In our opening we decided to use a voice over to narrate what is happening and the feelings of the character. This idea developed from the film Mean Girls as they use the same technique to introduce the character and to explain why she is where she is today. The voice over is coming from the main character, playing a part as the narrator. By giving the information about his life first hand from the character, it would make it more believable and more interesting because obviously they are telling their story for a reason because something has happened that we want to know about. The voice over is in 1st person, so this engages the audience because they feel that they are being spoken to. We used the voice over convention to introduce the main characters in the opening and to create mystery because Edwardo mentions in the voice over that he would tell us all about the worst day of his life, so something dramatic must have happened, so then this draws the audience in. Our voice over challenges the conventions in movies like Mean Girls because in Mean Girls all the voice over does it tell you about the characters and her feelings about whats about to happen or what is happening. This voice over technique we have used is to tell the audience the first part of the story and then carry on later in the film so the audience will have something to hold onto whiles they are watching. Also in the film "Super bad" the nerd of the school is the main character, we have taken this stereotype and used it so that our project main character is the nerd/loser/outcast. We did not challenge the conventions of real media because what we already had we already popular with our target audience and by changing what we had would have hindered our popularity and how funny we have already made it.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our media product represents different social groups because it is based in a school and we have used stereotypical characters that you see everyday in school or on other school movies. You have the geek/loser that everyone doesn't like for some reason who most of the time the story is about his tough life at school. Then you have the bullies who pick on the loser, and then you also have the hero/heroin who can be a good character or a bad character with good intentions, the one who sticks up for the little guy. Our media products represents these social groups by showing the behaviour that happens everyday but no one realises it's that bad. We show in this project a clear division of groups, the life of one outcast and the different people who made his life hell. We have long shots of Edwardo showing him walking alone because this represents loneliness reflecting on his status in the school, the schools biggest loser. We direct Edwardo to walk round the corridors and whiles he is doing this we have people passing him by calling him a loser and bullying him. Such as when he walks up the stairs, there is a group of girls stood there chatting and they suddenly turn on him and call him loser, also throwing things at him. Then we have a change of corridor and one lad walks out in front on him demanding his bag and coat because he knows he can take it because now one will do anything for on one will actually stick up for every ones loser. Also the scene where Edwardo gets confronted about a group of three bullies, there are three social groups here. The bullies, the loser and the heroin as Edwardo best/only friend comes out of no where and beats his bullies to the ground. The use of costume helps determine the different social groups, because of stereotypes by the way someone dresses they can instantly pick out what group they belong to. Edwardo has long hair which hides the face which makes the character more mysterious, and his social group would be the outcast for he is dressed all in black with his face hidden all the time. Also the bullies all travel round in groups this is another symbol of a social group because bullies normally travel around in groups because people are stronger in numbers. Showing the personal relationships between the characters also puts them into social groups because it shows the loner and the groups that attack the loner, this then shows that the loner is the loser of the school for everyone he passes laughs at him or bullies him. The social groups in our media product is something everyone can relate to, for it being similar to the character themselves or they have seen these characters around their school to which they attend. In our project we have put the main focus on Edwardo, the loser, whereas in normal teen comedies such as Mean Girls they focus on the popular people who in the end normally over come their popularity and everything is right in the school because everyone becomes equal. However ours focuses on the loser of the school and why he is the loser. At the end he has comes back a new man, for he has had a hair cut and wearing new cooler clothes, so he suddenly becomes popular. Our film is a reverse movie of the normal ten comedies that are in our cinemas today. The costume represents different social groups because of the stereotypical type of clothing. Such as Edwardo dressed in all black, which is a stereotype for goths to wear black to reflect on there emotional status. This sticks out showing him as the main character because everyone else is wearing colours and look pretty normal compared to Edwardo.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
Teen comedy is a popular viewing with the target audiences. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/ is a website that informs us of the money spent on similar films and how much was made from the films viewing, which is a useful tool to specify the popularity of the genre.
After following some research into our genre, I have found out that there are many different institutions that have spent millions on similar film genres such as:
Super Bad - $121,463,226 - Sony
American Pie - $102,561,004 - Universal
Mean Girls - $86,058,055 - Paramount
She's All That - $63,366,989 - Miramax
Bring It On - $68,379,000 - Universal
Porky's - $111,289,673 - Fox
The above research shows me how popular Teen Comedy is with its audience. The first top 15 from the website boxofficemojo.com, all films are above $40 million, this proves how much people are willing to pay for a popular film. Making a teen comedy film would not cost that much due to there is not massive amount of special effects, or budget spent on car crashes but there is a high cost to profit ratio. This type of film is popular to the studios because they know they will get the audience for the genre is a very popular one.
Since there are so many choices to chose from the studios to fund and present our film, a little more research is needed in order to get the best output. There is no clear distribution company for our film is based on a unique storyline of an outcast or a popular student overcoming their identity they have been labelled to wear at their school. However, no one has really done a story based exactly on this, normally it is about the social issues of the whole school and the main character is just the narrator.
I would have to choose Universal studios to be the distribution company for our media project film. Universal studios are a very popular network in America for they have their own films and their own programme network such as NBC. They would be able to advertise their own films on the top American comedy channels, advertising the film to their target audience. This shows that Universal are very dedicated to the genre of comedy and it would be the best choose to get the best quality out of our film. Universal Studios have more mainstream media than any other studios, they are successful in what they do and have the largest, most popular audience range which would reflect on the film.
Who would be the audience for your media product?/How did you attract/address your audience?
The audience for our media product should be for the comedy audience or for teenagers. The audience would be the same type of audience for films such as Mean Girls, Super Bad or American Pie. Which the age group would be 14 to 19, which is the age range for teenagers. We had to make variations to our film such as swearing or expletives because some of the audience members may not be mature enough to handle swearing yet, or this film may be mistaken for setting a bad example to younger children.
Films like Mean Girls have a certain popularity to them due to that fact that people can relate to the characters. They can see the character in themselves or someone they know at school, which makes the film more funny and likable. So having the film set in a school the target audience to get the best outcome of the film would be people who would be able to relate to the film. Such as school students or adults who can think back and remember the days they were in school They can see how they have changed or how things are still the same and have a laugh about it.
We attracted our audience by relating to them. Setting the scenes at school is something every student can relate to for they have either witnessed the acts shown in the opening, someone being a victim to bullying or they can relate to the character for they have been picked on themselves or they stuck up for someone and know the feeling you get for when you have saved someone the pain they have been going through. Plus because it is a comedy, so people would be able to laugh about the experiences that have been shown in our media project for they would be able to relate to the characters. Also sometimes it doesn't really matter what the story is about, if you are a big comedy fan then this would attract the audience just by mentioning the genre of comedy.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
What I have learnt from the making of this product on the technology side of media is the different levels and techniques to use the camera to create the difference between a funny atmosphere or a scary one. Such as when we used an over the shoulder shot in scene four we needed to mark out where Sam would stand, how high the camera needed to be for his shoulder height. We needed to consider the width of the hallway, where both characters would stand so they are both in the shot. Whiles editing this film our group now knows how to use "Adobe Premiere" programme to use fade, volume, edit in music and add and delete films. Using Adobe Premiere made the editing much easier once you knew how to use it and what choices you had to edit the project with.
To sum up what I have learnt about technology from this project is that, from the making of this film I have come to a clearer understanding on how to use a camera with the different angles and shots. Also using such things like the tripod, I now know how to fix the camera on and take it off of the tripod, as none of us knew how to use it at the beginning of the project. Using the computer has become easier from the process of constructing this project. Such as the programs that can be used for editing and plugging in the camera to connect it to the computer to send our filming to the computer for editing.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
I feel that in our preliminary task we were more worried about camera angles than the storyline. However in this media project we were more worried about the genre and the shooting. We have had experience in the preliminary task to practise with camera angles so it came more naturally for when we were filming this media project. The storyline for our film has been well planned towards our audience and making sure it made sense and we had no continuity errors. We now know how to plan our story board out and that sometimes you need to change the story board to make it possible to film in the environment and to get the realistic angle shots. We also know how to plan a script, shooting schedule, and camera map etc etc. This helped a lot in our full project because we already knew what we was going to film and what the setting is, so we know knew where the camera needed to be in order to get the shot we wanted. We also knew how long it would take us to film, so we knew how long we had to edit and if we had any time to make any changes if needed. I feel I have learnt how to use the camera with more confidence and now have a better understanding of the editing process, which appliances I can use and what I can use to make something funny or just to add a bit of an effect to the scene.
Our audience feedback...
Our audience feedback was very positive. We did not receive any negative comments back from the questionnaire after the premiere of our opening film project.
The questionnaire questions were:
1. Could you pick out the stereotypes from this film?
2. What genre is this film and do you think the genre matches the characters set?
3. Can you identify the characters relationships?
4. Do you understand the storyline so far and where do you think the storyline is going?
5. How realistic do you think the acting is and does it influence the genre?
6. Do you think the editing made this film funnier to match the genre?
7. Does the music fit into the storyline? Does it make it funnier to match the genre?
8. Do you think the setting in the opening was appropriate for the film genre?
1. Everyone understood the question and the responses we got back were, 'Loser kid, bully', 'Geek, bully', 'popularity, goth, loner', 'yes'. So everyone had there own version of the story characters but none of them were wrong. This tells us that we have represented our characters in a recognisable way to our audience. So our choice of costume and how they speak must be successful in the evaluation for the characters.
2. Everyone of our audience members understood that our project was a Teen comedy and they agreed that the characters match the genre. This tells us that we have made a clear storyline that our audience can understand and that our acting and choice of script matches the genre well. We have made all the right decisions, which is very positive feedback.
3. Most people for this question just put yes, but some people went into detail about which relationships they thought there was. Some identified that Edwardo and Hannah were going to end up in a relationship, they are in a friendship relationship but they do end up together at the end of the film when everyone is happy. Their theories are correct because Edwardo comes back a new man with his hair short and he is much happier. Then we ends up being in a relationship with Hannah and it ends happily ever after.
4. Everyone understood the storyline but some people didn't know where the storyline heading however some people guessed that Hannah would love Edwardo back in the future. But everyone guessed it would all end happily. They got the final idea of the film in a way but they have no idea how its going to happen, which makes them want to watch so that they find out how it happens and to see if their theory is correct.
5. People thought that our film was very funny and they thought that the acting complimented this. They thought the script and acting was funny which mean that we make the right decisions on basing our script in an American style because people found it funnier with the way that we spoke and the way we structured the storyline.
6. Most of the answers for this questions is yes. Which makes it a very positive result but no detailed feedback. So this gives up the idea that we made the right kind of editing and that there is no way of improving this. This gives the impression that the editing makes successful with the genre Teen Comedy.
7. Yet again every comment we received back was positive and no one would have made any changes to our choice of music. Some people just replied yes, others went into detail saying it was very comical and it fitted in well to where our music came into with the titles. Other commented on how the music matched the main character and how it gave out a school feel which is the setting of our film. These comments are very positive because we wanted the music to match the setting otherwise it wouldn't have made sense. So from the feedback we have come to the conclusion that our music choice was very successful.
8. Everyone thought that the setting matched the genre and the storyline, which is an obvious answer because our film is called 'High School Loser', it is set in school and we filmed it in school. Most Teen comedies are set in school because that is the place where Teens spend most of their time because of their age. It is commonly used as a setting because of social groups and the fact that teenagers can relate to the story whether its so a character or they have a lesson in a similar setting. So our feedback was positive because everyone thought it was an appropriate setting to match the genre and storyline, which made our choices successful and the right one to have made.
Overall we did not receive any negative comments back about our opening, which gives the impression that we made all the right choices and what we chose made an impression on the audience. According to the feedback we received because we had no negative comments back, we can not do anything to improve what we have produced which made our premiere of our opening an 100% success.
