Harry's Evaluation

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

Our media product defintely uses, develops and challenges forms of real media products. Throughout the process , we took inspiration from other media products for our piece. This helped a lot in developing our overall piece because we could look at the individual characters and the overall storyline and take small tips from voices, movements and the overall storyline.


One media product that we took a lot of inspiration in particular from the films 'The Hangover' and 'Superbad'. The inspiration for the character of Fogul came from McLovin. The name of the character was extremely similiar and helped with trying to think of a character name for our main character. For the character McLovin, we matched his mannerims as he acts like he is really cool and popular but in reality he really isn't and other people in the film do not like him secretly and we took inspiration from all of this for the character of Fogul. From the clip from Superbad above, it shows the introduction of the character of Fogul. His first line of 'Hey wass'up guys' is a line that we incorporated into our piece as we felt that that particular line resembled the character and would work especially well for our piece and we hoped that it would have the same effect on our audience as it did for Superbad's.

The kidnapping scene that we had in our piece was from watching 'The Hangover' as Doug was kidnapped in that movie and from watching that scene it helped us to film our kidnapping scene. The certain points in scenes that we watch make us think more about what we do in certain scenes. The 'evil' character that kidnapped Doug in 'The Hangover' was related to Harry in our piece when he kidnapped Fogul and trapped him in the toilets in the community lounge. Also in the kidnapping scene we got the motivation from the tension that was building between Seth and McLovin in 'Superbad'.

Another media product that has inspired us throughout the process is 'The Inbetweeners' which relates to our piece quite well. Their cast is mostly teenage and involves the geek with the cooler people which also relates to our piece. So throughout we have looked at different media products and took inspiration into what we have created for our own media product. It is really important for us to do this because so many different ideas can be generated from other media products.

In terms of already successful media products, I think that we have challenged them because even though we have took inspiration from several comedy pieces, we have added our own comedy values and ideas into the film as well as what inspired us from other comedy films like 'Superbad' and 'The Hangover'. So the comedy that we try to create is attempted to be better or at least challenge the comedy products that are already in the market and have been successful.

Developing our ideas over other media products was always going to be a huge challenge to fulfil as the films that we took inspiration from were very successful. One idea that we took into filming was the music that we chose and the effect that it would have on our audience. We chose 'Mysterious Girl' by Peter Andre and we decided to have this track as background music throughout the whole of the introduction. We thought that this would be effective because we felt that it would represent the main character of Fogul well and it also didnt really make too much sense which would add to the comedy value. Also normally the music would start at openings of a lot of media products, but would stop before the end in order for the characters to say their dialogue. There were certain parts where we made the music quieter so that dialogue could be spoken and it would still be effective hearing it quietly in the background rather than completely remove it, then start playing it again after the dialogue.

2.How does your media product represent particular social groups?

I think that social groups are an extremely significant part of our product. One social group that we include in our piece that also is in many successful media products is the 'geek' and 'cool' social groups. Throughout many media products, this becomes their evident social group. In our media piece, Fogul tries to represent one social group (cool) but really is the other (geek). This sort of transition between the two social groups creates a very comedic piece, especially for that character because he can act both of them and that creates humour. We took inspiration from other media products for inspiration on social groups like Role Models with Wheeler relating a cooler character and the kid that Danny works with would represent more of a geek. The relationship between the characters of cool and geek is what we wanted, but we wanted it to be a very negative relationship.

The character of Harry in our piece represents the social group of a bully. When he is first introduced to the audience, he is immediately seen as an aggressive, upsetting character who has an extremely short temper. He immediately snaps when Fogul turns up late and he immediately storms out and takes his frustration out on Fogul. I think the character of Harry displayed the anger and emotion well to make sure that the audience realised the social group that he belonged to. I think that the point where he does get kidnapped, the social group of the bully is realised fully.

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

As our media product was inspired by many comedy films like Superbad and The Hangover, I think that our type of product would be quite appealing to many media institutions. The downside for us in particular is that it we are not experienced and many media institutions would see it as a gamble to distribute our media product. An audience may not be completely interested in our piece because we are not well known and i think that a smaller institution would be more likely to distribute our media product. I think this because a bigger company would not want to take a gamble and if it fails for them then they could stand to lose a lot of money. I think that it would be more of an advantage for a smaller company because if it turns out to be a success then that would suit them well. Then if a bigger company sees the success that our film has generated, a bigger company would feel more comfortable about distributing our product and making it more of a success.

Also if it does not generate success, the smaller company would not be hugely affected as they would not be a big world-wide company and wouldnt stand to lose too much money. That is why I do not think a bigger company would distribute this as they would be condemned and other inexperienced media products would feel that they should have the same chance as we have.

4.Who would be the audience for your media product?

I think that the audience for our media product would be teenagers and adults who appreciate comedy films and find this type of comedy funny. We chose to do a comedy film and it needed to be appealing for people to want to watch on further. So it is important that we made the most of our characters with their voices and movement in such a short introduction so that people would be interested in watching on and see what happens after. I think that we would have quite a wide range of audience because it is clean humour and would probably appeal to teenagers and adults.

I think that our piece is quite limited in terms of the range of people that it would relate to as it is a very certain type of humour and some people will probably not find it that funny. We thought that our audience would have to be very specific and that the specific audience we have chosen would enjoy our media product more than others would. If we chose a wider range of audience, then a lot of older and younger people around the bracket that we have already chosen will possibly not enjoy it.

5.How did you attract/address your audience?

We knew that during the two minute introduction we have to want to make people watch on further and because of this, we tried to insert as much humour into the piece as possible so that they would want to do that. If our target audience is not wowed and impressed by the first two minutes of our media product, they will not want to watch any more. We made sure that we have managed to introduce the main character straight away and that we have introduced the storyline straight away so that the audience can immediately relate to what is happening. We have also attracted our audience by saying what inspired us to do this film. Our target audience would also like Superbad and The Hangover so saying that we have got big inspiration mainly from these two films would hopefully persuade people to watch our film in the hope that we challenge their media products. We also made a cliffhanger at the end of our film in order for people to want to watch on; because if we left it at a stand still then people wouldn't have the motivation to continue watching. Our last scene consisted of Fogul being released by Leeroy and saying that he will get his revenge. This is effective because people will want to know what Fogul will actually do to Leeroy further on in the film.
The costumes (especially for Fogul Nocklewodge) was extremely important for us to attract our audience. This added to our comedy value as the costume that Fogul wore was effective as it resembled the sort of character that we wanted to create. We wanted him to be like the character of Fogul from Superbad and act out the geeky character and his clothes matched that with big glasses and a striped shirt to also make him look like he attempted to look cool and that is the effect that we were trying to create for his character from the start.

6.What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Throughout this process I have learnt many different things about the technologies that we have used through constructing our media product. When we transferred the film from the camera to Premier Elements to edit, it was an extremely long process. We knew that certain scenes needed editing out and changing but we needed to be extremely intricate and careful with what we edited because if we couldnt edit or found problems it wouldn't look very good and there would be the prospect of having to re-film. Through the editing process, we also had to decide where to add in music, titles and special effects to add to the comedy in our piece. We had to carefully watch through the piece and decide where it would be most effective.
I also learnt that through the long amount of time that we edited our piece, it was actually no more than two minutes. Other films can go on for two and three hours and I know now why films take so many months and even years to complete to a high standard.
Another thing that I have learnt throughout this process is how vitally imporant the right camera angles are to a media piece. Often the use of angles makes the piece a lot better than the actual acting in the film. There also needs to be a big variety of camera angles used so that each scene can be used to its maximum effect through the camera angles that are used.
Finally, I have learnt that when filming, you have to be extremely careful with the situation of props and equipment so that there are no continuity errors. Often somebody would forget and maybe move an object and this would cause a problem because if the angle has changed and then it goes back to the previous angle, it would look different and would not make any sense whatsoever. Then we might have to try and edit it out but that might cause the scene to look very disjointed. The amount of care that is took in films is important because the slighest mistake that is not noticed will be fatal.

7. I have definitely learnt a lot from doing the main task from the preliminary task. I think that one of the major points that I learnt from the preliminary task was just taking more time and being more thorough with preparing the task. I also made sure that I spent more time on the lead up to filming as I discovered through the preliminary task that it was a very important part of the process and that I need to show what I wrote, what I researched and what I discovered through preparing my piece. Also in the preliminary task I didn't really research enough into other media products and this was one of the downfalls for a mainly unsuccessful preliminary task. I made sure that in my main task that I researched into a variety of media products and that I looked closely at the introduction to see what they did to make it have an effect on the audience so that unlike in my preliminary task, I took inspiration from films and tried to incorporate them into our film opening.

I also learnt a lot from my preliminary task about how a variety of camera angles is important to a media piece and that you need to be able to take plenty of shots of a scene to see which angle has the biggest effect and works the best on the audience. This was important because you want to be able to understand and feel emotionally attached to the story and if the angle that is chosen does not create that effect then the angle isnt right. In my preliminary task, I did not really take enough consideration in terms of varietising the angles and doing different angles as we thought immediately that the angles we have chosen were good. But after doing the main task, looking back at my preliminary task and looking at other successful media products, I believe that there were other angles that would have been more effective and would have got me a higher mark than what I actually got.

I also learnt from the process from starting my preliminary task that continuity errors are a major problem and a huge amount of care needs to be taken between scenes so that no problems occur throughout. In my preliminary task, I found some continuity errors after editing it on Premier Elements and by the time that this was discovered, there wasnt enough time for the group to go back and solve these mistakes as we left filming too late into the process. However in the main task we were a lot sharper and quicker with our targets without rushing them to be able to film earlier and when we edited our piece we were quite unhappy and disappointed because there were numerous continuity errors. The difference from the preliminary task to the main task which I learnt was that there was enough time to re-film and make our piece a lot better overall and eliminate all continuity errors. In a lot of cases, continity errors are not very noticeable and throughout editing our task, we had to look very closely at the location to make sure that everything was the same so that between scenes there was nothing that 'magically' changed.

Something that we added in the main task that we didnt in the preliminary task was music and that it could have a great effect on the piece if the music was correct and worked well within what was happening and what dialogue was spoken throughout the piece. For our main task we chose the track 'Mysterious Girl' by Peter Andre because our piece was a comedy and we thought that the randomness of the music would add to the comedy element and that the audience would find the difference between the actual film and the music that was played throughout it humorous. In our preliminary task, we did not think about music and when I look back at my preliminary task, I thought that a certain type of music would end up being effective and heightening my grade further. Another lesson that I have learnt is the volume and length at which the music should be played to make it effective. An example of this in my main task was when Fogul entered the community centre and dialogue was about to be spoken. The music up to this point was quite loud and was used to introduce the character to our target audience. Then because we wanted to hear dialogue between the characters, we died the music down to a lower volume so that it would still be heard, but the focus was on the characters instead of the music. Then after the dialogue was spoken, the volume of the music was turned back up.

There was a lot of deliberation in the group for when to add titles and how we should incorporate them. Because the opening of our piece was our main character walking towards the community centre, we felt that it would be most suitable for us to filter in the credits and we felt that the music would also make it effective and that adding credits in now was a usual ploy used in many media products.