Thursday 12 May 2011
Wednesday 4 May 2011
Tuesday 3 May 2011
Question 3 of our Evaluation
3) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
It is the task of distributors to identify and deliver the largest possible audience for every film. The UK has 6 major distributors and many independent distributors. According to the Film Distributor’s Association, most cinemagoers know in advance which film they want to see – and that is principally a result of competing distributor’s efforts to promote interests in the title(s) they are handling. Media institutions such as Universal would be appropriate to distribute our film because Universal is associated with chick flicks such as Wild Child. We researched other smaller institutions, which might help us create our media product because our film is low budget and not well known. We found suitable institutions such as Bedlam Productions or See Saw Films. Bedlam Productions, might be interested in helping us create our film. They collaborated to make the multiple Oscar winning, “The King’s Speech”; this film is also a comparatively low budget movie like ours. Although their main key areas have been feature films and documentaries, focusing on “real-life” stories, we feel our UK girls independent school setting also raises lots of historical and social issues in teenage lives, which would attract similar audiences.
Most importantly, See Saw Films has a first-look deal with Momentum Pictures in the UK and a film finance deal with the American Paramount Pictures. Since American institutions have much more capital at their disposal than British companies, this link with the US could be the secret to the success of distributing our film. Moreover, as distributer of “Mean Girls”, Paramount may well be interested in our film as it is aimed at a similar audience, addressing similar high school issues and stereotypes.
Momentum and Paramount would be great distributors for our product because they can distribute our film through larger companies and to the USA. These institutions would also be interested in distributing our media product because British audiences tend to warm to good quality, British films, and could work well on the back of the success of “The King’s Speech”. This might also attract funding from the UK Film Council.
The cinema is a place where film makers would love to have their products showcased. Films have the opportunity to come across as their best in cinemas as audiences enjoy an uninterrupted cinema experience. Therefore, we would like to show our feature film theatrically – in cinemas, as it is the best and most effective way to show a film and it creates a demand to see it. Showcasing our film on television channels rather than the cinema would be less effective because it would gain less audience attention.
According to the Film Distributor’s Association, the most frequent cinema goers tend to be teenagers, students and young adults, and they are the most voracious media consumers. This benefits us because our media product is aimed at a young target audience. More than half of 15-25 year olds in the UK visit the cinema at least once a month. Due to this, hopefully a good distributor such as Momentum or Paramount will distribute our product because it is aimed a large, young audience.
We invented a collaboration of production companies to produce our film. We created Starship Pictures and COSMO Productions, inspired by a space-like theme which has connotations of innovation and groundbreaking material. Our Starship Pictures logo of the globe surrounded by stars, was inspired by the logo of Univeral Pictures. COSMO also connotes a “girly essence” reminiscent of the fashion magazine named “Cosmo”.
It is the task of distributors to identify and deliver the largest possible audience for every film. The UK has 6 major distributors and many independent distributors. According to the Film Distributor’s Association, most cinemagoers know in advance which film they want to see – and that is principally a result of competing distributor’s efforts to promote interests in the title(s) they are handling. Media institutions such as Universal would be appropriate to distribute our film because Universal is associated with chick flicks such as Wild Child. We researched other smaller institutions, which might help us create our media product because our film is low budget and not well known. We found suitable institutions such as Bedlam Productions or See Saw Films. Bedlam Productions, might be interested in helping us create our film. They collaborated to make the multiple Oscar winning, “The King’s Speech”; this film is also a comparatively low budget movie like ours. Although their main key areas have been feature films and documentaries, focusing on “real-life” stories, we feel our UK girls independent school setting also raises lots of historical and social issues in teenage lives, which would attract similar audiences.
Most importantly, See Saw Films has a first-look deal with Momentum Pictures in the UK and a film finance deal with the American Paramount Pictures. Since American institutions have much more capital at their disposal than British companies, this link with the US could be the secret to the success of distributing our film. Moreover, as distributer of “Mean Girls”, Paramount may well be interested in our film as it is aimed at a similar audience, addressing similar high school issues and stereotypes.
Momentum and Paramount would be great distributors for our product because they can distribute our film through larger companies and to the USA. These institutions would also be interested in distributing our media product because British audiences tend to warm to good quality, British films, and could work well on the back of the success of “The King’s Speech”. This might also attract funding from the UK Film Council.
The cinema is a place where film makers would love to have their products showcased. Films have the opportunity to come across as their best in cinemas as audiences enjoy an uninterrupted cinema experience. Therefore, we would like to show our feature film theatrically – in cinemas, as it is the best and most effective way to show a film and it creates a demand to see it. Showcasing our film on television channels rather than the cinema would be less effective because it would gain less audience attention.
According to the Film Distributor’s Association, the most frequent cinema goers tend to be teenagers, students and young adults, and they are the most voracious media consumers. This benefits us because our media product is aimed at a young target audience. More than half of 15-25 year olds in the UK visit the cinema at least once a month. Due to this, hopefully a good distributor such as Momentum or Paramount will distribute our product because it is aimed a large, young audience.
We invented a collaboration of production companies to produce our film. We created Starship Pictures and COSMO Productions, inspired by a space-like theme which has connotations of innovation and groundbreaking material. Our Starship Pictures logo of the globe surrounded by stars, was inspired by the logo of Univeral Pictures. COSMO also connotes a “girly essence” reminiscent of the fashion magazine named “Cosmo”.
Thursday 28 April 2011
1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products
We chose to podcast our answer to this question. Click on the media player to hear our response
Question 7 of the Evaluation
From doing our preliminary tasks back in October to now having completed our main coursework piece, we feel we have learnt a great deal that helped us to make our product the best it could be.
Probably the most important thing we learnt from our preliminary task was that when filming we should always use a tripod. In our preliminary task, we handheld the camera when filming the shot-reverse-shot sequence and although it seemed steady at the time, it was clear when we uploaded it to final cut express that this was not the case. Therefore, when shooting our film opening ‘Dirty Little Secret’, we made sure that we used a tripod the whole time, except for when shooting the main character point of view shot. This made our shots steadier and easier to watch than our shaky preliminary tasks. We decided that handheld would be appropriate for Cally’s point of view shot as we found it was conventional of chick flicks like our piece.
After having a professional cameraman in to view our preliminary tasks, he pointed out the importance of headroom. It was clear in our preliminary tasks that there was much too much space above the actor’s heads, and so they did not properly fill the frame and there was too much background. Therefore, in our main piece, we were careful to make sure that our actresses filled most of the shot, ensuring that there was little or no space above her head. We feel that this improved our film greatly in comparison to our preliminary task and we have learnt how important it is that the actors fill the shot.
We also learnt how important it is to be organised, and made sure that for our filming of ‘Dirty Little Secret’, we had everything ready. In our preliminary task, we made the mistake of not charging the camera before filming and so had the problem of having to charge it and film at the same time. Luckily, since we were filming inside, this was not so much of a problem, but if it had happened in our main piece filming, we would not have been able to film. Therefore, we made sure the cameras were fully charged and our equipment was set up before our actress and extras arrived for filming. We found it difficult to arrange everyone in place and had to do lots of retakes in a short space of time, but from this we have learnt efficiency and we managed to get most of the filming done on the first day. Like in the preliminary task, we had to film over two days and so we made sure that our actress was wearing exactly the same thing she was wearing before and waited for a day in which the weather would be the same. Again, even though we had a short space of time, we managed to get our filming done completely by the second day and so we learnt a lot from this about time management, organisation and the importance of communication.
When editing our final piece, we thought back to our preliminary task and remembered the importance of continuity. In our preliminary task, we found that it took a considerable amount of time to edit the actor walking through the door so that it looked realistic. Therefore, we made sure that we took time editing our film opening, so that it flowed well, keeping the verisimilitude of the piece.
So, from our preliminary task to our main coursework piece, we learnt a lot about constructing a film and the experience at filming and editing certainly helped us when it came to doing our film opening of ‘Dirty Little Secret.’
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