Our final title sequence.

Evaluation.

Evaluation.

BRIEF: To create a title sequence and the opening scene of a new film.

GENRE: Action/Thriller

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

Before we started creating our title sequence, I looked into the typical codes and conventions found in a title sequence and looked closer into the types of codes and conventions that would be in a title sequence of a similar genre to our sequence.

Throughout our title sequence we tried to use the codes and conventions that we believe suited the scenes. We used a variety of codes and conventions that we used in our final title sequence, we used a range of camera shots, remembering to stick to the rules. However, we didn’t find this very restricting whilst filming, we had a lot of freedom with our filming. Had one element that ran through most of the title sequence which was overlapping film, we had two film pieces running at the same time but moving in different directions, which then created the twisted effect that, we had hoped to create. It also gave the audience more of an insight to the narrative.

Looking at different codes and conventions involved in title sequences helped us to make our title sequence better overall as it encouraged us to create a more successful title sequence and make it look more professional than it would had we not used the codes and conventions available to us. I think the title of our sequence give the audience an idea of what the film could be about but doesn’t give too much away that the audience could guess what film storyline as it isn’t so straight forward as it may seem. We decided it would be good to look into other words associated with ‘kidnap’ as our narrative was to do with a girl being kidnapped but we didn’t want to give too much of the story away before the film began. So, we looked at alternative words like capture, taken etc. However, we believe ‘Seized’ best fit and wasn’t too obvious; we also believed that it kept the tension more than the others would have done.

Who would be the audience for your media product? How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The original idea of the target audience for our film was to represent it to the 15 and over age range, we believed the range was quite accurate as it isn’t too restricted as to who could would be entitled to watch our film we also wanted to broaden our horizons with the topics we were using and wanted to go into more depth on the issues we were addressing within our title sequence. We have tried to address many emotions in title sequence to foreshadow what may come in the film. We wanted to aim it at the ages we have chosen because we want the audience to be able to relate to the characters and issues in the film so if we had made the age range lower we may have not been able to going into such depth on the issues we involved in our title sequence. The title sequence covers different aspects of social groups included within the age range we have chosen to aim our title sequence at – there are elements of tension and surprise for people seeking adrenaline from the film they are watching, includes lies and deceiving parts to the film for people who want a more emotional film to watch.

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

I took a lot of time researching different media institutions to find out more about them and the types of films they support and distribute. It was time consuming looking for an institution. However, we found one that suited our title sequence and the genre itself. We finally decided upon ‘Lionsgate’ as we looked into the films they had distributed for, these included films such as American Psycho, Saw and Crash. By representing films of the thriller genre, we thought this institution would be best to use for our title sequence. We also believed that the clip of ‘Lionsgate’ that we decided to use, really suited our sequence as it was dark and gloomy which reflects and sets the mood in our title sequence.

How did you attract/address your audience?

We thought we’d try to attract the audience that we were aiming for by trying to focus our title sequence around the habits, likes and dislikes of young adults 15+, I think we achieved our target.  We put a lot of effort into using unique camera shots and techniques such as soundtracks and transitions, which we thought would interest our target audience the most. Also, we based the age of the main character similar to the age group that we have aimed our title sequence at so it would be of more interest to them. We also took into consideration the types of things people of the age group would watch, for example, the twilight series and vampire diaries these films and television dramas include some of the same entertainment elements that may help to interest our age group.

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

From previous projects such as our continuity piece, we only had experience with iMovie. However, we were advised to use a programme called Final Cut Pro, which would benefit the editing process as it has a more advanced technology system. It was hard to get used to the programme as it was more complex than iMovie and has more confusing tools. But, once we had got used to the programme we were using we proved that we could make our title sequence look much more professional. After getting used to Final Cut Pro we concluded it was better overall as we had more advanced tools to use.

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

From looking back at our preliminary task I believe we have excelled as a group and have learnt many techniques from using a camera in new ways to using Final Cut Pro.  We have also found that being organised was very important; we were very organised as a group from the beginning of the project, which was beneficial as we had more time to focus on our editing to make the title sequence to the best of our ability.

I think researching around our topic was a good idea as it allowed us to be more prepared and involve our research in our work. I think this can be said for any work, as it helps you focus and get more out of what you are doing. In this particular instance we showed our ability to understand typical codes and conventions and incorporate them in our work.

In conclusion, I think our title sequence was very successful and am very pleased with the final product. Also, I feel I have gained a wider inset into media and filming.

Online feedback

This is the screenshot of the feedback that I collected on Facebook. I put a post and link on Facebook to the video on youtube and asked people to give feedback. All the feedback I got off of Facebook was really positive and I'm really happy that people gave positive feedback and like our title sequence.

This is  the screenshot I took of the comments on the actual video on youtube. All the feedback, once again, was quite positive and encouraging however, the one criticism we go was that the production logo disappears too quickly so this persuaded us to change it as we believe that feedback is crucial in the process of making any piece of work.  

Overall summary of feedback.

It was important for us to collect feedback from our potential audience so we could improve our title sequence if needed.


We posted our title sequence on Youtube to gather feedback from others. Overall, the feedback we collected was very positive however, there were some criticisms offered. One of the criticisms was that when 'SEIZED' came up, it disappeared too quickly, we took this into consideration and after watching the title sequence back we decided that it may be right to edit this part of the sequence so we lengthened the time that the title was screened.


Another way we collected feedback was to screen our title sequence to a selective few to represent as an audience. We showed it to other classes and gave each student a Audience feedback questionnaire we had created ourselves, the feedback gathered in this particular way was quite varied. One particular answer that kept popping up was about the music and that was was in some ways quite annoying to listen to but after taking this into consideration we realised that the students viewing the sequence were of a younger age than we had anticipated for our film overall, therefore we gathered that they may not have appreciated the title sequence as a whole as much as the people of the age we have aimed our title sequence at. Another issue that we found was that quite a few responses came back that people believed the sequence was a 'horror'.


Finally, as we were happy with or final product, we showed it to our media teachers. Unfortunately, we hadn't researched enough into the way the titles appear and didn't notice that the directors name always appears at the end of the opening credits, after realising this we decided to change this to better our title sequence. It's good that we noticed this mistake before the deadline so we could change it so our title sequence was to the best of our ability and looks more professional overall.

Examples of Feedback already collected.

 

Here are two examples of the audience responses that we have already collected. We are hoping to collect a lot more of these. But you can see how people respond along the same lines. I think we can be quite proud of some of the responses we are getting back as they are quite positive.

09.02.11

During today's lesson we mainly added everything to our blogs that is on the tick list and created a questionnaire that would count as our audience feedback. We also put the screen shots of our editing process on our blogs to show the steps of making our project. We started to gather feedback by asking a couple of people to watch our title sequence.

We are all going to post a link to our video on facebook to gather feedback off of friends and family.

Audience feedback.

This is the short questionnaire that we quickly created to give to people after our screening. We would like people to fill out the questionnaire after watching the title sequence - this is our way of collecting audience feedback.