Evaluation: Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Gender

We chose to cast a male as our protagonist, we did this as it was a conventional theme throughout this genre. This is because the stereotypes surrounding a male character are that this character will be strong and important. For a large majority of our film opening we tried to follow and represent these stereotypes. We did this by introducing the protagonist with a range of close ups and medium shots to create a preferred reading that this was the most important character.

However, we subverted these archetypal views when the protagonist was in hospital through the high angled shot looking down upon the character to represent him as weak and vulnerable.

Disability

We had a small part of our opening where the protagonist was disabled. We wanted the audience to view the character as weak in contrast to the strong, able bodied representation we originally created. We did this by the high angled shot looking down at the character and though make up and costume to make it convincing that he was injured.

Sound

For a large part of our opening, we had only non-diagetic, ambient music to create a sad tone to our opening. The slow, atmospheric sounds create a preferred reading that there is not much happening, it connotes a slow pace of life which is unconventional of the motor sport genre.

Towards the end of the opening, we had some more conventional diagetic sounds of the car engine. This being the only diagetic sound makes this stand out and connotes that this is an important scene. 

Evaluation Question 1

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

Evaluation Question 1 on Slideshare

Evaluation question 1 pp from harrysquire

Audience testing of final draft

We showed this clip to the same group that we used before so that we would get a pattern in the answers. We showed them the film and they said that they liked that we had added and changed everything that they suggested. They also preferred the new ending we gave it with the black out instead of the last car clip. Also they liked the ident that we added at the beginning and said that it gave a professional feel to the clip overall.

Second draft evaluation

Sound

Our second draft is a massive improvement on our first. First of all we have added sound into it, most sound is non-diagetic, incidental music which we and our target audience feel connotes an emotional tone. We also have some diagetic sounds that Amelia was able to get off of iMovie, of the car setting off and turning a corner. We were lucky that these sounds fitted in with our filming but we feel that they are important because they are conventional features of this type of film and it creates a kind of climax to our opening that engages the viewer.

Editing

Changes that were made in editing include the sound that was mentioned previously but the finer detail have also improved our opening; such as the change in lighting. We played around with the effects on iMovie for a while and found that we can make shots look brighter and clearer which made, in particular, our establishing shots look much more appealing than before they looked dark and gloomy.

Transitions were our main focus for the second draft in terms of editing. We wanted to start off the opening with a slow pace to create an emotional atmosphere so we decided on the establishing shots to fade them slowly out and as the music got quicker the transitions did too. For the first shot in the hospital we could fade out to white which gives the impression to the viewer that the protagonist is remembering back to something. 

At the end of the opening when the car is introduced, the cuts get quicker, this is to create a tension and make the viewer pay closer attention. The tone is suddenly more exciting!

Second draft

Creating titles

Titles creation:

As a group in our lesson today we looked through the different fonts and styles that the editing software had and we looked at which ones fitted the conventional theme that goes along with the Motorsport sub-genre. There was only one that would have fitted so when showing the focus group the sounds we just asked them whether the titles fitted or whether they looked out of place and they decided that they fitted and worked well with the opening.

Sound testing+sourcing

Sound testing+sourcing

This is a photo of us doing our sound testing. We got a group of both male and female 15+ and showed them our re-filmed film 3 times, each time with a different sound track. After each one they were asked what they thought of the sound track. After all 3 had been played they were asked which sound track was best. They chose the third track which was good because as a group we decided that that one was our favorite. 

We used a website called freeplaymusic.com to source copyright free soundtracks.