Media Evaluation

Film Opening Project

Jodie Margaret Mills 12LD
 Gender Age
Female 15-30

Audience
Other Films Who they may watch
they may like the film with
A Partner
P.S. I Love You
Their mother
Titanic

Friends
 A Character Profile

Name: Katie French

Age: 23
Lives: London

Katie is a hairdresser and lives with a friend in the outskirts of London. She enjoys
going out on the weekend and shopping with her wages, she shops in places such as:
Topshop, River Island, Jane Norman and French Connection. Other films she enjoys
watching are: Sex and the City - The Movie, Love Actually, Notting Hill and P.S. I Love
You. When going out the music she chooses to listen to is RnB, dance and chart
music. She would listen to the radio on Sundays for the top 40 chart. The music she
wouldn’t listen to is Indie and Rock.
 Looking into the Genre . .
The genre of ‘Romance’ is a very popular – I know this because I have looked at the gross
profit of some romantic films such as ‘P.S I love you’ which made $53,695,808 all together
and ‘Titanic’ which has the 2nd highest gross profit from a film ever, making $600,788,188
– so I know that audiences would be interested in watching a new romance.
To check this I looked at the profit of a film that was released this year to make sure my
facts weren’t out dated – the new romance ‘Dear John’ has made $30,468,614 from its
opening and theatres, so there is still an audience for this genre of film.

(figures are based on America’s box office)

 Advertising the Film . .
To make the public aware of my film I would cross converge many different
types of media – these would be things such as billboards, trailers,
television adverts, magazines, newspapers, the internet and radio. By Another way to attract audience would be
taking advantage of these many forms of media and using them all the through the representation in the film, these
advertise it is likely we would have a larger audience. I think this
are things such as victims, widows, couples,
because from personal experience, I’m more inclined to watch a film I
have seen a lot of adverts for or have heard a lot about. middle aged men and women. I think when
advertising our film this would work to our
As different people will read different newspapers, watch different advantage as there are many different
television channels and listen to different radio stations advertising on audiences we can reach out too.
them all for various age ranges/music types we would draw in a large
variety of people.

When thinking of making radio adverts or trailers I would try to use a

catchy/memorable song so people would subconsciously think of the
film when hearing it.
Representation Within our
Media Text.
In our media project we Represented older characters – 30’s and 40’s rather than the
younger teenage audience, we felt this was more realistic as they’re getting married
and it is unlikely people of a teenage range would be getting married. It also would
attract an older audience, but we also knew it would attract the younger viewers
because films such as; P.S I Love You’ have characters around the same age and they
have a large audience so we know that this is a successful approach.
 Representation Through
Costume
We also represented different situations/people with the
costume that we had dressed our characters in.

For the opening scene we dressed the character in plain

jeans and a top, we then smudged mud onto his
clothing and used fake blood for effect – a long with this
we ripped his top. All these are typical elements of
costume when someone has been hurt and the audience
will automatically recognise this. I think this also adds
this also adds a realistic affect to our opening.

Contrasting to the above was the fact that we used a

wedding dress in the 3rd scene, we made sure it was a
white one as this is the symbol of purity. This showed the
vast difference between the fast pace of the 1st and 2nd
scene. Weddings usually represent happiness also – also
contrasting to the rest of the opening.
We also used a dress from the 1980’s which represents an
older generation giving it the feel the wedding was filmed
years ago.
 Conventions . .
I think that our opening challenges a lot of different conventions and challenges the
audiences preferred viewing, because we show death within the first minute and usually
the audience would prefer the story to happy – especially when they are expecting to see
a romance. Therefore challenging the conventions by having a death in the Romance
genre film.

These images are showing an over the top sequence of events in our opening showing the contrast of the main
events .
 The Definition . .
Media institution
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia

“A media institution is an established, often profit-based organization, that deals in

the creation and distribution of advertising, entertainment and information
services.
Largely trans-national in nature but can exist in a smaller/national form. While a media
institution is similar to a media conglomerate, it differs in that it can be a non-
commercial entity; whereas a media conglomerate is a commercial entity. For
example the UK media regulatory body Ofcom can be considered a media
institution but is not a Media conglomerate.
Examples of Media Institutions include: News International, Time Warner, General
Electric, Viacom, The Walt Disney Company, Bertelsmann, Vivendi Universal, Sony,
Ofcom and the BBC.”

http://dictionary.sensagent.com/media+institution/en-en/
 Media Institutes . .
One of the main inspirations for our opening and a film we got a lot of information from
was ‘P.S. I love you’ and therefore it seemed sensible to have a look what media institutes
distributed/produced that film.
The 2 production companies that produced the film were:
Alcon Entertainment
Grosvenor Park Productions

I am going to find out more on these production companies and see if there is a trend in
the films they produce ect.

The company that distrobuted the film in the UK was

– Momentum Pictures (2008)
 Alcon Entertainment . . Grosvenor Park . .

Alcon Entertainment was founded in 1997 and is an
American company, all of its films are
distributed by ‘Warner Bros’ which is relevant
because in America the film ‘P.S. I love you’ was
disturbed by this company.
The first major film produced by Alcon was ‘Lost
& Found’ which failed financially – which again
in a Romantic Comedy.
The latest film they have financed is ‘The Book
of Eli’ which is more of an action film, showing
they are willing to finance/produce many
different types of film.
Grosvenor Park is a specialist financial provider for
entertainment companies, and has overall raised $5
billion for over 400 companies. Most of its clients are
Hollywood studios and producers. Although it is
headquartered in Hollywood there in an office in London
which would be useful if we needed Grosvenor park to
finance our film as they would be easy to communicate
with and commute to and from the offices for meetings
ect.

Looking at this information I’d find it relevant for

them to produce our film because their love
films have been successful and as the makers of
‘P.S I love you’ chose it, it seems relevant that we
would use this one also.
 Momentum Pictures . .

Momentum pictures was founded in 2000 by a company called Alliance Films, they
distribute around 20 films a year – ‘P.S I Love you’ being one of them.
This would be useful for us because we would be planning to film in the UK, so we would
have easy communication with the company. They have also distributed many other
successful films such as: The Young Victoria, The Crazies and Lesbian Vampire Killers. So
we would know we would be able to trust them, from their successful past.
Preliminary Task . . .
180 Degree Rule
I learnt quite a lot during our preliminary task and incorporated
some of the techniques into our film opening project .

We will use the 180 degree rule during our 2nd scene, when showing
the leading lady looking at the picture of the wedding. As this will
draw the audiences attention to the two and the significance of this
picture on her.

We used this panning shot in our opening when

we see our lead male fall into the stream – this
just adds a different element to our opening and
we thought it was an effective camera shot.
Shots from our Preliminary . .
I have chosen some examples of the shots we used in our Preliminary task that inspired some of the shots we
ended up using in our film opening such as . .

We used ‘Close up’ many times during our preliminary

task this made us confident when using it through the
opening, where we also used it many times – usually to
show the characters emotions.

Zoom – This is obviously used

a lot when filming opening and
using it in our Preliminary
gave us more practise.

We used it during our opening

to draw attention to
something specific
 Shots Inspired by
Preliminary Task …

These shots that I have print screened are

shots that have been inspired by the
preliminary task, we used these because we
had previous experience with these shots and
we thought they’d give our opening more of a
professional feel.
 Different Camera Shots …
Close up

Extreme Long Shot

We tried to use a variety of camera shots to give our opening the

professional feel we wanted, we also did them to convey different
emotions.
For example, we used close ups when trying to show the actors
emotions in more detail, the ones above show fear and heart break.
Medium Shot We used to extreme long shot to show the actors despair and to give
the impression that they are lost.
We used the medium shot as it us just a conventional shot that is
used but shows the two characters together in the same shot,
showing their closeness and relationship.
We got our actor to hold the camera at one point when running so
we picked up his breathing for sound and it also gave us a different
view on the characters experience, so we thought it would be
Handheld interesting to add in.
 What I Learnt About Technologies from
this project . . .
I learnt and used various types of technologies from carrying out this project, these were
things such as;
Google
I used this to find useful images during my evaluation and when making the mood board, it
was also useful when I had to find out information about different media institutes.
iMovie
We obviously used this when editing our media project and although I found it hard to use at
first, the more I used it the more comfortable I became with it.
Blogger
I used this to keep track of my progress through the whole process, it made it easier for me to
know where I was and what I needed to do.
 Overall Evaluation

Overall I am very happy with the way our opening has turned out, I think there could have
been some things that we could have done differently such as more people included rather
than just the two main characters – although I think that this showed the closeness of the
two people in the relationship. I also think that some shots could have looked more
professional and the lighting could have been brighter (for example in the first scene), but
I think that this kind of worked to our advantage as it contrasted to the brightness of the
wedding scene – showing the happiness of the wedding and the sadness of the husband
being killed. I think in order to make our opening more successful we could have given a
clue to what would have been expected in the rest of our film, but generally I am very
pleased with our efforts and think that it looks very realistic and professional.