Final Evaluation

Our project is an opening sequence to a film. The members of my group were Lauren the angel, Grace, Gemma and my self. My main contribution to the group was playing one of the main characters in the opening sequence, I had to dress up as a geek to fit stereotypically into my part, all the feedback that we received agreed that my costume and my character was achieved effectively “Stereotypical girly girl and geek”. The filming of my self getting changed into my costume was filmed in my bedroom, as I was the only boy in my group with a male looking room. When researching the background of the genre we choose for our opening sequence I helped gather information about Working Title films and gathered figures of three of the top romantic British comedies made by the company and how much money they made on them, i discovered the figures are huge. When filming the our preliminary task I also played one of the main characters in our made up job interview, after finishing our final opening sequence it is easy to see that we have dramatically improved our skills with a camera and methods of filming. I also researched the type of target audience we should be aiming for as well as researching the genre we have choose to discover how popular it was.

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

The genre we choose to work with was a romantic comedy we choose this genre after researching and finding out it was a popular genre in the UK. Romantic comedies such as Four weddings and a Funeral made a worldwide total gross of $246,942,017. Also our group consisted of three girls and my self so we had to actors required to do the job. From the feedback we discovered that 100% of people who took the questionnaire could tell what the genre we choose was “romantic teen comedy”. We used such media language conventions as two opposite locations and the characters appearance to typify their stereotype.

We choose typical elements to make the opening sequence seem more believable and not blown out of proportion and by using stereotypes and exploiting a typical geek and girl the audience can understand what’s going on quickly. It was vital for us to do something new to the genre we choose so that it was different from other romantic comedies and so that it would stand out from the rest, by using a blind date plot we were able to create a different kind of romantic comedy for the audience. We believed our innovations would work well because by doing a stereotypical geek and a stereotypical girl the audience would be able to understand the flow of the sequence and that by using the storyline of a blind date we could exploit and try different shots well when filming the two getting changed and create interesting shots that fitted well together within the opening sequence. I think that our decision to choose a blind date for our opening sequence worked well for our audience because every one who watched it and completed our questionnaire said that they enjoyed it and found the shots we used fun and different “yes after watching the sequence I would definitely want to continue watching”.

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

The two different characters we choose to represent in our opening sequence were a geek and a normal stereotypical young girl. Our costumes helped to establish our characters very effectively. The geek who was myself wore geeky glasses, a tweed jacket, pants, black shoes and had a come over to add to the image.

We also used the setting which was my room very effectively to establish my character, we did this by making the room appear tidy and organised and had books and a map of the world on the wall to add to the point of my character being very geeky and leading a simple neat life of dedication.

The stereotypical girl we choose to represent was also established well with costume and the setting. The room in which she got changed was a complete mess with clothes, shoes and equipment scattered around the room to emphasise the point that the geek was organised and the girl un organised. The costume Gemma wore was also very effective she wore typical girls going out clothes and her task of having to search for her outfit also added to her character.

I think the image we created of a geek was the sterptype being strange, socially outcast, clever, organised, dedicated but unlikely to be the kind of people going into a relationship. The image we created of a young girl was messy, un tidy, unorganised and more concerned with appearance than anything else in the world, so some positive images of both characters but also some negative ones. Our non digetic music also played parallel alongside with our opening sequence, the song we choose was called The Golden Silvers – Arrows Of Eros, the songs lyrics are about two people a boy and girl who meet and fall in love with such lyrics as “There was a girl who lived in London town”. Our use of cross cutting editing between the two opposites getting changed worked well and flowed well making the opening sequence interesting and helping to represent the kind of lifestyle our characters lived. An example of this is:

The shots used in the above stills are similar to one another as they are both preparing for their outing by looking in to the mirror and applying their accessories in the first two and in the second two shots they are both picking their outfits. We used different shots to establish place ant time for example:

The use of the two above long shots emphasises the two characters un awareness that they are the ones meeting for the blind date. We used other methods such as close ups.

By following the storyline of a blind date, the use of close ups on the two phones created enigmas about who the boy was sending the text to as well as establishing the genre of the opening sequence.

I think the stereotypes we used did adhere to what we commonly see in the media today but with the upset of two complete opposites who wouldn’t expect to see with one another going out on a blind date. We choose a geek and a girl to emphasise the point of out opening sequence of two opposite kinds of people falling in love and I think our audience responded to that well because they were able to identify our characters easily and thought that the way we represented them fitted into our plot well “comical outfits and stereotypical appearances.

Qn 3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
One of the media institutions we researched was Working Title Films which is a British based firm producing similar romantic comedies as us. Such films as Four wedding and a funeral, Love Actually and Notting Hill are three romantic comedies produced by Working Title Films. I believe that a company such as Working Title Film would back our opening sequence for a number of reasons. Our opening sequence ‘Fixed On You’ is different to other romantic comedies because it follows the story line of two opposite people falling in love, the cross cutting between the two characters getting changed works well and makes the opening sequence flow well and keeps the audience interested in what’s happening. After conducting our questionnaire we discovered that 100% of the people who watched the opening sequence liked it, after being asked do you think this opening sequence needs to be improved? One of the participants put “no I really enjoyed it”, proving that it was an appealing opening sequence.

Qn 4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

The audience that we would like to target for our opening sequence would be 15-34 year olds, probably mainly aimed at females but would also appeal to males and people who are fans of comedies or romance or both. We decided to choose this target audience because after researching the BFI Handbook 2005 we discovered that 41.5% of cinemagoers are between the ages of 15 and 34, which is a large proportion of people who go to the cinemas. By aiming at this particular target audience our opening sequence would benefit financially because this is the most popular age for the cinema. After reading over the feedback we received a very positive feedback from our target audience “Yes after watching the sequence I would definitely want to continue watching”

Qn 5: How did you attract/ address your audience?

At first the audience establish that there is two completely different characters getting changed for something but they don’t know what. After discovering who the characters are, the boy being the geek and the girl being a typical girly girl, the upset of normality takes place when they discover they are both to be on a blind date with one another, this is established when the geek texts the girl. This shocks the audience because in normal life to opposite people who are so greatly different aren’t usually attracted to one another in modern society this attracts the audience because they want to know what happens next. Throughout the sequence both characters put on similar clothing in the same order this creates enigmas because the audience want to know where they are going. We created binary opposites by making our stereotypes extreme, for example the geek has a comb over and geeky glasses like of Harry Potter, creating conflict as the audience want to know why two complete opposites are being filmed in sequence of one another. Our opening sequence suggests to the audience that two different people can fall in love this works effectively because the audience wants to know what happens on the geek and girls blind date and incenses them to concentrate on the opening sequence and find out.

After completing our final opening sequence and comparing it with our preliminary task I discovered that we had progressed dramatically. In our preliminary task our shots didn’t flow well and the sequence it self looked jumpy and poor and had no consistence to it. Compared with our “Fixed On You” sequence, which flowed well, was interesting and completed all the jobs of an opening sequence. We learned that by keeping the camera recording at all times you can work with what you’ve got more efficiently and that by using a range of different shots and styles are opening sequence was more compelling and easier to get in to compared to the boring shots we used in our preliminary task. Teamwork was also vital to the successfulness of our sequence and by using the ideas of everyone in our group we came out with the best possible final product we could produce.

Technology helped us out hugely with the creation of our opening sequence, obviously we used a camera to shoot our footage and edited our what we had done on the computer using an I Mac. The computer allowed us to include our music into the sequence and made life a lot easier for us to edit.

I am extremely pleased with the outcome of our opening sequence, teamwork prevailed and our final product was a lot better than I thought it would have been. After showing it to a number of different audiences all of them enjoyed it and wanted to watch on but were unfortunately unable to do so, I don’t think there was anything we could have improved on and out use of costume and location helped to establish our characters very well making our project a complete success.