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

Our film is called "26", it is an Action film and it features the three members of our group; me, Anjana and Shobnam as the secret agents Delta, Sierra and Echo respectively.

In order to acquaint ourselves fully with the action genre, so that we were ready to create our opening sequence, we did extensive research into the four main concept areas of film production; genre, narrative, form and style.

Genre

Brainstorm of inspirational characters, themes and film techniques which we applied to our opening

Through our research, we found that character was very important in not just action films, but in the media in general. The inevitable character development and internal, external and interpersonal conflicts that make every film worth watching were something that we definitely had to include in our film, in order to keep the audience on their toes and hooked throughout our opening. We took inspiration from the following characters;

Catwoman from "Dark Knight Rises" - a very
big character influence for us

Alex from "Charlie's Angels" - from the
film that inspired our own opening

Evelyn from "Salt" - her quest for revenge
was a huge influence for us

Convention	Application (Used, Updated or Challenged)
Character
Protagonist is typically male, white and heterosexual (e.g. James Bond, Harry Potter, Sherlock Holmes)	CHALLENGED · 3 female protagonists; · 2 of whom are Asian, due to serious under-representation of female Asian action heroes. Also, due to the fact that 2 of the girls in our group were Asian, it made sense to play to the strengths of our group. · 1 Caucasian female so as not to stray too much from normality and shock our audience. · However, later on in the film we planned to add a male sidekick, in order for the film to not be completely female-dominated.
Victims are typically female and ethnic minorities (e.g. Rain Ocampo - Resident Evil)	CHALLENGED · Our primary victim, the Guard, is not a stereotypical victim; he is male, strong and white, and looks older than the girls. · We used this character as a victim, in order to establish our heroines as being first and foremost, dominant and assertive.
Female characters are typically sexualised (e.g. Lara Croft, Alice Abernathy - Resident Evil)	UPDATED · It could be argued that the character of Delta is sexualised due to her casual changing in the sequence, however the fact that the camera cuts away before anything is seen, shows that the film is not going to objectify or sexualise women, something which we wanted to have quite a feminist approach on. · Despite the fact that Delta is not sexualised, she is still feminine and shown to be desirable

Narrative

Using Todorov's narrative theory, I devised this flowchart of events in our opening

Our narrative was pretty typical of that of an action film; it included an equilibrium that was disrupted by one of our main action heroines, Delta. Similarly, in "Charlie's Angels", Natalie (played by Cameron Diaz) walks into the workplace of the men and distracts them. We also found out that action film openings usually have more than one disruption; as you can see, our one has 3 (4 if you count "Guard stirs"). We decided to conform to these narrative conventions, as we didn't want our opening to look irregular and unprofessional.

Form & Style

Our Production Company Ident - we wanted it to look elegant and calligraphic, to show our production company as being professional

The font we have been using throughout the entire project - Courier.
We feel that this font fits our film quite well, as it is quite a
military font and portrays the action genre well.

Our film title graphic is quite a binary-type font, showing the
mechanical aspect of the world we have created

Question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The two main areas of representation that we wanted to focus on were gender and race, as we found that there was a huge lack of female action heroines (up until very recently, with the groundbreaking "Alien" franchise) and also a substantial deficiency of positive representations of South Asian characters in Hollywood. Therefore we decided to challenge and update the representations as much as possible through our film. We also decided to focus mostly on British Asian characters, due to the recent success of British Asian films "Slumdog Millionaire", "Bend It Like Beckham", "East is East" and it's subsequent sequel, "West is West". All of these films were critically acclaimed, as they gave global audiences an insight into 'never before explored territory'.

Gender

Despite the fact that we decided to make all of our protagonists female, we chose not to represent them as being very butch and masculine, as we didn't want to detract from their femininity. Below is an analysed photo that we took for our animatic, showing how we exploited the fact that our characters were female.

Ethnicity

After doing a quick Google search of "Asian characters in film", I came across some fascinating information.

Slide on Representation of Ethnicity from our pitch presentation

Ethnicity Analysis of photo taken from our animatic

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

We initially shortlisted two distribution companies for our film; Columbia Pictures and Screen Gems. In the end however, we decided to go with Screen Gems, as it had previously distributed films of the action genre featuring female protagonists and also British produced films.

Screen Gems

Distributed films such as;

• The Resident Evil franchise

• The Underworld franchise - Has a positive, strong female lead who is determined and hard-working
• Attack the Block - Screen Gems distributed it in America as it is a British film, like ours, therefore it is more likely that they would be able to distribute our film successfully
• The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones (coming soon) - An action film, adapted from a popular book franchise, most of the characters are young, like ours and they are battling the forces of evil
• Obsessed - the film starred an ethnic minority protagonist, played by Idris Elba. Despite the fact that the race explored in our film is Asian, we still think that it is a step in the right direction.

Production Company

Our production company is called "Cornucopia Films". We chose the word "Cornucopia", because it means "an abundance of", connoting that the company produces a wide variety of films with different genres and themes.

The Cornucopia Films Ident

We also decided to add some interesting background facts about "Cornucopia Films":

• Founded in 1994
• Headquarters in Soho, London
• Formed a partnership with Screen Gems in 2008 to distribute British films in the US.
• In association with "Almost Human" since 2009, creating make-up and visual special effects.

Exhibition Platforms

• Cinemas, such as Vue, Cineworld and Odeon in order to target a mainstream audience.
• We expect that our audience will view the film on websites such as Hulu, LoveFilm, Netflix that require a subscription OR illegal streaming sites such as 1channel, thepiratebay and solarmovie. We understand that due to the fact our Core Audience is 16-24 year olds, illegal downloads will be an inevitable exhibition platform. This will generate a lot of interest and we will reach our audience this way, but unfortunately we will lose profit. 

Release Strategy

The UK and US are not the only countries where we plan to distribute our film, however they are the two main places where we expected the film to be successful.

Question 4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

We decided that our core target audience should be 16-24 year old females, as we fit into that age & gender group and we therefore feel that we can get into their mindset and appeal more to that specific demographic.

(Please view full screen for maximum immersive experience)

Sophie is a typical member of our Target Audience, because she fits our initial Core Audience Member Profile (below) and I found out that the biggest cinema going demographic is the 16-24 year old group.

Taken from a presentation from the 17th Europa Cinemas Network Conference on 23/12/2012 by Saskia Walzel

Question 5: How did you attract/address your audience?

Audience appeal is arguably one of the most crucial parts to get right when making a film. I found out that the concept of our film appealed to the audience, as well as the characters and humour. The majority of the audience members I talked to also liked the overall mise-en-scene, such as the props (guns) and costumes (leather jackets, leggings etc).

Please click HERE to view larger version of diagram

Audience Feedback - did we appeal to them?

Jenny Questionnaire - Core Audience

Age: 17

Favourite Film Genre: Action/Adventure

Last Film You Saw: Oz The Great And Powerful

What is the title of the film?: 26

What genre is it?: Action/Spy

What are the main themes?: I'm not sure, maybe good vs evil

What are the characters' names?: Delta, and I'm not sure about the other ones sorry!

What happens in the sequence?: A security guard gets beaten up by spies and then they break in to some kind of facility?

What works well in this sequence?: I like the costumes and the props, the gun is pretty cool.

What doesn't work as well?: There's this bit where the lighting goes all weird

Rate out of 10: A solid 8

Andria Questionnaire - Core Audience

Age: 16

Favourite Film Genre: Romance

Last Film You Saw: Warm Bodies

What is the title of the film?: I didn't see, sorry!

What genre is it?: Thriller/Action?

What are the main themes?: Teamwork and violence

What are the characters' names?: Delta and Sierra

What happens in the sequence?: Delta lures the guard out and then Sierra does the dirty work and beats him up and WHAT'S BEHIND THE DOOR?

What works well in this sequence?: The dialogue seems natural and realistic

What doesn't work as well?: The guard's coughing looked strange

Rate out of 10: 7

David Questionnaire - Secondary Audience

Age: 16

Favourite Film Genre: Horror

Last Film You Saw: Mama

What is the title of the film?: 26

What genre is it?: Action/Adventure

What are the main themes?: Good vs Evil, Survival?

What are the characters' names?: Sierra, Delta and err... didn't get the other one 

What happens in the sequence?: You beat up a guard for some reason, not really sure why, then you open a door and something bad happens

What works well in this sequence?: The music builds up tension

What doesn't work as well?: Lighting isn't consistent

Rate out of 10: 8.5

From this feedback I have learnt that the audience found the lighting and some of the acting unnatural, and the themes may have been a bit difficult to understand, however most members of the target audience grasped the storyline fairly quickly and liked the overall mise-en-scene.

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

After doing this project, I realised that I was much more comfortable working with software as opposed to hardware. I think that using computers is much easier, as there are no time constraints to what you can do, and there is also a lot more creative freedom to experiment with colour and effects.

Our animatic was very useful during the production process, as it enabled us to review the timings and pacing in our final sequence. It was also useful, as we were able to see where our titles and graphics would go and whether they fit with the mise-en-scene and cuts. The animatic also helped us to redraft out shot list and script, and we were also able to practice working with the Canon HV30 camera and tripod, which proved useful later on in our project.

The social networking site Facebook played a large role in our project. I made a group called "MAS" which stands for Mila, Anjana and Shobnam, where we could post ideas or documents that we had made.

We also had a facebook inbox where we could also discuss ideas, but in "real-time" so that it was a much more instant way of messaging.

Question 7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

What I learnt from the Preliminary task and how I applied it to the final text



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Reflections on Preliminary Task
Including a 2-shot during the conversation would have been more logical and also given us a sense of where the characters are in relation to each other. We could also have used a CU instead of an LA on the last shot, because the shot just looked out of place and odd. We could also have tried to ensure that the lighting was consistent, because some of the shots in the office were shot using one set up and the others were shot with another.

I learnt how to edit a sequence following the continuity rules, and how to make the sequence look like it flowed. I also learnt how my group members worked, and we managed to create a very positive dynamic. This was crucial, as I have found that communication is one of the key aspects of a successful piece of groupwork. I also know now that my strengths are mainly in the editing department.

Reflections on Final Piece

Reflections taken from Prezi on Question 6