Evaluation Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My media product represents quite a few stereotypical social groups. Firstly gender, my character is a male, so I showed this by making him wear dark cream trousers, white shirt, golden tie and black jacket. My film also showed the male gender in the way he walks and looks with his eyes, his eyes are direct and look dangerous, especially at 2:23 in my film. His short hair and overall look obviously suggests a male character. This represents the gender in that it shows how man are wild and violent and hold guns to kill, whereas women stereotypically don't carry guns like my character did. The gun represented a social group in a gangster and secret agent world, the gun created a more threatening character, which is what gangster and secret agents are. My character also represents age; age is a very simple category to understand more about the character and make instant judgements, whether the character is younger than the audience or older, I think that my character looks like he's in his early 20's and to most of my target audience he will be older. This makes the character more threatening, stronger, experienced and good at what he does. Lastly the characters nationality, he has a Eastern European look and I wanted to show this in my video, you can really see this with his very prominent jaw line. Again stereotypically this Eastern European look makes people think of a spy or secret agent and the fact that he has a gun makes him look dangerous and up to no good.

Evaluation Question 1

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

I think that my opening sequence film uses forms and conventions of real media products entirely, without them I don't have any idea what this video may have turned out like. I think it is really important to learn certain techniques of previous products but not just to copy but to replace and expand on their ideas. While technology is only getting better, us as film-makers are constantly getting out creative ability widened on how we can express and tell a story. I wanted my film to be a serious approach to a horror/action film so the chance of be challenging any forms or conventions of real media products were limited, I couldn't really break any stereotypes because then the film would be taken seriously and I couldn't challenge the real media products because my intention was to make my media product just as real as theirs.

I am proud to pronounce my final cut of Chalk. For best viewing experience please watch in HD and sound to a realistic volume (use background sounds of birds to adjust). I would like to give a special thanks to Victor Yakovlev for being so patient with me and being such a great actor and friend.

Video Editing Software

As you can see from the picture I have been using Adobe After Effects for the credits and the film production company introduction video. This software is extremely good with varrious tools to give my work that professional touch, one tool I used was motion tracking, for a couple of the credits the words are moving with a object in the video (e.g piece of grass for Victor Yakovlev)

Windows Movie Maker was the video editor I used, this was for the videos to be places in order, trimmed and placed with music as well as smooth transitions. This was obviously a low budget film but if I had the option I would prefer to use Final Cut Pro to widen my options and ability to do various effects and use various tools to make my film more exciting and different.

Universal Clip Issue

I decided that the use of Universals introduction video is not right, firstly it breaks copyright laws and secondly because I don't want my work to be recognised as Universal's work. Therefore I decided to create my own film production company, Ecstatic Entertainment, and then made my own Ecstatic Entertainment introduction video.

Feedback

This is the feedback I got from my survey made with Survey Monkey. The feedback has been very helpful to me and I have taken on board the comments and tried to apply the ones that I think are necessary to my final cut.

So my respondents were mostly ages between 18-34 but I did have two respondents who were aged between 55-74, this is good because then I have a different point of view. The gender is quite varied which is good because then I get responses which my not be gender related in the overall terms.


I had some very good responses answering the question 'What did you like about the film' which are useful because the last thing I would want to do is make the wrong changes to my film and make it worst! From this question I have noted that the camera angles are strong (but not towards the end), it has a lot of suspense and is atmospheric, the lighting and location is effective in building the tense, the music was suitable and the creative shots of nature. All these comments I have taken on board and am making sure that my final cut keeps all these features.

On the other hand, the dislike's are just as important, or more, to help me improve my film. So the Universal logo I also believe wasn't a good idea, giving someone else credit for my own isn't clever. Secondly reading the responses about too fast transitions and short length videos, this is a very good point that I didn't actually notice before hand, although I agree totally. One thing I noticed that has been mentioned is the ending of the video, personally I think it is quite weak and loses the audiences attention, like one of the comments 'the ending, its boring and loses my interest'. this is a big problem because the key to a good film is to engage the audience to the very end, so I have decided to make my actor move fast and I will take some more interesting shots, maybe a extreme close up of the characters eyes while moving.

Now, the main reason why I made this survey, to improve the film. So like I mentioned in the sentence above I will do some more creative shots to keep the audience completely engaged. Again like I said above, remove the Universal video, I think I'll make my own film production company logo introduction video. The credit 'George O'Reilly' is a bit unclear so I will improve the font, boldness and style of the two words. So there were some technical errors with the rendering and exporting of the video, this is easily fixable. I really like the suggestion about 'natural noises' like birds and leaves being moved by the wind, this sounds really good actually and i think it would add to the atmospheric effect. Another thing I noticed before hand, the last clip is way to long; I think it should fade out to black faster but just stay black with the music going to keep the audience thinking 'what's going to happen next...'.

Please help me improve my film by doing this survey.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/R9G7PZX