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

Director's Cut of "The Yellow Brick Road" from Anna Wyatt on Vimeo.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

From the opening, my film could represent any social group, within reason; I simply have a woman, who's clearly the main character, doing the same thing every day- waiting for a train, as many people from many different social groups would do. It could also represent those who are more free-spirited, due to the insinuations that this woman will travel, and break free from the normal daily 9-5 job and lifestyle. The woman would be more likely to represent someone outside of the higher classes of society, as clearly she has to work, which is one of the reasons she feels so fed up, and in the need of escape. Many members of the audience will have wanted to escape their daily lives for something totally different, and as such, this woman could represent them.

The film could be seen as a feel-good film too, because it sees a normal person become different, change their life around, thus causing an audience to believe that it is possible for anyone, and in this way, my main character could represent anyone in the audience, within a certain range.

My main character may also be perceived to be quite isolated, emphasised by the train just passing her by, while she stands, unaffected by it. This isolation will allow certain members of the audience to empathise with her, and those people will come from all walks of life, proving how despite social class, you can take one character, and represent any number of different stereotypes or groups. 

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

 

Palm Pictures produces, acquires and distributes innovative music and film projects with a particular focus on the DVD format. Palm has positioned itself as a leader in the converging music and film markets, placing an emphasis on projects like music documentaries, arthouse & foreign cinema, and music videos. This company distributed “New York, I Love You” which isn't similar to my concept, but has themes that could be, and also is very art-house in style.

Focus Features is the art house films of Universal Pictures, and acts as both a producer and distributor for its own films and a distributor for foreign films. This company distributed “Billy Elliot” and “Lost in Translation”, which have similar concepts to those found in my film.

Momentum Pictures

Momentum Pictures a leading independent motion picture distributors in the UK and Ireland and releases approximately 20 theatrical films a year, with several stv releases. The fact that it has previously distributed films such as “Amelie” make it a suitable distributor for my film, which is in a similar style to both.

Ideally, I would choose to use Momentum Pictures to distribute my film, because it has a similar feel to many of their films.This company is also one of the most successful in the industry, and as such, my film would therefore have more chance of being successful. However, Palm pictures would also be a good choice because it is becoming a leader, but is not one yet, and so there would be a higher chance of being able to distribute my film with them. They also focus more specifically on the ArtHouse style.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

I would primarily be looking at those aged between 18 and 40, in the ABC1 category, to be my main audience. This is because these ages and classes would be most likely to appreciate what is going on in the film, and engage with my main character the most. Having said that, I can also imagine an older audience as well, because they may be able to appreciate it in light of their own experiences, rather than their own feelings, and the younger generation may be able to.

My target audience would have a genuine desire to travel, and discover other ways of living, as then they will be able to connect with the main character more, and so the film will be more effective to them; for example, it might be pointless for someone who is perfectly happy with their life to watch this film, because it puts across the message that one can change their life around, and this is something that someone like that would not need to do, and so would be unlikely be as interested in the film.

An audience who may want to watch it could be those who enjoyed the recent film “Eat, Pray, Love”, which was released shortly after I wrote my film synopsis. Turns out it actually had a fairly similar plot.

How did you attract/ address your audience?

With the audience research I conducted, I found out that the most common genre of film people like were films that allow you to escape, in particular romances. My film is not a typical romance film, but the idea is very romanticised, and it certainly allows escapism, and at the end a feel-good solution; audiences tend to know the topic of the film before going to watch it, and as such this genre would attract a range of people, from those who like the escapism of sci-fi, to those who enjoy the escapism of romantic films. This is partially because, during my audience research, I found out that most people like a fairly slow-paced introduction with only one or two characters, that doesn't leave them reeling from the amount of information they've had to process, and my opening does this, hopefully attracting the audience to keep watching.

The opening itself also serves to attract an audience by hooking them in, forcing them to question the connection between the two story worlds we see in the introduction. In the audience research, most people agreed that they only like to be introduced to one or two characters in the introduction, a suggestion I have stuck to, because it allows them to become familiar with the characters. One person said they enjoy being able to grow with the characters as well, which would certainly be possible in my film, where the audience go on the protagonist's journey with her. It also gives them something to relate to; the normal 9-5 working day, waiting for the train and going to work, which addresses them directly, as they could perhaps envision themselves in a very similar position. 

However, the main connection any audience would have with her is this desire to leave everything behind, and find out more about the world and a different path of life. This wanderlust is something that many people in the audience would have felt, and as such, they can hopefully relate to her. The idea of travelling is enforced by the images which are clearly not from where she is now, and this hopefully entices the audience to watch the rest of the film. It also addresses them; if they want to travel, this will talk to them personally. This is why the film could be seen as a feel-good film too, because it sees a normal person become different, change their life around, thus causing an audience to believe that it is possible for anyone. Films that show an ordinary person change their lives around tent to attract audiences, because they allow escapism on a possible level; one of the topics that came up in my audience research was escapism, one of the reasons audiences choose to watch a particular film.

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

On the way to my final piece, the editing software is the area that I feel I have learnt most about; my opening makes use of shot alterations, such as sepia; many shot transitions that I have altered the length of to create the necessary atmosphere; much more editing in terms of cutting out sections of film; and also the alteration of speed of the shot. For all of the above, I have found the editing software iMovie perfectly adequate, as it has allowed me to manipulate all of my footage to exactly what I wanted. There are certain limitations I this software, such as only being able to speed up or slow down footage to a certain amount, but that would be expected, given that it is provided for free on macs computers, and there are ways around the problems as well, so I found iMovie right for this level of editing; if I wanted to produce anything longer, or more complex, I would find it a lot more limiting.

For the audio of my opening, iMovie was also fine for incorporating it, after finding the audio elsewhere; the song I have used comes from a website called “SoundCloud”, which allows new musicians to upload their music copyright and royalty free, and enables users of the website to download it, which was incredibly useful. If this technology had not been available to me, I would have created my own music in GarageBand. At first, I did experiment with creating my own music using the loops feature on the software, and there were many appropriate sounds and sequences of music on there, but I did find it limiting in that the way of recording music on to it wasn't very high standard, which would have dragged down the audio, and thus the entire feel of the opening. However, I have discovered how to use it for basic things; in fact, I have used it and iMovie to create the director's commentary for question one of the evaluation.

I have found social networking sites, such as Blogger, Vimeo, and Youtube, highly useful for my coursework; Blogger in particular has allowed me to document the process to the final opening easily and efficiently. I have also learnt how to embed clips from both Vimeo and Youtube successfully onto my blog; both of these video sites have been invaluable, both in uploading footage to Blogger, as well as for research purposes. In particular, I used Youtube to look up other effective film openings, to see what worked and what didn't, which has allowed me to create an opening that hopefully avoids many of the downfalls of other film openings. The downfall of Vimeo is the sheer amount of time videos take to upload; a 3 minute film could take two hours to upload, which posed problems when uploading the audience research and preliminary task, because a limitation on lesson time means it was hard to find enough time to put films up. However, for the actual opening I was using my own laptop, so this hasn't been a problem.

The final major technology I used to create my opening was obviously the camera itself; I was using a Canon HD camera, which was of high enough quality and complexity to allow me to film all of the footage that I needed to make the opening work. The only problem I had in the process of filming arose when I went to France, and discovered that the tripod I had been using didn't fit in my suitcase, no matter how many angles I tried to squeeze it in... Looking back though, I feel like the scenes in France have actually benefitted from this, because they look slightly edgier now, and have more of a contrast with the shots at the train station, for which I did use the tripod.

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

The preliminary task was a simple sequence following a character going through a door, to have a conversation with another character, filmed using the shot-reverse-shot technique. It also took minimal editing to make into a sequence; of course, my opening was much more complex than this, and particularly the editing, took a lot longer than that used in the preliminary.

One of the first things I learnt while creating my final piece was that it would take a lot more planning than the preliminary had done; for the preliminary exercise, there was hardly any planning involved, only the creation of a script and an ordering of events. We simply found two people from around school who were free, and told them what they had to do, and that was that. However, for my final piece, I needed to create detailed plans, mood boards, story boards, before even considering filming. I also had to find appropriate characters rather than pick the first person I saw. I have also discovered how hard it can be to coordinate people; this is one reason I am glad I only needed one main character; it was a lot easier to coordinate one person than it would have been to coordinate many.

In my preliminary task there was very minimal editing, something that changed drastically in my final piece. The preliminary only required cutting slightly and ordering, where my final piece needed a lot more work to make it something watchable. For example, I think I filmed around two hours of footage in all, perhaps more, of which two minutes was actually used. This is partially due to the speeding up of some film for effect, but also because there were many scenes that I couldn't use because of some outside circumstances affecting the effectiveness of each shot. This wasn't a problem because I had a lot of footage, but had I had much less, I expect the opening wouldn't look as it does. Another new thing I used in my final piece was shot transitions, which play quite a large part in my final piece; basically, everything that goes into the editing of the opening I learnt whilst creating it.

Audio is another aspect I feel I have learnt a lot about; it is quite amazing how much effect the soundtrack has on the overall feel of a piece. Even if I had used a similar song by the same artist, it would not have had the same effect. I also had to take out audio from the actual film in my opening, which is another thing I didn't have to do in the preliminary task.

I've also learnt about the importance of the visuals in a piece like mine; they weren't very important in the preliminary, given the simplicity of the task, but they make up all of the content in the final piece, and as such the positioning of my main character, the actual setting, and the way in which I filmed a shot was all a huge amount more significant. Creating a piece purely based on visuals and on constant sound track has allowed me to realise how much can be implied or communicated through images alone; as such, I've learnt about the importance of good quality camerawork, and interesting shots that hold the attention of the audience. Also included in the visuals is the mise-en-scene of the piece, which is a huge contributor to the mood of the product, and another thing that makes the visuals of any piece so important.

I have also discovered in better depth how to use the video sharing sites such as Youtube and Vimeo, and I have discovered how invaluable they can be when creating a project like this, from planing the piece to broadcasting it to the entirety of the internet.

In all, I have learnt so much from creating my final piece that I wouldn't have considered in creating the preliminary task, from the actual camerawork through to the editing process, and sharing the outcome.

Audience Feedback

Recently, my film opening was shown to a group of media students, who filled in a response form anonymously, with their reactions to my work.

Generally, this feedback was very positive, with comments about the high quality of camerawork, fitting music, and use of different effects. I also had comments about the effectiveness of the changing outfits, which is positive, as that was one area I was concerned didn't have enough impact.

The only concern that repeatedly came up was that the storyline wasn't clear from the opening two minutes. However, as much as I will take in this criticism for any further work, I don't believe that it is important for any film to give much indication of the plot in the opening. This applies to my film especially, because of the two separate story worlds that are going on; one of the main protagonist in her normal life, and one of where she will assumedly end up. The idea was to not give away the plot in the opening of the film, and to perhaps cause the audience to question where the story was going, and what relevance the two scenes held to each other, which was achieved, given that people didn't understand the link between the worlds.

Overall, I am very pleased with the feedback I was given, as it has reassured me that the sorts of effects  was hoping to create were achieved, and has also allowed me to think about areas where I can improve my work in the future.

Final cut of my film opening!

The Yellow Brick Road from Anna Wyatt on Vimeo.

Music

Instead of going immediately to creating my own piece of music, I had a look on the website called "Soundcloud" which allows you to use music that hasn't been copyrighted. On here, I found a song that fits perfectly with my opening, and so I've requested permission from the creators as a back-up, even though I know it is a copyright free song by an unsigned band.