MEDIA STUDIES AS

EVALUATION

Mohamed Bushra

AS Media Studies Resubmission

I’m resubmitting my AS coursework because I can achieve a higher grade than last year,

this is because I can now link all my research and planning to my final film, . For

example, last year I didn’t evaluate my research and stated how it links to my film when

it came to planning.

Q1) IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR

MEDIA PRODUCT USE DEVELOP OR

CHALLENGE FORMS AND

CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA

PRODUCTS?

Mohamed Bushra

Comedy has been a successful film genre since film began. They are

produced to entertain and to humour people which always appealed to their

audience. Our film is a short sequence of an action-comedy film which

develops the genre ‘comedy’ and ‘action’ conventions that are seen in many

other action-comedy films.

We made it an opening to a humorous comedy, with a serious twist and action

in some parts. Together as a group we worked to make this piece of film an

unconventional action-comedy as much as we could, for particular parts of the

film I don’t think that it is similar to any existing comedy film, although we were

inspired by other comedy films for our product such as these main movies:

Bad Boys (1995), Men in Black II (2002), Hot Fuzz (2007) and the chase

scene in the park in our film footage was inspired from ’21 Jump Street

(2012)’. Most of the time cop movies contain two main characters as shown

by the screenprints in the next slide.

We followed the conventions of comedy films, as in almost every comedy

film the characters are introduced at the beginning of the film with upbeat

music playing in the background, so we developed this convention by

introducing the characters in that way. The idea of using the background

music at the opening credits was inspired from our radial analysis of the

films mention in the previous slide and has been used for the same effect,

the music that we added was used so that the audience know that this film

isn’t serious decoding that this is a comedy genre. However we challenged

the location action-comedy films are set in, instead of filming in a busy city

we decided to film in a park as a surprise element as the audience will not

be expecting it, another element which we have challenged is the mixture of

American and British accents in our film which shows that we are not

excluding any nationalities. We followed all conventions of action-comedy

e.g. established the narrative, genre and the mood by the use of music and

our title credits.

For the editing part of our film footages, my partner and I have produced perfect

transitions and moments to create the opening 3 minutes of our film. We did

this by using techniques such as ‘freeze frame’ when the main characters were

introduced which was also done in ‘Hot Fuzz’ to emphasise the physical

attributes of one of the characters, ‘stretch time’ was also used in the scene

where I dropped the bag this was to create a dramatic effect which was

successfully done with the music used as this was done in ‘21 Jump Street’

also to create a dramatic effect. The camera work performed was one of our

strongest points; this is because we had a wide variety of camera techniques in

our film footage such as close ups when, POV, over the shoulder shot, tracking,

panning, canted angle etc. The canted angle was used in the shot when one of

the characters jumps over the bag and at this point the audience see the scene

from the perspective of the bag itself, we also used a ground level camera

angle when the other character doesn’t see the bag and falls over it.

This is a screenshot from our film, here one of the

characters

Is being chased. This scene was inspired from ‘21 Jump

Street’.

However we decided to use different camera shots and

added

non-diegetic music to make the chase exciting.

Q2) HOW DOES YOUR MEDIA

PRODUCT REPRESENT PARTICULAR

SOCIAL GROUPS?

Mohamed Bushra

Our film product represents particular social groups in our society which are teenagers and young adults, in particular males as they’re more likely to perform foolish actions. From our film it could be deduced that this social group are more likely to enjoy this genre as they’re the part of society that are more laid back about some morals action such as not throwing litter in the bin and leave it lying around.

My audience of teenagers and young adults will be attracted to our film because it is representative of young people and their stubbornness. This film will communicate part of realism through some of the issues that we slightly touched in this project e.g. how adults take every action of a teenager very seriously. Furthermore, the one of character in the film that is causing a ‘problem’ is wearing casual clothing such as sneakers, denim shirts and always walking with a backpack and this helps to represent the social group that we are targeting.

But you can also see that the cops in the scene are wearing smart clothes but

they’re not in a full suit, this represents the current ‘young adults’ social group

as most of the time you see them only wear smart shoes, trousers, tie and a

shirt without a blazer. The language used by the characters also reveals for

which social group it is aimed, our film didn’t contain swear words but some

slang that other social groups might not understand e.g. the elderly.

This film and its genre relate to many teenagers and young adults across the

UK and the world as comedy is an escape from real life and the problems they

face. They want to be amused once in a while especially by going out.

Q3) WHAT KIND OF MEDIA

INSTITUTION MIGHT DISTRIBUTE

YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT AND WHY?

Mohamed Bushra

What does a media institution

do?

A media institution produces films. These organisations sometimes fund the

films, this is usually happens if the organisation is a conglomerate. The media

organisation we use is called ‘ZKMC Production’ and the logo was in the

opening of our film.

Our media institution is

called ‘ZKMC

Production’. The name

was created by taking

the first letter of our

names.

As our film is action-comedy which is produced from a small budget and contains amateurs actors I think the kind of media institution that might distribute our film would be ‘Channel 4 &5’, ‘Film 4’ and ‘ITV’ as the social group (C2-DE) we are targeting watch these channels. This is because it would help us advertise our film product so that the general audience would know about it and in this way we can attract a greater audience.

Another reason for choosing these popular media firms is that when it comes to the distribution of our film we know that they have plenty of experience and so know the best ways to get to the targeted audience. When a big media institution is involved in a film then the audience will know that the film is good or it wouldn’t have got so much support from these firms and therefore our product would be seen as a highly rated film.

We also chose these firms as they are large media institutions that are based in the UK where our film is produced and would interests British teenagers and young adults.

Q4) WHO WOULD BE THE MEDIA

AUDIENCE FOR YOUR MEDIA

PRODUCT?

Mohamed Bushra

Our final product has a target audience of teenagers and young adults. This

targeted audience can identify with some of the characters in the film

because of the dialogue which is a big part of characterisation, the characters

use plain English and a bit of slang and when looking at films which have

these elements in common you will find that we have the same target

audience.

To understand the audience and what types of movies they’re attracted to we

used the experience and opinion of our own classmates, friends other pupils

in school who are fairly young, this was done by the creation of a survey and

questionnaire.

From the survey and questionnaire it was clear that the majority of the audience

would be attracted to comedy, while the minority which weren’t far behind

favoured an action film. The certain age range of the audience was between

12-25 years but also 25+ years.

When looking at my target audience and how comedy is currently targeted at

teenagers and young adults. This is because these social groups at this time

watch lots of movies and go out with friends for entertainment as they have lots

of leisure time and can spent money, that is why we have targeted the social

class C2-De. At the moment there are films in production and haven’t been

released yet that share the same target audience as our film e.g. ’22 Jump

street’ and it’s age certificate is 15 which indicates of it having a young teenage

audience.

Q5) HOW DID YOU ATTRACT/

ADDRESS YOUR AUDIENCE?

Mohamed Bushra

We attracted our audience by making sure that they can identify with the characters and the location used. This was done by the research of film conventions and what they had in common that attracted the audience. After that we applied as many successful conventions from our research to our film, in order for the audience to get what they expect from a typical comedy film that will contain humour, foolish actions by the characters, funny punch lines and etc. We gave the audience this by the techniques used when one of the characters doesn’t see an obstacle and hits his head we used sound effects to enhance the sound and we usually laugh when a person is hurt.

The title of our film ‘Useless in Uniform’ gives the audience a slight clue of what our film is going to be about, but uniform can mean any professional job so the audience doesn’t totally know and this keeps them excited about what the film is going be about

Our film will work and attract its target audience in a wide of range of ways; through the dialogue of the characters (funny lines), mise-en-scene and editing techniques used as well as the choices made when selecting the soundtrack during the opening credits. The soundtrack has an upbeat tempo which basically represents teenagers and young adults and their association with it, this means that the film will engage them while watching as it entertains them, takes some of the problems of their mind and enjoy it with friends or family.

I also thought that we could have attracted our audience by creating a viral which can be distributed on mobile phones, social networking sites and etc. This is because teenagers like to be involved in the latest internet viral and know everything about it, if one person knows about then his circle of friends will also know and this will then help our video attract our targeted audience.

Q6) WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT

ABOUT TECHNOLOGIES FROM THE

PROCESS OF CONSTRUCTING THIS

PRODUCT?

Mohamed Bushra

I have used the following technologies during my research and planning:

HP 2210 Work Station, they were build for multi & interactive media technologies.

Canon HD Legria and microphone

Tripod

Adobe Premiere 11

Blogger

Slide share

Box Office Mojo

The-numbers

YouTube

Survey money

YouTube: I used YouTube as a source for my primary

research so that I could analyse different opening sequences of films, but YouTube is also a great place to find what the mass thinks about certain films. This is because they leave comments containing specific examples of what they didn’t like in a film/trailer.

This source contributed a lot to my planning as I analysed the amount of views, likes and comments a film got e.g. Men in Black 3 Trailer to gain a better understanding of what my target audience expect to be present in my film. .

Box Office Mojo &

The-numbers I used Box Office Mojo & The-

numbers to research the most

successful action-comedy films

made in the last 10/12 years, any

sequences, total gross and by

which studio.

I used this site when choosing which

genre to pick for my film, I looked at

the most popular, simple and

entertaining genre when planning

my film.

&

Blogger Blogger gas been used to present all my

work in a creative & organised way.

This was done by posting all my work in

the order that I have done them in,

therefore reducing the chance blogger to

upload videos, images and presentations

so that my work is neatly and clearly

presented.

Slideshare I used Slideshare to upload most of my

work to Blogger, as this meant that I

can just embed the ‘slides’ any page.

This allowed me to present my work

clearly and in a logical order.

This was achieved by posting my work

after my teacher marked it and all

improvements had been done.

Canon HD Legria and microphone we used 2x Canon HD Legria cameras when filming my film. The advantage of using

this camera is that it was easy to carry around, everything was recorded on a SD

card which transfers film footage across different devices due to its size. The

cameras are ‘Full 1080P HD’, which meant that we recorder all our footages in full

HD not missing out any detail.

Adobe Premiere Elements

11 This was the software used to edit my film

footage together, this process was

straightforward as I have used this software

before. The software allowed me to add action-

comedy elements to my film e.g. freeze frame,

sound effects, fast pace etc.

The software contained simple editing tools for

us to use such as transitions, adding texts,

trimming of footages. This all contributed to the

creation of a successful film.

A good feature of this software

was that I could edit the sound

using the ‘Audio gain’ tool, this is

because it was very windy when

we filmed and this made it harder

to hear the characters dialogue in

the film, by editing the sound we

managed to reduce the sound of

the wind and therefore make the

characters voice clearer.

However, this software also had some limitations. One of the limitations of this

software was that I couldn’t add an ‘after affect’ after the introduction of a

character e.g. when the main character/villain is introduced in comic books and

his posture/body stands out form the background. Another limitation is the lack

of different transitions that look more professional instead of the standard

transitions.

Moreover, the software started freezing/lagging during the process of editing

costing us time and sometimes we had to use a different computer because it

didn’t work on every computer in school.

Q7) LOOKING BACK AT YOUR

PRELIMINARY TASK, WHAT DO YOU FEEL

YOU HAVE LEARNT IN THE

PROGRESSION FROM IT TO THE FULL

PRODUCT?

Mohamed Bushra

From our preliminary task (The Interview) I think I have learnt a lot of things that made our final product successful, this is because after completing the task it gave me a clear understanding of what makes a film successful e.g. the importance of choosing the right camera techniques, location, and costume and when writing the script I had to think about the dialogue of the characters. This is all to make sure that everything fits the scene and what is happening in it. From the preliminary task I also gained more confidence in using Adobe Premier Element 11 to edit my final film.

When looking back at this task I can identify the things that I could have changed if I had another chance to re-shoot ‘The Interview’ such as the camera techniques used when the two characters shake hands at the end of the interview. For that part of the scene I felt like that I should have used a close-up to emphasise that it is the end and that the character is about to leave. I also learnt from the audience which bits that I might want to change and ways to improve our footages, which will benefit our opening film.