In what ways does your media product, use, develop, or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our film Death3 utilizes dramatic effects found in films such as 2012 yet further challenges and develops the convention by having the story revolved around nuclear warfare and the aftermath opposed to the 'natural disaster' theme that seems to be permanently cropping up within cinemas. Furthermore as a production company we believe the whole 'major effects over any real plot' is wearing thin on its target audience. Building upon this research we've took the special effects (which can be seen during our news scene, and nuclear explosions) yet interwoven a somewhat emotional and in-depth story so that our target audience and media institutions, can clearly see our movie stands out and above other films available.
Another convention that Death3 has that differs from conventional methods is starting our movie after the disaster rather than before like many post-apocalyptic films do. However you may be wondering how our target market won't be confused by the story so far? Introducing the storyline is a balance of news reports and a presidential announcement, allowing us to focus on action rather than a 'slow start, everything's happy' style that seems to be a semi-permanent convention we decided to break. Yet is an image the only thing that's important in a film? According to most post-apocalyptic productions this seems to be the case. Yet for Death3 we believe that music is paramount, being able to have a silent eerie build up gradually transitioning into a fast paced track that still at the same time has connotations of the unknown - a convention that I did actually find in many post-apocalyptic productions and we decided to use in our own movie. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our film focus's itself around an 'average person' social group, purely to allow the majority to relate their selves to our media product. We achieved this by wearing no formal attire, 'major' branded clothing, or even via internal music. You could reference the 'rock' style of music that's found towards the end of the opening minutes to be linked to a more 'Gothic' social group although that would be slightly ambiguous - mainly due to us as a production company on the whole being influenced via this style of music. Looking more in-depth we could be seen as merging both the 'average' social group with the 'Gothic' to show that both can work in harmony when a apocalyptic disaster occurs (as we know from the mainstream media both groups often suffer controversy due to their 'distaste' to each other). You could see our film as a twisted fairy tale in the way that two social groups have been brought together yet at the cost of a major nuclear disaster. What kind of media institution would distribute your product and why?
A company that we would possibly choose is that of Columbia Pictures as they're known for releasing the megabucks film 2012 and as a result our film would be managed by some of the biggest professionals within the media business. The logo for Columbia Pictures containing the image of the lady Jenny Joseph is extremely distinctive and would be recognized with ease by our target audience; again relating us to the whole 'professional' look.As an alternative we can also consider distributing our film with Summit Entertainment. They are the creators of the 2009 production – Knowing a film that’s centred on destruction and the ‘unknown’ extremely similar to the way our film is laid out. A definite advantage of using Summit instead of Columbia is that we are more likely unique final product and release at the cinema, as Columbia may be very likely to copy similar sorts of methods to which they used in 2012 – even if unintentional.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
The audience for our media product would be that of teenagers to young adults (13-21?) and could further extend depending on a person’s exact taste in film and hobbies. Due to our target audience being quite 'young' this perfectly links in with the whole 'gaming generation'; our film takes great influence from the game Fallout 3 -where survivors are cast into a desolate wasteland with very few buildings still remaining, therefore fans of both games and movies can form a solid link between us which will be presented in advertising posters - similar colours and mise-en-scene.
A feature I believe will be effective towards targeting an audience for our film - like mentioned before - is having the effects of 2012, yet a much more in-depth storyline, so we're able to target both sides of the film spectrum. Being slightly stereotypical you could say our movie is more aimed at males then females, the reason being that big 'action explosions' are normally stereotyped as being things the male sex find interesting; so we will be taking this onboard when promoting our movie.
How did you attract/address your audience?
From the beginning of our movie quest getting the correct niche was crucial to our success of attracting the right audience. Originally our plot was based around showing the developments of the nuclear war and its escalating state from a classroom atmosphere. After some initial research we then realised that this would be hard to achieve when considering how much the building is in use, and it would also be following all the same conventions of a typical post-apocalyptic movie rather than breaking them and being innovative. Thus as a result of further research we decided that our audience would be much more interested in seeing the aftermath of the nuclear war rather than a mass build up to it.
As you can see from watching our film intro we followed through with our plan and its proven to be extremely effective in being unique, and it also has action right from the opening minutes; something that was vital for our 'young' audience to entertain them and sustain their interest for as long as possible. Last but not least the actors used within our film are around the same age as our target audience so that they can relate their selves more to the situation; as a result our movie has a more alluring attractiveness to its audience.
What have you learn about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
From the process of constructing the product I've learnt just how effective programmes like Adobe After Effects can be for both budget and 'big time' producers. Nuclear bomb stock footage can easily be imported to the programme and included to an environment. The most impressive part in my eyes is how we had the ability to create our very own news broadcast similar to that of GMTV. I've also taken away the skill of operating a camera to create a range of different camera shots and also to create a video montage (people running away in distress in numerous locations).
Whilst Photoshop is often looked upon as just a 'photo editing suite' it's been vital to our group’s movie. Whenever graphics have been used on screen - especially for the credits, these have been created within Photoshop and then overlapped with the movie during the After Effects programme. The outcome is unbelievably professional, and people on any budget would easily be able to accomplish it. As a group the technologies didn't prove a problem as we are all technology competent and found the project to be interesting and to contain a plethora of skills that shall stay with us for life.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
A definite thing we learnt as a group and individually from the preliminary task was time management. I originally thought that a film was only going to need a few camera shots and it was from the point of hearing about the preliminary that I learnt that in fact a new camera shot was needed near enough every couple of seconds. Whilst we still managed to meet the deadline of the preliminary it still took us a lot longer than we originally thought it would, and I believe this spurred us on to effectively plan out the main task with camera maps, storyboards etc and made sure we could carry it out to the best of our ability.
Upon looking back at the preliminary it also helped us to look at the various different camera shots we could use, and for me personally it allowed me to visualize what sort of final product I would like. Within our film at various points you will notice that the music goes along to the action and I think it was the 'match on action' shot that got us into this mainframe - something that probably wouldn't have happened if we didn't have the opportunity to carry out the preliminary
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