Q1

Media Studies
AS Level
Mr. O’Brian

Foundation Portfolio Evaluation

Q1. The start of our scene reveals the plot to our storyline, this is similar to some
superhero movies such as ‘X-Men 1st class’ e.g. when the little boy’s mother gets shot
in front of him, this shows the plot of the movie will be based on revenge. Our
superhero film is different to other superhero films, because we have not used a male
as the superhero, whereas in films like Spiderman, Batman and Superman they use
male characters as the superheroes, therefore by using a female character we have
showed that the superhero does not always have to be a male, in order for the film to
be made successfully. We have kept to the conventions of the form to professional
films by using a variety of shots, angles and sound effects, this has made our film look
more creative and had adapted to our audience, because people will only want to
watch a film which contains elements of professionalism. We have challenged the
conventions of superhero movies by using a female superhero, as many people would
not be used to seeing a film with the superhero being female, therefore this sets
challenges against other superhero films and may challenge the audiences thoughts on
whether they should watch this movie because those films who do have the female
gender as the superhero always has the help of a man somewhere in order for them to
reach their position, whereas in our sequence it only contains the female gender as the
superhero, who gets no help of a male throughout what so ever, in my opinion our
movie can gain a lot of attention if the storyline is kept simple and straight forward for
the audience to understand.

Also we decided to make the movie quite low hearted and not comedy or act ionised
like Johnny English, the reason this has challenged superhero films is because it is
more on the sad side. Another movie our film sequence is similar to is ‘Spiderman 2’
this is because in Spiderman 2 the hero’s uncle gets killed by a goblin and he seeks
revenge. The similarity of this movie in our sequence is that Sarah wells mother Julie
wells is killed by a unknown criminal and Sarah wells has the inheriting of a coin
which the entire state has been looking for over 20 years, the opening sequence just
shows what the people want (golden coin) but later on it shows that Sarah will fight to
keep her mother inheritance safe and find her mothers murderer to get revenge.
Challenging conventions-female rather than typical male

Q2. In our movie we represent two young adults one of 22 years and the other of 30
years. We have chose the 22 year old to be represented as strong, but then have
weaknesses when dealing with emotions or memories of her late mother, the reason
why we had done this was to show despite having to be string as she is a superhero,
she still has feelings like any other human being therefore by showing her weaknesses
it shows the audience superheroes are almost equivalent to normal human beings. On
the other hand we chose to represent the 30 year old as vulnerable as she is a single
mother and is unable to protect herself and her child from the villain, in my opinion
this shows that by having parents that are weak doesn’t mean the offspring will be
weak, this may show be similar to the real world when people think that disabled or
people with mental problems are unworthy of having a child, this basically shows you
should not underestimate someone because of their weaknesses or the way they are
presented to you and others.

Inderpreet Kaur Basran

Media Studies
AS Level
Mr. O’Brian

The positive stereotype of the 22 year old is that she is independent and works in a
good environment, also she is able to control and manage her own life, this may show
an understanding of work commitment to those in the similar age range and may
motivate those who are unemployed, and it overly shows. Unfortunately there is no
positive representation of the 30 year old but the negative stereotype of the 30 year
old is that she is represented to be weak and is not able to protect her child. The TV
programme that has a comparison with our movie is downtown abbey as downtown
abbey shows how women are dependent on the males in the house, but in our movie it
shows the independency of the women from the start. This gives a positive
identification of women; showing that they can be independent and survive without
male company this impacts the audience’s views.

Q3. The media institution that would distribute our movie would most likely be
Universal, as it is a well known brand name for films, because they have distributed
well known films that are similar to our sequence, these films were; Spiderman 2 and
X-Men 1st class. Universal also have the money to distribute movies that cost up to
£25,000, the reason I have talked about cost is because our film sequence contains a
lot of props and costumes which may be costly. We had chose universal because it is
a worldwide distributing company and people are aware of it, for example if we was
to have out movie distributed by nowhere productions than this would not gain
attention from viewers as they are not familiar with the distributing brand name, but
then again it depends on the film name itself and how catchy the name is and to some
distribution companies may not even be known as they are just interested in the
movies. Our movie would be distributed internationally as it would be distributed by
universal, which tend to distribute their products internationally as they have
reasonable amounts of money to do so and therefore are successful in the market of
selling their goods. However TV would be a good way of distributing our product,
because on the internet people would access it for free through linked websites, or
other websites that are specially set for the public to watch movies for free. Also
people would not go to the cinema to watch films when they can access websites and
watch it for free. Last of all TV would be the most liable and correct source, as it has
a wide range of audience and cannot be accessed through piracy for the public use of
free viewing.

Q4. The demographics of our targeted audience are to both female and male genders,
it is a movie containing emotions and no foul language, therefore in my opinion
people aged of 16 years-30 years are most likely to watch this movie, because they
will have a better understanding of the film than a child who is the age of 6 years, also
it may relate to their life or general reality problems, every human being faces-death.
Our feedback showed us that the movie was slightly confusing therefore it fitted in the
age range of 16 years + and the reason we kept the age range to 30 years was because
the movie shows a women of 30 years and therefore it fits with the public audience
age too and this would be an acceptable age, as people older than that will be less
likely to watch the movie because audience usually watch films that fit into their age
range and their lifestyle. If international audience would be interested in our movie
than this would be more of an advantage to us and universal as we could distribute the
movie internationally to those who would like to watch it, on the other hand if people
wish to buy this movie on DVD than we would reach them by offering to sell DVD’s
with blue-ray (increase sales and make profit) by preparing with market research first


Media Studies
AS Level
Mr. O’Brian

to acknowledge how many people would like this service and how and where their
easiest purchasing store would be. This would make it easier for us as a company and
for the audience. Also our other weakness was the soundtrack fade at the start which
we had adjusted to the standard required by the feedback.

Q5. The props we had used; newspaper, pen and paper, photo, necklace and toys-
these props are just everyday used items and are revolved around our targeted
audience. We had used a newspaper to show where daily information is extracted
from to every public member, this emphasised on the plot of our scene as the scene of
the radio appeared next showing the second source of daily news. The pen and paper
were used to show how the working atmosphere in an office usually is and they may
relate to those audience members who also work in similar places. Moving on, the
photo was used to show the imagery of Sarah wells and her mother, many people have
photos of those who are close to them so this is another prop which also connects to
our audience, the necklace was then used as another prop to replace the missing coin,
which would probably then be found by another family member and the inheritance
would continue further, necklaces especially pendants are worn by a majority of
women for a variety of reasons, some may be for a relation with another person and
some can just be for fashion, but in our case it was for a continuous relationship. The
toys had then shown indication of children and what sort of equipment they use for
entertainment, which all kids do in everyday life.

The performance was based on mixed emotions containing, shock and action, this
keeps the audience engaged with the film and shows the audience how the character is
feeling. Our audience feedback had shown that they were engaged in order to keep up
with the storyline and if they did not focus enough they simply would not understand
the story, they mainly said the opening got them engaged as they liked the music style
and how it fitted in well with emotions of the character at the start. For the adults in
our movie we had used two outfits, one was formal and the other casual, for the baby
it was subtle clothing, the purpose of using those costumes was based on what the
target audience would wear for a daily routine when at work or at home, the clothing
also linked to a particular age range for example the 22 year old in an office and
dressed formally gathered together well, on the other hand the 30 year old dressed as
an casual 30 year old with her child. The setting was an office room and a house, we
chose these as they had fitted in well with our filming but also they can be connected
to the audience, for example if people living in Wolverhampton had knew that a film
was being made in Wolverhampton, they would want to watch it as the place is
familiar and exciting for the audience, to see what they’re going to be presented with.
The major reason to use an office room was to show the audience what the working
environment in an office is like and how majority of them look, and the reason to use
the house was to show where usual people would be located in, when they are not at
work.

Q6. I have not really learnt anything new about using a camera, as it was a
technological component which I am familiar with, however placing myself to record
the scenes and moving it about I was also recognizable with but I had slightly
improved whilst picking up the pace on using the tilt and pan movement with the
camera, I also got familiar with the way to adjust the camera so it captures all the
movement and people in a scene and fitting all the people in the screen that were


Media Studies
AS Level
Mr. O’Brian

being filmed. Moving on I now know how to edit on the Macs and iMovie because I
had observed my peers using the technological machinery and gradually picked up on
how to use it myself, independently. My knowledge on this has improved because I
eventually started to experience new tools on the Mac’s such as all the different
formats in editing and merging scenes together. My skills have improved through
production work by learning new things from the people in my class and taking all
opinions into account, for example when I was told to improve and put my point
across in writing to exam responses and since September in my opinion that had
improved. This production work has developed my knowledge, especially referring to
the Mac and iMovie processor.

Q7. Since the prelim task, we had planned and prepared more covalently for our
opening sequence because we had made a story board to guide us through the shots,
angles and dialogues needed for the filming; this had made the process easier, as it
was a step by step system. We had improved the quality of the footage shots by using
the tripod to keep the camera steady for the shots that required steadiness, for example
when the camera zooms into the characters eye, this shot required steadiness and
focus from the camera and us as the camera workers, however the disadvantage of
this shot was that the camera lens did not focus as well and kept blurring so we had to
zoom to a certain distance than move the tripod a little forward and repeat the step,
because there was no other option besides going really close to the eye, which we had
also done but the camera lost its focus more. Also the zoom in function of the camera
was too fast and was not at a timed pace which made it hard to get the focus of the
lens right in order to continue with the filming. We had added various sound effects
and sound tracks at appropriate scenes to relate to the ambience an example of this
would be the opening scene when music played along to the character reading the
newspaper, it fitted in well and faded out in time when we had changed the pace of it.

http://www.pressandguide.com/articles/2011/07/15//news/doc4e20928bcdf302345282
58.txt

By Kurt Anthony Krug
Press & Guide Newspapers

The word “superhero” has become synonymous with summer, raking in plenty of
cash at the box office.

Based on comic book characters and — to a lesser extent — video games and toy
lines, superhero movies proved to be big business with the success of 1989’s
“Batman,” starring Michael Keaton in the titular role, based on the DC Comics
character.

The 2000s had some of the most profitable super-hero movie franchises in history,
starting with 2000’s “X-Men,” based on the Marvel Comics series with Hugh
Jackman in the breakout role of fan-favorite character Wolverine. Other successful
superhero movies include 2002’s “Spider-Man,” 2008’s “Iron Man,” and 2008’s
record-breaking “The Dark Knight” (it grossed $1 billion worldwide).


Media Studies
AS Level
Mr. O’Brian

Due to the success of super-hero movie franchises, between 1-4 super-hero movies
have been released every summer since. This summer is no exception with “Thor,”
“X-Men: First Class,” “Green Lantern,” and July 22’s “Captain America: The First
Avenger.”

http://www.jasonsanford.com/jason/2011/05/the-coming-superhero-movie-
collapse.html

Add all these up and its obvious Hollywood is betting its blockbuster future on the
continued success of superhero films.

http://boxofficemojo.com/genres/chart/?id=superhero.htm

The Dark knight
Watching the trailer of the dark knight, I think people would have been attracted to
this movie because it contains a lot of action and violence and is a thriller film as well
as a horror film, it also has an appealing character that is dressed as a clown which
makes the viewer more curious to watch it, as clowns are presented in two forms and
in this movie the clown is presented as a scary murderer and is disguised which makes
you want to find out who it is. In my opinion those people who love to see action,
violence, pain, blood and mysterious killings would be interested in watching this
movie, more overly people who do not fear are likely to watch this movie because if
someone is scared of horror movies they would not be interested in watching the dark
knight as it is a horror film. The age range of this movie in my view would start from
the age of 12+ as it does not contain sexuality in any scenes and kids who are that age,
mainly the male gender love to watch lorries tumbling, hero’s and baddies on
motorcycles shooting with massive guns etc. The institution that had distributed this
film was the WarnerBros (WB) a famous organisation known for its name and very
common in Disney movies, as it’s so well-known, this would then help the film
distribute rapidly to different areas over the world because some people may have
watched previous films distributed by WB and thought that the movies they present to
us as an audience are good and therefore from now on I will watch movies distributed
by WB.

Spider-Man 3
This movie is a movie that every child awaits for, as its hero ‘Spiderman’ is so
appealing and inspiring to both, the younger and older generation. Also by watching
the prior two spider man movies and knowing that they were so good has made the
audience want to watch the third one, therefore the movie had gained a lot of attention
and awareness from the public. The way it had been advertised may have also been a
source that gained more viewers, one regular way of advertisement would’ve been,
people dressing up as spider man and try to get people involved in various activities
and get kids to persuade their parents to take them to the cinemas to watch the movie.
In my opinion this film would be aimed at kids from the age of 6 years to adults at the
age of 35, it would start from the age range of 6 years because they are the kids the
film is originally aimed for as at that age many kids are mature and understand the
concept of dialogues etc. On the other hand adults are aimed to watch this movie to
because they are most likely to watch it with their children, therefore would be


Media Studies
AS Level
Mr. O’Brian
interested in watching all the upcoming movies themselves too. Spider-Man 3’s film
distributor was Colombia this distributing team is not well known but the success that
spider man had made was from the film name itself not the distributor, so fortunately
because the name of the film was so well known by the public and watched a lot this
made the distributor a lot of profit, so some distributors work with films where they
know the film itself will bring them masses of profit.

The Incredibles
This movie was successful in attracting audience because kids were so astonished by
its trailer and this made them curious to watch it as it had a family with different
powers that helped on another and the community from danger. Kids aged 4 would
have been interested in watching this movie as it is based on cartoon and animated
characters which gains the attention of little toddlers, as this is the type of imagery
they like to see. The distributor of this film was Walt Disney/Pixar; these are the
distributors that are set up to disperse movies and programmes for children from the
ages of 1 year even. Incredible was distributed easily and gained a lot of attention
because similar films such as; Monsters Inc, Toy Story and Finding Nemo were also
distributed by the same company and these films were the most popular films made
and well known by children, in fact they were so popular that more and different types
of merchandise was at demand sometimes.

Batman Returns
Another movie which is well known, and has been re-invented to the 21 st century’s
generation. A movie that attracts the eyes of kids aged from 10 years to young adults
to the age of 23 years, in my opinion this movie is acceptable to be watched, by kids
from the age of 10 to the young adults to the age of 23 because both ages comprehend
what goes on in the movie and how the dilemmas arise in certain scenes. This movie
may have been presented to the male gender mostly as it contains explosions, violence
and a lot of the cast are from the male gender. This movie also stars well known
actors; Michael Keaton and Danny DeVito, so this may have been another way to
gain the attention of the public to watch this film. Once again, Batman Returns was
distributed by the Warner Bros (WB), which could’ve been another reason to why the
movie was successful in its selling point. However in my opinion this movie was well
known because of its earlier showing in the mid 90’s and the interests that the
audience had in watching the movie themselves and what they were surrounded by,
e.g. other superhero film. For example if they had watched other superhero films like
Spiderman, Superman, X-Men etc. Then the public would also want to watch this
superhero film to see what is different in this one to the other ones than compare them
and know whether to buy it on DVD etc.

Superman Returns
Last of all superman returns is another superhero film which attracts in my opinion a
different sort of audience this time, I would say that this film would attract young girls
from the age of 15-18 because they hero ‘superman’ is an attractive character which
makes the public want to go and watch a movie seeing a good looking character in
there, to judge the acting perhaps. But then again it would always appeal to the
original audience which are children and young adults, mainly the male gender. The
distributors for this movie were also the Warner Bros (WB) which makes the film a
classical and may be typical superhero film, I don’t think it beats Spider Man in the
public’s eyes because superman is not as original or recognized well enough as Spider


Media Studies
AS Level
Mr. O’Brian
Man, this can depend on a variety of reasons some may be the date and time of year
the movie was realised and the amount of advertisement done for the movie and how
appealing the advertisement was itself.

Upcoming Releases

The Amazing Spider Man
In my opinion The Amazing Spider Man’s target audience would be children aged
from 8 years to 16 years but then again the age varies, because it depends on the
interests that a person has in certain categories of films, for example an individual of
18 years may enjoy watching romance films, as this is their interest and passion on the
other hand a person aged from 18 or above may like watching superhero films
because this is where there interests lie. Their interests may lie in superhero movies
because they may have been bought up in an environment where superhero had
surrounded them,, on the other hand they may have to take younger siblings to watch
these films and therefore their interests may have grown within the superhero films
sector. Also I think that superhero movies are mainly aimed to the male gender
because it contains all the action and violence that the male gender love to see in
films, henceforth I think that this film will also be aimed more at the female gender
than the male gender. Income can be another source of information which can affect
the amount of viewers watching this film, as currently recession is going on and
people are budgeting on where and how they spend their money therefore the viewers
may decrease, as cinema ticket prices are increasing and consumers may go elsewhere
where they can watch this movie for free.

The Dark Knight Rises
This film would be more considerate to be watched by people from the ages of
10years-22years, and once again it would be aimed at the male gender as this gender
is shown more in the trailer and it would attract this gender more, due to the fact that
the males in the trailer, are shown to be taking part in activities which involve
violence and action, and these are the activities that young males like to watch.
Statistics show that the male gender’s psychographic interests are to watch action
movies, as the male gender has always been presented to be hero like, strong and
powerful compared to the female gender, this representation of the male gender, in
my opinion is also due to historical results, as in previous centuries the male gender
would work and provide for the female gender and their offspring, hence movies were
produced on the male gender being superhero’s and facing difficulties in order to be
successful by using all their strength, this may be why the male gender is so fond of
watching superhero movies.

Thor 2
This film will once again attract mainly the male gender as it contains action and also
it is a thriller film, however the female gender may also be attracted to this movie as a
woman is presented to be working with the males in violence and romance is shown
between two characters, this film will also be shown in 3D therefore a lot of the
public members may want to watch it because of that as it is a better way to gain all
the action out of the movie and experience the movie in reality, this is where money
comes in and people cannot watch a movie in 3D at home and have the same
experience as they would at the cinemas, therefore they are likely to go to the cinemas
to watch this movie and spend £8-13 on each ticket, increasing profits.


Media Studies
AS Level
Mr. O’Brian

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/weekendwarriornews.php?id=86827

This article suggests that ‘The Dark Knight Rises’, ‘The Avengers’ and ‘The
Amazing Spiderman’ will be successful in finding audiences because; The Dark
Knight Rises will be released on 20th of July which is summer time, the article
mentions ‘This will be one hell of a summer’ meaning more audiences will be
attracted and are likely to attend, especially kids because they have longer holidays at
this time of the year. Therefore they are more likely to have time to do their work and
still watch this movie. However the article shows that ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ and
‘The Avengers’ will be more successful in gaining audience than ‘The Amazing
Spiderman’ this is because the other two movies have used different directors and
actors which in their view will gain the attention of viewers more and will attract
them to something new, rather than something that they are already aware of, but in
my opinion some people may like a movie because of its director and the familiar
actors because this can be a reason what keeps them engaged to a film and make them
aware of what is going on, and makes more sense as they know or are familiar with
these actors from previous film viewings. A cause that can affect ‘The Dark Knight
Rises’ audience is if the storyline is different or not as expected by the people who
have studied the books of this title.

It is stated that ‘The Dark Knight’ had brought in $158 million on the opening
weekend and since those four years more cinemas are now open to the public, which
means ticket prices may have increased booting up the profit for their upcoming
release ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ which is known to be a super hit. ‘The hype up for
TDKR will bring fans in, and also the key ingredient.’ This movie may also even be
sold in six months in advance as it is in so much demand from the public. ‘These
movies are going to influence the future of several superhero movies’ this suggests
that other franchise movies will do the same in order to be successful for their selling
points and gaining audiences, and may cause competitiveness in the film industry.

‘G.I Joe won’t even make it to 200 million where Spider Man will get it before TDK
comes out’ It is also stated that the costs of an opening day for this movie will be
around about $170-175 million, but it will simply make $400 million. So this opening
day can attract a huge amount of target audience for this movie. Unfortunately ‘The
Amazing Spiderman’ will also have a open day earlier that same week, and this may
cause conflict between what film the audience prefer and for one movie it can be a
total waste of time and energy if they lose millions of viewers.

In article is written that the first Avenger introduced new characters who have proven
popular amongst other moviegoers, at the same time as Samuel L, Jackson’s Nick
Fury and Scarlett Johansson’s black widow. The avengers is also linked to, the return
of the incredible hulk in 2008 with the character this time shown as Mark Ruffalo. On
the other hand Tom Cruise has been successful in Mission; Impossible-Ghost
Protocol. So this report is basically telling us that the actors have a great impact on
movies and are the main achievement of success in superhero films, nevertheless the
audience feedback quotes this: ‘The Avengers is the movie I am most concerned with.
The Dark Knight Rises will coast on the hype from Dark Knight and has nothing to
worry about. For Nolan- it’s pay day!!!Spider Man is also a proven franchise. I don’t
believe that most people will be concerned about the cast change if the trailers look


Media Studies
AS Level
Mr. O’Brian

good- they just want to see Spider Man and believe that the movie will be exciting.
Most people will not car at all about the change of director.’ This quote tells us that
the public will not be bothered in who stars in the movies, they are just anticipated to
see what the movie has to offer them and give them a good view of the film, at this
stage their remarks will just be on how good or bad the movie is.

In the first starting paragraphs it has been exposed that, the Dark Knight Rises and the
Avengers are well ahead of Spiderman and the reason to that could be the change of
director and characters, an comment by a public member on this was; ‘I know as well
as The Dark Knight Rises will deff. Come on top, The Avengers second. Then the
amazing Spider Man .Spider Man could be second, if Sam Raimi were still in the
director’s chair. The Avengers, however has been in the making for, 4-5 years now.’

So comparing the top two paragraphs in my opinion, a change in characters and
directors can attract audience but at the same time can lose audience, however this all
depends on how long your movie or franchises have been out in the film industry and
what sort of target audience your movie is invented for. But as an viewer i would say
that trailers grasp your attention whether to a film is interesting or boring, so in the
trailers you’ve got to show all the different scenes that are going to be shown in the
movie and make the viewers think that your movie is different, and an experience
they’ve never discovered before, so this is where the directors and actors do not
balance out the audience attraction.

One comment stated; ‘The script will have to be really good to keep a focused movie
moving forward’ this once again relates to how the movie is presented in its trailer to
the viewers, the film industry need to realise that the public is seeking new
adventurous and uncommon films to keep them engaged and not predict further.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-16365884

The star actors are important to superhero movies because they are the main plot to
attract audience, for example if a famous or well known person had starred in a movie
than this would attract they public eye as they would want to go and see this persons
movie and see how well the movie is, the other reason is attractive characters that
appeal to the public will make them want to spend money and watch films, other
members of the public may just want to see characters their familiar with for a variety
of reasons, the main being their acting, whether its good or bad or whether the actor is
good as a comedian and entertainment for the audience.

On the other hand the director of the film is also very important because if people
have watched films of a familiar director previously and had enjoyed them, then this
attracts them to watch more movies made by the director, as the director has given a
positive aspect of themselves to the target audience and other public members.


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