The document discusses the media product created by the candidate, including how it uses conventions of real media, challenges they faced finding copyright-free music, and how it represents social groups. The candidate also discusses distributing the product through an independent cinema, targeting a male audience aged 15-70, how they attracted this audience, what technologies were used, and what was learned between the preliminary task and full product.

1. Media Evaluation By Russell Denny Candidate number – 3058

2. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? The media product which we created uses many conventions the same as seen in real media products, examples of these would be soundtrack, opening titles and credits, and key shot types. All of these factors together with many others help make our product look more professional and therefore appeal more top our audience and keep them interested in the product. The titles are a very important part of our product as they define is as an ‘opening sequence’ and without these factors it may come across like a movie trailer, which was not what we intended for or what the specification wanted. We encountered many problems when selecting the appropriate music for our production and almost every piece of music that we found we were not able to use due to copyright restrictions. The outcome of this problem was that we had to source music from local unsigned bands or from websites containing copyright free tracks. Fortunately we found a suitable piece, which was copyright free and fitted in perfectly with our film.

3. How does your product represent particular social groups? Our product represents a couple of different social groups which are easily recognizable throughout the extract. In the production we see English secret agents, we see them form two perspectives, one of them as being very serious and professional and the other as very clumsy and stupid but all together a rather positive spin. Whereas another demographic represented is Russians, specifically the villain of the story a Russian terrorist, which is a very negative portrayal and not typical of most Russians. The storyline includes the Russians plotting an attack on London and it is agent Morris ’ s ’ job to stop this. The plot for the extract is completely fictional and was chosen as we thought it may be most effective for the product and most interesting for the audience.

4. What kind of media institution might distribute your media production and why ? After researching local independent British cinemas we found one that is situated in a local town, Chelmsford. This independent cinema is named the Chelmsford film club; they agree to show independent films in exchange for a Percentage of the profits. The film club are open to films of all genres and have shown films such as ‘ tell no-one ’ and ‘ son of Rambow. We chose this as it is a local independent film company and had a good reputation, information and advertising can be accessed online which means it can appeal to a wider audience than just local residents.

5. What would be the audience for your media product? The audience that we thought our film would best appeal to is a general male audience. The main focus of our research was the film Johnny English that is a spoof spy film similar to ours. I feel this film has a similar target audience although it may appeal to more of a younger audience to ours as it is rated as ‘ PG ’ whereas our production is a ‘ 15 ’ . Our production would appeal to mainly males aged 15-70 but could also be enjoyed by females. It would appeal to anyone of any religion as there are no religious connections. The only demographic which may be slightly offended by this is Russian people as the Russian character in the film is portrayed as a terrorist, we don ’ t feel that this has significant effects on our audience as we are planning to pitch to a mainly British/ American demographic, with the main focus on Britain because the location and storyline would appeal mainly to them as it is set in their country and they would be able to relate to it.

6. How did you attract/ address your audience? We attracted our audience best by our choice of soundtrack; we chose a piece called ‘the streets and the city’ and the lyrics go very well with our production and help emphasize the situation. Another factor which was played a big part in attracting our audience was the filming locations; we filmed a majority of our opening sequence in and around London and we chose to film at well-known ‘sights’ in the capital, we thought this would attract our audience as they are famous locations which most people can relate to. Also choosing to film in London fits in perfectly with our chosen genre and links strongly to our chosen film title.

7. What have you learnt about the technologies from the process of constructing this product? I have experimented and learnt about a range of different media technologies whilst constructing our product, my capabilities have expanded greatly in the following technologies; filming equipment (camera, tripod etc), ‘ blogger ’ , editing (using adobe premier pro). I now have a wider knowledge of media terminology and techniques, this was through filming experience and research and things that we explored in the classroom. E.g. match on action and the 180-degree rule. With the exception of the filming equipment I have never before encountered these technologies until making this project. Between me and the other two members of my group we managed to figure out any problems by ourselves.

8. Looking back at the preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? If I compare my preliminary task to our opening sequence it is obvious to see that there has been a vast improvement in many areas including the editing, choice of shot type and execution of shots. Some of this may come down to the fact that we felt restricted whilst producing our preliminary task as we had a specific brief to stick to, whereas for our main task we had much more freedom when selecting and creating the content for the film, we also as a group were much more committed as we felt the production was ‘ our own ’ and was based solely on our ideas. Again as a group we felt much more experienced and able across all aspects of filmmaking. You can see these improvements by looking at our final production as we feel that we chose the right shot type for each shot and that the shots are well executed and the transitions are smooth and fit in with the film. Although we were let down by our filming equipment, mainly the video camera, as some parts of our production appears to jump and flicker which is down to the quality of the camera in which we filmed the section with.