Evaluation task 3 - What kind of media institution might distribute your media project?

What kind of media institution might distribute your media project?

Our opening title sequence consisted of a tense scene of a middle aged man surrounded by traps moving towards a door where his possible enemy was trying to attack him. The film has aspects of mystery and thrilling violence, the film has a various amount of media institutions the film could fit in with and could work with a medium sized budget. In terms of distribution the film is fairly universal meaning it could potentially be distributed to a wide audience across the world into different formats including theatrical, DVD and online services such as Itunes.

In terms of production films similar to our concept include 28 days later and I am legend, the companies that produced these films were DNA films and Warner Bros Pictures, however Warner Bros pictures is a company that specialize in high concept and high budget films for example on of their films (The Dark Knight Rises) had a production budget of $250 million, and even though our film could potentially work with having high concept features such as effects and actors, we think that it will work more effectively as a more medium sized budget and concept, still having features that will create a more effective film such as effects and fairly know actors.

 So we had a look into DNA films who were responsible for making 28 days later film, we saw they were capable of making film similar to ours such as Sunshine and Dredd with medium concept ideas and features, exactly what we wanted.

We did further research into the company and found out they specialize in medium to fairly high budget films aiming around 5 to 50 million dollars, we thought that somewhere in between this budget would be a perfect budget for our thriller, allowing us to add many aspects that would make it a hit, such as well known actors and better effects. Also they are clearly used to producing films about the end of the world with films such as Sunshine so choosing this production company will be productive and worthwhile.

In terms of distributions we have done some research and found a distribution company under the name of revolver entertainment which is capable of distributing films onto many formats in different areas of the world including the UK and the US. Revolver will be able to provide theatrical distribution across a wide range of cinemas across both the UK and US. Also they are able to publish the film onto different formats such as DVD and blu-ray making the film a wider release. I think this company will be a perfect match for our project as its not an independent film that only a small audience would watch, so we could project the film and appeal to a larger audience worldwide.

Evaluation task 2 - How does your product represent particular social groups?

Due to our product only having one character we can only represent one social group, due to the use of camera work it is very easy to understand that our social group was a "white male". A fairly typical choice as the majority of hollywood films are domintaed by this social groups, if we were to have a bigger budget we would still keep the social group of a white male but use a bigger and more well know actor such as Tom Hardy. These are the first couple of shots that clearly indicated what social group the character was from. (Left) 



From this point the audience see's our character clearly and can acknowledge that he is white. It was hard to create and represent the social group as we only had one character and a short amount of time to represt him. However due to the character being alone, we filmed it simirally to I am Legend where the opening sequence also involves a character on his own however representing a different social group and also on a bigger scale. For example in the opening of i am legend, they make it clear what social group he is from having close ups, just the way we did it. 

During the rest of our film we would use different techniques in order to represent our characters social group. For example we would focus on his accent, portraying him to be a white male and also clothing which we have already focused on, dressing him in big boots and a big raincoat. 

Evaluation task 1 - In what ways does your media project use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Evaluation task one in what ways does from hurtwoodhousemedia5

Shoot day write up

Before we were filming we made sure we had all the props in place such as the axe, tent and string. We also checked with our actor Adam if he was still up for it, he was. When i woke i was excited to get to the set and finally see what the tent will look like with all the strings around it in our new location. We were very well prepared when we arrived at the shoot as we had all our props ready, we had permission from the housemaster and we had let the cleaners know in advance what was going on so there was no confusion as to what was happening. When we arrived we noticed the set was too full with funiture so we moved all the sofas and tables into different rooms. It also was very dark so we added some artificial lighting to make it seem as if it was in the morning. When we had cleared everything up the room looked very good and how we all imagined it. When we were setting up we all took different roles for example me and Frankie set up the tent whilst Mima cut strings to hang up and Owen washed the tins so we could hang them up on the string. I think that i was very good at choosing different shots and lining everything up so it looks effective, also moving things around so we can get intresting shots. For example i cut a hole in the tent so i could get over the shoulder shot of Adam waking up. On the shoot day we had a few problems but our group acted quickly and we sorted them out, for example behind one of the windows there was a garden that looked too smart and civilised, to prevent this we boarded up the windows to make it look more like the character was hiding from something. Also another problem was that we did not have very much room to shoot in the tent so we cut a hole in it. I think the most succesful part of the shoot was filming inside the tent as once our whole team had helped to create space and fit the camera in our whole team worked well together to get the shot done fast and easy. It was towards the end of the day and we were all familiar with how eveything works and we were all doing something useful. I think that the part of the shoot that could of gone better was the beggening when we were filming our opening credit shots, as we took long doing various shots, the reason we took a long time was because we had not perfected our shooting skills, once we had caught a grip on how to do everything perfectly we could film more effectively and faster.  The part of the shoot i enjoyed most was choosing the different shots to film with inside the tent because it was avery small tent and difficult to work around it, it was challenging but once i had figured away around it it was enjoyable and effective. In the edit i was most looking forward to seeing the shots we took right at the beggenning which were some still and some panning because i think they will look alot better with titles moving across them. I think that our team worked extremely well together as we all had a go at each job but we found what job we were best at and towards the end stuck to it, making the proccess fast and efficent. There are a number of skills i learnt that would help with my next shoot, firstly i learnt how to focus the camera with certain objects and make the background less out of focus. Also i learnt how to steady the camera effectively easily whilst panning and tiltingthe camera, making shots more smooth and constant. Finally something that would also help in later shoots is lighting and how to create artificial day light using different kind of gels.

Setting up the trap

Adding more aspects to the trap

Setting up the tent and getting our character to get the feel of it

Looking at space and what we could do

Re-schedule and new shooting schedule

Due to the bad weather conditions we had to re-schedule our shoot to wednesday 30th january. We also had to change are shooting schedule, seen below.

8:50 - drive to Bwebb

9:00-10:00 - unpacking, setting up tent and string

10:00-11:00 - filming first few shots which will have the titles shown over the shots

11:00-1:00 - film all shots with adam, axe shots, walking over trap and approaching the door to hear the bang

Change of location

We went to ewhurst (our initial idea for a set) to go and see if it was possible to film there, however it figured out to be very difficult as there was not enough room to get the shots we needed. So we went to look around more houses such as cornhill and bwebb. Again cornhill turned out to be too smal with individual rooms too small to film in. It also looked a little too modern with objects suchas pool tables and vending machines.

So we went to Bwebb, another house. The entrance was perfect, it was very dark and huge. It also was very dark which is what we wanted. There was plently of space for the tent to be put up and get the shots we needed, so we decided to choose here.

Filming day schedule

9.30 - 10.00 - unpacking props, costumes etc.
(Arriving and getting evrything organised)

10.00 - 11.00 - setting up all strings tent make up props etc. (Making the set and putting everything in place)

11.00 - 1.00 filming
(Filming the first few shots which the titles will be shown over and the shots in the tent)

1.00 - 2.00 Lunch

2.00 - 5.30 Filming
(Filming the shots of him getting out the tent, grabbing the axe, walking over the trap and approaching the door to hear the bang)

5.30 - 6.00 Packing up and clearing up
(Pack everything up and clean up)