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

Age:
Usually, the media portrays teenagers in a more negative light. Although many more 'teen-orientated' television shows and films have been created (such as 'Skins' and 'Misfits'), these shows may not present teenagers in a positive light. They are usually full of drama, and have deep themes and hardships that make the audience question the characters motives and choices. Although this seems ordinary to some teenagers, it is quite a dramatization of the life of a majority of teenagers in Britain, and many people of this age may not feel represented by this stereotype. Moreover, to an older generation, these portrayals of teenagers are rather negative, as they are shown smoking and drinking, and generally negatively impacting society. 
This is quite a common convention in film, as many films portray teenagers in a way that strikes true with real teenagers, but may be looked down upon by the older generation. This mirrors real life, as many members of the older generation feel out of touch with the younger generation, so may disapprove of their decisions and their life. This idea is shown throughout our opening:

The opening is rather subjective, and it doesn't show teenagers in a good or bad light. Our character only has a few lines: "That was the most heinous nightmare. Who is Alan Hamlin? Wait, where am I? More like when am I? Bogus". In our target audience, this may seem normal or funny. It may be a little annoying to an older generation, as they probably don't recognise this slang, and may find it unusual and irritating. Because of this, the representation of this social group totally depends on the audience. This is common in existing films of this genre. 

Gender:
Our opening only has male actors, and therefore only represents male social groups. However, typically, in television and film, male social groups are portrayed in a very stereotypical way. Men are usually presented in a typically masculine way. For example, in 'Misfits' (which is a portrayal of modern day teenagers), there are three male characters. Each character is quite 'strong', and typically 'masculine'. They typically find themselves in bad situations and take it upon themselves to save everyone, and to be the strong person. This is the stereotypical view that most media productions portray. This is common in film. 

However, in our opening we focus solely on male characters. Overall, our representation differs from this norm as it presents male characters less masculine and it uses less stereotypes than usual. However, there are still a few scenes that perhaps show this stereotyping, as the main character is seen gaming, and skateboarding, which are very typically 'masculine'. Moreover, our characters don't interact with anyone else, so it is difficult to interpret how they represent male social groups. Overall, I think that our representation of males is a more realistic representation than in many films and games. 

All in all, our representation of teenage males is ordinary. We have decided to keep the characters as ordinary as possible, as this will allow for people to relate to the characters more. I fully believe we represent teenage males in a more realistic way than if we were to mimic pre-existing films. 

Evaluation question 3- What media institutions might distribute your media product?

This is a link to the voice over Noah did:
https://soundcloud.com/user-743180385/evaluation-question-3

Evaluation question 4- Who would be the audience for your media project?

This is a link to the Prezi I made.

Age:

All in all, I believe that the audience would be from around 12-19, with perhaps a small audience in their 20-30's. 

I think that primarily, the film would be targeted around a younger audience. This is because although it revolves around a kid from the nineties, it has a lot of quirks and trends from present day, and our character is forced to navigate through a modern day Britain, full of Pokemon Go, and strange looking cars. This makes the setting immediately recognizable to the younger audience, and a few of the jokes will be more humorous to a younger audience because of this. The film can be advertised on 'teenage channels', such as the Disney channel, or perhaps CBBC. 

This target audience is clearly shown in our casting, as we have used actors that are around 13-17. 

However, on the other hand, there may be a slight interest from a slightly older audience (people in their 20-30's). This is because these are the people who were children in the nineties, so they will instantly know how it felt to be a teenager in this era. It will perhaps bring back memories of their childhood, which will make them want to see the film.  Also, the main character will be relate-able to them, as they can imagine what it was like in the nineties, compared to present day.

Age Rating:

Because of this, our film is rated a 'PG'. I was going to originally going to rate it as an 12. However, after researching into the 'bbfc', and their guidelines on age rating, I realised that our film was closer to a PG film, than a 12.

For example, on their website they state- "Mild bad language only. Aggressive or very frequent use of mild bad language may result in a work being passed at a higher category.". 

In our opening, there is one use of 'bad language' (our character says the word 'bogus'). However, this is a milder use of language, and may not even be recognised as bad by many viewers. 

Although our target audience is 12+, I believe that a rating of PG would be quite effective, as it would create a larger pool of potential viewers

Gender:

Originally, I thought that our target audience would be unisex. However, after actually creating the opening, I believe that our audience is more aimed at teenage boys. This is partly because every actor in our opening is a boy (including the main character). This may make it a little hard for girls to relate to the opening, as they aren't really being represented in the film. Because of this, our film appears to be more relate-able to teenage boys.

Moreover, throughout the film, our main character is seen doing stereo-typical 'male' things. For example, he is seen playing on a games console, with his (male) friend. This is usually seen as a more masculine thing to do. Because of this, the film may be more relate-able, and humorous to boys. 

Genre:

Our genre is comedy. This effectively attracts our target audience as comedic films are very popular in our male, teenage target audience. 

Example of audience member:

A perfect example of an audience member for our film would be:

A 15 year old boy, who has hobbies that include- gaming, skateboarding and nineties music.

He is normal, but perhaps has slightly unusual interests.

He probably has a smaller group of friends, as he shares his interests with them.

Evaluation question 5- How did we attract and address our target audience?

So, me and Emily made a smaller vlog to explain exactly what we did in regards to the question...

Here it issssssss...........

gos

GOSH WE THOUGHT THROUGH THAT AUDIO THING HUH

Well not to worry! I'll be writing up what we said in the video.

ATTRACTING THE AUDIENCE
So, this is pretty much "how did we get people to go see the film?"
First off, there was the advertising we would've had. It would've primarily been trailers and advertisements on TV, including TV spots and maybe an exclusive clip on a show like Good Morning, Britain.
They'd be cut to avoid spoilers and giving away the best jokes, but use material that's good enough to draw an audience and make it clear that the film is designed to be a comedy.
There would also be a campaign with advertisements that are dotted around, but not too much that people would be sick of seeing the adverts everywhere, and put them off of going to see the film.
Posters would ideally be placed in/on:

• Buses and other bus related things - Millenials mostly rely on public transport to get around.
• Cinemas - Obvious, advertising a film in a place dedicated to films.
• Tube stations - Thousands use the tube to commute to work daily. Thus, potential thousands see the posters every day.
• Standees - More fun, interactive way of advertising the film may draw more people.

However, the main target for advertising will be the internet. Since our target audience is the "Millenial" generation, they're infamous for using the internet and, more specifically, social media more than anyone. So, by having a large advertising scheme involving the internet, there's a larger potential audience who would see the adverts.

ADDRESSING THE TARGET AUDIENCE

We managed to address the audience in the opening by... mocking them, essentially. In the filming we cut, we had a few stereotype Millenials doing various activities in a hyperbolic fashion, such as referring to each other as "bae", playing Pokemon Go, and dabbing.

These would be used in the posters, having Zac being surrounded by people doing one of the three things, depending on which poster it'd be, but Zac would remain confused during all three.

We also tried using the type of humour that the target audience likes, and for that we acknowledged what our friends found funny, as well as other people in the Sixth Form. Eventually, we ended up with something that we think addresses the audience fairly well.

Evaluation question 6- What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Radio show:
What have you learnt about editing, and how have you developed your editing skills?
Do you have any examples of tasks that have improved your editing?
What did you learn from your preliminary task? 

Overall:

• Editing gets easier, if you learn the techniques. We learnt how to import images and sound effects in particular. A specific example of this is in our final video, our main character winks, and a 'ding' sound effect is played over the top of this wink. At first, we didn't know how to import this and play it over the top of the video, but we ultimately worked out how to do this. This tells us that our editing has hugely benefited from the construction of this piece.
• A specific task that helped us improve our construction was making the video log. We filled the vlog with pictures and sound effects, so naturally, this helped us work out how to edit in such items. It also helped us to work out how to import and include video that we didn't film ourselves (for example, Noah's animation, or the Zelda gameplay).
• We learnt a lot from the preliminary task. Specifically, we learnt to make sure the audio always worked, and was audible. We learnt this as there was a lot of interruptions in sound when people tapped the table or made seemingly small noises. 

All in all, we have learnt a lot about technologies from this process. We are now able to edit well, and understand how to film and construct a film opening. 

Evaluation question 7- What progression has been made since the preliminary task, and what have you learnt from them?

So, let's look back on what the preliminary tasks were.

There were the match on action practice...

 ... the character crossover...

... and the mise-en-scene opening.

So, how have these all lead to the opening of "Fast Forward"?

First off, the editing is much, MUCH better. Back in the "Wedding Cancellation" and "Backstabber", the editing was very choppy, and seemed very amateur, especially with the first of the two examples given. Dialogue randomly cut in the middle of a sentence, and there wasn't a good flow to it. The "Backstabber" opening was slightly better (especially considering it was done in the earliest hours of the morning because the person I was working with was no help at all), but non-digetic sound was inconsistent and repeated in a way that was noticeable. "Ghosts" was edited by both Megan and myself, but it was probably the best editing out of the three tasks above. There really wasn't anything to fault! :)

There were issues that were carried through all three tasks though, such as

• Shaky camera, due to lack of compatible tripods

• Unwanted background noises

• Wind / other people interfering with dialogue recording

Stuff like that.

So, when Emily and I were making the opening of "Fast Forward", how did we try and prevent the issues that the preliminary tasks had? 

First off, we got a tripod! We found a tripod that would actually work with and correctly / sturdily hold our camera! That meant that quite a few of the shots are sturdy, whether they made it into the final cut or not. One specific one I can think of is of Zac (Isaac) skating down a hill, and the camera is completely still when compared to the other shots of him skateboarding.

A lot of the other shots were done with one of us holding the camera, but we made sure to hold it in a way that was comfortable, and that we could hold for a long time without twitching, shaking, etc.

Unwanted background noises was both difficult and easy to solve. At first, we thought we could just get a microphone to record the audio and use one of those fancy poles to hold the microphone, but then we realised... why don't we just film somewhere relatively quiet? There was no forest of trees rustling in the wind (see the second half of "Ghosts"), and we learnt from "Backstabber" that filming somewhere quieter resulted in better sounding dialogue and sound effects.

So, we only really filmed where there was very little to no people around, such as in the scene where Zac gets on the skateboard for the first time in the opening, there was no-one around except Emily, Isaac and me.

The dialogue was a fairly easy work-around. We knew that, while we were able to film in mostly quiet areas, we couldn't find anywhere in Castle Mall that was quiet enough to film in (especially after the evacuation incident). So, when we did have scenes in the Castle Mall, we did a second recording purely for the audio, by having the microphone closer to Isaac's face so that it is the main aspect of the recording.

The editing was also bumped up a notch! I was the one who did all the editing while Emily started off her evaluation questions, which was perfectly fine with me :D

I used some of the techniques I had learnt while making the video diary and my Art Multimedia coursework, including

• How to put in images and edit them to fit the video itself

• How to improve sound effects and when the right time to put them is

• How to speed up audio, change it's pitch, etc.

• How to put in titles, which we used for the time cards and the credits (most of which were made up.)

• Fading video in and out, in both black and white.

• Proper audio mixing for when the audio is the main focus and when it's not

Now, I think that's a pretty good list of things to improve on from the beginning of the academic year :D

I believe that the variety of shots is slightly upped from the preliminary tasks, but the newer interesting shots are used in place of some interesting shots from the preliminary tasks. For example, the most interesting shot (in my opinion) of all the three preliminary tasks above, was from "Backstabber". It was after James's character challenged Charlie's character, and the shot of Charlie pulling the knife out of his pocket, and having it shine and sheen to the camera. That was what I think was the most interesting shot was, and while we don't have anything "worm eye view" like that in Fast Forward, we do have a similar shot of an item coming out in a shot that focuses only on that; the shot in which Zac flips out the skateboard onto the floor.

In a nutshell, we learnt a lot of how to improve the intro from the preliminary tasks. Most of it was on how to make the audio and video higher quality. The editing is much better than before, and the shots, while different to the preliminary shots, are just as, maybe even more, interesting.

Rough cut

Hello:) 
This is the rough cut of our film opening.