Evaluation of Film Opening.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (I.e. of film openings)

- The title of our film is ‘Trapped’ as we thought it suited the meaning of our film opening well. We chose various locations to film our opening in, such as; the bedroom - the first scene in which one of the main characters is drinking and absorbing drugs.), the dining room which is meant to be seen as a café, the bathroom in which she reflects on herself in the mirror after being beaten up which is meant to be her main turning point in life.

- For the second main character, we decided to film the scene in her front room, as this is where most of the pictures were, which reflect her boring lifestyle of being trapped as a housewife.
- The costume we chose for the first character was of a more sexual Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
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ture to represent her role as a prostitute; the colour red is usually associated with lust and has a sensual nature to it, which is why we chose to have her dressed in a red leotard throughout, until the last scene in which she meets the housewife and changes her lifestyle.
- For the second main character, we decided to have her dressed in a simple checked blue shirt, and all black as black is usually associated with depression that we thought suited her role perfectly.

The font style, which we chose, was called ‘typewriter’ which we downloaded from an online site, and then imported it onto ‘final cut express’. We thought this best suited our film as the two main characters meet on an online chat room, so the typewriter font was linked to this throughout the opening.

The main story of our film is that two completely different woman are drawn together through an online chat room as they are both trapped within their own lifestyles. The opening of our film begins with the prostitute’s eyes being zoomed out of, and into the first scene in which she’s taking drugs and drinking alcohol, which we thought would have a good impact on our audience as they would then want to watch more to find out what happens to her destructive lifestyle, especially as our film is a drama which this reflects.

Our characters are introduced one after the other, which we separated using special effects such as transitions (fade in and out, black out), slow motion and fast motion, and blurs. Our film opens in the beginning with the first main character’s montage. The scenes within her montage include the special effects which are named above. These were included to make an impact on our audience and allow them to engage in what they were watching properly. Similar to the first main character, the second main character had special effects included in her montage, but these were more subtle as she was meant to be living a dull life therefore we thought this would be presented through dull transitions such as slow motions and simple fade outs.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Julia Roberts as a prostitute in ‘Pretty Woman’.

Molly Pavett in 'Trapped'

- They are both dressed in revealing attire which represents the kind of lifestyle their living
- They both have short hair which makes them look more mature
- Molly Pavett's make-up is more natural whereas you can clearly see Julia Roberts' make-up as she’s wearing bright red lipstick and heavy eye makeup.
- Julia Roberts doesn’t have many props apart from her bag, whereas in our film Molly has props such as the bottle of alcohol and the drugs on her bed.
- Molly’s facial expression is harsher as she’s pulling an expression at the bottle in her hand, in comparison to Julia Roberts’ which is caught off guard as she’s in the middle of a conversation.
- Julia is sitting on a bench with her body slightly tilted towards her companion which suggests that she may be involved with this character.
On the other hand, Molly’s is slouched onto the edge of her bed, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand which is where we get the sense of disgust that she is portraying from.

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

A production company is either a small or large company responsible for the production of a particular genre of film that is usually responsible for raising the funding for that production. I thought that ‘Origin Pictures’ was a good company to choose to distribute our film as they are independent and well known for distributing drama films, which matches the genre of our film. Producer and financier Anant Singh also backs the company through Distant Horizon, the international production and Distribution Company. They have produced material such as ‘The Awakening’ and ‘The First Grader’ which have both been popular films.

'the awakening'


'the first grader'

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Amy Leigh

Gender: Female
Age: 17
Hobbies: Going out with friends, drinking, reading online magazines, Face booking.
Where do they shop: She prefers to shop in New Look or Dorothy Perkins as they offer a more diverse range of clothes to suit her style compared to Topshop/River island.
Music preference: RnB, Dubstep, Drum and Base
TV/Film Taste: Drama, Thriller, Horror.
Aspirations for the future: To be a Hair Stylist because she gets to express her inner creativity.



How did you attract/address your audience?

We tried to use iconography that would appeal to our target audiences such as alcohol and drugs, which would gain and obtain the attention of the teenage audiences. For example, we chose to include drugs and alcohol in the beginning of our film opening as we wanted this to appeal to our target audience. We wanted to make the beginning of our opening interesting and to build suspense to keep the attention of our audience, as we know that younger people would want to watch our film more if there were elements they could relate to.



In a focus group, I asked members of my target demographic what they thought of my film opening and whether they felt it addressed their needs as young audience members, some of the most important responses are as follows:

"I feel the use of 'dangerous' and perhaps 'taboo' props may entice people like me to the film and give them a sense of power. But I don't think these items reflect everyone's lifestyles"

"The costumes are rather stereotypical but I suppose this helps the audience immediately establish the contrast in characters"

"When the prostitute character is looking in the mirror and the music stops I feel the mood really represents that idea of self-realization many youngsters go through- hopefully not about prostitution though"

"The use of lipstick on the prostitute if both really fashionable now and really symbolic of the danger and passion in her lifestyle- an interesting mix."

These comments are pleasing and shows how closely an audience may analyse intricate choices filmmakers make. However, the audience also pointed out the flaws in our product, e.g.

"I can see you in the mirror of one shot- it detracts from the plot"

"Some of the shots should have been reshot to get maximum effect" I particularly agree with this point as we could only edit with the footage we had available. I would be more organised next time.

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

During the filming process, using the equipment was not as challenging as we thought as most of the group had used camera's and tripods before, therefore we were familiar with what we had to do to ensure we got the shots that we wanted to include within our films.
Using final cut express helped me to develop my editing skills as during the editing process of our film, we had to use a variety of tools such as; trim, cut, fade, zooms and transitions.
We came across many problems using this programme, especially timing of our clips not matching the music we wanted to add into our film opening.
We also had to create our own soundtrack to accompany our film which we created using garage-band. This involved adding pieces of instrumentals together, and then composing our piece, ensuring that everything sounded smooth once played all together.

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

Looking back on our preliminary task 'Life On Mars', we have come quite far in terms of learning about different terminology, various shot types and using different equipment to complete the filming of our opening as the production of our film opening involved greater thought and detail to each stage, such as planning, filming, editing and then going on to evaluate all the work we completed.

In our preliminary task, everything we learnt was given to us in lessons which meant that it was easier to complete any task given, as we were able to ask for help if we needed it. we had to complete the task of watching the clip many times, and the writing down precise moments in time ad describing in detail what happened at that moment. This was challenging as it involved a lot of patience, but also had to be accurate as we were then asked to use these shots to create our own version of the clip. We then had to use 'i Movie' to edit our filming and also add in transitions to make our clip look as much like the original clip as we could. Looking back on this stage, using 'iMovie' to edit our filming was much easier as oppose to 'film cut express' which we found difficult to use as we weren't familiar with the programme.

Creating a shot list in preparation for our film, even proved a challenge as we had to write down what location we would film it at, what happens in that shot, the actors needed for that shot and also props needed. It was beneficial for our group in the long run as it helped us to know exactly what we needed to do so there was no time wasted.

During the filming process our group had to be very organised as we all had to plan when to meet to film our openings, which was the hardest part as we were all mostly busy all the time. This made me realize that the production of films aren't easy as there is a lot of behind-the-scenes work that goes into the making of the full product.