Evaluation

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

We tried to avoid the convention found in action films of fight scenes being hyper-unrealistic, focusing instead on a crisply choreographed fight scene which still manages to retain its spirited atmosphere.

Our location was not typical of an action film, but more of a horror film. This was because we needed to maintain enough space to shoot our fight scene and in order to stay away from crowded areas.

Our film does conform to several conventions of typical action movies as the main feature of our production is the fight scene. We also used weapon props and used music to build tension through the scenes.

The costumes we used also fitted with the conventions of an action film; the protagonist is dressed in regular clothes to make him accessible to the audience, while one of the antagonists wears an unusual mask that prevents the audience from connecting with him, as does the hood worn by the second antagonist.

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How does your media project represent particular social groups?

Our project can be seen as representing people from a working class background (due to the costumes of the characters) as being violent, as all three characters engage in violent acts that result in two of them being killed.
The use of a mask and hood represents how no one can be truly sure who there enemies are.

What kind of institution might distribute your media project and why?

The type of institution that would distribute our project would probably be a production company such as Film4 or StudioCanal UK, as they have a track record of producing and distributing up and coming independent, gritty, British films.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our main audience for our media project would be

people who enjoy action/thriller films, or those who enjoy films involving choreographed fight scenes (such as martial arts films).

How did you attract/address your audience?

We attracted our audience by creating suspense with the use of music and various camera angles that do not properly allow the audience to see what is happening initially. This leaves the audience in a state of intrigue as they attempt to piece together what is occurring. 

We also spent a lot of time practising and choreographing the fight scene in order to make it more interesting than a simple brawl. We were inspired to be as gritty as possible after watching the different fight scenes in the film Green Street and we drew lots of other ideas from other films, also. 

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

This project was the first time anyone in our group had handled a high quality, professional style camera. This meant learning how to use the camera properly to collect good quality shots, particularly functions such as focus, lighting and zoom. These small aspects of filming all worked as contributing factors to perfecting our project. 

I hadn't done any of the editing in our groups preliminary task and thus never used Final Cut Pro. The technology was actually relatively simple to manipulate and I found myself successfully editing much faster than I expected.

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?

Since making the preliminary task I have better learned how to edit films, both in terms of time-effectivity and overall quality of the final piece. 

I have also become much more patient in terms of expectation vs reality. Due to the intricacy of the film making process, not everything that you pictured would contribute to your final production will be featured. Throughout the filming of this project, I realised that the more work needed to perfect a piece, the more likely sacrifices are going to be made.