Evaluation Task 1

Evaluation Task 6

During the process I acquired different forms of software that would be used together in order to produce my final product. This included Sony Vegas and Adobe after Effects. My reasoning for using Sony Vegas is that we felt that it helped us to organise our scenes and clips, which helped us to bring all footage together and create the unfinished opening. Whilst Adobe after effects was used for additional effects which gave our product the final look it needed. For example our main editor Casper used after effects to create a distorted transition effect to make it seem as if there was an impending event about to occur and also to make it seem as the character Rakim had been hurt. This gave us the desired effect that we wanted to convey. We also used Adobe effects to create our typography, in which we used a combination of moving transitions, text and sound, as would wanted our opening to be as close to the film experience as possible. This taught me that I can use a wide range of software’s for a range of different uses. After Effects allows you to incorporate different ratio aspects in order to increase the resolution of the product (e.g. 720p, 1020p etc.). This taught me that some software’s can be used to develop and enhance the final product significantly, whilst other types of software can be used to place all the footage together in a chronological manner. However, they sometimes may be complicated to use and quite expensive. Another issue is that these programs are hard to use and difficult to acquire and use also come with regularly updated plugins, which is beneficial as new plugins can add new effects to your work. However, these plugins can sometimes come in big files such as 1GB or even 3GB, and some plugins are not free and are expensive to buy and download.

Evaluation task 7

Evaluation task 4

Evaluation task 2

Evaluation Task 3

Institution: An organisation or company that owns and produces media products for the consumption of an audience. As our film is an independent film it may have a smaller budget and collection of actors, with lower production costs. This may be due to the fact that we would have less access to conglomerates and institutions, meaning that we would have to apply a scheme such as the Love Film microwave scheme as we would be on a smaller budget, with less risk on the output of the film. This may mean that our films will be shown in smaller cinemas such as art houses where more social concept based films will be shown. Due to the young age of the actors within our thriller opening we agree that we would like to go down a similar path as ‘Shifty’ and use a smaller budget of £150 000 and use more unconventional forms of advertising to reach an urban audience, such as advertisements on pirate radio, using social media websites such as twitter and Facebook. This may be due to the fact that our specific audience will be able to identify with the characters in the opening. This may mean that other independent companies such as Studio Canal produced the film known as ‘Attack the block’ which although was not successful at the box office it went on to receive mass publicity.

Evaluation Task 5

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

as a whole. We also tried to emphasise how much ‘next generation’ technology that teenagers use and within the first scene it is madOur product represents several social groups in today’s society. One of the main social groups represented is the teenage demographic consisting of ages 13-19. During our opening the main protagonist can be seen to be representing certain stereotypes associated with today’s youth. In the opening the character ‘Rakim’ can be seen playing a violent video game known as ‘Grand Theft Auto’ which has been criticised for its violent nature and explicit content. We believe that this suggests that the youth of today are constantly being exposed to violence in and around them every day and in turn is leading to a much more dangerous society e obvious to the audience that the character has a large television, game consoles and a high tech phone. This suggests that teenagers have almost unlimited use of technology and have almost become unattached to society as a whole choosing to stay in their own home rather than socialising outside, signalling that times are changing, almost as if today’s teenagers are becoming anti-social. Regarding Rakim’s costume we believed it was best if we captured the stereotype that urban youths are most likely to be dressed in tracksuits and dark clothing. We did this in order to reinforce common stereotypes for our audience before they had an opportunity to form their own, because as the opening carries on the audience are made aware of Rakim’s true character, leading to our audience having to reconsider their own stereotypes, in all suggesting a misrepresentation of urban youths in our society. We believe that our thriller opening addresses the issue of peer pressure among teenagers today, as in one particular scene where Rakim and Ahmed are conversing it is apparent that Rakim is having second thoughts about carrying out the favour that Ahmed asked of which leads to Ahmed pressuring regarding a possible payment, it is also apparent that Rakim is slightly afraid of Ahmed. This scene suggests that among teenagers there is a social issue of peer pressure and fear of other opinions regarding their own character. As a result this leads to many teenagers being forced into situations that they shouldn't be involved in; often leading to issues which could have been avoided. We believe that this shows that our youth have self-confidence issues which lead to them being unable to stand up for themselves in certain situations, such as the issue that Rakim encountered in London’s Burning.
 

Regarding social groups we tried to make sure that the costumes we used were able to portray the image we were trying to put across to our audience. Both Ahmed and Saeed were dressed in suits. We wanted this to connote that the two characters were both of great wealth and intelligence, representing the upper class and almost elite like in wealth.  It is quite obvious from the opening that both Saeed and Ahmed command some sort of power over Rakim who is not as fiscally secure as the other two, with Ahmed even offering him money to do a job for him with Rakim willing to do it.  We wanted this to denote that the upper class/ the 1% have greater influence in society today rather than the general public. This is evident as Ahmed and Saeed were able to do their bidding, suggesting that the upper class profit from the work that the middle and lower class do

We believed idiolect to be a pivotal part of our thriller opening. The various use of slang helped us to represent and cater to a much younger and urban audience. Throughout the opening it is apparent that all characters use type of urban slang as the following video is likely to identify.

Storyboard