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

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

• Camera Work

During our preliminary task we felt we were doing a lot of improvising, we didn't plan for any scenes or shots and turned up on the day and decided what we wanted to do as we did it, this led to continuity problems such as characters wearing different clothes, a couple of shots were also filmed on different days at different times (suddenly switched from light to dark) as well as the general shots not linking together as well as they could. This was the first time we had studied media and had little knowledge about the huge variety of movements and angles, we felt that in our preliminary task we were able to use these angles and movements as we discovered them. We also learned about the 180 degree rule, which we used through our preliminary task and through our main project.

• Sound

In our preliminary task we used a single running song throughout the majority of the task, any diegetic sounds were purely from the camera when we were recording the scene, and the dialogues audio was recorded as the visual scenes were recorded. However in our film opening project we used a microphone to seperately record the sounds, this allowed us to give a slightly more authentic feel to the opening. This involved pre-recording sounds and detatching this audio and placing it into the footage. When we begun our film opening, we used a music track as opposed to a film sound track. However as we were doing a different task to our preliminary we realised that we would need to alter the soundtrack and we would not be able to use another music track. We gathered a sound track from 'The Dark Knight' and edited this to sync with our footage. Completing the preliminary task before our film opening helped us to see the importance of sound in changing the piece of media. With a different sound track you can really see the change in perception of the piece of media.

• Editing

During the preliminary task my experience with editing was fairly minimal, especially in after effects which I had only used a couple of times previously. However Eric has previous experience and as I watched and contributed somewhat to the editing I felt that I learnt a lot, although I tried to convey what I meant to Eric there was a lot of language that I had no idea about and the editing of the preliminary task really helped me to convey my ideas more easily in the final editing phase. It also allowed me to try a bit of editing myself (we each produced another seperate short film) and I felt that I learnt a wide range of simple techniques which hopefully helped my group in the final stages of post-production.

• Narrative

As I mentioned earlier our preliminary task was pretty much improvisation, we didn't plan the scens and this resulted in a pretty poor narrative, there was almost no storyline

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

I have been set the task of completing this question individually, I have decided to make use of Prezi. The basics of what need to be done in order to complete this question are as followed:

• What is a media instituion?

"A media institution is an established, often-profit based organization, that deal in the creation and distribution of advertising, entertainment and information services."

• What are the major/local/possible media instituions?
• Major (National)
• The Pinewood Studios (Pinewood Films project)

In 2011, The Pinewood Studios Group created Pinewood Films to help fund and and provide facilities to independent British films with budgets of approximately £2million. Pinewood Films would invest equity up to 20% per film with the intention to support four films each year. In 2012 only one of the four films they aim to invest in have acquired the funding. Although competition would be stiff this is a possibility as the whole project was set up in order to help fund small-budget films. This would give great publicity as it would link us to the hugely succesful Pinewood Studios (Who produced hugely succesful films such as Harry Potter Deathly Hallows, Captain America, The Dark Knight and are planning big films for 2012 [The Hobbit])

• Film4

Film4 seem to specialise in British films, producing some of the most successful in recent years. Although this could be an option if we had previous experience of successful films under our belt, I do not think that Film4 would be likely to produce our film and I think it may be better to focus on more local organisations.

• Revolver Entertainment (London)

Once again Revolver Entertainment are another hugely successful British film institution films recently produced by Revolver include: 'X: Night of Vengeance', 'Ill Manors' and 'Deviation'. All of these films have a similar theme to our film opening however once again the lack of previous experience would probably cause these institutions to hesitate in offering to produce our film.

• Major (International)
• The 'Big Six'
• Paramount
• Colombia Pictures
• Walt Disney (Pixar)
• Universal
• Warner Brothers
• 20th Century Fox

These are the large international hollywood big six, it is likely that these media institutions would not even consider our film as they are far too large to risk funding and production of such a small film. However I felt I should include them just to show the largest media institutions that are operating.

• Local
• SeptterFilms

A small independent film production company situated in North Oxfordshire (Banbury). Although funding would likely to be little to none this may be a more realistic target of a media institution. There is very little information online about this institution so if we pursued this option we would need to contact SeptterFilms directly.

• Distant Object Productions

 A slightly more succesful and publicised local media institution this would probably be the ideal company to produce our film. The film would be much more likely to fund us than any national producers and are well known and publicised both locally and nationally. Here is a link to the website.

• Which of these institutions would be likely to produce our film?

On an international scale it would be extremely unlikely for any of the larger institutions to produce our film. This means we have to look more locally at companies such as Distant Object Productions or larger national businesses that have set up projects or companies to help fund low-budget british films such as the Pinewood Films project.

• What would be the motives of these institutions?

The motives of businesses would be first and foremost money. This would probably be more relevant to local businesses as there primary motive of suppourting us would be to increase the profits of our business. However when you look at businesses that are on a larger national scale have other methods of profit and any profit made by our film would be miniscule compared to the overall profits of the company. This means that there must be other motives of film companies to produce smaller films or no projects set up specifically to fund low-budget british films would exist. The publicity created by funding smaller films

• How could we convince these media institutions that it would be worth there while to produce our film?

The problem with convincing the media institutions that investing in and producing our film would be worthwhile is that none of us have any previous professional productions that the institutions could evaluate the success of, this would mean that the sole judgement on whether or not the film might be produced would be showing them a small portion or taster of the film. We could of course use the film opening that we have created, show them the planning and production of this film opening which would hopefully be enough to convince the institutions to produce the film. This limits the number of institutions that we can go for of course as many would not consider producing a film with no proof of previous success so a local/smaller film company will probably be the correct route to take.

In summary the media institution that would be likely to distribute and product our product would likely to be either a local institution or a project similar to the 'Pinewood films project'. I think that if we were looking to produce and sell this product we would probably approach as many projects like the Pinewood Film one as possible as these provide better funding and publicity than local film producers could. However as these are so competitive a local film company such as SeptterFilms could be another option. We could also consider at least attempting to gain a larger company such as Film4's attention however I think this is probably unlikely to be successful.

What kind of media instituion might distribute your media product and why? on Prezi

Plan for our Evaluation

We have been set 7 questions to answer in an evaluation of our projects as a whole. We have begun to divide up the tasks between the groups and the following is a list of each question and who will complete each question.

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

 We will be completing this section of the evaluation together as a group. We will complete it as a voiceover commenting on certain aspects of our opening as the opening plays.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

 We will be completing this section of the evaluation together as a group. We will complete it as a voiceover commenting on certain aspects of our opening as the opening plays.

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

 I will be completing this section as part of my personal evaluation. I have started planning for this with a prezi previously and

Who would be the audience for your media product?  

 Eric has chosen to complete this section of the evaluation.

How did you attract / address your audience?  

 Dan has chosen to complete this section of the evaluation.

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

 We will be completing this section of the evaluation together as a group. We will complete it as a voiceover commenting on certain aspects of our opening as the opening plays.

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

As Dan was not a part of the group when we created our preliminary task, we will be completing this section of the evaluation seperately to him. Meanwhile Eric and I will complete this section together. We have decided to contrust a prezi together using the "Edit Together" feature on prezi.

Missing.

Embedded below is the final video of our film opening



Evaluation of our project will be followed up in following blogposts.