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

In order to see the ways in which I have applied codes and conventions to my final media product, click on the website below:

http://meganjaynebennett.wix.com/lonelythischristmas1

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

An interview with the MD of Vertigo Productions:

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

Primary Audience member example:



When watching back our media product, I think we have managed to successfully engage our target audience of teenage females aged between 12 and 18 in audience demographics D and E. As mentioned in the audience profile, we said that we would use many codes and conventions in order to attract our target audience in our opening sequence. For example the worry about the future is a convention that always comes up in coming of age films like Submarine and Perks of Being a Wallflower, and too comes up in our opening sequence. As this is a current worry for the primary audience of our film, we have used it to engage the audience as something that can help them and give them something to relate to.

The audience we have targeted in this film is very similar to the audience we had originally planned to aim our film at then creating our old film sequence, because even though the narratives and characters aren't similar in many ways, the same themes, ideas and codes and conventions have been used to attract the target audience. The reason that we didn't decide to change it during the creation of the opening sequence is because this is the target audience of the majority of coming of age films and has been very effective and so we thought that by engaging with the same target audience it would increase the chances of our coming of age title sequence being successful.

You can tell that our opening sequence is aimed at this audience because the protagonist is a female that is clearly feeling alone and isolated, which is a feeling experienced by this target audience many times over their teenage years. We have created an atmosphere that makes the audience sympathise with the character and sympathy is most often, stereo-typically, given by girls, whereby engaging the target audience of women far more than men. Although we haven't created the entire film following this 2 minutes, the rest of the film is based on her life as a teenager which therefore lads to her situation now. We decided to have an opening which didn't start with her as a teen because that is the same way almost all coming-of-age films start, e.g Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging. We thought that by starting the film with a reflection of the protagonist's emotions later in her life, it becomes more engaging for the audience whereby enticing them into watching the rest of the plot ewhich leads her to this point in her life.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

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

What I have learnt about new technologies during the construction process of my product? - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires

7. What do you feel you have learnt from the progression from your preliminary task to the full product?

I think that from my journey from the preliminary task, to the development of our second idea, to the creation of the final product, I have learnt so much in terms of production, filming and editing. For example, in the placement of characters within shot. In the preliminary task this was very poor, however I feel like since learning the rule of thirds, I feel like i have tried to use this effectively to draw the eyes of the audience to the right place.

I feel like the decision to change the idea from what we had thought of originally was definitely the right decision to make. This is because, as you can tell from the footage, it was not working effectively even after two attempts of shooting for the sequence. Filming for this proved to be really hard as we had two protagonists to film for, and trying to organise a few days which we could all be together for was really difficult. It was evident to us that after to attempts of filming, the idea wasn't going to work and so towards the end of December we decided to change our idea and try and come up with something better. This is where the idea for the Christmas theme of our newer opening sequence has come from. 

From task 1, I took away what sort of conventions opening title sequences used and applied in order to engage the interest of their audiences, and then in task two I learnt how the creators of coming of age films applied these conventions to their sequence successfully, so I started gaining knowledge of the sort of things to look out for and apply when it came to starting to create my own opening sequence. One of the best ones that I looked at was Ferris Bueller's Day Off and so it was from this film that I started making comparisons across media and took which things I liked and didn't like in terms of editing and narrative structure of a sequence. I also looked at the Breakfast Club and it was from here that I was inspired to do the jump cuts etc of things relating to Christmas and things associated with it, like they do in this sequence.

Sixteen Candles, a film I analysed in task 3, was quite influential to the ideas behind our project because it gave us a basis to go on as to how teens were represented in films: self-conscious, but also kind of overlooked by others in society. This was a way in which we represented the protagonist in our film in order to link her back to and engage with the target audience of our film so that they would empathise with her and see that she isn't so different from themselves. 

Tasks 4 and 5 were useful when it came to the production of our opening sequence because it taught me how different companies and directors use different codes and conventions to personalise and put their own mark on things that they produce. This made me realise that in order to make our sequence a success it had to stand out and be different from all the others, e.g in terms of atmosphere created and ordering of the narrative. Task 6 was then also really useful because it was all about audience research - learning who our target and secondary audience would be, doing a questionnaire to find out what people of our age group wanted to see in films, which ones they preferred and what it was about these coming of age films that they liked. We took away information from this task which was vital for the production of our opening title sequence, and this is how we built the structure of our new idea for the opening sequence.

Task 7 proved to be really influential to our final product because it was the titles which we struggled to get right a few times, but which in the end, I feel have brought the opening sequence together in that the authenticity and ambiance they bring to the sequence make it appear more sophisticated and professional. The typography we used was difficult to pick but on the place cards suited the titles really well, and we also learnt what the order of titles was here, and so this explains the order of titles in order to fir the convention of other coming of age films.

In task 8 I studied narrative structure within an opening sequence and is what lead us to revealing an equilibrium which was shortly followed by the disruption of an equilibrium in our opening. The representation of characters within this narrative was also really important, as I learned in task 9, because it was through this that I learnt the ways in which I could make the audience empathise with and feel sympathy for our protagonist, and also how I should present these characteristics and events to the audience. I learnt in this task that I should give the main character in the plot of the film an obvious hamartia which is what leads to the route of their problems, which in our characters case is carelessness in her youth.

Task 10 was where I finally got an idea of what opening sequences produced by others doing Media Studies A level looked like, and it gave me an idea of what they did well, what I certainly shouldn't do and also what I wanted my final product to look like. My final product from this course has turned out just how I wanted it to and so I feel like I have made something which fits the ideals of a coming of age opening title sequence.

The preliminary task made me realise what a difficult task it was going to be creating our own sequence and it taught me that I needed to learn how to control a camera, the techniques I should use for achieving good camera work, the correct positioning of characters and the way in which a narrative should be laid out in order to engage an audience in the opening two minutes. I feel like I have done all of these things from the progression from my prelim task to my final product, and that the development of my ideas for the sequence to the production and editing of it have improved vastly over the course of this task, and can be seen throughout the blog.