The document provides an evaluation of a media coursework project created by three students. It summarizes the key elements of their film including: 1) The film title "Only Chance" and how it intrigues audiences and emphasizes the band's seriousness. 2) The setting of a stereotypical college which immediately establishes the genre and features noticeable props. 3) The introduction of the two main characters, Chesky and Megan, who have contrasting costumes reflecting their different personalities. 4) The film's representation of teenage social groups and characters that break stereotypes. 5) The targeted audience of 14-19 year old teens and how genre conventions and music were used to attract this

1. Evaluation of Media CourseworkBy Francesca Consiglio, Josh Bamford and Megan Lawrenson

2. 1: In What ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

3. TITLEThe title of our film is Only Chance the title of our film helps to emphasise just how serious the band is to its members whilst also intriguing the audience.

4. SETTINGStereotypical college setting which sets the scene immediately and gives an idea of the films genre.The college setting is clear due to our use of props for example the environment has notice boards and other teenage extra’s with bags which make them appear they have lessons.

5. SETTINGOn the continuous shots Chesky walks down a corridor and past lockers clearly emphasising the college setting

6. CostumeThe two main characters have contrasting costumes to establish the difference in personality and their attitudes. The props are minimal except for the musical instruments in the band scene as they were a necessity for the films plot. The costumes of our characters are typical casual clothing that students would wear on an everyday basis. The costume for Meg however has more of a rock look.

7. ICONOGRAPHYThe poster represents the group’s desperation to find a singer as they are now opening the auditions to anyone that wants to try.

8. CAMERA WORKI think for us it was very important to establish that the film was going to be different from the beginning so rather than have the credits over long shots we decided to split sections of video into quarters allowing us to have two pieces of video playing simultaneously with the credits

9. GENREThe genre of the films was very clear from the offset the setting is very clearly a college film as we thought the opening should have walking shots to establish the location of the film whilst close ups of the guitar show that the film will also include a lot of music.

10. HOW THE CHARACTERS ARE INTRODUCEDThe first main character Chesky is introduced through close ups of her playing the guitar and close ups of her head bobbing along to the music her band is playing. When being introduced it would be hard to first recognise Chesky as one of the main characters as other members of the band have close ups too yet as the story progresses chesky is the only member of the band in the auditions emphasising how important she is to the band and how she is the key member

11. HOW THE CHARACTERS ARE INTRODUCEDThe character of Megan is introduced through walking shots. Her videos are filmed handheld which shows the roughness of the character and her edginess. The first contact between the two characters sees them barge into each other in order to establish the animosity between them.

12. 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

13. Megan, one of the two main characters from our film is reminiscent to the character of Jenny from Gossip GirlThe appearance of both characters is very similar for example both girls have platinum blonde hair and have very similar make-up as we believe that the large amount of eyeliner conveys the girls rock attitude.Both characters are wearing similar style outfits, which are original and bold

14. Cheskyportrays a character similar to the one of Sam from ‘Bandslam’The characters are both brunettes and front girls Both characters appear happy and positive.Both characters are guitarists

15. The two main character’s from our film generally go against stereotypes as the blonde is stereotypically portrayed as the nice girl yet our film breaks the stereotype and goes against the ideology of this by portraying her as a rock girl who isn’t that innocent. In the majority of films the brunette is portrayed as the more rebellious character whereas the brunette in our film is shown as someone who is nice and dedicated to her band.

16. Our film offers a much more realistic representation of teenage girls by showing them as girls who can be nasty and bitches to each other. This idea will later by reversed as both girls will come together and become friends in order to be successful.INSERT PICTURE OF MEG AND CHESKY ARGUING HERE

17. The portrayal of teenage cliques in this film is also more realistic than the usually over exaggerated portals in many modern American films and is much more subtle in showing the contrasts of cliques.

18. 3:WHAT KIND OF MEDIA INSTITUTION MIGHT DISTRIBUTE YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT AND WHY?

19. We believe that touchstone pictures would be the best option for distributing our film as they have released many films of a similar style to ours e.g. 10 things I hate about you and Step Up 2. The film would be a good release for this company due to the film’s target audience and the fact that Touchstone Pictures is part of the much larger Walt Disney Company and is known for releasing films with more mature films suitable for teenage audience.

20. We believe our movie could be produced in a major Hollywood film studio because the idea is original yet still fits with the genre conventions of a typical teen movieOur film wouldn’t be an indie film or a small British film as we feel it appeals to a much wider audience.Our film offers for franchise/merchandising as it features a band that would actually perform in the film. The featured band could do a tour, much similar to the likes of Miley Cyrus who is an actress and a performer. This would increase profit made from the film.

21. 4:Who would be the audience for your media project?

22. This photo shows our target audience. We appeal to the tastes of male and female teenagers typically aged around 14-19. We feel that girls would appreciate our film, enjoying the friendship storyline as well as the issues raised about ‘stereo-types’ and ‘individuality’ however we would also appeal to boys with the theme of music and also the cast of attractive girls.

23. Television programmes such as Skins or Misfits, for the top end of our age bracket, would appeal to our audience as the sense of character relation makes these programmes seem more realistic.

24. Also the theme of rock ‘n’ roll music would relate to our audience who, as teenagers, would typically be experiencing lots of genres of music and developing their tastes. Our audience would shop in a range of young trend stores such as H&M, Topshop and also independent shops as the theme of ‘being different’ features heavily in our film.

25. The target audience we have aimed our film at would be interesting in watching the film mainly because the themes relate to their life. Also, going to the cinema is a popular activity for the age group of our audience.’10 things I hate about you’ is a film which is similar to ours because of the contrasting characters. The film was released in 1999 however it still appeals to a similar audience of teenagers interested in movies dealing with real-life teen issues.

26. 5:How did you attract/address your audience?

27. GENRE CONVENTIONSCertain genre conventions have been fulfilled within our film. For example, there are typical settings in which you would expect a teen movie to be based around. Our film is set in a college for 16-18 year old students in England. You see typical aspects of college life such as college bands, corridors and classrooms and also college items such as posters and lockers.

28. GENRE CONVENTIONSAnother convention that we have fulfilled is that our two main characters originally didn’t mix in the same social groups.

29. GENRE CONVENTIONSTo a certain extent there’s an element of hostility

30. GENRE CONVENTIONSHowever there is a situation that brings them together and unites them with a common interest. This convention is often included in films aimed at teenagers as stereotypes and cliques are an inevitable part of a modern teens social life.Also our two main characters physically look very different to exaggerate the contrast between the pair for example Megan is blonde where Francesca is brunette. However this in itself is a contrast to a typical stereotype as usually the blonde girl is the nice girl.

31. USE OF MUSICThe use of music within our film is very important as music is the main theme in the film. We have included the song ‘Miss Nothing’ by The Pretty Reckless as it is a high energy, rock ‘n’ roll song which features in the introduction and also is the song Megan has to sing in the audition. Taylor Momsen, the lead sing of the band, is the style icon we based Megan’s look on and we felt it would be fitting to also include one of her songs.

32. UNIQUE SELLING POINTThe ‘Unique Selling Point’ our film is a sense of British reality. A lot of teen films are set in America and often don’t quite relate with the ‘average teen.’ Characters in typical teen movies seem too extreme. They’re either unintelligent Jocks and air-headed blonde cheerleaders or drug addled rich kids who get away with everything and think they know everything. Our film is subtle yet effective at portraying how different people can build a friendship over a common interest. This is what would entice our target audience of 14-19 year old male and female teens.

33. FILM RATINGOur film would be rated a 12A as there may be minor swearing or ‘mature themes’ such as relationships as more characters became involved

34. 6:What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

35. PROGRAMMES/ WEBSITES USEDWe used Adobe Premiere to edit our projectWe used YouTube for research and to upload our video onto.We used Photoshop to import fonts.Blogspot was used for the write upWe used Slideshare to make our slide in to a video clip

36. TOOLS USEDSelection Tool/CursorTrack SelectRazor ToolZoom/Magnify ToolTIMELINE

37. ADDING VIDEOS TO THE TIMELINETo add videos to the timeline you first select them in the left hand column and drag it to the place to want the video to be on a video track on your time line as shown hereVideo tracks

38. ADDING MUSIC TO THE TIMELINEAdding music is very similar to adding videos however you drag the selected audio clip to an audio track on the time line

39. Video transitions used:Cross DisolveDip to BlackAudio transitions used:Exponential Fade

40. QUAD SPLIT SCREENThis is and example of one of our split screen shots. In this example we have four screens in one shot.To do this we selected the video clip we wanted to use and resized the shot by dragging the corners as shown on the red guitar in this photo

41. ADDING TITLESWe added titles to some of our split screen shots and introducing character shots to list the cast etc. We added titles by clicking on Title, New Title and then Default StillAfter naming the title it appears in the left hand column

42. ADDING TITLESThe edit new title window opens where you can add text, select font,change font size and text colour

43. 7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

44. PRE-LIM SIMILARITIESCLOSE UPOVER SHOULDER SHOT

45. PRE-LIM SIMILARITIESMATCH ON ACTION

46. PRE-LIM MISTAKESA mistake we made in our pre-lim film is that we filmed from a high angle when we should have been at eye level. However we learnt from our mistake and didn’t do this in our coursework.

47. EDIT TERMSWe used Keyframes to change the volume of the background music so that speech could be heard and too add effect.We also used this technique in our pre-lim but it’s use was much more subtle in our coursework film.(Pre-lim)

48. EDIT TERMSWe’ve used a dip to black in both projects however in our coursework the effect was appropriately placed not just at the end.In both projects we complied with the 180 degree rule.

49. FINAL NOTEOur thinking has changed throughout the process of making our film as we discovered how hard it was to involve a large number of cast. We changed our film ideas slightly to accommodate filming times and time restrictions. Also sets were often unavailable due to us filming in a real college. We have learn a lot about editing and media conventions as we realised there was a certain criteria we had to fulfil by making a teen movie. We learn about the importance of continuity and tried very hard to make sure there were no errors. To conclude although the process has been difficult and time consuming we feel very happy with our finished film.