Evaluation Question 3

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

Our distribution company

Our production company

We created our own production and distribution companies as we wanted to achieve a sense of individuality when it was presented to our audience. Our production company is called 45 Productions. We chose this name because our group number is 45, which puts our imprint on the production. It was also the only name that we could agree on as a group. Our distribution company is called Shoot Productions. We opted for this name because our film is based on football and shoot is a common term within the society. Similarly, shoot is also a part of media terminology, which makes the name even more appropriate for a film like ours.

Although our production company has produced blockbusters like Slumdog Millionaire and The Inbetweeners Movie, it is still relatively small when compared to others such as DreamWorks, Warner Brothers and 20th Century Fox. This is because Film 4's productions are more suited for the British public as opposed to globally, which makes it a good choice for our film. Our distribution company is an even smaller independent company who also specialise in films catered to the British public, and because of this, they will be useful in helping us to get the attention of our own target audience.





We chose Film 4 as our production company as they have a distinguished history of producing successful British films, which have had low budgets and yet resulted in major profit. These include films like: Shaun of the Dead, East is East, Trainspotting and The Inbetweeners Movie, which were all hits with the British public. Another reason that we chose them to be our production company is because they have sufficient funds to produce our film, as it doesn't contain any CGI or big stars. In addition to this, the fact that they are also a television broadcasting company means that we may be able to advertise our film on their channels or websites, which will give it more attention and increase our potential audience. Moving on, we chose Revolver entertainment as our distribution company because they have distributed successful independent British films with similar audiences to ours such as: Shank, Ill Manners and Kidulthood, one of the films that inspired us. This would result in our film attracting the same kind of audience too. In addition to this, we opted for an independent company as opposed to a major one because we do not require a large amount of resources to get attention for our film. This due to the fact that our target audience is confined to the British public rather than a global audience. Instead of massive billboards, we could use social networking sites on the internet like: Facebook, Twitter and Youtube to get attention from our target audience. We could also put up posters of our film in places that we would expect people from our target audience to visit. For example, near football pitches in urban areas.

Evaluation Question 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Who watches teen films?

Teenagers generally tend to watch them, as they are made in order to appeal to them as an audience. However, many adults may also be attracted to them because of the nostalgic affect that it has on them. They may also watch them because of their interest in the lives of teens of their current generation, but they may end up with a warped perspective of them because of the stereotypes that most films choose to portray as opposed to what occurs in reality.

Who watches sport films

Our film has a sub genre of sport and people who tend to watch these films usually dabble in sports themselves, which allows them to empathise with the protagonist and engage in the storyline. This may also mean that they enjoy films that depict the protagonist going on a journey, as they themselves know what hard work and persistence results in. In addition to this, people who watch sports films may also enjoy the dramatic moments that are a constant feature in films of this genre. Moments like these include last minute goals or knockouts.

Who is our target audience?

Our target audience is males that enjoy football aged from 14-21. This is because the plot follows a teenage male protagonist who aspires to be a professional footballer in the future and we think that our film will be more effective in attracting people who are in a similar age group to our protagonist, as they can relate to him more. More specifically we want to really appeal to young people from London as they can relate to the youth culture that is portrayed in our film easily. For example, they will be able to understand the slang that features throughout. Conversely, this factor could also attract the attention of people who are not from London or that are older, as they may want to get an insight into what life is like for people that fit our protagonist's demographic. The sub genre of sport enables our film to appeal to a wider audience than what we specifically target, as football fanatics will be urged to watch it solely because of the aspect of football that is so heavily linked to our plot. We also aim to address people who are looking for an unbiased perspective of London youth as the riots of 2011 have given us somewhat of a bad reputation. We are able to do this because our opening contains both the good and bad sides of the youth of London as is the case with our protagonists and the muggers, which enables our audience to form their own view of them.

Question 7- Evaluation

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



Raekwon Smerkz Lamothe's Slidely by Slidely Slideshow

Evaluation Q1

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

Convention: The widely recognised way of doing something, which includes content, style

Conventions

In our opening, we used various means of mise en scene and cinematography in order to present and develop our storyline. In terms of editing, we used rapid frames (no longer than four seconds) in order to create an energetic atmosphere when Hadi is playing football. In addition to this, we added slow motion to some shots to emphasise the gracefulness of Hadi's movement and skill. This is a common aspect in many films with a sub genre of sport as it dramatises certain moments, hence it being used to show last minute goals in the films She's The Man and Goal. We also chose to include various conventions in our film such as young inner city teens being involved in crime. This convention was taken from one of the films that inspired us: Kidulthood. We utilised this convention as it allowed us to establish binary oppositions of good and evil between the hoodlums and Hadi, which therefore allowed us to challenge this convention, as it shows that young teens are capable of being both promising and hopeless. Finally, the sound that we used in our film opening is conventional considering the genre and plot.

Intertextuality

We also took some aspects from the two films that inspired us' Goal and Kidulthood, and incorporated into our own production in order to help develop our storyline. We took the location of a football pitch from Goal to emphasise Hadi's considerable footballing talent. It also allowed us to establish binary oppositions of good and evil between him and the two muggers when we filmed on a residential road in the second scene. This location also introduced a sense of danger to the scene as it is dark and had a low amount of passersby. In addition to this, our characters were also inspired by both Goal and Kidulthood. Our protagonist, who was played by Hadi, was based on Goal's protagonist, Santiago. We done this because we were influenced by his journey from an amateur to a professional; the same journey that we intended for our protagonist to embark on.

Evaluation Question 5

How did you attract/address your audience?

Various aspects of our opening are aimed to attract the attention of our target audience. One way that we went about doing this is through our storyline. Within our opening, the protagonist gets mugged shortly after he leaves his house. This is a common occurrence London, so many of our target audience can relate to the situation and therefore empathise with our protagonist. In addition to this, the protagonist is played by a young actor who's age is similar to that of our target audience, which allows our audience to further relate to him and entices them to watch the film. The mugging also provides our protagonist with two options: the good path in which he could simply move on and focus on recovering, or the evil path which would involve him wanting to take revenge on the muggers for potentially ending his footballing dreams. The title of the film also appeals to our target audience. This is because it implies that the protagonist will embark on an emotional journey. This will entice the attention of people who enjoy sport films because they are usually dramatic and inspiring, a feature that may also attract our young audience. The genre of the film is further emphasised by one of the locations in the opening - a football pitch. This gives the impression that the film is heavily based on football from the outset, which encourages football fans to watch more. The sound in terms of a song that we utilised in our opening also appeals to our target audience. This is because young males from London may know who Wiley is and respect him. This form of celebrity endorsement may encourage our target audience to watch our film or even broaden the spectrum of people that will be attracted.

Rough cut and technology

In terms of our rough cut, we didn't have to alter it in order to make it better appeal to our audience because of factors like genre and conventions. However, the quality of the film was the major factor in deterring our audience. Because of this, we cut down the duration of all of our frames in order to give our film a fluid pace and prevent our audience from getting bored. So far, we have reached our audience via Youtube, Vimeo and a cinema preview. We used social networking sites to address our audience because they are popular in youth culture today, which makes it easier for us to spread word of our film and broadens the range of our audience. In our cinema preview, we showed our film opening to many other media students and a few adults. We then interviewed certain members of the audience, specifically the ones that matched our target audience, to see what they thought of our film.

Interviews

In this clip I interviewed someone who isn't the same gender of our target audience to see if our film would still appeal to her. The fact that she did enjoy it suggests that our potential audience isn't just limited to males and that it it attracts people of both genders as long as they are interested in football. In addition to this, our interviewee was also enticed by our choice of music and location, two factors which we specifically chose to attract our target audience. This tells us that our methods to attract them were successful.

In this video, I interviewed a man whose age didn't match that of our target audience in order to get an insight on the potential range of our target audience. He stated that the aspect of football in our opening appealed to him, however he also thought that there was nothing more that enticed his attention, which ultimately deterred him from wanting to watch the entire film. This suggests that our film is more catered to younger viewers, which is our target audience, as opposed to older people.

Evaluation Q2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

This was made using slide-es. I discuss which social groups my film is representing and in what ways we were able to show that.

Evaluation Q3

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

Although our production company has produced blockbusters like Slumdog Millionaire and The Inbetweeners Movie, it is still relatively small when compared to others such as DreamWorks, Warner Brothers and 20th Century Fox. This is because Film 4's productions are more suited for the British public as opposed to globally, which makes it a good choice for our film. Our distribution company is an even smaller independent company who also specialise in films catered to the British public, and because of this, they will be useful in helping us to get the attention of our own target audience.

We chose Film 4 as our production company as they have a distinguished history of producing successful British films, which have had low budgets and yet resulted in major profit. These include films like: Shaun of the Dead, East is East, Trainspotting and The Inbetweeners Movie, which were all hits with the British public. Another reason that we chose them to be our production company is because they have sufficient funds to produce our film, as it doesn't contain any CGI or big stars. In addition to this, the fact that they are also a television broadcasting company means that we may be able to advertise our film on their channels or websites, which will give it more attention and increase our potential audience. Moving on, we chose Revolver entertainment as our distribution company because they have distributed successful independent British films with similar audiences to ours such as: Shank, Ill Manners and Kidulthood, one of the films that inspired us. This would result in our film attracting the same kind of audience too. In addition to this, we opted for an independent company as opposed to a major one because we do not require a large amount of resources to get attention for our film. This due to the fact that our target audience is confined to the British public rather than a global audience. Instead of massive billboards, we could use social networking sites on the internet like: Facebook, Twitter and Youtube to get attention from our target audience. We could also put up posters of our film in places that we would expect people from our target audience to visit. For example, near football pitches in urban areas.