MAIN Post 12.7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Looking over my previous work I think I've make an obvious improvement, there were three key points that stuck out for me that I've developed and improved. 

The preliminary task wasn't as good as the main task therefore there is an obvious improvement. The beginning of Behind Blue Eyes has the background music instantly with panning shots of the equipment which is an improvement from the beginning of The One Mistake which begins with a simple black screen showing the title then a long shot of the character in the corridor. The preliminary task didn't require an opening sequence like the main task did, the beginnings have still improved.

The location of our tasks have improved as you can see from the preliminary task to the main task. There was one location used in the preliminary task and it was not used to its full potential and was not correct for the storyline. We also had troubles with noise levels whilst filming and the lack of actors to make the scene look some what believable though the location was incorrect. The various locations of the main task however worked a lot better as they were more conventional and appropriate for the storyline as well as the correct actors to make the situation believable. 

The camera's positions when filming has definitely improved, during our preliminary task we used incorrect camera angles that didn't work, missing out on eye line level shots and preforming an incorrect shot reverse shot. During Behind Blue Eyes however we have used a variety of camera shots that have worked in our favour and have remembered the position of the characters whilst filming a shot reverse shot.  

MAIN Post 12.6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Since the preliminary task I've been using many different types of technology and learning how to use or become more confident with various computer programmes or handheld devices. 

One of the major things I used was obviously a camera, it is an essential piece of technology as whilst filming as you need it to capture the footage. I learnt a lot using the camera as it although was a small handheld it made me start to notice if I had the correct frames, lighting and sound. 

The most obvious new piece of technology I've been working with in the past months would be blogger. I've completed many tasks and posts on here making sure to include all of the work I've done in class or in preparation for filming. I've learnt how to create a blogger, upload photographs, insert links and change or edit posts.

I have also used Adobe Premier a programme which was crucial when it came to editing our opening sequence and our preliminary task. I've grown more confident with this programme and can now cut and adjust clips, edit sound as well as place background music into a clip.

YouTube was another important social media site that I used. I learnt how to upload video clips such as our audience feedback and the completed version of 'Behind Blue Eyes'. I also discovered how to embed into blogger, you simply copy the embed code and paste it into blogger, this would not work for me however no matter how many times I attempted.

I've learnt how to use a flip camera, a piece of equipment used for recording our audience feedback. I've learnt that you can also record voice clips instead of with a video. 

Powerpoint has helped me when creating collages of photographs. I've learnt how to save images or transfer them to JPEG files which is done by changing their format. I've definitely grown more confident in this area. 

I've used a variety of technology and I believe I can say they have all helped a great deal when it came to producing 'Behind Blue Eyes.'

MAIN Post 12.5: How did you attract/address your audience?

I believe our film in quite unique in many ways and that's probably why our audience is attracted to 'Behind Blue Eyes'. There is the ultimate friendship between Paige and Sophie which is very relate-able to our target audience, everyone has that one best friend they've known forever that they have the best memories with. This makes the audience have an emotional link to Sophie and Paige because they can understand what it was like to be young - or at their age, and have the best friend that's like a sibling to you, you fight and argue and go through many problems together but are still together. Our target audience is between the ages 15 to later 20's and we were sure to get audience feedback from them as well as from a slightly higher age demographic who could see it from a mother's point of view more then the child's. By listening to our audience feedback we were able to grasp a good understanding of what our whole target audience might think of it, we had the slightly older individuals tell us what they thought on their own so that we could have a contrast between them and our target audience.

Whilst I was researching The British Board of Film Classification (bbfc) when looking into other films in our genre and how the plot line effected the rating, I started to become curious as to what classification 'Behind Blue Eyes would receive.' Looking between 'Behind Blue Eyes' and other films in the genre of drama I would say that it would more then likely receive the rating of 12 or a 12A. I wouldn't give it a higher rating due to 15 film's usually including sexual arousal and activity which 'Behind Blue Eyes' does not include, it only hints at the relationship between Alan and Sophie. The reasoning behind it not being lower then a 12 is because it bring's up a controversial issue of sexual grooming which could be offensive to younger viewers and although there is no sexual activity between the victim and abuser it is still suggested, making 'Behind Blue Eyes' unfit for a U or PG rating. The rating of our film could work in our favour as our target audience would appreciate a higher rating then a U or PG as it would stop small children from watching and would give it a more mature theme. It's also attractive to not put it as a 15 because some people might not be able to get in because they don't look old enough even if they are from our target audience. Therefore I believe putting our film as a 12A would attract our target audience because that is the more likely classification they would watch as well as the emotional links and the ability to put yourself in the characters shoes.

bbfc website link

MAIN Post 12.4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

The target audience for 'Behind Blue Eyes' is from age 15 to late 20's. The reason for my group and I selecting this demographic was because we produced questionnaire's that featured the question "When do you go to the cinema and who with?" From ages 15 to late 20's said they went often with their friends and because of this we selected this target group because they would be more willing to go instead of someone much older. 

If we could describe a character from our target audience they would be; interested in the latest trends and celebrity gossip, possibly be a student or in a new job and enjoy hanging out with their friends on a regular basis. The photographs describe the interest of a possible member of our target audience. 

MAIN Post 12.3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

The Production Company  is the company that creates and produces a film. They would produce a film and then take it to a distributor. A Distributor is a company who is responsible for the marketing of a film. A small distributor may only be able to put the films on to DVD'S or might have connections in another market or country. A large distributor would be able to make the film available to the public through theatres, networks, downloads, television programmes or DVD's.

If a production company needed funding and they were in Britain then they could obtain the funding they needed from the British Film Institute. The British Film Institute is there to "Encourage the development of the arts of film, television and the moving image throughout the United Kingdom, to promote their use as a record of contemporary life and manners, to promote education about film, television and the moving image generally, and their impact on society, to promote access to and appreciation of the widest possible range of British and world cinema and to establish, care for and develop collections reflecting the moving image history and heritage of the United Kingdom."

They would provide producers in Britain with the appropriate funds needed to create their film. All of the money that The British Film Institute uses is from the national lottery and would be used to fund films that reflect the history and heritage of the UK, films that have been funded include This is England and The King's Speech. 

This is in comparison to a production company somewhere such as Hollywood which would often receive's all of its funding from the studios. The reason the studios would fund such large films is because they know they will make money back once it has hit cinemas, downloads and DVD's. Another possible way that someone could receive funding is from the government or depending on the size and the plot line of the stories some films can be self funded or funded by small businesses. 

If I could chose I would want a large company to be able to distribute our film because of possible subsidiary arms in other media markets or countries meaning the film would be more accessible. I believe a perfect company would be someone like Sony as they have the experience and would be able to market our film in more ways then say a small distributor. Possible marketing could be through print advertisements, trailers during prime time television, through out the internet or at the cinema. However I believe a distributor through the British Film Institute would be more then likely to distribute a film such as ours due to it being a short film which are not often popular and with a risky and controversial storyline it is not a clear hit in contrast to clique and unoriginal romantic comedies where the storyline is always the same and usually makes a large amount of money.

Here's a link to the bfi: BFI website link

MAIN Post 12.2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In our film we had to make sure we showed the characters profile well making sure we represented each characters social status. Our main character is Sophie, a young 15 year old teenage girl as you can see from the photograph to the left. I believe our character represents a female teenage social group well as she is a typical teenager at a public school, who has pressures from various aspects in her life. Having to deal with a mother that never has the time for her, the stress of GCSE'S and typical social pressures it seems that Sophie is any regular teenager, if not slightly lonelier then others. Her costume as seen in the photograph consists of a blazer, tie, school shirt, black tights and a black skirt. Sophie's appearance signifies to the audience that she is in school and with her dress being somewhat 'scruffy' it links to her background story of not caring about her appearance, instead choosing to be focused on school work. The audience also see Paige who wears the same school uniform however her's is 'smarter' and more formal, which puts her in the same social group as Sophie but also shows a contrast between the two girls. I believe our media product here represents her in her social group well because of the specific costumes we picked for Sophie to wear.

The other main character in 'Behind Blue Eyes' is Alan, Paige's father and Sophie's abuser. Alan is expected to fit into a social group of someone who know's how to dress well, but someone who has a dark secret. Wearing a smart dress shirt and plain black trousers with black shoes Alan's character is put in the social group of an 'average joe', meaning he doesn't want to be recognisable in a crowd, showing he has some sort of sordid secret. Alan is a middle aged business man/maths tutor so is expected to dress formally however he is rather conservative choosing to keep himself off the radar. 

Here are two images of characters (the victim and the abuser) in both film and television that represent the social groups our characters belong to. We researched into characters that went through similar story lines and found that television brought up the subject of sexual abuse and grooming a lot more in comparison to film, perhaps because it would not be an obvious hit in the box office.

MAIN Post 12.1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The genre of our film is Drama which is a very broad term so we decided to focus more on the social realism when it came to our film giving us the opportunity to be creative with the narrative content. As a group we decided to be conventional with our film so the audience would be able to tell what our genre was however due to certain twists in the protagonist’s journey in our film overall we weren’t as conventional as we could have been.

The genre Drama is described as putting ‘the characters at conflict with themselves’ which we kept conventional with our main character Sophie who is unhappy with her grades and is becoming stressed with her GCSE’s. She is at conflict with herself because she wants to do well to improve her life. Later on in the film Sophie will be at a bigger conflict with herself trying to decide if the relationship with her best friends father is right or wrong and as a result of her relationship with him her friend Paige, Alan’s daughter will become jealous that ‘Sophie’ is receiving the attention that she used to get. Another way we kept to the conventions of a Drama was making our storyline realistic which we managed to do through our research into the steps of sexual grooming producing the guideline for our plot.

The music we use was called ‘December Rising’ which due to the lyrics – for example ‘I was your best friend when we were all alone’ fits in with the storyline and the message we want the audience to understand. There is a large intake of breath at the beginning of the song also which helped set the theme. The instruments such as the piano were played slowly, created an eerie feeling at the beginning of our opening sequence. Setting the atmosphere of the film was conventional of a Drama to engage the audience with the theme. The emotive feeling of the film anchored by the pace of the panning and static shots of the title designs - which fell more into the category of graphical then live action, meant that we fulfilled our genre of drama due to its emotional themes.

The introduction of our characters was somewhat unconventional when it came to narrative enigma due to our group’s choice of including a voiceover so that the audience knew that the film was from ‘Alan’s’ point of view and not ‘Sophie’s’. Our audience all realised that it was from ‘Alan’s’ point of view but they could also guess what was going to happen later on in our film suggesting some sort of rape or sexual abuse, this is unconventional of a Drama because the genre usually keeps the storyline a mystery only suggesting what will happen.
On the other hand the fact that we created an enigma of ‘Alan’ and showed that the two girls where obviously at risk was conventional because in drama’s you are aware of who is the protagonist is and we made it very clear in our film. We were also unconventional with the introducing of the girls however because both girls got the same amount of screen time, not giving a clear indication of who was who except from the close ups being of ‘Sophie’s’ body not ‘Paige’s’.

The structure of sequence was conventional keeping our film in chronological order and sticking to our plotline and research into the stages of grooming. The opening titles kept the suspense with the slow pace and the voiceover helped with keeping the eerie atmosphere which was conventional of a Drama to do. The title ‘Behind Blue Eyes’ was unconventional because it appeared half way through the titles when usually the title would have been after or before, we as a group decided putting the title at the end of the title design would introduce scene one which was shot in the class room better then putting the title at the very beginning before the titles or at the very end of our two minute opening sequence.

The style and colour of font in our opening titles was conventional as the colour white was bold enough to stand out against the black backgrounds and fade outs however we kept the style, font size and colour plain and consistent so that we didn’t move the audience’s attention from what was going on in the background. The style of the presentation was rather simple however when it came to finding where to put the titles it was sometimes difficult because the titles where in white and would only show up against a black background. We had to play around a bit to find out where was appropriate to put the titles and from our research what order the titles should go in.

When it came to our mise-en-scene we had to think about our location because there were two English school girls so that meant we had to keep with the British stereotype and have the two characters in school uniform however changing ‘Sophie’s’ to fit in with the voiceover making her ‘Her skirt was short, her tie loose’. For ‘Alan’ we had to make sure he was dressed smart to show his age because we used a young actor we had to make him appear more mature. Our location was Kings Langley Secondary School which meant that some of the props were already on location such as; the corridor containing lockers and the maths classroom where GCSE maths books were kept, we tried to keep the locations conventional making the film seem as realistic as possible including using a car that we drove instead of using a green screen in the background. We did use a variety of props especially in our title design; we borrowed maths equipment to emphasise the school theme in our opening credits which was conventional as it set the location of the film for the audience. They were aware that one of the main characters would be involved in something to do with school which was anchored by the panning shot across the maths exercise book which stopped slightly on the name ‘Sophie Freeman’ which introduced the character before the audience saw her.

The sound in the film was diegetic for the dialogue between ‘Paige’ and ‘Sophie’ which is conventional because the audience expect to see and hear the dialogue between the two characters. ‘Alan’s’ voiceover however was unconventional because the audience didn’t expect the voiceover to come from ‘Alan’ but from ‘Sophie’ this use of non-diegetic sound explains the point of view from which the plot is being told. Diegetic sound was also used for the car scene for the car’s engine and also in the corridor scene with the locker slamming which was conventional because it made the film seem more realistic and the audience expected it.

In our film when it came to editing and special effects we used a variety of special effects to set the pace for our film to correlate with the genre of drama as we used fade ins and outs which was conventional because we tried to keep the eerie atmosphere of the film. For the very beginning of the title design we controlled the speed of the clips to keep in time with the music fading in and out on the timed beats of the music to make the audience wonder what was going to happen. Our group when filming took numerous shots in various camera angles during each scene for when it came to using the editing suite we could view each clip and see what we would use and what we hated, we had to be careful when putting certain vital scenes in encase there was a continuity error or disruptions with the camera during filming. This is conventional to shoot more then one angle during each scene and to go through many takes because directors are sometimes unsure with what camera angle would look better during certain points in the film.

We used a variety of camera shots to show the emotions of the characters and to increase the atmosphere, the close up shots of the opening titles of the maths equipment with the backing music created the feeling of curiosity for the audience. The first shot of the two girls we see is a high angle shot in the classroom instantly showing them to be vulnerable even in the safe environment of school, their vulnerability suggest that they are having problems at school which links to the diegetic dialogue of the girls with ‘Sophie’ having a hard time in maths. In the classroom we had to make sure not to break the 180 degree rule as we tried to keep the conventions of a drama when it came to the camera shots. In the car we used point of view shots of the girls to link with the voiceover which was conventional as drama’s use point of view shots to get the audience to see through the characters eyes. We used extreme close up’s in the car mirror of ‘Alan’s’ eyes and mouth to create an eerie feeling, by not showing the audience his face they don’t know what his full profile looks like and is a mystery to them making him appear dangerous, this is conventional in a drama as camera shots are thought out to get a reaction from the audience.