Coursework Evaluation

Coursework Evaluation

　

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

When we first researched the chosen genre for our piece we looked at the conventions that most of the romantic comedies used and what we would try to follow in our piece. These were young modern music, bold titles, monologue, generic characters, location- school and a clear story of romance. We got these from the films we researched to be inspiration. Many used a monologue from the main character which we also did from Jimmy. This gave insight to Jimmy and made it easier for the audience to come to grips to the story from Jimmy’s point of view. It also showed that he was the main character. Another was the use of young modern music like in ‘10 Things I Hate About You’, music is used throughout to represent the school life and the different social groups in a comical way. From our feedback, we learnt that one of the most popular things about the piece was the representations of the different social groups and the use of music. Keeping in with the conventions is also the clear story of romance which I think we showed as 90% of the people from the feedback knew that it was a romantic comedy and one said on what they liked, ‘immediately recognize what genre it is’ suggesting that we were successful in showing some of the conventions of a romantic comedy. However I felt we challenged some conventions due to the opening being set in a British school instead of a American like the ones we had watched during research. This makes it much more interesting for the British audience and puts a twist to the others. So although it is similar to films like ‘10 Things I hate about you’ and ‘Mean Girls’ it has a difference that this is set in England. It does follow some of their conventions and so we did follow the conventions we put out while planning and researching.

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

Ours is very interesting because we decided to show the stereotypical different social groups in a school from our point of view and Jimmy’s. There is the ‘musically talented’, ‘the popular kids’ and the ‘geeks’. They are represented in a very typical way the musically talented are away from everyone else and are playing their music very scruffy while the ‘geeks’ are wearing glasses doing loads of work. The ‘popular kids’ have make up on and are viewed as better then the rest while also appearing very dim with Kate asking ’Is Europe a hot country’ suggesting they are all looks and no brains. The use of representing them in a stereotypical way makes them more interesting to the audience while also challenging their thoughts if this is right to do. 40% of the people asked mentioned they liked the representation of the different social groups and one said about them ‘their lines were funny’ while also showing the ‘reality of school life’. It is also interesting that Jimmy does not fit in with these while having a friend, it challenges if all school students need a group and if they choose to be put there. Jimmy is not critical of any of the groups really but does state that Kate has a low IQ while then being shown to fancy her putting him in the place of knowing they are dim while yet still wanting to be apart of it by fancying Kate. There is also a use of music to further show the different groups in a stereotypical way with for example the ‘geeks’ having classical music over their scene while the ‘popular kids’ have a much more modern upbeat song suggesting more popularity with them also shown sitting on the tables in a very relaxed way suggesting they are higher up in the school. This and the fact that Jimmy gets very nervous when he fears he has made a fool of himself after he has waved at Kate. This further creates humour while showing they are completely different. When asked people in the feedback, most put the music and the representations together and generally most like it.

　

3. What kind of media institutions might distribute your media product and why?

To answer this question, I looked at the media institutions that distributed the media products we looked at it during research. The two main inspirations were from ‘10 things I hate about you’ and ‘mean girls’. These were distributed from Touchstone Pictures and Paramount Pictures. They may be interested in our media product as they are similar with all following some of the same conventions and going for that teenage romantic comedy. However I do think that Paramount would be better as they have distributed a vary of different films from Mean Girls to GI Joe. As a result they may be more open to a romantic comedy that is set in England. They did distribute a British romantic comedy for teenagers that was ‘Angus, thongs and perfect snogging’. However most of the films they have distributed are made in the USA so it may more useful to a industry that has distributed more British films such as Universal Pictures. Universal have distributed British films such as ‘The Boat that Rocked’ and ‘Mamma Mia’ while also distributing teenage romantic comedies also set in England such as ‘Wild Child’. Therefore as they did well with these films they may also be interested in our media product as it is similar and sells to the same target audience as ‘Wild Child’ so they already have experience in distributing this sort of film and know where to go with it so it is not a huge risk that they have never taken on before.

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

Due to our piece being set in a school based around teenagers the target audience is specifically teenagers. When we was researching romantic comedies as a whole we felt we would be better doing a one based for teenagers rather then one for adults like ‘Notting Hill’ due to us being teenagers ourselves and being in sixth form. As a result the piece was originally going to be for the older teenager such as ourselves like ‘10 Things I hate about you’ and ‘Mean Girls’ which has just that bit more older topics that older teenagers will get more then younger ones. However once we finished the piece and we started to get more feedback we found we may have underestimated the older teenager’s understanding as while the feedback we got was fairly positive from our own point of view and others we figured that the younger teenager may be more suited. The piece is not complex while being funny and has no mention of anything that could take the rating up such as swearing or mention of drugs, sex etc. As a result the younger audience is able to watch it and also enjoy it so as a result while the older teenager is still targeted we lowered the age of the target audience to about eleven or twelve. With the research of the target audience while making and planning the piece we looked at what we as teenagers would like and that of the people around us and our own personal feelings while also looking at what teenage romantic comedies were popular as a whole and this took us to the research. It was the same when we looked at lowering the age of the target audience. We thought about what we had watched as that age and the younger people around us and it was this that made us change the target audience. It is the sort of piece that many teenagers would go to see with their friends while the majority being girls. Looking at our feedback more of the girls said they would watch the rest of the film while only one or two of the boys said they would suggesting that it is better targeted at females despite the main character being male and the comedy elements it is still a romantic comedy and generally these are more popular with females.

5.How did you attract/address your target audience?

By making the characters stereotypical of the different groups in schools in society at the moment it creates ‘ a reality of school life’ therefore I think it attracts the teenage audience because they can relate to it and know the characters more. However by having the different groups it makes the audience want to know what group they belong in as well as laugh at themselves because the different groups are presented in a comical way. The character of Jimmy also relates to any teenager that is on the outside of the different groups. The use of different types of teenagers attract these different groups because they can see how they are presented and they as a social group are not left out. The actual story attracts teenagers that are going through that stage of fancying someone and by hinting at a love story between Jimmy and Kate people want to continue to watch to see if the two characters get together and if there is that happy ending. From the feedback one person when asked if they would see the rest of the film said, ‘yes to see if the two characters got together.’ Five more people said they would continue to watch the rest of the film while one said maybe. This shows that we were able to attract them and they were aged 16-17 so in the brackets of our target audience. By having Jimmy the focus of the story and the voice over, the audience want a happy ending like they do for other romantic comedies. When researching we found that popular films like 10 things I hate about you, used the reality of school life in a comical way as well as use music to attract the audience. I think we managed this as the story is not complex so is more lighthearted so audiences are more prepared to watch it. It also relates to them in someway. However from the feedback, we can tell that we could have better attracting teenage males as they generally liked it less however most of the teenage girls we asked liked it because they found it funny and liked the story. Therefore we found that our piece was more suited for the female audience because they generally like romantic comedies more. It is lighthearted like ‘10 things I hate about you’ and so by making it very obvious to what genre it was and the character, it simply appeals to those if they have likes romantic comedies in the past, it helps that our piece follows some of the conventions. One asked if she would watch the rest of the film said ‘yes because I like romcoms’.

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

Before starting the product, none of the group really knew how to use the camera, tripod, the Macs used for editing or the programme imovie which was also used in editing. By the end we had all grown accustomed of using these and I myself learnt to be more confident when using the camera. The change shows from our prelim to our actual piece. Everyone one we asked on the question said that yes we had improved. When we did our prelim we were all unsure how to use the technology and it shows in the prelim. The benefits of the technology was they enabled us to get some good shots and also enabled us to put it all together in the editing process. The imovie programme was particular useful as all we had what we had filmed and apart from put it together it helped put the music, transitions, titles, voice over etc in to our piece that made it overall much better and what made the audience like it. I learnt a lot about the programme that I never knew before and so did the rest of the group. It was really the most useful technology we used. The camera was useful and once we had got a grip around it, it was not hard to use but the tripod had some limitations. The tripod was quite hard to use and to do a tilt and a pan shots it was really hard to move steadily so made our shots look a bit shaky at points. Sometimes it was easier to use a steady cam such as the one at the beginning with all the school student and this also made the shots shaky. One of the things that was not as successful in our piece was some of the shots. In our feedback when asked what our piece could be improved on, most of the people said the camera shots and the angles. So we know that we could have been better when using the camera. We also used other technology that came in useful one was using a digital camera to scout locations. This came in use when we was talking about it afterwards and trying to picture how it would look, it really helped when we did decide where we would shoot. To make the piece more successful I think we could have used a better tripod to make the camera shots more steady and perhaps more choices when it came to the titles and transitions on the imovie as there were not that many and so it was hard to choose. Having said that it made us make our own title which turned out to be better then one that we could have chosen. Overall however the technology we used was effective in creating the piece and we learnt how to use it and how to make the piece itself .

　

　

　

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

Our prelim was a learning progress with the camera and the tripod that we were able to take on into the full product. However the transitions, titles, music was not that complex so in the progression we learnt more about editing and not only the simple stuff that we had used in the prelim but we became more aware of what we able to do to the final piece. In the prelim we had learned how to do a match on action shot that we were able to take on to our final product and used it a few times. We also learned continuity in the prelim and the importance of this, in our final product we took special care in making sure we never broke continuity by always checking everything and making sure our actors wore the same costumes, the setting has the same things etc and I think we were good at this and there are no major problems with this. One of the major problems we had with the prelim was that we broke the 180 degree rule quite badly. We did not do this in the final piece and instead we tried to show people talking in different ways such as a two shot with Jimmy and Kate at the end. In the prelim we used music that worked well once we had done it so we also took this on more in the final product which worked really well by being comical and showing the different groups. Everyone in the feedback agreed that we had improved from the prelim and the ways I think we improved was with better use of the camera and better shots. We also used more music, transitions and titles as well as be more complex with the editing. The story of the final piece was more planned and organized as well as the settings, costumes, props ect whereas the prelim was very quickly thought out and not very organized as the props were simply some cabinets pushed together with some pieces of paper on them to be like a office. Overall the final piece was more carefully thought out and planned with better organization and ideas with the experience and lessons we had learnt from doing the prelim. If I were to do the final piece again I would make the camera shots better by adding a bit more variety and keeping them more steady. The shots we did get needed to be done more smoothly due to the final piece moving along very quickly and not smoothly. I think the music and the story worked well and so would not change this but the camera angles used and the actual smoothness of the piece I would change as well as get rid of some of the transitions as I think there is to much but we really had no choice due to the way we filmed. We filmed the scenes all together in one and so when we had one scene that we wanted to cup some parts and keep others it would create a jump cut such as the teacher’s part. Therefore we put in a transition but in the end I think there is too many and so this does not help the piece run smoothly. I am pleased with the final piece however as I think we did have some good parts and the feedback we received from the target audience was generally positive as well as we had improved from the prelim.