Evaluation of the Exchange.


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

The Product mainly leads you up to an a Exchange and how it is done. Briefly speaking there is a young man that is very exited about getting a chance to show him self in front of a big guy (mobster) who is willing to give him a job in other words opening a way for the younger man to get better and more important in this business.
There are two other films which are out and very successful that our Product similar to or were we have got our ideas from.
-Lock Stock and two smoking barrels – All the fast scenes and action was mainly the inspiration form that film and it gave our Product a quick and exiting meaning which audience like and that what intrigues the audience.
-Snatch was another film that had gave us ideas to make our film and what way to work. This was a great idea because both of these films are very popular with the audience so that means the distribution of the film will be easier as audience excepts this kind of thrillers therefore people know what they are going to watch.
There is also a last film that we have looked in to get some ideas form and it is Lucky Number Slevin.
The reason for that was Due to budget restrictions we couldn’t show the female character (named WIN) who is a relative (possibly adopted ) of “The Drill’s”.
The Character of Win would be represented as being from an Asian or any other different back ground and function as challenge to the conventions of a U.K. heist thriller (Snatch, Lock Stock ). So talking of Lucky Number Slevin talking about Lucy Lui ( and in that film she was a Asian woman who helps to solve the plots and mysteries)


2)
How does your Media Product Represent Social Groups?

There are seven characters in our piece. All of them are men. Three of which were outside the school one of them was a aged man. In our film he was the boss(mobster) called “The Drill” second man was the bodyguard protecting The Drill and the third professional actor from outside school was the man character that was trying to get the job. Other four actors were people from our school because of lack of money and time we couldn’t find any other way to film but to use non professional actors which still were great in our sequence. Its is mainly characters from middle class the ones that are the older ones but the younger ones might be thought of as from the poorer backgrounds as they are trying to work their way up by serving and working for a big man as boxers.
Also representing the white race because showing Europe and it is mostly common to see white people in this type of films.
The three main characters are wearing suits in order to represent the higher status and social status of the men. Although the boxers were dressed in sport clothes in order to show that they are training and working out and to represent the hard work and that they are tough and can work their work to the top by boxing and serving to the boss.
In our piece there are mainly not speaking there is music through the opening and only by the end of the sequence the main character explains what exactly is happening. His voice tone represents his middle class and that he really wants this job in order to go up in social status and become a more important figure in his life.
One important representative on our film was the actual mobster (The Drill) so in order to point out that he is the man and he is important we have made sure he was sitting in the chair and everything was made around him in order to suite him and not anyone else. So showing the Big Boss in a arm chair and the bodyguard that does the rest of the job for him. The reason for having the mobster in was in order to show the way mobster does his business and dirty money. Representing him shows the audience the main focus of the film and were to mainly look for the hints to understand and follow the story of the film.
We could of done a different representation for example we could of represented the important bits of the mobster in order to show the key parts of the Drill.

3)
What kind of Media Institution might distribute your Media Product and why ?

Our Thriller is an Independent Low budget film. The reasons for that is that we are doing it in our school and there is no way we could of made a higher budget as it was done from our own pocket and the bits and peaces that school could of provided us with.
So therefore our sequence is cheap in making although the camera and the equipment we were using were very expensive they were given to us by school. The locations we have used were in school because we were only given one day to film it and there was no way we could of hired other places and had enough time to film it all in different parts. Although the locations were classrooms and the toilet I still believe it was a great lay out and we have done our best in order to make our thriller as perfect as we could of done.
There was no actual advertising or marketing of your film because we didn’t have the finances to do that or there was no point as the rest of the film is not being made. So the only possible way to advertise our product was to tell people and then they would spread the word and therefore people would find our about your production.

Although if we could of found more money to pump into our product in order to finish it completely then more institutes would have been interested in our film so then needing to do the promotion we could of used all sorts of this such as internet for loads of people to read it form the internet as majority of population that watch films use the internet. Also promotion in places like the actual cinema would help a lot as people that definitely are interested in the films are able to see and realise that our film is coming out and what it is about.
United Kingdom Distribution Companies would be particularly interested in distributing our product as there are not enough British films and therefore that would be a great reason and opportunity to release a film that might be very successful with the audience. So interested in the product Companies would try to get the film on their side in order to make sure British film industry rises and becomes more important and meaning in the world of cinema.

4)
Who would be the Audience for your Media Product ?

The Rating on our production that I would put would be 15 and over. The reasons for that are if we were to do a film further on there would be much more swearing, violence and horror. That would be the rating of 15 on the National level as it is very hard to get allowance for such films with your audience to be allowed to watch it.
But the Local authorities may change the rating as they think it is appropriate so we will have no control on the rating of our film in UK (Local authorities).


The distribution will be quite hard to do as we don’t know any famous and fancy companies that might help us and therefore it might be a bit of a trick to get it into the cinemas in order for people to actually watch it. Some Uk films wait a year or more after they are finished before even getting onto a screen because they have to compete with lots of cheap USA content that is shown in cinemas - the mostly vertically integrated (producing, marketing and distributing their own USA content) system of cinemas here in the UK means that multiplex places like ODEON
show their own films becuase they make more profit from the ticket sales .

So when we actually do have our film released on the cinema screens.So we will probably have the film on in cinemas for quite a while.

We probably have 3 days to make an impact over a weekend in small niche/arthouse cinemas like Brighton's Duke of York if we are to make any money, or just to cover production costs. (This niche cinema shows a lot of budding talent on the stage and screen )





Then in around 6 months we shall release it on the DVD in order for people then to buy it and have it at their house to watch. I recon that is quite good way of distributing our film because by that the audience will not get board from the film and they will have time to forget some bits about it and then demand it more in between the time of cinema and DVD release.


5)
How did ways you can attract your audience and a very big factor is the advertising. You may have many different ideas in order to sell your film more and get more loyal audience. First of all you can release some soundtrayou attract / address your audience?

There are different cks that will attract the audience and other people that haven’t seen the film but heard the soundtrack will want to watch the film in order to know the whole story. There is other ways of marketing such as Viral marketing it is also a great way of advertising although it is more specific harder to make and it may be expensive. A good example of that is websites. If you make websites referring to the film that will give audience a way to intervene with the film more. That would lead to a more loyal audience because they will love the film, they will be waiting for the next one and also that will also mean most of them will want to buy things such as t-shirts, games etc anything that is relevant to the film. Also if the main actors that are the most influence on the rest of the audience they might as well have a website of their own such as Bebo of Facebook. That will give people more chance to communicate with the actual figure them self’s and that will gain more loyal audience. People that like internet and are visiting websites such as youtube. If you upload some clips or even the sequence on the youtube that will be another great way of attracting audience because people that see the clip may then look it up read about the film get interested in it and either go to the cinema or even buy a DVD

6)

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

The first thing we have learnt was the camera work. We had a special lesson on practical work with the camera. First of all learning all the technological words and the names of all parts of the camera, further on we have gained the skills how to actually use the camera, we came out of the class room and were given a storyboard that we needed to stick to in order to video the sequence. After that we had the preliminary task which I have spoken about previously and that was the first time we actually had put our skills into practice.
After actually shooting the film the most important thing was to edit the actual film to make it perfect and make it exactly what we wanted. So in order to do that we needed to learn about Final Cut Pro as we were using it to edit the film. Many things that were needed to be learned about the program because many different ways of how to do something and also millions of different choices of different effects and extras. Using Final Cut Pro wasn’t easy it took us a very long time to complete the video and make it to what we wanted. It taken us a while to get used to the way it worked such as you needed to put the Input and Output then cut it and make it a new slide. After that all we needed to put the slides over each other so they didn’t overlap or other way it wouldn’t show everything we wanted. All the special effect were very hard to make such as cutting the pictures changing the color and then freezing them in different positions at different angles and with all type of writing such as credits. That all took a long time because we needed to use a different program called After effects. This is completely opposite the final cut pro and learning that again was hard for the whole group. Also a very important part of our thriller was the soundtrack and voice over. The voice over was made on the day of the actual shooting day. So we had one of the actors doing the voice over while we wrote what to say on the paper and passed it to the character. The soundtrack was also needed to be done in order to suite the fast shots and sequences so we needed to make our own music because no music could be taken from any were else as it is all privatized and has rights.

7)
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in theprogression from it to the full product?

The first proper time we have used a camera was when we were filming our preliminary task. The whole class had been split into groups of 4 people in each group. In our group filming I was the camera man. So I had to put the camera up , make sure that everything is working and listen to the command of the director. We also had 2 actors a female and a male actor. There was a storyboard that we had to stick to in order to make sure that we can do all the types of shots and angles of the camera and also making sure that we know what it feels like on the actual shooting day. So shooting the sequence and practicing that gave us an idea of what it looks like and feels. Looking back at the video and the day there were many things that should have been done before the actual day many things were needed to be improved. The preparation is very important because when we were doing the preliminary task it took us a while to organize everything , put it all in place and shoot it. So we learned that it was crucial that we did that before the 12th of January the day of actual shoot.
When preparing for the real shoot day it took us a long time to make up the story board, to decide the angles at which the camera would take the shot . Also the actors preparation was important. We needed to have many preview runs through the sequence before we shot it in order to make it perfect. We needed to put the lightning in so the video would look professional and with good lightning. If there was a way we could go back to the preliminary task I would make sure that we went through everything and rehearsed everything before so now it would better then it is. Also if we could come back to the actual shooting day that would also change the thriller a bit more. May be we would get more shots of the fighting and shots of the character getting ready and also the actual exchange. That would help us with the editing because there would be more shots that could be put in and it would look better with the fast sequence that we already have.