EVALUATION QUESTION 3

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

For our final production company ident, after many trials we decided that we preferred using simpler graphics, as we felt this might convey a sense of elegance and give a professional feel. We wanted to create a production company that felt more specialised than large distributors such as Fox Entertainent, and i think that using the unusual word "Euphora" helped to stand it away from them. A production company holds a large stake in the process of creating a film, as they invest money and resources into a project in the hope to recieve an even greater return. However they are required to take risks as many films unexpectedly make a loss rather than profit. As our film is a psychological thriller, it would not require as much investment as an action genre film. Thus I think that independent British film distributors may be more interested in its production.

We wanted to achieve an edgy authentic feel to our film, not following the glamourised typical hollywood productions. To achieve this we tried to use more interesting camera angles such as extreme close ups and possibly canted framing, I would therefore class our film as an in Art House style.

In this style, media institutions such as Film 4 might distribute our product, due to their previous products.  In recent years Film 4 has funded/developed films such as "the Double"; "Frank" and "Never Let Me Go". All these films are highly stylised and I believe that our product would fit into this category.

The Double, pictured left, was a very interesting film that conveyed a distopian place and had a many colour palette of green hues. This collated for a surreal effect, however it also had a raw feel to the film which I believe relates to the feeling of our own.

Another media institution that might distribute our product is the British Film Institute. Like Film 4 they fund very stylised and unique films , mainly British products, and help them to reach a wider audience. Looking at BFIs showreel their choice of film products is very particular and shows the true elements of life rather than glossed over. As our product includes a hopefully dynamic party sequence, this reflects the kind of individual style I believe BFI is looking for.

I also think FilmNation might distribute our film as, like BFI, they produce stylised films such as 'Under the Skin'.  The difference being that FilmNation distribute for a more global market, which would increase our products publicity and value.

EVALUATION QUESTION 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Transcript, if video doesn't play:

• Our production includes a broad range of actors, including gay actors to emphasise the level of modern sociability and the broad range of people in which this group socialises with. This builds to our main representation of this social group as social, which adds to the feeling of solitude in the first scene where the main character sits on her own, in contrast to the other scenes which involve large levels of sociability.

• Our opening shots show a young girl sitting on her own by a river. From the way she is dressed, we can deduce that this individual comes from a relatively wealthy background due to her expensive looking clothing and jewellery.

• We attempt to create an image of a stereotypical girl in her late teens still dressed as she was the night before in order to show that she has not returned home yet

• The music used in the club scene incorporates a sample of Beyonce (Me Myself and I) and Aphex Twin in an attempt to create a piece of music that would demonstrate what a typical teenage girl would listen to - modern pop combined with old school house

• Our representation of youth in our production is carefree and irresponsible. This is shown in our production by including many shots of people finishing their drinks to suggest excessive drinking as well as the use of the girl throwing up following the clubbing sequence.

• Our clubbing sequence includes shadier looking characters such as the man wearing a hat and hood to disguise his face to incorporate different social groups besides our main one, We do not put much emphasise on this character but include him as a suspect for the crime which gets committed. This rougher character represents a typical south London youth, showing aggression and violence towards our main character in an attempt to draw a negative response from the viewer.

• It is unclear as to the age of the girls in the production however it is easy to assume late teens as they appear young, but are involving themselves in adult themes such as clubbing and drinking and flirting with older men. In this aspect we can compare our characters to the girls in Skins, who are similar in the sense that they are irresponsible and act as adults despite being quite immature and over dramatic.

• We emphasise on the fact that our characters are relatively young as our character is being phoned by her mother and has to explain why she hasn't returned home yet. This is done in order to achieve an accurate representation of this particular age group, which is old enough to be out socialising with friends, however still somewhat reliant on parents. Our target audience will be able to relate to this as they would have most likely endured a similar phone call.

• We can also compare the girls in the production to those in the movie clueless, who are similar to the girls in the production in the sense that they are generally ignorant of real life and are too caught up in their own social lifestyle to be aware of the world around them, which allows for incidence like the kidnapping of our character to occur as the characters are blind to the fact that threats are constantly present in the outside world such as our shady hooded character

EVALUATION QUESTION 1

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

FINAL IDENT

This is our final ident for our film opening. I used the application MOTION to create it and personally, I think it works really well because of the cyclical movement as well as its minimalistic nature. I didn't want to incorporate too many things into it, but i think the clean and simple look of it has been achieved successfully. I used HELVETICA NEUE simply because I love that particular font and felt it had the crisp feel we wanted.

I think the main inspiration for me in making the ident like this was having loved BBC One's cyclical ident since I was a child.

I love the way they have adapted the malleable idea of a simple circle into all manner of different things, appropriate for different TV programmes and films. From hippos to footballers and even the surface of the moon, it is obvious to the viewer that it is BBC One due to the shape and motion of the ident, with the objects or people orbiting the logo. I also think the logo is really clever due to its simplicity, with the classic layout of BBC letters and the simple lettering of 'one' in a larger font.

FINAL CLUB SONG

Me and my brother Joe have finally finished the song we are going to use for the dance sequence. Using Logic, we were able to incorporate everything I was looking for - a house beat of around 130bpm, an interesting bassline and most importantly a slow climax in the music which would alert the viewer that something wasn't 'quite right'. I think I achieved this through the minor synth which kicks in half way, and also the increase of reverb on the vocals.

For the voice in the track, we sampled a Beyonce acapella called 'Me Myself and I', before pitching it up and reverbing it. These snippets of vocals are common in modern dance music, especially house - where the clipped words and sounds form actually part of the melody. Here, the sound 'eee eee' becomes the focus point of the whole song, as it does in song like 'au seve' by Julio Bashmore:

We also incorporated a single sound of a reverbing drum from the song 'Alberto Balsam' by Aphex Twin:
This is really not obvious, but I thought using this particular sound would make our 'house' track more unique as it's not the kind of thing you might usually hear in mainstream music.

This screen grab shows the process we went through in building the song, on the left hand side you can see the different tracks, from the garage bass to the clap, to Beyonce's audio and at the very bottom the resounding minor chord that kicks in as Alfie is seen dancing with Helena. I found it really fun to create this piece, and by teaching myself how to use the programme I hope I will be able to use it future projects. Overall, I am really happy with the result. I think it's realistic (something you could well hear in a club) yet fits the scene exactly and the feeling of unease.

Here is the final song (I didn't take the picture in the background)

FINAL FILM TITLE

FILMING - BEACH SCENE AND WALKING HOME SEQUENCE ANALYSIS

I found the beach scene really fun to shoot. It was well organised; we gathered our equipment at around 3 and met Anna schofield, our actress, at Clapham Junction before travelling to Waterloo by train.
The walking home sequence proved to be quite difficult in terms of arranging everyone (me, Emma, Blake, Anna Schofield, Helena Eades, Joanna Murray, Emmy Pollock, Lara Redmayne) to be in the same place at the same time wearing the right outfits. I brought the props and clothes for our characters and we met at the 'club' in Clapham that our actresses would walk out of. We then travelled to our final setting which was the alleyway. As people needed to get home the process was quite rushed and stressful, bearing in mind this was before we realised the camera wasn't recording any sound.
Overall, I think the filming went well, but the beach scene was most enjoyable to shoot because of how well it had been planned out and how easy it was to manage a smaller group compared to 8 people, or with the club scene around 15-20.