Thursday, 28 April 2011
1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
We chose to podcast our answer to this question. Click on the media player to hear our response.
7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
From doing our preliminary tasks back in October to now having completed our main coursework piece, we feel we have learnt a great deal that helped us to make our product the best it could be.
Probably the most important thing we learnt from our preliminary task was that when filming we should always use a tripod. In our preliminary task, we handheld the camera when filming the shot-reverse-shot sequence and although it seemed steady at the time, it was clear when we uploaded it to final cut express that this was not the case. Therefore, when shooting our film opening ‘Dirty Little Secret’, we made sure that we used a tripod the whole time, except for when shooting the main character point of view shot. This made our shots steadier and easier to watch than our shaky preliminary tasks. We decided that handheld would be appropriate for Cally’s point of view shot as we found it was conventional of chick flicks like our piece.
After having a professional cameraman in to view our preliminary tasks, he pointed out the importance of headroom. It was clear in our preliminary tasks that there was much too much space above the actor’s heads, and so they did not properly fill the frame and there was too much background. Therefore, in our main piece, we were careful to make sure that our actresses filled most of the shot, ensuring that there was little or no space above her head. We feel that this improved our film greatly in comparison to our preliminary task and we have learnt how important it is that the actors fill the shot.
We also learnt how important it is to be organised, and made sure that for our filming of ‘Dirty Little Secret’, we had everything ready. In our preliminary task, we made the mistake of not charging the camera before filming and so had the problem of having to charge it and film at the same time. Luckily, since we were filming inside, this was not so much of a problem, but if it had happened in our main piece filming, we would not have been able to film. Therefore, we made sure the cameras were fully charged and our equipment was set up before our actress and extras arrived for filming. We found it difficult to arrange everyone in place and had to do lots of retakes in a short space of time, but from this we have learnt efficiency and we managed to get most of the filming done on the first day. Like in the preliminary task, we had to film over two days and so we made sure that our actress was wearing exactly the same thing she was wearing before and waited for a day in which the weather would be the same. Again, even though we had a short space of time, we managed to get our filming done completely by the second day and so we learnt a lot from this about time management, organisation and the importance of communication.
When editing our final piece, we thought back to our preliminary task and remembered the importance of continuity. In our preliminary task, we found that it took a considerable amount of time to edit the actor walking through the door so that it looked realistic. Therefore, we made sure that we took time editing our film opening, so that it flowed well, keeping the verisimilitude of the piece.
So, from our preliminary task to our main coursework piece, we learnt a lot about constructing a film and the experience at filming and editing certainly helped us when it came to doing our film opening of ‘Dirty Little Secret.’
5) How did you address/attract your audience?
The target audience for our main piece in mostly teenage girls between the ages of 10-18 and we researched modern chick flicks with a similar target group and found out how they made the film fit the need of the main audience. Like in films such as wild child and St Trinians, we decided our main character would be a young, fashionable and pretty female. This was because our research found that this was common of modern, girly chick flicks aimed at teenage girls. We chose to have this stereotypical female character as the hero of the story, since she would be someone that the audience could recognise and relate to, attracting them to our film. So in a sense, we showed our audience in our film, by choosing an actress who was female and of the age group.
During our first discussions about the plot and idea of our main piece, we were unsure of how to make the character of Cally stand out from the other girls in the school. We first thought that Cally should be of lower class, dressed less well than the other girls, so that she felt intimidated by the typical snobby girls at the posh private school. However we decided against this, having Cally dress fashionably, but be a rebellious character and so making the other girls look up to her, though they appear to be jealous of her, giving her dark looks as she passes. We found that this idea was more common in chick flicks and was more suited both our actress and our original idea.
We found that the way we dressed Cally did seem to be the right decision as when we showed a preview of our film opening to our target audience, the shoes our actress was wearing was hugely popular among the girls. They commented on how they really liked them, wanting to buy the shoes themselves. Therefore, this did reach out to our target audience and attract them to our film opening.
With the girls who played extras in our film, we allowed them to form their own groups, making the film more realistic as they were in similar age and friendship groups. This created verisimilitude, along with the chosen setting, which was our school, which we found was the perfect setting. We also had girls in the windows of the school building, which showed that everyone was focusing on Cally as she arrived for her first day. We handheld the camera in part of our film, showing Callys point of view as she looked over at the small group of sixth form girls and the head girl. This also would help the audience to relate to Cally, getting the sense of being watched by the girls who think they are superior to her.
Another important thing that we also found attracted the girls that we showed a preview of our opening to, was the music. Our song Dirty Little Secret by The All American Rejects was the perfect song for our piece as it was a well known, upbeat, current song that was widely and often used in the chick flick films we had researched. We also felt that the lyrics of the song applied to the plot for our film and so decided that Dirty Little Secret would also be the title to our film. From the questionnaire given to the girls at the screening and the interviews we had with a few of them afterwards, the music was scored extremely highly and the girls were very enthusiastic about it.
3) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
Media institutions such as Universal would be appropriate to distribute our film because Universal is associated with chick flicks such as Wild Child. We researched other smaller institutions, which might help us create our media product because our film is low budget and not well known. We found suitable institutions such as Bedlam Productions or See Saw Films. Bedlam Productions, which might be interested in helping us create our film. They collaborated to make the multiple Oscar winning, “The King’s Speech”; this film is also a comparatively low budget movie like ours. Their main key areas are feature films and documentaries. Even they have so far focused on “real-life” stories, we feel our UK girls independent school setting also raises lots of historical and social issues in teenage lives, which would attract similar audiences.
Most importantly, See Saw Films has a first-look deal with Momentum Pictures in the UK and a film finance deal with the American Paramount Pictures. Since American institutions have much more capital at their disposal than British companies, this link with the US could be the secret to the success of distributing our film. Moreover, as distributer of “Mean Girls”, Paramount may well be interested in our film as it is aimed at a similar audience, addressing similar high school issues and stereotypes.
Momentum and Paramount would be great distributors for our product because they can distribute our film through larger companies and to the USA. These institutions would also be interested in distributing our media product because it is a British film, and could work well on the back of the success of “The King’s Speech”.
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