is cast wearing great big plastic 3D glasses and the ‘jock’ is wearing a football kit around school and wouldn't be caught dead without a football by his side. We feel exaggerating each characters characteristics adds humour to the film. Also we attempted to attract our audience through using popular indie music and human generated sound effects of the time machine which can also attract and create humour. With some members of our team creating the time machine sound effects themselves using sounds from our mouths, it makes the film in a sense more personal and unique. Knowing that we created our own sounds for the film rather than using already generated sounds off the iMac’s, which thousands of people will all use and share, we hope, will create more interest in our movie.
7. lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? We are grateful to have used some great technology for the filming to the editing process of our project. With great pieces of equipment like the camera to film and the iMacs to edit, it allowed us to do so much and to achieve what we were going for. But like everything technical something can go wrong. We had several technical difficulties throughout the process of making our film, whether it be the camera loosing battery life, not having enough film, finding and using the same Mac so we could continue editing our video, not having a lead to connect the with the camera etc... We have picked up a great amount of experience for when it comes to editing on the iMacs. We originally filmed about 10 minutes of footage for our film, including outtakes, which we would then have to cut down to just 2 minutes. Because of this, we had alot of practice with selecting and cutting film clips which we thought to be unnecessary. Once we cut the film down the first time it was still over a minute long and we then had to knit pick and every second and do some more cutting, cutting milliseconds at a time sometimes. Because we done so much cutting of the film, we had so many small clips that made the overall film which then led on to the editing. Before this project only one of our team members had experience with editing on the computers where as now all four of us are fully knowledgeable about it and could edit freely without hesitation. Another thing that we have learnt is that from certain editing software a lot of special effects (SFX) with sounds and imagery can be generated to fit the certain atmosphere you are looking for. We had decided to generally stay away from adding these affects as they can often look unprofessional and effects for transitions such as fades and dissolves.
8. lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? We, as a group have made a significant jump in terms of quality and skill of the work that has gone in from our prelim to out final production. We have specifically learnt how much difference adding music in shots, can affect the atmosphere. Unlike our preliminary video had no music or non-diegetic sound to it what so ever. All the sound was recorded as the camera was filming. Whereas the sounds and music that went into our actual film production was a big part of the film. We spent along time as a group deciding on fitting music and the timing of the visuals with the rythm. We learnt how to put soundtracks over the clip but also narration. We also added . We have also learnt how to fade out unnecessary diegetic sound in the clip and replace it with sound effects, music or narration. We also learnt how to cut out unless, unneeded seconds that were making our clip too long. These clips were making our clip 3 minutes 30 seconds instead of 2 minutes like it was meant to be. We asked for more help when it was needed from the teacher and stuck to more deadlines than we did before. We have learnt how body language, facial expressions and voices can make each character more realistic. Before, our body language and facial expressions were plain, which made our preliminary not as successful as we would have liked it to be. However, our main product, we made our actors look and act like the characters would be behaving so it was much fluent and looked more believable.
