By Jordan Sivell

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

At the start of the task to make a film opening, I decided that it would be used to research as many different film opening as possible to get a feel for what they look like, what too include and round about how long they should be. I found that things such as credits take up a lot of time in an opening, and introduction of main characters, but not a lot of talking should be included because it can become very boring and give away the film too quickly, I wanted our film to not give away much in order for the audience to want to keep watching, I felt that we dealt with that well because we showed shows parts of different scenes that gone on the past, which always manages to grab the audience attention because they know at some point all of it will become very clear.

I also looked at colours that are used in a romantic comedy because as a group we wanted to set the scene as much as possible in order for the audience to know what sort of film their watching. We found that warmer colours work best as it makes the atmosphere seem more happy and loving.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

We found that we represented young peoples partying lifestyles during our film not only that we felt that we represented the generation of young adults during this film, falling in love, partying, not doing homework, that’s a very stereotypical view on young people now a days.

Not only in general we used stereotypes but in the classroom scene we used stereotypes by the people at the back creating trouble, shouting rude things, whilst the ones at the front are know as being ‘geeky’ and always doing there work.

The stereotype to actually represent social groups is that there is always one geek in a romantic comedy who is classed as being ugly but as a group we choose not to do this, because we didn’t want it to be like every other romantic film. So we choose a pretty young girl who falls in love with a boy who she’s only just met, we wanted the girl to play the leading role in the particular film.

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

We choose Ardleigh Media as our institution that would fit best to distribute our film opening this is because it’s a small English company where it’s based in Essex not far from us. Not only that basing it with a small company means that the film if it was published properly would build its self up instead of being up at the top institutions and being slated because the funding obviously wouldn’t be as good as the big movies.

Also the actors are English so we think that by having an English company helps the production of the film more.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our media product is called ‘Study Guide’ therefore its aimed around teenagers in school finding love. So we thought that it would be good to have the target audience as early teens to mid 20s, but obviously we know that the age group watching this could be older as well because of the sexual references that would be put in the film later on. By having the target audience younger it means they can all relate in one way or another in this movie. Whilst getting the audience to relate to a film that they are watching it helps them to understand what’s going on more and makes the audience want to carry on watching, even by just seeing the opening in this instance, as it shows love, a kiss, partying and being in school all what our target consumers as stereotyped to do at this age.

We also aimed the film more at women because of the female lead role within the film, we felt that women would enjoy a film about falling in love more, mainly because they understand how women think whilst being in a relationship and what’s its like in college and at parties.

How did you attract/address your audience?

Firstly as a group we decided to attract our audience by getting them involved by making a survey monkey asking them what they expect to see in a romantic comedy. This really helped us as a group to get an idea of what to put in the film opening to get our target audience interested in what they would be watching.

We tried to address our audience by keeping the target audience to early teens to mid 20s as they are the type of people filmed in the opening therefore its easy for our target audience to relate to them as they are of similar age, going to college, having parties and getting into relationships. So we figured that the audience can watch it to get a sense of escapism from there lives.

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

We found a lot of things helpful to use when creating our film but especially the construction of the product. Firstly we found that creating an Imessagegroup is a quick and easy free way to get your point across that fortunately we all had access to all the time, we found that its quicker that email because it comes through instantly and is just like texting, and you can send pictures quickly for free.

Then we had to do a questionnaire so we found that using Survey Monkey online helped us because it saved us having to print out a lot of questionnaires it was all online and it meant that people we didn’t know would answer so it was done properly.

Then we decided to make a twitter and Instagram account to help us get in contact with the outside world of different media opinions, many people tweeted us back by doing this and really helped us out!

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

When we first did the Preliminary task we thought we knew exactly how to do it until be started filming, and the editing we realised that we actually broke it because the two actors were not actually sitting opposite each other. But I felt that by not doing it right the first time that I learnt from this and my media skills improved because of this, and with our film opening we knew not to break it. Even with the first scene we made sure that the angle was just right for the rule not to be broken.

Conclusion On reflection of the production of our film opening I found that as an

individual I have improved my media skills, such as thinking about the 180 degree rule and making sure that the colouring of our film is right for the genre of film it actually is. By doing this had made me realise that there’s a lot of thinking just going into an opening of a film. By choosing to do an romantic comedy meant that it was easy to film using the facilities we had in college, I believe if we were to choose another opening it would have been a lot harder to convey well enough for a good produced film opening. I am really happy with what we came up with and how well we worked as a group on this.

Whilst I the different locations in order to film this I thought that the sofa was a good place because it less intense than a bed which is not what we were going for as directors, the sofa meant that the love at the moment (the beginning) was more causal as it usually is stereotyped to be when being in a relationship.