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

Genre

It was a fairly easy to decide on what genre our media text would fall under. We are all young British people living in London so it only made sense to make a "British Urban Drama". This is because we all consume media texts from the same genre so we would be able to make educated judgments on whether our opening would be appealing to our target audience.

Themes prevalent in British Urban Dramas are:
-Disaster
-Violence
-Relationships
-Friendships
-Conflict
-Coming of age
-Love

As you will you soon find out, our film contains a slight element of each of these themes.

3 real influences for our choice of genre are the films Kidulthood, Attack the Block and Fish Tank

Attack the Block

Narrative

There were multiple theories that we took into account when forming our narrative structure:


We used Todorov's Narrative theory when constructing the storyline of our film. The theory states that there is will typically be an Equilibrium, Disequilibrium and Resolution in a film's narrative.

• Equilibrium - The white family and the black family are distanced from each, with no ties whatsoever, allowing them to proceed with their lives peacefully. They are still prejudice but there is no reason for them to act upon these prejudices
• Disequilibrium - The two teenage protagonists, from each family, fall in love with each other.This creates a direct link between both families which cause racial tensions to rise dramatically. An eventual consequence is that Clem helps Melissa's brothers in a fight - in an attempt to quell these tensions - but ends up getting stabbed
• Resolution - Clem is hospitalized and is obviously supported by his family. However, because of Clem's brave efforts, Melissa's brothers also visit and support him, along with the rest of their family. This results in both families coming together and reflecting upon their racist views. Clem recovers and the relationship continues without any family strains. 

The theory in a nutshell

Sometimes the theory is challenged, as is the case in Kidulthood as seen above

We used and developed Levi-Strauss' theory of Binary Opposites when deciding on vital elements of our film. The two protagonists have two prominent binary opposites that both differentiate them, as well as being the basis of the conflicts in the narrative. The film is all about the struggle to overcome these opposites.

• Ethnicity - Clem is white whilst Melissa is black. This contrast in ethnicity has caused problems and conflicts around the world for hundreds of year. It continues to do so today, particularly in urban environments where hubs of both races would exist next to each other, without ever properly integrating with each other.
• Class - Clem is middle class whilst Melissa is working class. This difference in class is arguably the largest divider in the current UK society. Class usually correlates to wealth, which causes a plethora of issues in regards to opportunities, quality of life and prejudice. Furthermore, ethnicity has a sizable affect on which class you will ultimately belong to.

The moment when Clem and Melissa first meet

We also used Barthes' theory of Codes when deciding on how we could pack the film opening with enough compelling aspects in order to keep the audience interested. We ensured that we had at least one example of all 5 codes.

• Enigma Codes - Where is Clem going? What does Clem think of Melissa? Why does Melissa's Dad need medicine?
• Action Codes - Skating shots, both from the GoPro and the stationary camera. Our first shot is a skating shot taken by the GoPro, which instantly grips the audience.
• Semantic Codes - The awkward looks Melissa and Clem give each other at the bus stop suggest they fancy each other.
• Symbolic Codes - Melissa is a black working class girl living in an estate. Whereas, Clem is a white middle class. They represent their respective social groups whilst also suggesting there will be conflicts because of these symbolic codes.
• Referential Codes - The drink KA, which Shani is holding is a reference to her links with the black working class community. Also, "Pigeon Productions" displays links to Britain and in particular London.

Style

The biggest consideration for us, in regards to style, was colour grading. We wanted to capture a sense of bleakness in order to show the gritty side of London. This also foreshadowed the dark and depressing issues of racism that are portrayed within the film.

A major influence for us, when dealing with colour grading, was the TV Drama Misfits. It already demonstrates use of the exact same feel that we wanted to achieve via grading.

Colour grading in Misfits

Colour grading in our film

Another major consideration in regards to style, was out titles. We couldn't decide on what titles we wanted but after watching the opening sequence of Somers Town, we agreed to use a similar style.

Somers Town title

The titles are very minimalist - small, white font hidden in the corner of the shot.

Growing Pains title

Our main title shot

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

Our film primarily focuses upon the conflicts sparked by racial tension, therefore is is only expected that the core social groups within the film are defined by ethnicity. Our film also represents class. However, our representation of class, is also heavily influenced by our representations of ethnicity. In addition, our film represents age in the form of teenagers. In particular, teenagers from London. Below is a mind map displaying the methods of representing these social groups in our film;

Clem

Photo of Clem who is played by group member Louis

Clem is a 17 year old British white boy.

• Middle class shown by his branded clothing - isn't too obvious that it's branded which suggests that he's very fashion conscious 
• Skateboard - represents indie teen - popular with white middle class youth living in an urban environment
• We modeled Clem off of Skins character Freddie  

Freddie and Effy from Skins

Melissa

The character Melissa was heavily modelled after the character Shaks from the 2011 film "Sket". Both are they stylish with their clothing, but are still practical and wear what's comfortable.

Shaks from the 2011 film "Sket"

Setting

Another major social group we wanted to represent was those living in an urban environment. The most practical way to do this is through the setting of our media text.

London, one of the most iconic cities in the world, is culturally, ethnically and socially diverse, yet every inhabitant can relate to certain features of the city. For instance, the use of a bus stop at the end of our opening scene will be recognizable by every Londoner.

Bus stops are iconic for all types of people

Bus stop similar to the one in our final product

Additionally, we had to represent the contrasting urban backgrounds that Clem and Melissa live in.

Clem lives in a middle class area. Thinner roads, semi-detached houses and large gates are all affiliated with more affluent and middle class residential areas. 

Clem skating down his road

Melissa lives in a tower block state. This type of estate is commonly affiliated with poorer areas in London and other major British cities.

Typical London estate

Melissa and Shani walking down estate staircase

Another important element is the whether the characters reflect the setting. For instance, all the characters are dressed in typical urban attire. However, we also had to consider language, dialect and slang.

Our first draft of the script for Growing Pains

The first draft of our script displays an over the top use of London slang. We ultimately decided to use more subtle types of slang in order to give a more mature, yet still urban, feel to the characters.

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

Our film deals with rather controversial and specific issues such as racism and gang violence. Therefore, it would be impractical to attempt getting a large studio company to distribute our film. This is because they would dislike the controversial aspect and would instead prefer generic and harmless issues to be present within the films they distribute.

Funding

We researched into British institutions that would provide us with funding for our film. Film4 is what we eventually decided on. They have an independent film funding scheme that intends to promote the creation of films that will represent the British community and challenge controversial issues.

Above is a screenshot taken directly from Film4's website. It explains that they are looking for contemporary stories that push the boundaries of its own film genre and are created by British led talent. Our film, Growing Pains, fulfills all those criteria.

We know that we can provide Film4 with what they want, but other than the funding, why them over anyone else? Below is a list of films that Film4 has distributed and funded successfully:

It is clear that Film4 are extremely resourceful, as they have given commercially successful films, like Slumdog Millionaire and Last King of Scotland, the platform they needed in order to start off. Perhaps they could grace our film with commercial success.

Regardless, all the films in the list above are critically acclaimed, like Submarine, and allowed the producers to get the recognition they deserved, which would be more than ideal for our production company.

Film4 sequence as seen in Growing Pains

Distributing Company

Revolver logo

After intensive searching, we eventually came across the distribution company Revolver. Below is a description of exactly what the company is, taken directly from its website:

Most importantly, Revolver has shown that is is fully capable of professionally distributing our film. Not only are they resourceful and reliable, but they are also very inventive. This can all be seen in yet another extract taken directly from their website:

They are very modern and efficiently utilise social media in order to heighten their impact on the media. They have a strong presence on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, arguably the three most prominent media websites.

Revolver's YouTube page

Revolver's Twitter page

Revolver's Facebook page

Production Company

We decided to create our own production company, appropriately named Pigeon Productions. It's a low budget production company that focusing on bringing heavy British influences to Urban, Indie or Romantic Dramas.

Pigeon Productions as seen in Growing Pains

Due to the fact that we're a small company, there's little to no chance of us getting our film into big cinemas like Cineworld or Odeon. However, British Indie Dramas have a very good network of indie cinemas that they can utilise.

We eventually discovered Picturehouse. They have a number of independent film cinema screens across the country, particularly in London which is perfect.

Screens which would show our film

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

In order to create a successful media product, we had to deeply consider exactly who our target audience would be. This is especially important with our film because it is an indie film, meaning we already have a more refined audience because of the lack of funding to launch a full scale advertisement and distribution campaign.

To tackle this task, we envisioned profiles of the standard individual within our audience. To do this, we stated some of the aspects of that individuals life. These aspects include age, ethnicity, gender, lifestyle, means of consuming and other media interests.

Primary audience

Age	16 to 24 – largest group of UK cinema goers. Same age as characters, allowing them to be able to relate with the topics present in the film
Gender	Both – the film includes and represents both genders equally, meaning both genders will find relatable aspects
Ethnicity	White or black – the two races represented within the film, plus, they are the two races that are most common within the UK and more importantly, London.
Lifestyle	Middle class people living in an urban environment. The film paints working class people is a worse light than those who are middle class (gang-affiliated brothers are working class), which may deter some working class people. Skating as a hobby
Means of consumption	Cinema – as previously mentioned, they are the most avid cinema goers
Other media interests	Skins, Submarine, Fishtank and possibly Attack the Block

Submarine

Skins - Freddie

Secondary audience

Age	16 to 24 – largest group of UK cinema goers. Same age as characters, allowing them to be able to relate with the topics present in the film
Gender	Female – although Clem is the hero, Melissa is the character going through the most (ill father, lover is stabbed, gang-affiliated brothers, racist mother), which arguably makes her the main character, therefore allowing girls to have a more powerful connection
Ethnicity	Black – Not very common for a black girl to be one of the protagonists, meaning black people will be more inclined to watch the film
Lifestyle	Working class living in an urban environment. Interested in boys, partying and fashion.
Means of consumption	Cinema or online – in the age range of most avid cinema goers but they may also stream online because of lack of income or time to go to the cinema
Other media interests	Attack the Block, Top Boy, Sket, Skins, Fishtank

Fishtank

Sket

Tertiary Audience

Age	25 to 32 – film could provide a platform to reminisce about teenage life
Gender	Both – the film includes and represents both genders equally, meaning both genders will find relatable aspects
Ethnicity	White or black – white people who are typically more sheltered, would find it interesting to be injected into a gritty world. Black people who were probably more likely to have experienced racism due to their age would be able to relate and notice any differences in severity of said racism
Lifestyle	Middle or working class living in either an urban or more rural environment. Work absorbs a larger portion of their life. Perhaps even a family.
Means of consumption	Cinema or online – Don’t have time or will to go to cinema, may perhaps even get involved with illegal downloads
Other media interests	Top Boy, Somers Town

Somers Town

Top Boy

5) How did you attract/address your audience?

Attracting the audience

This Prezi provides an in-depth explanation of how we attracted our target audience, in conformance with Katz and Blumler Uses and Gratifications Theory:

Addressing the audience

We collaboratively created a survey on Survey Monkey to acquire feedback about the film and what/who it represents. Here is the survey:

Here are some useful responses:

All participants are within the age boundaries of our target audience

All participants are from the UK

However, there was mixture of responses in regards to what genre they would classify the film as. This suggests that the film may be lacking some genre specific conventions. However, I believe it's simply because all of the possible answers are fairly similar.

Regardless of previous answers, thankfully every single participant would be interested in watching the film. This is exactly what we were hoping for.

 

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

Below is a quick overview of some key technologies we used to create our film opening. It's a collaborative vocal annotation of our opening by myself, Louis and Mari.

Hardware

As mentioned in the commentary, we used two different cameras to film the opening. One was a Canon HV30. It was also compatible with a tripod and a shotgun mic.

Canon HV30

Shotgun mic for Canon HV30

Useful Functions

Difficulties

HD – Capable of capturing high quality footage so that every detail could be picked up, allowing the audience to suspend their disbelief much more easily Digital – Allowed us to lots of shots in quick succession and made it much more lightweight. We could also watch the footage back instantly to ensure that the shots we captured were of an acceptable standard. Footage could also be transferred to a computer directly, making the editing process much quicker. Viewfinder – Allowed us to see exactly we were filming, which made framing far easier Lightweight – Meant that we could transport the camera around the location very easily Tripod – Allowed us to keep a steady frame and change the angles at which we shot Shotgun Microphone – Helped focus on the sounds we wanted to hear and eliminate some of the background noise Zoom function and auto focus – Made shooting from a distance much easier. Auto focus ensured that we were never out of focus, regardless of distance.

Tripod – The pivots in the tripod we stiff, which caused us to jolt the camera when attempting to take pan shots. This meant we had to shoot more takes than we expected. Furthermore, the legs were difficult to balance unless it was fully extended on flat ground. This sometimes made shooting horizontally hard. Shotgun Microphone – Although it probably did eliminate a lot of the background noise, it didn’t eliminate enough, which later caused an issue when we were editing the dialogue sequence.

The other camera we used is the GoPro Hero 3. GoPro cameras are quite unique in the sense that they are very small and compact, designed solely for filming action shots from a plethora of points of view.

GoPro Hero 3

It comes with a clamp, which can be attached to most surface types. There are also different packs you can put on the back of the camera. We used an additional battery pack so that we could film for longer. However, the additional battery pack prevented us from using the viewfinder pack. To counteract this problem we downlaoded the GoPro App from the Apple App Store on Louis' iPhone. This allowed us to view what the GoPro was filming in real time in order to check if the framing was of an acceptable quality.

The GoPro App as seen in the App Store

Here are some samples of the shots that the GoPro was used for - they are shot from the front of the skateboard as Louis (Clem) is skating about:

Software

We edited our footage in Adobe Premiere Pro SC5. Via the use of various tool we were able to alter the sound mix, tamper with colour grading and cut our shots. We also used LiveType to create titles.

Firstly, we cut our shots down and slotted them into chronological order. The mutli-track feature allowed us to view each shot clearly and independently. It also gave us the ability to separate the video of a shot from the audio of the same shot. This was particularly helpful when trying to get dialogue in sync.

Colour Grading

We used Three-Way Colour Corrector, a tool that allowed us to alter how prominent certain colours were. This allowed us to change the mood of the the shots. By making all the colours dim and bland, we gave our opening scene a much more depressing and bleak feel. We were then able to copy and paste the same colour settings across onto each shot in order to keep our opening scene continuous.

These are the settings we used on the Three-Way Colour Corrector tool

We also used the ProcAmp tool, which allowed us to change the brightness, contrast, hue and saturation of each shot. Once again, this allowed us to give our film a much darker aura, which helped to significantly change the mood of the sequence. Similar to the Three-Way Colour Corrector, we could copy and paste these ProcAmp settings across onto each shot in order to keep the sequence continuous.

These are the settings we used on the ProcAmp tool.

After using both the Three-Way Colour Corrector and the the ProcAmp tools, we had effectively graded our shots. The result can be seen below:

(The bleaker one is the edited shot)

Sound Mix

Editing the sound mix was actually an extremely simple task. On each audio track, there was a line representing the volume, which could be altered at any point in order to make certain sounds more prominent and others less so.

The simple process of altering the sound levels

Titles

We used LiveType (software exclusive to Macs) to create titles. We selected the size, colour, boldness and style of our font. We then simple typed out the titles and dragged them into appropriate corners of the screen in order to avoid blocking any of the focal points of shots. We could also add effects to our titles, whcih we chose to do so only for the final title of the film name.

The layout of the software

LiveType logo

Examples of titles in our sequence

The fade effect used on our final title shot

Communication

One very practical use of technology, is the ability to have constant communication within the group at all times. We decided to use Facebook for this. We created a group chat which included myself, Louis, Mari, Vivian and our actress, Gina.

Our Facebook group chat