By Vishal Sehgal

For our main project we decided to do an urban drama film opening sequence therefore we had to focus on the forms and conventions that would make it successful. We based our research and studies of the conventions of the drama of British Urban films such as Kidulthood. A convention that we found out was the use of a weapon. In Kidulthood one of the main characters is shown drilling a gun. From this, we concluded that in our opening sequence, the use of a weapon should appear. By doing so, this would make the atmosphere of danger appear and so this would catch the audience’s attention because they know that something interesting is going to happen. By showing a weapon it would also foreshadow the use of crime. Another convention that we found was the dress code being hoodies, trainers, caps etc. When seeing in the media, teenagers are usually wearing a particular dress code of hoodies, trainers and caps which indicates trouble. This link has created a stereotype of teenagers that as a society are scared off. We also followed this convention as our main characters wear some sort of tracksuit/cap/hoody/jacket at a certain point of our opening scene.

My media product represents a particular social group who lived in an urban area as the opening sequences relates to some teenagers in everyday life. The social group are teenagers from the ages of 16 and 22. We chose this because it was one that as a group could relate to and had some knowledge about as well. By so, we knew how exactly we wanted our actors and how we wanted to portray them to the audience. We knew what type of character they were and where the location of some scenes should be. However, our media product represents our chosen social group in a stereotypical way and by making the characters troubled and different, this makes it more interesting and fascinating- audience would be more focused.

I think that the best institution to distribute my media product would be Revolver Entertainment. I believe this would be most suitable because the company have operations both in London and in Los Angeles. Revolver Entertainment is well known for the London urban drama Kidulthood, Adulthood and Shank. They are known for their promotional stunts such as superimposing the faces of political leaders onto Kidulthood billboards in London.

Furthermore, I believe that the most influential way for distributing my media product (opening sequence) would be through the internet. The internet is used by everyone around the world and due to many technological advances; people can now stream and watch trailers of film movies instantly.

The audience for our media product would be teenagers ranging from the age of 16 and adults up to 22. We based this information on a questionnaire that we asked random people to answer to.

The reason that this is the age group for the audience of our media product is because a lot of teenagers are interested in watching modern films such as Kidulthood, Adulthood and Shank. In addition, teenagers can relate to the opening sequence where as if we had a market audience of the elderly, than this would have been a big issue because they could not relate to it at the time.

To attract the audience, the main technique was the use of a teenager cast for teenager actors. This was ideal because this meant that our cast knew how the way they should act and what to do. By having a teenage cast, this attracted the audience through the link of them being the same age meaning that they could relate to them even more. We wanted the audience to feel what the characters were feeling and to make them relate to the situation because it is reality. We also attracted the audience with the use of music. We used a grime/drum and bass music which I made using Garageband on an Apple iMac. By having music like that, this attracted the audience because a lot of teenagers are familiar with the genre Grime or Drum and Bass and so they would feel more into the opening sequence.

Our main problem when facing our media product is that one of the members of the group did not do any work throughout the project. And so, the other member of the group and I had to do extra work, extra recording and extra editing during our spare time. We had to put even more effort into the work because one of the members did not do some of the tasks such as research, record, camera shots, analysis etc.

Another problem that we faced was that if we wanted to save and edit an instrumental from Garageband, we could not open the file on our home Windows computers because the format was different and because Apple does not allow it to happen. In addition, Windows does not have the programme Garageband, so we had to use the iMacs the whole time when creating the instrumental.

Furthermore, another problem that we faced was the fact that the original camcorder we were using created pixilated images. So we had to re-do all the filming from a different camcorder.

The majority of our project was based on the iMacs so we had to come across and deal with different technology. None of the group used an Apple iMac before, so we had to research about them. Two of the main programmes that I used were Garageband and iMovie. I used Garageband to create the music and we used iMovie to edit our video. We learnt how to upload filming onto the iMac from a member of the group. We also learnt how to edit the filming as well.

On Garageband, I learnt how to create a whole new project. I learnt where to go and what to do in order to create the music I wanted. I learnt how to make a beat longer and shorter whilst playing at the same time to another beat. I learnt how to make more than 2 instruments to play together and finish at the same time as well.

I also learnt how to use www.blogger.com which was very useful as I could post my research and analysis whilst getting feedback.

After looking back at my preliminary task, I have seen that my final product is significantly better. This is because I have used more effective camera angles, more props, costume, created music and also much more experienced editing. This is because I have a better knowledge of how to use technologies and software’s which was to my advantage. By not having an effective preliminary task, I made sure that we took on board what we needed to do in order to make it a much better quality. We were a lot more organised because we made and stuck to our shooting schedule, and we made sure that if any props that we were going to use was available for us on those specific dates.

In my preliminary task, I struggled to know which camera angle was most useful but when making the full product I did a lot more research to know what camera angle and camera shot is used best. By following our schedule and timing skills, we managed to reach our final deadline.